Recent Work

It's okay to let things end

Last week, I was listening to Spotify for the last time. Already I wa… Read more

Hourly Comics Day 2025

Panel 1: 12am. POV of Alan and Ruby sitting in our living room. 'Talking about last night's plane crash' Panel 2: 1-8am. Zs in the dark. Panel 3: 8am. Travis showering. Panel 4: 9am. Travis sitting on the couch with a laptop next to a lampshade and cup of hot coffee.'

It's fun to make tangible things. Between s… Read more

insteadofai.site

A no robots sign very similar to a no smoking sign

A webpage that lists resources to use instead of Generative AI. Read more

insteadofai.site icon

A 48x48 pixel image I made as the favicon for insteadofai.site. Read more

Building the web I want to see

A brick-like pattern of white rectangles with blue outlines, blue names like Ruby Gertz, Clotheshorse, and many other names of people and projects, plus each rectangle has blue labels with the topics each person/project covers

I have made a webring! This feels important to me as I try (along with many o… Read more

Over the Garden Wall poster

A pixel art image of a pumpkin man, a horror creature, many cartoon faces including a frog, and two boys and a bird facing them all.

Very excited to watch Over the Garden Wall again with some friends! This is easily one of my favori… Read more

Underhill from Red Mars

A pixel art image of an astronaut in a spacesuit looking down a path in a Martian settlement. The path ends at a massive salt pyramid with a tiny figure on top and one blue dot among the stars.

I've been reading the Mars Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson. I've been loving these books and flying… Read more

Your project is worth it

A dithered photo of Travis riding a mountain bike in the woods

After reading a blog post from Andrew Dana Hudson about therm… Read more

We cannot afford to skip repairs

A dithered image of a flowering sage plant in my backyard

Maintenance and repair are essential to a more sustainable, and frank… Read more

My Kingdom for a Paper Map

A dithered view from the bottom of the Initiation Well at Quinta de Regaleira in Portugal. The well is a large stone sprial staircase with ornate arches twisting up to the sunlight. Strongly recommend visiting if you can.

Recently returned from a ten day vacation in Lisbon, Portugal to cele… Read more

My interest in Solarpunk

A dithered view of Lisbon showing its castle, hills, and many homes and buildings in pastel colors with orange tile roofs

Over the past few years, I have been taking in a lot of Solarpunk inf… Read more

Abolish Landlords

A pixel art image of an apartment building with letters in the windows that spell out: 'No one gets seconds til EBERYBODY gets a home; ABOLISH LANDLORDS'. The building also has various plants, lights and books in the windows and there are people watering plants, sitting on benches and toasting.

No one gets seconds til everybody gets a home. Hunger and homelessness are policy choices. … Read more

Sketches of the Real

A dithered image of a spiral-bound sketchbook with a pen sketch of a Victorian house with a hoophouse in front of it and a tree branch ot the right

I have been sketching lately. Mostly sitting in a place and drawing a… Read more

I am the hand, not the tool

A dithered image of a clock tower atop a storage warehouse looming over a tree-filled neighborhood

Despite a very full schedule leading up to the Social Justice Hackath… Read more

Finding my best duck-ness

A dithered image of my mountain bike on a small bridge in front of an old homestead

Coming through feeling sick and just in time for day light savings, w… Read more

After vacation; before spring

A dithered photo of people walking down a street of the medina in Assilah, Morocco

Excited to see that the sunlight is just starting to stick around aft… Read more

Social Justice Hackathon Website

The website for the Philadelphia Social Justice Hackathon. Built with Michael Chow, Hao Ye, Jake Ri… Read more

Back in the saddle

A dithered photo of a wooded trail going off into the trees

After a few weeks working at my new job and settling into new habits,… Read more

New year. New job. New habits.

A dithered photo of our backyard lightly coated in snow, a rarity now in Philly. A mostly brown landscape features some orange pots, a blue umbrella, and white snow.

New year. I am newly 35 years old and just came through a tough but s… Read more

A personal financial project

A screenshot of the debt snowball chart showing the paydown of the debts compared to the traditional payment plan

Earlier this year I built a project that came from a … Read more

Season of Change

The Wissahickon Creek flowing from around the corner through orange leaved tees that have dropped about 20% of their leaves

Autumn is in full show here in Philadelphia, at least up in the North… Read more

Smaller code and bigger plans

Ruby standing on an autumn beach on her birthday weekend

Over the past few weeks I have released a tutorial to make the classi… Read more

How to make Minesweeper part 3

Our fully done Minesweeper game with styling to make it look like cut stone.

How to make Minesweeper part 3 This is the final part of this 3-part series! I rec… Read more

How to make Minesweeper part 2

Our partially done Minesweeper game with blank squares, some pink ones, and an array of buttons reading 'reset', 'easy', 'medium', and 'hard'

How to make Minesweeper part 2 This is part 2 of 3 and I recommend starting with R… Read more

How to make Minesweeper part 1

Our partially done Minesweeper game with randomly placed bombs and safe squares

Overview Let’s make minesweeper with just native web tools! Using only native web components we ca… Read more

September Updates and October Upcoming

Sunset over a local church and graveyard

I have some updates from the past week and a content schedule for the… Read more

Web development streams coming soon!

Travis holding a bouquet of flowers in a field of flowers!

I have been working on personal projects in my spare time for a few w… Read more

Expungement Petition Generator

From the project page: The project we are currently working on is building out an… Read more

Cautiously considering creating content

Gray buildings amongst green trees under a blue sky. A dithered pixel-art of a view of Fairmount, The Art Museum, the Schuylkill River, and the ridges beyond.

I have been arguing with myself for a while now about getting back into content cre… Read more

Bike & Build Sendoff Poster

A pixel art poster I made advertising a party in Philly to acknowledge … Read more

Now with permalinks!

A recursive screenshot of this blog post in tinier and tinier images as they recursively recede into themselves.

I have been trying to keep this portfolio and its parts pretty simple and lightweigh… Read more

I need a better routine

A dithered photo of our campsite from our recent vacation to Raystown Lake PA. Featureing our camp chairs in front of our campfire pizza, our borrowed tent and our two hammocks near the lake.

I am still very much on the job search. I am actively seeking a full-time (thoug… Read more

Solved a tricky (for me) docker-compose error!

I am currently volunteering on a project as part of Code for Philly's Launchpad … Read more

PhilaVibes

PhilaVibes is a map application that helps people in Philadelphia at point A with more ti… Read more

Green Equity Demo

A demo project by Azavea (now Element 84) developers to show Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill Spendin… Read more

1-Bit Beach Scene

A 1-bit, low-res pixel art image of an outlet pipe and it protective beams on a beach

32x32 Self Portrait

Azavea CS Fundamentals Group

Screenshot of the README from the CS fundamentals group repository.

A repository of the work that fellow Azavea co-workers and I went through to learn computer science… Read more

Debt Snowball Calculator

A debt snowball calculator with a chart showing how the different debts pays down as you … Read more

Why is some documentation better than others?

Note: This was originally published on the Azavea blog, but I wanted to put this here… Read more

Gravity Play

Screenshot of small colorful planets orbiting each other in a gravity simulation.

A small 2D simulation of particles enacting gravity on each other and combining as they g… Read more

Minesweeper Clone

A clone of the classic computer game, Minesweeper. Read more

Bike Camping PHL

A Philadelphia-specific weather based packing list for bike camping trips. Read more

It's okay to let things end

Hourly Comics Day 2025

insteadofai.site

insteadofai.site icon

Building the web I want to see

Over the Garden Wall poster

Underhill from Red Mars

Your project is worth it

We cannot afford to skip repairs

My Kingdom for a Paper Map

My interest in Solarpunk

Abolish Landlords

Sketches of the Real

I am the hand, not the tool

Finding my best duck-ness

After vacation; before spring

Social Justice Hackathon Website

Back in the saddle

New year. New job. New habits.

A personal financial project

Season of Change

Smaller code and bigger plans

How to make Minesweeper part 3

How to make Minesweeper part 2

How to make Minesweeper part 1

September Updates and October Upcoming

Web development streams coming soon!

Expungement Petition Generator

Cautiously considering creating content

Bike & Build Sendoff Poster

Now with permalinks!

I need a better routine

Solved a tricky (for me) docker-compose error!

PhilaVibes

Green Equity Demo

1-Bit Beach Scene

32x32 Self Portrait

Azavea CS Fundamentals Group

Debt Snowball Calculator

Why is some documentation better than others?

CRT Flower

House Portrait

1-bit Self Portrait

1-bit Mushroom

Gravity Play

Minesweeper Clone

Bike Camping PHL