the lab

Things I built instead of writing about building them.

Some of these are useful. Some are jokes with a database behind them. They live at one address because they were all made the same way: an idea on Tuesday, a working version by Sunday, and nobody's permission.

rob's pick

Try this one first.

Rate eight moments from working life: the surprise donuts, the reply-all, the expense report. You rate each one before you can see how anyone else voted. Then you find out whether you are with the crowd, and whether your own department is with you.

Finish the round and it writes your annual performance review, signed by Work. Rules and my writing, not a model, so the same answers always get the same review.

About ninety seconds. No account, no real names. A considerable amount of infrastructure to find out whether office pizza is helping.

Begin my review →

Everything in the lab

Ten projects, one of them unfinished

Things you play

Work Reviews

Rate the moments of working life, never the people in them. Crowd results stay sealed until you vote, then you see where you split from everyone else and from your own department. Finish a round and read the performance review it writes about you Firebase, with anonymous sign-in so nobody makes an account. The review it hands you is rules and written material, not a model.

The Internet Whiteboard

One prompt, one shared canvas, and no picture of the thing you have been asked to draw. You get a playing card's worth of strokes, and when the deck runs out the round closes whether the drawing is finished or not. Draw your strokes while the round is open, then come back for the reveal Firebase, and one real shuffled deck used as a second clock. Being built in the open, so parts of it are missing on purpose today and you can watch the rest arrive.

Final_Final_v7

A good idea walks into a room of five reasonable people. Every note you take is fair, and the filename creeps toward Final_Final_v7 while you watch. Play Cocoa Comets, then any other case. Same room, same five people, and it falls apart differently every time 2,187 paths per case, all hand written. No model in the loop, because the point is a framework you can argue with.

kaspaROB vs. the World

I play one side of the board. Everybody who shows up votes on the other, and the turn resolves on a timer whether the crowd agrees or not. Vote on the next move and leave your reason. The reasons are the good part Apps Script, sheet as database. The server owns the board, so nobody wins by editing their own JavaScript.

Affirmation Station

A cardboard version of me with fifty nice things in his head, built in an afternoon to see how fast an afternoon could be. Click him. He jabbers, you get one Layered art and CSS stop motion. His head is a photograph, hinged at the jaw.

Things that answer you

ROB-ot

An LLM literally no one asked for, trained on how I actually talk about work rather than how a résumé says I do. Ask it what I'd do about your thing, then decide whether it sounds like a person Custom corpus. The corpus was the hard part. The model was the easy part.

Working Theory

Send me a real problem you're stuck on. When one grabs me, I think it all the way through and publish what I came up with, in public, with my name on it. Read one first and see whether the answers are any good, then send yours Form, sheet, numbered archive. Numbered and never dated, so nothing in it can look stale.

Things with a spreadsheet inside

The Hopper

A gumball machine with a spreadsheet inside it. Turn the crank, collect the set. Also how I send one specific person to one specific place. Crank it a few times and see how long it takes to repeat Apps Script. One engine, swappable skins, and every bank of prizes is a tab in a sheet.

4some & then some

A gamification concept that got built instead of pitched. Foursome logic, invite mechanics, the whole engine, working. Walk the invite flow and watch where the mechanic actually bites Squarespace with a sheet behind it. Easier to argue with a working version than a deck.

The Price Check

A card price checker I built for myself, then shared with a few people who kept asking me to look things up for them. Look up something you own and see what the market thinks it's worth Apps Script. Still a side deal, still useful, still slightly held together with tape.

people found the lab

Who has been here?

—

visits so far

Checking who has been here...