Henry's Zoo

Lately: Hope in Source podcast, receipt printers (transactional → personal), GPS notes in the real world (surrender of letting go, kairos over chronos), dwelling in the absurd.

> before this, I was mostly maintaining the Babel team + Lerna/ESLint/JSCS at Behance.

Thanks to sponsors, I've been funded by donations since 2018, solely supported by individuals and companies, working and thinking about open source and living with technology. to know what I'm up to, get a semi-monthly bi-annual newsletter by sponsoring on GitHub!

Creating the World in His Image Dec 24th, 2023
on images and idolatry
More on Images Dec 24th, 2023
image as metaphor
The Limits and "Good" of Public Goods Jan 17th, 2022
a sense of limits

Projects

Explorations in code, community, and thought

bible app active

2025
rethinking reading
can it be communal? more interactive? new actions/metaphors?

Sauntercast

2025
a walking podcast
taking Hope in Source on the road, archiving my walks
site

are.na search experimental

2025
find are.na channels by url
site

henry.ink active

2025
show bsky posts as you browse
(started as a annotation sidebar for X)
github

qr quiz

2025
play trivia using a barcode scanner (or phone)
fast like a clicker, but uses QR codes
github

vibe search

2025
uses embeddings to help you discover related tweets in the community archive
what if we could search for a *feeling*, rather than a literal word
github

book club (dm to try) paused

2025
a cozy space to discuss PDFs and annotate, promoting an async-like book club
what if each PDF became a shared room, with conversations flowing through its margins?

receipt printers active

2024
send me a message/photo, like a fax (can ask me to try it)
what if we had a network of printers?

riff with friends

2024
exquisite corpse with friends: each person writes a line of a poem and shares the link to the next person
site

kairos paused

2023
an app for serendipity
why none that can deepen friendships? only for creating new ones

boxes

2023
factorio-inspired programming environment on canvas inspired by Paul Shen's work
site inspiration: conveyor belt programming paul's prototype

sound of code seeking collab

2022
plays video game sounds as you type keywords
what if you could write code that sounds good?
site

text expander seeking collab

2022
different ways of reading text by exploding/zooming in on a sentence at a time
site

bible karaoke paused

2022
memorize verses using speech recognition + blurring the words
thinking of making an airpods only version of this
site

code equalizer

2022
code itself is en equalizer with lofi girl in the bg
site

localized keywords

2020
site to test writing JavaScript keywords in other languages (via Babel)
what if you could write code in your native language?
site

contributors on github seeking collab

2016
browser extension highlighting contributor activity on pull requests and issues.
what does it mean to welcome someone into a new community?
github site

babel & open source

2015-present
I never expected to be a part of xkcd #2347. Maybe nobody does. Like most maintainers, I became one by accident. Still grateful for the serendipitous and challenging opportunity
it was an ever-increasing rabbit hole into how open source *actually* works, by participating in it. my crash course in community building... realizing I don't want to be a content creator. It's always been less about fixing bugs and more about ecosystem sustainability. the digital commons.
github site