Game
Sloth Rocket Grand Prix
A 3D kart racer that runs in the browser. Five courses, five karts and split screen for up to four drivers, with Xbox controllers, a wheel and pedals, or the keyboard.
At home
What I do away from work: games for River, sailboat racing, a go-kart that thinks it is a Formula 1 car and whatever we think up next.
Games and projects
Game
River's Rocket Works
Design a rocket and fly twelve missions, from a first launch to a wormhole. It reads the missions out loud, so a kid can play it.
Game
River and the Nightjar
A storybook adventure in eleven chapters. River boards a midnight train that lays its own rails of light and rides north to a city of lanterns. The story is read out loud.
Game
Hand-tracking sailing simulator
Sail a Sunfish, an Optimist or a pirate ship by moving your hands in front of the webcam.
Sailing
Sunfish racing notes
Tuning notes for the Sunfish, the only class-legal vang, and how mixed fleets get scored.
Sailing
Learn-to-sail week
A free week of sailing lessons on Sunfish that our yacht club runs every June.
GarageBuild plan
F1 wings for the go-kart
A front wing, a two-element rear wing and sidepods for a two-seat Thunder Kart, from plywood and PVC pipe.
BooksIn progress
Comics and books for River
Two picture books about our family and a three-part space comic built on real physics.
Every game you can play in the browser is on the games page.
Posts
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River's French homework: a fire escape plan
River's French class sent home a fire safety project for the weekend. We made our family escape plan in French, and then I had it animated with River in it.
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River and the Nightjar: a midnight train adventure
A storybook game in eleven chapters. A train that lays its own rails of light stops on our street, and River rides it north to a city of lanterns. Here is what is in it and where it falls short.
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River's Rocket Works
A rocket game I built for River. Design a rocket, fly twelve missions from first launch to a wormhole, and race the whole family around the solar system.
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Making a Sunfish faster without breaking the rules
My tuning notes for the Sunfish: the four sail controls, a few ideas I want to test, and the only class-legal way to rig a vang.
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A sailing simulator you steer with your hands
A browser sailing game that watches your hands through the webcam. Pick a Sunfish, an Optimist or a pirate ship.
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A free week of sailing lessons every June
I'm the commodore of our local yacht club, and every June we teach people to sail for free. Here's what the week is and why we do it.
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How to score a race when the boats don't match
Club races put fast boats and slow boats on the same course. The Portsmouth yardstick is the simple math that makes it fair.
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F1 wings for a two-seat go-kart
River loves Formula 1, so the Thunder Kart I'm rebuilding is getting a front wing, a rear wing and sidepods. Plywood, PVC pipe and about $50.
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Formula 1 keeps showing up in everything I build
A kart racer, a go-kart with wings and a Grand Prix hidden inside a bus simulator. A short tour of how one kid's favorite sport took over my projects.
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Comics and picture books starring River
Two picture books about our family and a three-part space comic that sneaks in relativity and quantum mechanics.
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How this site got built
A domain, a free host, no framework and four rounds of me saying "I don't like it yet." Notes on building r3ai.dev with Claude.
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Building games for my kid
I am not a game developer. Here is how one request became a twelve-mission space game with our whole family in it, and what I learned about directing an AI.
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A hometown bus simulator from real map data
It started as a toy trolley on a made-up grid. It became a driving game on our real streets, with real routes and tens of thousands of real buildings.
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A father-son comic book about physics
River wrote a space adventure about the biggest unsolved problem in physics. We are turning it into a real printed comic book.
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Standing up a website in a weekend
This site is brand new. Here is what I did, what the AI did, and why I could not load my own website the day it went live.
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Pure fun: a goat racer trailer and texts to my dad
Not everything has to be useful. A 30-second movie trailer made from one photo, and a running joke about my dad's car.
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Small life questions
A benefits document, a scraped bumper and a strange name on a restaurant. Three everyday questions and what I learned from asking them.
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Hobbies and volunteering: sailing scores and a club website
I race small sailboats and help run a yacht club. AI now does the race arithmetic and some of the homework a volunteer board never has time for.
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Chasing a big idea, and letting AI poke holes in it
I have a concept for helping local governments modernize. The most valuable thing AI did was make my own numbers smaller.
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Following curiosity into hard math
I am not a mathematician. I spent many hours with an AI on one of the most famous unsolved problems anyway.
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Sloth Rocket Grand Prix: a kart racer in one HTML file
I asked an AI for a kart racer themed on Formula 1, rockets, pirates, libraries and sloths. Here is what came back, how to play it and where it falls short.