About
Erty Seidohl (he/they) lives in Grand Rapids, MI with his partner Greta, two kids, a dog and a cat. Erty enjoys programming, writing, comics, and teaching.
Currently, he's stay-at-home parenting, making stained glass, and looking for employment after being laid off from Google.
He graduated from Lawrence University in June 2013 with a B.A. in Mathematics/Computer Science and English. He attended the Summer 2013 batch of Recurse Center.
His email address is contact@erty.me. Also, check out his résumé.
What's up with this site!?
Website information is normally stored hierarchically, but I wanted to try something different. I've laid out all of my projects in more-or-less random order. Things I put more work into (and/or am more proud of) are nearer to the top.
Instead of facilitating a direct dive to a specific action, I want this to be a wandering experience. Click around. Find some things. Discover what I've built. Hopefully you'll find something fun or inspiring.
If you want to search for something specific, you can use your browser's search, or use the search box at the top of the page.
Email Newsletter
I occasionally publish an email newsletter! You can sign up for it:
Solidarity Glassworks
I make stained glass art as a hobby. Check out my Instagram, and also my stained glass emoji project.
Education
Bachelor of Arts in English and Mathematics/Computer Science from Lawrence University
Recurse Center, Summer 2013
!!Con
Since 2014, I've helped organize this annual conference of lightning talks on the "joy, excitement, and surprise of computing".
Most years, we sell out in about ten minutes! In 2020, we moved to a virtual conference format.
Computing Etymologies
An in-progress project to document the etymology of common computing terms.
Javascript Comics
Educational comics about the Javascript ecosystem, aimed at developers who already know how to program but are new to Javascript and all of its idiosyncracies.
I draw these on my phone while I ride the subway to and from work.
Javascript Practice Apps
Access Practice
A tool/game for practicing accessing Javascript arrays and objects.
This was a rough draft of the idea which helped a lot of my students while I was teaching programming.
Destructurer
A more gamified version of Access Practice that I polished up for the TEALS NYC science fair.
I made this for Managed by Q, who I worked for at the time.
erty.me
Where you are right now!
This site has been around since 2000, when I created a school project on Riparian Areas.
Check out an evolution of this site over time, if you're interested.
Comics and Webcomics
Lost in Space
Currently on indefinite hiatus, Lost in Space is an attempt to run a CYOA webcomic with democratic user choice.
Each comic is written in second person and readers are invited to suggest what should happen next (or vote on an existing suggestion). The top choice is used as input to create the next comic.
Penny and Arthur
I started drawing Penny and Arthur on a bus, my senior year of high school. Influenced by Watterson, I tried to keep the characters interesting and the action fantastic. Ultimately, starting college caught up with me and I was unable to continue the comic.
Fish Food 3
This is the third iteration of Fish Food, my earliest webcomic. This one only made it 6 comics before I started Penny and Arthur.
To Save a Life
To Save a Life was my experiment in long-form graphic novels. Drawn while a Junior in high school, I posted (mostly) daily updates to this comic. You can really see my art get better and more dynamic through the year and a half that it took me to complete this.
The Infinite Canvas style was invented by comics genius Scott McCloud, and is uniquely suited to digital display.
Liang Kou Ren
The title translates to "Two People". I can't promise the comics make sense in either language. I think you really need to be a beginning Chinese student to find them funny.
Fish Food 2
The second iteration of Fish Food, my first webcomic. This one ran for almost two years! The comics starting with 9xxx are ones that didn't run or were just filler. I think Scott Reu joined me for the writing for a while.
24-Hour Comics
For more information about the 24-hour comic, see inventor Scott McCloud's website.
Multiplayer Mayhem
Four sprite comics using Halo sprites. I guess?
Green and Orange
This was back when sprite comics were all the rage, inspired by Bob and George.
Fish Food
Only nine comics, and the second one is me apologizing for not keeping to my schedule. Prescient much? But it was a start!
NaNoWriMo Winner (x3!)
In 2008, I wrote The Last Dream, a YA-Fantasy story about a young girl and her brother who set out to return an amulet dropped by Morpheus, god of Dreams.
In 2013, I unsuccessfully attempted to write 50,000 words worth of short stories, completing about 2,500.
In 2016, I wrote a sci-fi/fantasy story about a woman who takes a job at the tech company that controls the world.
In 2018, I wrote 50,000 words on data structures, "Approachable Data Structures"
I don't intend to publish any of them, I'm just happy that I wrote them.
a e s t h e t i c Generator
An artistic landscape generation tool to create a e s t h e t i c lake scenes.
Created by Ryan McVerry, Per-Andre Stromhaug, and myself over a weekend in Python, which I then ported to Typescript.
Vue Exercises
Some vue.js (2.0) exercises for a class I taught. Includes a PDF handout on data binding, some exercises for a lab, and one of those exercises completed.
Released under CC-BY-SA 2.0 so you can use it in your own stuff.
Irresponsible Wednesday
The second Wednesday of every month is hereby delcared a day of irresponsibility!
My friends and I came up with this holiday in college and celebrated it monthly. So I made a website for it.
It's a great excuse to book that vacation you want, send that text you've been drafting in your head, etc.
Of course, I take no liability for whatever trouble you get yourself into!
ErtyandGreta.us
I got married to Greta in August 2014 - this is a wordpress site that we put together to celebrate and commemorate the occasion!
Our wedding was steampunk themed, and photos from it were featured on Offbeat Bride
GoogleGoogleGoogleGoogle
GoogleGoogleGoogleGoogle.com was four iframes of Google on one page. Started by my good friend Alex Sowieja and I, this site went viral thanks to an anonymous post on the site My Life is Average.
Back in its heyday GoogleGoogleGoogleGoogle.com was getting upwards of 1.5 million views in a month, but then Google sent us a cease and desist for using their name in the url, so we moved to ALotOfInternet.com, which never quite reached the same popularity and eventually went offline.
Featured on:
Really, it was just four iframes on a static HTML page, but to all those 50k daily visitors, it was magic.
Ludum Dare
LD43: the [prince] mission
A game made by myself, Tim Douglas, Ryan McVerry, and Evan Conway for Ludum Dare 43.
For two players. One plays a shoot-em-up while the other runs engineering and tries to keep the ship running.
LD38: Radion
A fully functional arcade cabinet, built and programmed in 72 hours!
The goal of the game was to bury the central circle in colors, or something like that.
By myself, Ryan McVerry, Matt Golon, Eric van der Heide, Max Feldkamp, Ben Gooding, with cabinet art by Haley White-Ballowe.
Also, check out the blog post I made about it!
LD32: Focus Locus
A game by myself and Ryan McVerry. Defend America using lenses and light!
The videos are great (thanks Dad!) and only takes about 10 minutes to beat.
LD29: Ben Eath, the Surf Ace
A local co-op game played one one laptop and many cellphones. Use the accelerometer in your phone to control a shark and eat surfers!
Built by a large team (see readme here) in 72 hours at Recurse Center. We ended up getting 18th place for innovation!
(I think the server is no longer online, unfortunately...)
#MagicItemPrefixes Weapon Generator
Someone started a hashtag called #MagicItemPrefixes on Twitter, so I wrote a bot to scrape them all and generate weapons you can use in your campaigns.
Who doesn't want a "Gluten-Free +2 Dagger"?
Shibe (Doge) Translator
In September 2013, my friend Julian and I went on a road trip to surprise our significant others by showing up at their door a thousand miles away without telling them.
Anyway I wrote this thing while I was bored in the car. It translates from English to doge
Lawrence University Web Portal
I was tired of having to search our university's website for useful information so I made my own.
Based on XKCD #773.
Heart
I decided to make a game using only emoji!
You play as the defender of the central heart, while small and dangerous emoji try to make their way in to attack it.
Music by my friend Evan Conway
Flash Games
Religoff
A short flash game about converting people to your religion.
Switcher
A small flash game about inverting the keyboard controls.
Shields
A bullet hell where you drive a motorcycle between protective shields?
Also features a REALLY wordy instructions screen.
Warp
A small game where you warp around and trick enemies into crashing into each other.
Zombpocalpyse
Local versus multiplayer king-of-the-hill zombie game.
Everyone plays on one keyboard at the same time.
Flash Apps
Blue Circle
One of my earliest animation tests, a very short loop.
Vector Sim
Apprently this was my high school AP Computer Science final project?
Daisyworld
My own version of Daisyworld, an app which models an equilibrium between daisies (squares) which either absorb or reflect heat.
ChineseWriting
I made this app to help my friends study for our Mandarin Chinese exams
Microbiology
For our microbiology final in high school, we were each given a mystery bacterium and told to identify it. I wrote this app to help me do that.
Link to directions in upper left corner. If I recall correctly, I was able to use this to ID both cultures.
MFC Trello Creator
A small website that helps aspiring UU Ministers create a trello board with materials for the MFC.
Allows aspiring ministers to choose which books they need to read and tasks they need to complete, then turns each of those into cards.
Space Bass Man
[Link to mp3]
My friend Evan Conway for some reason let me play with his digital audio workstation and we (mostly he) managed to produce this. Only some feelings were hurt.
The plot of the song is: Space Bass Man is hanging out on his spaceship when aliens attack! There is a battle and Space Bass Man is about to lose. But then Batman shows up, and Space Bass Man and Batman kick the aliens' butts. The end.
1 byte = 1 pixel
I've created some common data sizes where one pixel = one byte, to show you how large a gigabyte really is.
Love (In Four Parts)
I wrote this love poem to my wife in 2016, for our 9th dating anniversary.
I'm really proud of this piece.
Apples or Oranges
My oldest surviving project (ca 2002). My friends and I would make these "Folder Mazes".
The goal: Find "YOU WIN!!!!!!!.txt" to win.
Exclamation Foundation
I serve on the board of the Exclamation Foundation (!F) which is the organizing body behind !!Con and !!Con West
LU Students Portal
This page was last updated in 2011, but was my idea of what a real student portal for a university should look like. I know I used it a lot to find out when meals were, or how late the health center was open.
My Photography Blog
Sometime in high school, I bought a Sony α200 camera, and took a bunch of pictures with it. Selections are hosted on this blog.
Osacian Escape
A pared-down version of a game that I'm working on about exploring the galaxy. In this version, you have to outwit or outshoot the alien guards and make it to an escape pod. This was done in place of a comic on Lost in Space
There's definitely a memory leak (or something) so it slows down after a bit. But I still consider it pretty good for a solo project over just one weekend!
Deity Generator
I built this on a flight from Denver to L.A. It generates a deity and five commandments from that deity. Sometimes it's funny, sometimes it's nonsensical, sometimes it's contradictory.
Definitely needs a facelift but I only had about two hours to build it :P
Referrals
I have some referral codes. Sometimes you get something if you use them!
Available at refer.erty.me for quick reference.
Connect
A poem for two voices that I wrote and co-performed for a service at UUCB, with my friend Sam Fenzel-Alexander.
Contract Web Work
U.P. Pro Rodeo
Website for the Upper Peninsula Pro Rodeo
Medley Bros. Bourbon
Website for Medley Bros. Bourbon. Design by TDA_Boulder
Women and Identity in Gaming Symposium
I helped organize the first WIGS conference at Lawrence University and ran the website for a number of years.
The Eight Eyes of the Spider King (website)
I ran an "Um" adventure (like D&D but with no dice, rules, maps) for some friends and made this website just to keep track of the dates/times we were playing.
I'm particularly proud of the fact that the paper background image is responsive :)
Neighborhood Problem
I needed a fancy UI for an interview problem. Here, a graph search (pathfinding) algorithm is needed. Written for JavaScript, but also available in python.
Meme crossword
I tried to create a Sunday crossword puzzle for my meme newsletter. It's pretty ok (there are only four gibberish words).
People who have solved it: My parents, Evan C., Julian D.
PDF.
Burritos
This is a list of my favorite burrito places in Boulder, CO
I made this because I would charge students one burrito if they wanted extra tutoring during my lunchtime.
You can always access it at burrito.erty.me.
Fhtagn
A game about distinguishing YouTube comments and Cthulu worshippers
Can you tell the difference between a (real!) YouTube comment and a Lovecraft reference?
This was my first project using Angular, so we only ended up building the intro to the game, but I think it's enough to get the general idea.
Pelko Timer
The Pelko Method was invented in 2012 by fictional CEO Brad Bradstone. I created a really basic Pelko app using jQuery to try the satirical technique myself.
The idea is to improve on the Pomodoro Technique by setting a timer for a random amount of time, so that the fear of the alarm going off keeps you motivated.
