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A blog that slowly morphs into a web forum over many years

I updated to MacOS 26 and absolutely love it. Much more than I thought I would!

I am stunned... Based on my back-of-the-napkin math, a whopping 5% of ALL US teachers 🤯 have watched one my Shuffle Buddy videos to the end (full retention) www.joshuapullen.com/blog/shuffle...

I don't think icebreakers build community in a classroom nearly as much as authentic opportunities for collaboration early and often to begin the school year. Students know when it's just a first-week thing, right? Here's what I prioritize instead: thebrokencopier.substack.com/p/building-a...

I just discovered "story tables" from a Knowles fellow and I LOVE them for teaching algebra storytables.substack.com/p/sowhat-is-...

Found a really great project made by a math teacher @pulljosh.com called shufflebuddy.com Its a great way to arrange and randomize your class roster into a seating chart. Lovely feature to add rules for restricting A and B from sitting or tagging certain students to a specific spot. #EduSky

I need to stop making Shuffle Buddy better. Getting the word out is working and it's FUN. www.joshuapullen.com/blog/stop-im...

I got engaged! I love you Jessika ❤️ www.joshuapullen.com/blog/she-sai...

I’d never used the TikTok app in my life, but I just uploaded a video and now I feel famous. The internet has warped my perception of numbers, but ~3,000 people seeing my thing is CRAZY www.tiktok.com/t/ZTHg51Y4og...

I finally figured out <meta /> tags to add an image to the post when it is shared. I was using <meta name="og:image" ... /> originally instead of the correct form, <meta property="og:image" ... /> It's weird because it's a little difficult to test if your meta tags are correct until you deploy them

I've been collecting strategies that teachers use to randomize their seating charts, and I don't like any of them (except the one I made). Ways I don't like: 1. Popsicle Sticks 2. Deck of Cards 3. By Hand with Sticky Notes 4. Random Number Generator www.shufflebuddy.com/blog/five-wa...

Next week, I'll be presenting Shuffle Buddy at the Knowles Teacher Initiative summer conference. I'm excited to help more teachers with their seating charts! www.shufflebuddy.com

It's so easy for personal biases to become systems if you aren't careful. I was testing my name-identification heuristics and look which names it doesn't think are names. (Spoiler: It's the ones with accents.)

Visual Effects

you will of course recognise that they are still having some issues over at the utah teapot factory

I love this post by Alan Wu about the motivating value of community. It is absolutely true and I want to find/build more communities around my passions alanwu.xyz/posts/commun...

My fun theory is that having aphantasia (no mental pictures) makes me better at programming. Kinda like how people who are blind typically have better hearing. I am very well-practiced at thinking in terms of abstract information

I actually annoyed myself while writing this because I followed the post’s advice while writing the post and it turned out better than anything else I’ve written. I want to be smarter than the ideas I can articulate, but I’m not.

Some ideas don’t gain traction because they are invisible. Dandelion ideas come to life when you give them a name. www.joshuapullen.com/blog/dandeli...

Why did I include a very prominent photo of myself in the blog design? It's not narcissism. It's a marker against AI slop. The article exists primarily for the purposes of SEO, but it's also a real article with real advice written by a real person.

Teachers who use Shuffle Buddy love it, but I need to get the word out more. To that end, I am creating a blog in the hopes of improving SEO. I started with a post titled "5 Ways to Randomly Shuffle Student Seats." ⬇️ Why do this? ⬇️ 1/6 www.shufflebuddy.com/blog/five-wa...

It's Get Swole Summer for me www.joshuapullen.com/blog/get-swo...

I probably spent ~6 hours designing this multi-select dropdown menu, and it still has major issues that need to be fixed. Programmers know how long it takes to build things that users should take for granted.

I spent the majority of my teenage years with a ripping engine but no traction. I was talented, full of energy, and ready to build. I poured countless hours into projects. I wrote code, built things, and then... abandoned them. Now I’ve fixed that. Here’s how. www.joshuapullen.com/blog/tractio...

I put together an annotated version of the new Claude 4 system prompt, covering both the prompt Anthropic published and the missing, leaked sections that describe its various tools It's basically the secret missing manual for Claude 4, it's fascinating! simonwillison.net/2025/May/25/...

A few weeks ago, I visited 16 classrooms to make observations. The most breathtaking anecdote I witnessed was an extreme form of multitasking from a special education teacher who coached two students through their essay writing simultaneously. It was wild. 1/2

you can now change my avatar!!! (finally managed to deploy it) you can even check my avatar gallery, stored in my PDS :) please try it whenever you visit my profile 🙏 avatar.nornoe.net

Have you ever scanned a dirty or crumpled up QR code, *certain* it wouldn't work, and then it instantly does? They're built to be really resilient! Here's a guide I put together, full of interactive visuals to show the design choices in the QR spec. perthirtysix.com/how-the-heck-do-qr-codes-work

I learned the hard way: If you are making a tool for teachers, try to avoid distributing it as a Chrome extension. Publish to the web instead. www.joshuapullen.com/blog/teacher...

I am strongly in favor of anything that would make build-tool-free web development easier, for learning purposes if nothing else.

New experience for me: watching a large number of people use what I built, taking notes, and am changing it accordingly. This is the first time I’ve ever identified as a designer, not just a programmer.

Will you wishlist Replicube? “Signs point to yes” s.team/a/3401490

I just published a new seating chart chrome extension called Shuffle Buddy. When I tested it with teachers, I was caught completely by surprise. www.joshuapullen.com/blog/you-don...

@jessegrosjean.bsky.social's Bike is still the gold standard. Such a simple solution. I wish we had this on the OS level. (h/t @jaakster.bsky.social)

iykyk

After getting some rest, I am in awe of everyone who continues to lift their voice and speak out. This is a moment for our country, and we must make a choice about the America we want to be.

Looking back at "Clown School", an interactive math textbook I started building a while ago, and I am *shocked* by how good it is. Past me cooked. Are there people who would pay for this? clown-school.mrpullen.com/real-analysi...

Y’all can hate on vibe coding all you want but I’m a freaking hero to my kids for making a math video game

. @anselm.io

Fast software feels great

Please somebody—anybody—help me understand merge conflicts. My brain does not have enough wrinkles to comprehend

small harmonics

This is an unironic revelation for me.

Instead of committing to a big new project, maybe I should put googly eyes on a sock or attempt a cartwheel. www.joshuapullen.com/blog/flow-vs...

the feminine urge to

My list of visual math and coding folks. Some very fun follows here! bsky.app/profile/did:...

New blog post! Self-directed play is my favorite kind of learning, but public school isn't built for it. "Discovery learning" is a popular attempt to fill the gap, and while it works well in some cases, I have another idea. www.joshuapullen.com/blog/self-di...

‘A computer algebra system is so complicated that maintaining a production-quality one is something very few people are capable of. But what Boehm & co came up with is 100% correct, & gets 99% of the way to the perfect UX at only 1% of the implementation complexity’ chadnauseam.com/coding/rando...

Designing the homepage for Shuffle Buddy, a Chrome extension I'm building for my classroom that randomizes seating–with some constraints.