A new version of Glitch.com is in the works, so we need your help!

Earlier this year, our team began working on the most important project we’ve ever done — building a whole new Glitch the way we’ve always wanted it to be, in collaboration with our community. If you’ve been following along in the forums, this won’t be a surprise, since building it in public with you is crucial to our shared vision of the next version of Glitch. 

This September, we began sharing our work in the form of a development preview site, https://preview.glitch.com/. If you haven’t had the chance to review it and give feedback, please do! As you will see, we’ve been busy iterating on the new version, all while sharing ideas for features, filing bugs, and asking you to brainstorm along with us. Glitch should be something we create together and we are so excited to be working alongside the community to make that vision a reality.

For our next big phase, some of the hard work to rebuild Glitch has to happen under the hood, modernizing and updating our infrastructure. We’re kicking off this next phase soon, a long-awaited and highly requested set of upgrades that will include a move to more modern versions of Node.js. And to do that, we’re going to need your help — it’s a little bit like a collective cleanup effort that helps benefit the whole community

Retiring the very oldest versions of Node.js

Our community cleanup will start with projects that are running on the very oldest versions of Node.js — Node 6. This is a tiny percentage of Glitch apps (less than 1%), so the vast majority of you don’t have to do anything. But if you might have any Node 6 apps, we’ll have a few simple steps to follow.

Here’s what you’ll need to do: Review your projects in the Glitch dashboard, and update any projects using Node 6 within the next two weeks, by December 1. (We’re also currently working on improvements to the dashboard so that you’ll be able to easily see at a glance which version of Node.js your projects are using, so keep an eye out for that.) If you’re not sure how to do that kind of update, we’ve got a help doc and a forum thread where the community is discussing the process.

We’ll be deprecating older versions of Node on a timetable, meaning that if your project is using Node 8, we’ll ask that you update it to a newer version by December 15. After that, we won’t be deprecating any more versions until we’ve completed a major container update in the first quarter  of 2024. You’ll get plenty of notice before any changes.

How do I update my project’s Node version?

Not sure how to update your project? We have new and updated Help Center articles to walk you through the process! It might sound complicated, but it should only require editing your project’s package.json file. Read this Help Center article for the full details. As always, if you run into any issues, you can reach our support team directly through our Help Center.

If you have any questions about this update, or the ongoing project of rebuilding Glitch, please let us know by sharing in the community forum. We’ll be sharing even more updates starting next week, so we’ll see you there! 

All of the work we’ve been doing in collaboration with our community is to set Glitch up for being a healthy, thriving and creative platform for many years to come. The beta version of Glitch launched more than seven (!) years ago, and a lot of tech has changed and been upgraded since then. This work sets us up to be able to move a lot faster and to deliver a lot more of the features you’ve asked for.

We also wanted to return to some of our original principles in creating Glitch — working more closely with our community, and supporting open ways of connecting to the rest of the web. You’re already starting to see some of the first results of that work on our new preview site.

Upgrading a platform where every creator is a coder who can have complete control of their code is a tricky process. Doing that at a scale of millions of apps and users is even more challenging. We’re excited about the chance to do this process together with all of you, and really appreciative of the trust and patience you all consistently show as we have been doing this work.

(Re)Building Glitch

Sometimes slow and steady does win the race. Especially when it comes to good news. This October, conservationists discovered that for the first time in eleven years, the white rhino population in Africa has finally increased! In fact, their overall population increased by 5.6% in the last two years. What does this mean for the Glitch community? Hopefully it takes a little pressure off to create the perfect project the first time around, or even seventh time. 

Speaking of building projects, in case you missed it, we’ve been building a new Glitch with you—the creator community—over in our community forum. Head over there to get a sneak peek at the new site preview.glitch.com, give feedback on ideas, or make your suggestions. We’re building the next iteration of the site, and the community, together! 

In other big news from October, our pals at Paradowski Creative, makers of Above Par-adowski (your favorite virtual mini-golf game), released their next big game this month: The Escape Artist. It’s hosted on Glitch, and accessible via your preferred VR headset, so check it out! A preview of their beautiful work is what you see above in the header image. 

Lastly, this month we kicked off a community initiative we’ve been wanting to do for forever: Glitch Community Code Jams! Head to the forum to find out what jams are, and how you can participate. Now, for the good stuff—the projects the Glitch community built in October 2023!

~artistic-concise-zebu by @aieong is a cat-centric virtual experience integrating so many of the things we love: music, pastels, flying playing cards and more. 

~artwalk22 created by @emmettbaber is a virtual (and Android compatible) WebXR experience of the Eugene ArtWalk from 2022.

~star-languid-fahrenheit by @dmarcos shows what happens when you load Gaussian splattings on a single line of HTML (it’s pretty cool!)

~polished-foggy-wilderness by @marwie is another demo showing the Blender to web workflow with Needle Engine (watch the video here!)

Don’t stare at ~rainbowphenakistiscope by @blippypixel for too long, it made me dizzy pretty quick.

Guess as many London Underground metro stations as you can, with this guessing game created by our Fastly friend @kailanblanks. 

~random-horror-movie by @cfjedimaster helped a lot of people find the perfect scary movie during spooky season 

~london-underground-stations by @mapsmania is the original Tube Guesser game, inspiring the one Kailan created!

~pepperoni by @angstr.m is a cool web font that is generated in the browser. 

~babypi by @kfarr was inspired by Early Games and uses a Raspberry Pi to create a simple learning game for the youngest of youngsters. Check out the two-part tutorial to build your own! 

CONTENT WARNING: The next section includes important tools that are used for activism, including one that documents sexual assault, and one with images of a 3D printed nude bust. 

~violenciacontramujeres-yanipaper created by @YaNiPaper is an interactive map that geolocates the points where there was a sexual assault or femicide documented since 2018 in the city of Guadalajara. 

~dbn by @LingDong- is a browser-based version Design By Numbers, the predecessor to Processing.js. 

~ai-training created by @denzelsedwards, @AndyForest, and @becherachapman walks you through the steps of training an AI program with Micro:bit.

Need a Mastodon Oauth2 workflow that works with Python and Flask? @macgill has you covered with ~mastodon-oauth-python-flask! 

~becoming-real by @arit007 is a PatriotHacks project that wonders what a digital self could look like using 3D printing. Good inspiration for our “self portrait” code jam!

The SAG-AFTRA strike is over, so to celebrate, here is a virtual Timotheé Chalamet paper doll, created by @kris10cabrera. We’ll let you know if we find a Pedro Pascal one. 

~traveling-alike-aunt by @stejeda is a choose your own adventure-style story that takes you through the phases of aging.

~infinethum-ephemeral by @sheIby generates brand new art with the click of a button.

~heartbreak-cards by @n.hieda is a collection of autobiographical collectors’ cards, created during a 24-hour period in August 2023.

And finally, ~christmasheardle for 2023, created by @russellc is now live!  

And that’s a wrap on another amazing month for the Glitch community! Follow us across the open social web 🌐 

You can still send your projects and playlists to us via the community forum, or email community@glitch.com—we’d love to see your work in our next roundup!

Sometimes slow and steady does win the race. Especially when it comes to good news.

October 2023 on Glitch: Slow and Steady

Let’s face it, September was full of fails. Travelers tried to put their pets through TSA’s x-ray machines. Americans discovered that they’ve never even heard of the best flavors made by KitKat. And to top it all off, it took New Jersey police two weeks to capture a loose alligator. On the other hand, sometimes it all depends on how you look at things. It’s possible that in these fails, family pets discovered a love of flying, US citizens learned they could order KitKats (like Churro flavored ones!!) online, and one alligator had the best summer vacation of its life. 

We’ve definitely been trying to look at things a different way at Glitch. If you haven’t heard yet, we’ve been testing out a new site. You can check it out at preview.glitch.com and visit the Glitch community forum where we’re asking for your feedback, sharing sneak peeks, and giving the community as many updates as we can churn out to keep up with your ideas! 

Speaking of updates, seeing Andy Dilallo’s new Glitch in Bio reminds me that we recently pushed a bunch of updates to the Glitch in Bio starter, so if you want to implement them, be sure to read Keith Kurson’s update on the forum. And now, your feature presentation, the very cool things the Glitch community built in September! 

~postmarks by @ckolderup is an ActivityPub bookmarking and sharing site that you can customize easily by remixing!

~pipesmarks by @andypiper is their remix of Postmarks, seriously you should try it!

~ossified-cooing-script by @jwgabriel55 is a cool <model-viewer> demo template you can use to quickly see your 3D models online.

~minimal-i18n-library by @janmonschke is not a new app, but a very important one that’s making the rounds again. 

~conant-gasket, created by @christianp, is a visualization of the Conant Gasket, which I’ve just learned is a “particular configuration of vertical and horizontal unit segments drawn between adjacent points in the non-negative integer grid.” M. Douglas McIlroy.

~discover-music is a free app created by the University of York, aimed at helping people find music makers and music makers to find people.

~best-practices by @n.hieda and @guevarajorge is an in-progress project called “Stage for Digital, Contagious, and Networked Bodies and Code++” (SFDCANBAC++) which allows audience members to participate in the ephemeral experience of bodies, colorful objects, live-coding and glittering pixels continuously changing their constellations on the stage. 

~audiogram created by @tennyson, is a browser-based version of NY Public Radio app that lets you create shareable waveform animations right in the browser!

~moldy-world, by @swimygraphics, is an incredible collection of moldy foods, kept updated. 

~hakko by @ooooootasora4321 and @ootaoota0038, is a collection of “memos” capturing varying scenes of human life — it’s a very interesting read!

~streets-of-winchelsea by @mapsmania is a variation of San Francisco Street Names, which also inspired yet another interactive map game, ~london-park-names, so if you love map games, welcome to this rabbit hole!

~lace-difficult-trombone, also known as Scrubstack, created by @elankiderman, finds a random Substack for you to read. (Note: Substacks are unmoderated, and may contain harmful stuff; browse at your own risk.)

~fissh, created by @goatlizardmail, is a web fish! Kinda…

~mus-cog-matters is a podcast series, hosted on Glitch, which focuses on promoting interdisciplinary and collaborative music cognition research.

~mnist-demo, by @bwasti1, is a demo which uses WebAssembly and Loop Tool.js to create an in-browser algebra compiler. 

We saw this cool VR tutorial going around, and discovered that it featured ~artutexample by @emmettbaber. It’s a quick watch so check it out! 

~peptide-blend-calculator, by @dregsow is a calculator that helps you in finding end dosage amounts when combining multiple peptides of potentially different amounts into a single vial/dose.

The project featured in this post’s header image is ~flatvend, which looks like a work of art, and is also @Jakehill3’s portfolio of digital zines. Check them out!

Let’s face it, September was full of fails.

Last month on Glitch, the September 2023 edition

Think about the first time you heard a song that sampled another, and thought “whoa.” For me, it was hearing the Four Season’s “Beggin” revived by French DJ Pilooski. The art of taking something known and making it anew for a brand new audience is one that we keep coming back to, like with Casey Kolderup’s Postmarks project. A fresh take on social bookmarking, but built for the fediverse, and more importantly—the individual user—which definitely made me say “Whoa.” Thankfully Casey is a staff software engineer for Glitch, and Glitch is all about *remixing*, so I was lucky to be able to chat with them amid the buzz Postmarks has been generating. 

Jenn: You’re no stranger to Glitch, but how did you first learn about it?

Casey: I’ve followed along with its launch under previous names but was in my “writing Ruby in vim” era at that point, so I hadn’t used the platform all that much. I started using it in earnest in early 2021 when the new React starter launched—I had been working exclusively on backend development for a while and wanted to catch up a bit with frontend trends. Three months later, by some weird twists of fate, I found myself applying that knowledge to Glitch.com as a contractor, helping out with updates to the site itself.

What is your favorite thing about the internet?

For me it’s the opportunity to broaden your horizons, learn about the things that are important to other people, and decide what those things mean to you. On the internet I’ve made lifelong friends, learned about entire branches of political and philosophical thought (for better AND worse), become a fan of bands who only had a few dozen supporters, and discovered the joy of both 6-second Vines about road signs and 6-hour Youtube video essays about Japanese video games.

How is making an app that’s designed to be remixed by others different from making an app just for yourself?

There’s a lot more pressure to make it work before you tell anyone about it, that’s for sure! I found myself having to think more about the specifics of how Glitch (cleverly– I can say that because I wasn’t there when they thought this stuff up) uses things like the .env file and the .data directory to make each remix different. I had never made it this far before on a project that was designed as a remixable object first, but now that I’ve done it I want to think of more.

We haven’t seen new bookmarking apps in several years, what made you want to revisit the idea?

I’ve been using online bookmarking platforms since the days of del.icio.us; a couple years ago I had an idea for something I wanted to do with the solution I was using at the time and found that their API felt really difficult to use, to the extent that I started thinking about how I could probably build the solution I wanted from scratch more easily. 

I got busy with other things and shelved the idea for a bit, then started working on a new Rails app that was built around having small-group conversations with specific URLs as the subject, a sort of “URL book club”. As I built things like User Accounts, Login, Privacy Controls, etc. it all felt sort of tedious, to be building another closed platform and having to spend time on all of these things I’ve written a dozen times with slight variations. Some programmers would take that as a cue to design their own framework; instead I just went back to playing Nintendo Switch. Despite that, though, both apps kind of remained stuck in the back of my mind.

What were your community inspirations for building on the fediverse in this way?

I had been trying out various ways of being a user on Mastodon ever since its first big migration in 2017; some public, some private. It had never occurred to me that the ActivityPub protocol was something I could build a working server on until Darius Kazemi started re-promoting some work he had done to make exactly that process more approachable, and I was particularly interested in apps that weren’t just different microblogging implementations– I’m glad people are building those, but it wasn’t for me.

I thought “maybe I should make my URL book club work on the fediverse?”, and in the process of thinking through the implications of that, I landed on this simpler idea.

If you were to have one, what’s your ActivityPub wishlist?

I’m still learning more about ActivityPub and its associated specs, but I will say that I’ve felt challenged from the start to provide good interoperability with dominant platforms like Mastodon–figuring out how to make Postmarks “play nice” with other implementations seems like a tricky line to walk, and I’d love to learn more about how true that is for everyone versus my own lack of understanding.

What makes Glitch a great platform for building Activity Pub apps?

When I first set up Postmarks and wanted to test that it could publish Notes that something like Mastodon could read, it occurred to me that there would be no way to do the handshake of requests that go in both directions to make many ActivityPub operations work successfully if I was running the app on my own computer.

Building on Glitch gives you a unique hostname that’s publicly accessible from the rest of the internet immediately. There are other tools that would let me do that by creating a tunnel from my computer, but getting new names for each remix is easier than any that I’ve seen.

On the internet I’ve...discovered the joy of both 6-second Vines about road signs and 6-hour Youtube video essays about Japanese video games.

As a fellow not-frontend-engineer, what were the challenges in building a light-weight, responsive site with minimal JS? How did building on Glitch make that easier or harder, and what can we do better to support or encourage that sort of work?

I take a pretty critical eye to a lot of the Glitch platform but I think the Glitch Editor is currently a good place to build a node.js app with Express and Handlebars that accesses sqlite files on disk: not the newest, flashiest architecture; but one that’s certainly well-worn and familiar to a lot of people.

The biggest difficulty I found was related to syncing my changes back and forth between Glitch and the Github repo I set up, especially once I had multiple remixes of my own, so I guess I’d say that regardless of your framework choices it would be great if we could find some time to revisit that workflow and think about how to improve it.

What’s your dream pull request to get from the community of people who are now exploring Postmarks?

The response I’ve already had from the open-source community has been beyond my wildest dreams. In the first two weeks I’ve had so many PRs I’ve barely been able to keep up, and they range from bug fixes in my handling of ActivityPub details to implementing entire features like adding the ability to search your bookmarks. Everyone has been helpful, kind, and barely said anything about some of my more embarrassing lines of code.

I try to keep the GitHub Issues up to date with things that indicate the general direction I’m hoping to take the project (as well as all the known bugs that I or other people have noticed), so taking a look there and speaking up about something that looks interesting is certainly a good place to start.

More Postmarks, hopefully! When I was working on the project by myself I was happy with a number of ways things were designed to be easy for fellow coders, but the response to the launch has made it clear that people from a lot of different backgrounds and skill sets are interested in this already.

While I’m proud of how easy the initial setup process by remixing on Glitch and walking through the README, getting updated versions into your remix while safely preserving your data is something that still has a ways to go, and I hope to feel like I’m supporting people who don’t want to do things that I take for granted like manually managing SQLite databases soon.

I try to put all my projects on https://casey.kolderup.org, but I also blog about them on https://motd.co and socialize with people on Mastodon at https://sharetron.com/@casey!

The art of taking something known and making it anew for a brand new audience is one that we keep coming back to, like with Casey Kolderup’s Postmarks project.

Bringing fresh fun to the fediverse: A Q&A with Casey Kolderup, Postmarks creator

What made you first fall in love with the web? I’m trying to remember my first impressions, but as far back as I can recall, each new discovery made me excited for the next one. First it was email, messages I could send to my (other sixth grade) friends without mailing a letter or passing a note! Then, designing my own site on GeoCities – a space that was completely up to me to decide how to decorate, or express myself. Around the same time, ICQ gave me rapid real-time messaging with new friends from around the world. Each time the world got a little more accessible to me.

We have it all now. So, what makes you excited about the web now? What are you looking forward to next? I’m really bad at predicting the future, but I’m pretty great at loving all the ways the web makes us excited, inspired, and delighted. I know one thing for sure, the Glitch community continues to create projects that make us smile, help us out, and capture countless ways to inject a little more fun in the everyday. 

~town-names by @mapsmania explains the meaning or origins of the names of the biggest towns and cities in the United States. Some of them might surprise you! 

~random-horror-movie by @cfjedimaster can either serve as your own spooky season movie scheduler OR you can remix it to build a generator with Cloudflare workers.

~florentine-real-ease by @hello-smile6 and @mna4 is a multiplayer drawing website that uses a Discourse forum for authentication and was inspired by a discussion in the Glitch forum!

This colorful dataviz app was shared in a recent interview with Gissoo Doroudian that you can read here. 

~open-lab by @n.hieda is an interactive graph using Cosma that maps the common interests of students in their cohort. Remix it and see what interests match your friends!

~chord-search by @jtf4 just put notes into this app and search for chords that match. It’s perfect to use with studying music theory or writing music.

~landschaft-sound by @n.hieda is an app that transforms a camera image to sound using choo and p5js, try it out!


~tenmile by @jpf, @rndmcnlly, and @ktuite offers folks the ability to create and share playable quotes (your favorite parts of the game) of Game Boy games.

~committy by @11BelowStudio is a collaborative card game where you create the cards, created during a recent Itch jam! ✨

~nothcom by @jooooooon inspired by notpron, this site features a Windows XP-themed game that will haunt you. 

~sumptuous-crystalline-palm by @AvinashSharma converts your random color library to the nearest matching Material or Tailwind color for each of your existing colors.

~tree-text-editor created by @EricLewis is a simple tool that lets you create a list in the text editor and render as a tree!

~well-maize-howler created by @obafunsoadebayo17 helps you generate copy for social posts about your choice of topic!

Try this tutorial to see what you can send around the globe with Fastly! Created by @triblondon. 

The project featured in this post’s header image is ~mxstudio, who created the site for their collaborative design agency led by KT Duffy, using Glitch. 

What made you first fall in love with the web? I’m trying to remember my first impressions, but as far back as I can recall, each new discovery made me excited for the next one.

Last month on Glitch, the August 2023 edition

Did you know that the “dog days of summer” begin in July? If you’re anything like my dog Maggie, the dog days should be more about bothering people to let you outside so you can eat bees, and less about heat and lethargy. See also bothering the cats just to entertain yourself. Speaking of entertainment, we have a full roster of cool apps the Glitch community created during the last 31 days, but before we get to that I want to tell you about a new feature on glitch.com. 

Last month we introduced a new feature called App of the Week. Each week we’re selecting projects nominated by the community to be featured on the glitch.com website — maybe including yours! 

To submit your app (or your favorite app) to be featured, just fill out this form, or share your app in the nominations thread on the community forum. We can’t wait to see what you choose! 

~iphonespacergif by @mikker helps you declutter the homescreen of your iPhone with a handy gif. 

~zippy-inky-radar created by @shmen-shmen is a productivity app with the ability to increase your productivity to scary levels…

~wagtail-starter created by @Scotchester is a Glitch-hosted starter for the open source CMS written in Python and built on the Django web framework.

~ocrop by @admin46899,  finally a way to pull the text you need out of the mess returned by OCR. 

tiddly.packett.cool is a storage and sync solution for TiddlyWiki that turns it into a modern offline-first web app with client-side encryption! 

~2d-ocr by @ckolbeck aims to enable folks who rely on alt text to navigate through things like images of tables.

~juegosdevestirgratis by @anticristo-666 is an art project, or maybe a game, but even if I tried to describe it here, you wouldn’t believe me. 

~aframe-spatial-ui by @dmarcos is a multi-layered WebXR experience that even features one of our faves: Hayao Miyazaki, built with A-Frame and Glitch! 

~misc-calcs by @dtcwee is a collection of useful JavaScript created calculators

~scammersworld by @joinity is a project dedicated to exposing NFT scammers and giving back to the community. 

~musical-tarot by @adam.czibere45080 lets you draw a card to get your reading and an accompanying musical recommendation to inform your vibe for today!

~aramzs created by @AramZS is a new glitch in bio (seeing these in the wild never gets old to us)!

~blueridge by @dschep  is a little art project inspired by the Blue Ridge Mountains. (Hint: these mountain ridges are different on each load!)

~creating-with-data.glitch.me/connecting-atlantic/index.html created by @digitalWestie is a great animated visualization of the progression of trans-atlantic undersea telegraph cables

~newtons-disc by @rowan-m is an online optical illusion that slightly differs from the IRL optical illusion, can you tell??

~tanzaku by @koya.drill lets you create a digital wish on a coloured strip of paper called tanzaku and hang it up on bamboo to celebrate the Tanabata Star Festival.

~storehouse-a created by @bookwormgirl910 and @stsche is a text and typography-based virtual exhibition showcasing interactive visual poetry inspired by the lexicon of NetHack.

~curator-and-the-machine created by @stefan is not a new project but was recently added to fediverse, so we’re happy to feature it again! Try out curating now or read the blog post behind this generative art project. 

The project featured in this post’s header image is ~futureroom by @blippypixel is like if Geocities was a virtual room. Look for the lava lamp! 

Did you know that the “dog days of summer” begin in July?

Last month on Glitch, the July 2023 edition

One Glitch use case that we absolutely love to highlight, is the situation that occurs when folks play around with Glitch to figure out creative solutions to problems. Which brings me to Nat Alison, a software developer and one such Glitch creator. If you’re anything like me, when you see graphs and x-and y-axis points, your eyes go wonky and you get flustered. Not so for Nat, who introduced me to a totally different world of solving interesting problems with math—and Glitch. Please enjoy our recent conversation, hopefully, as much as I did. 

Nat: I honestly don’t remember! It’s either

I heard about it from Jenn Schiffer or another Glitch person at a conference, or

I saw a thread from Anil talking about Prince.

Do you have a favorite project you’ve seen on Glitch?

I think it’s less of a specific project and more of a sense of joy whenever I see a Glitch project pop up in the wild! It’s always something quirky or interesting, and reminds me of the good ol’ StumbleUpon days where the internet wasn’t just four websites recycling content. I try to carry that spirit in my work, and I think Glitch does a good job at it too.

Why polyhedra? What do they signify for you?

Do you have a favorite addition to CSS in the past year, and is there anything not-widely-supported that you're hoping will be soon?

Oh man there are so many! Container queries, “:has” selectors, new color spaces. I just checked and they’re adding trigonometry to it. CSS had gotten so powerful recently it’s amazing! The problem is I can’t legitimately can’t tell you which features have been “added” in the past year or which ones are still not widely supported. I was going to answer offset-path but it turns out everything but Safari implemented it in 2020 or earlier!

Is there an unsolvable puzzle out there that haunts you? 

The Classification of Finite Simple Groups. “Groups” are abstract objects that represent symmetries, like the moves of a Rubiks Cube, or the rotations or reflections of a polyhedron! These symmetries can be broken down into “atoms” called “simple groups”, just like molecules, and by a lucky coincidence there are 18 infinite families just like in the periodic table!

Oh and there are 26 of them that don’t fit into any family, the largest of which is called The Monster and lives in 196,883 dimensions. Like if there were just 26 random atoms made out of strange and charm quarks and one of them was almost as big as the observable universe. Oh and the proof takes more than ten thousand pages. And it has something to do with the most efficient way to pack spheres into 24-dimensional space. And the fact that eπ√163 is almost an integer. Why are they there?? It’s all extremely Cursed Algebra.

Where did you come up with the idea for a permutation group visualizer?

Honestly it was kind of a joke! I was studying the sporadic groups–those 26 groups that are just there for some reason? I plotted one of them to see what it looked like, and let’s just say, the results are not very aesthetically pleasing. Why does it look like that? If this is one of the fundamental atoms of symmetry, why does it look so un-symmetric? I knew I had to make something interactive to show others how baffled I was. Later I found a “prettier” representation of the same group, but my fascination still stands!

This is my introduction to permutation groups - what’s there to know and what's done with this knowledge?

Permutation groups are ways to represent ways to rearrange objects, like a deck of cards or people around a table. They’re the most tactile way to represent a group, whether it’s the transformations of a square or the arrangements of a Rubik’s cube, and it’s often easier to “see” the underlying object they represent. For example, for the symmetries of a square, you can tell the permutation group represents turning and flipping a square. It’s harder to do that with, say, a matrix representation. When I’m looking at something more abstract that doesn’t have a real-world equivalent, it’s a fast way to get a “feel” of how a group works.

Some people’s perception of work in mathematics/abstract algebra looks more like dense research papers and static diagrams—do you consider clean, accessible, interactive work like this to be something to like... fight that, or is there a cohort/movement that you’re working within that deserves more exposure to outsiders?

Definitely! I think, at its core, mathematics is play—exploring abstract concepts, asking weird questions, yeeting numbers—but the notation or the way it’s taught gets in the way of a lot of people getting to enjoy that.

As for cohorts, I’m part of the Explorable Explanations community, which is a group of creators combining play and learning. If you like my stuff you should check out other stuff on their page!

It seems rare to find tools useful for mathematicians that are so fun to click around, is this on purpose?

Haha, I don’t think there’s a secret cabal of mathematicians going “we need to keep math BORING.” I think it’s more that a lot of math tools are meant for research, and so the focus is on utility rather than style. It’s harder to make fun visualizations for a lot of higher level, more complicated math, both because it’s rarer to find someone with UI/UX knowledge that the material and there are usually more prerequisites so it’s hard to convey the point across to the layperson! …though that doesn’t stop me from trying!

What JavaScript dependencies make building stuff like this on the web possible?

I’m using React because it’s what I’m most familiar with but honestly it’s more important to find a toolset that’s right for you and just start making things. 

Speaking of the web, what is your favorite thing about the internet?

It’s really hard to say, especially since so much of the Web has been gutted in recent years. Flash is dead, forums have been abandoned for closed off message boards, even your freaking parking meter wants you to sign up for an app… But you can still make a Geocities-style website, or a blog, or a weird math app! And there are places (like Glitch!) that make doing it super-easy now. I remember in college wanting to make an online puzzle game of sorts but was so confused on how to make a website that I… just did it over Google Forms. It’s also the most accessible place to share what you’ve made. I love making web apps because I can show them to anyone on their phones without them needing to download an app, or buy it from a Steam page or what have you.

I want to make more math apps! There are more cool things in abstract algebra I want to visualize. My dream is to figure out some way for people to even get a bare glimpse of comprehension of something as complicated as the 196,883-dimensional Monster, and I’m going to do it one math toy at a time.

I’m also looking for a Renaissance-style Patron to fund my strange artistic endeavors (or you know, a normal job would be fine too).

My personal website is https://tesseralis.site. All my socials are there, but I’m mostly (somehow) on Twitter at @tesseralis.

Software developer and ride or die for polyhedra, Nat’s previous work explores the relationships between math, puzzles, componentry, and Pokémon. 

5 minutes with Nat Alison, polyhedra enthusiast

Right now it feels like there is so much going on around the web! It might seem like it’s getting harder to keep track of all of the things, but taking a break is always okay. Studies show that taking frequent breaks in general keeps you more relaxed, more productive, and my personal favorite: more creative. So roll back your shoulders, unclench your jaw, take a deep breath in through your nose and out through your mouth, and enjoy what the Glitch community created during the month of June. 

In case you missed it, way back at the beginning of last month, we gave glitch.com a makeover, so it could reflect all of the cool, intriguing, and inspiring projects that you—the Glitch community—create! Take a look sometime, you might just see your own app. 😉 Plus, if you’re at all curious about the new Apple Vision Pro, you can start building for the XR future now on Glitch!

Oh! And another thing. Glitch celebrated its seventh birthday recently, making it a Gemini (making the fish, in fact, twins)! Shoutout to those of you who remember it way back when it was HyperDev. 

One of the least-known, but coolest things about modern web apps is how you can easily install them on your phone or laptop or tablet to run just like any other app. Here are some of the latest glitch apps you might want to install, all based on remixing our ~glitch-hello-installable starter that lets you make apps like this for free:

What2Eat, created by @bangorip, is a meal-planning app that pulls in quick recipes for you using basic styles

~jungle-pwa-webusb, created by @florent.vibert, @griffaud, and @gilles.riffaud is a demo of an installable Progressive Web App with WebUSB capability.

~leomessi, created by @saachidhaliwal is a site focused on dark matter and dark energy for all your dark astrophysicist needs. 

~mayfly, created by @somi is an ephemeral notepad where your notes last 24 hours…seems like this would be great for venting. 

~terrific-jumbled-lock, created by @Pufferfish101007 is a JavaScript Compute starter app for Glitch to port to Rust created during the Glitch Community Testing Program! 

~testing-hill-shading, created by @Pomax is a tutorial that shows you how to turn a height map image into a nice looking 2D map

~skitter-luminous-heaven, created by @lita.doolan, is a feminist wellness chatbot that encourages you with suggestions on how to relax

~florentine-glen-piccolo, created by @atog is a script that will show others what you're listening to via last.fm

~yyna, created by @yynaa is a cute site full of mini-games to play

~you-see-the-moon, created by @identikitten is a microfiction site they made to not let echo anxiety defeat them—or you!

~alignments, created by @vanessa-vasquez is an app that allows you to create and share alignment charts with your friends. Finally, an app that shows if you’re more of a Jenn Schiffer or Jenn Turner type of Jenn. 

~stupendous-aluminum-citrine, created by @lyzleong is a collection of skies from friends scattered all over the world using spreadsheets to create it!

~flexispot-sit2go-fc211, created by @sgidon is a 3D rendering of FlexiSpot Sit2Go Model FC211, for all you ergonomic workstation fans.

~needle-apple-vision-pro, created by our pal @herbst from Needle Tools, answers the question who renders the renderer??

~storiesinmotion, created by @federica.ballardini is a site dedicated to the collaborative investigation of rights violations at the Franco-Italian border of Menton and Ventimiglia. 

~wide-calm-silk, created by @sammy.mcmillion is a very pretty portfolio page in one of our favorite colors 💕

~vague-but-exciting, created by @giulia.laco were the very words used to describe Tim Berners-Lee’s March 1989 proposal.

~switzerland-rainforest is another fascinating app created by @mapsmania that lets you compare the size of Switzerland around the globe.

~newleafradio is a really cute online radio of Animal Crossing: New Horizons songs with custom weather!

The project featured in this post’s header image is ~melding, a nicely made clone of the 2048 game created by @AndrewHanson that you can download to your phone right now!

Right now it feels like there is so much going on around the web! It might seem like it’s getting harder to keep track of all of the things, but taking a break is always okay.

Last month on Glitch, the June 2023 edition

When I first discovered Summbot, Summer Anne Burton’s magical mixtape creator, I knew I had to reach out to her and find out the story behind it. I love mixtapes so much (RIP “burning” cds), and the one Summbot created for me hit me so hard: 10cc, Etta James, Yo La Tengo and Vince Staples??? It’s one of the most intriguing and joyful experiences I’ve had on the internet in a long time, which is one of the reasons Glitch exists – as an outlet for everyone to build experiences for others to delight in. Thankfully, Summer agreed to chat with me about her experience being online through the years, Glitch, and even everyone’s favorite topic: AI. Please enjoy our conversation, and definitely get a playlist from Summbot!

Jenn: How did you hear about Glitch and why did you use it instead of other options out there? 

Summer: I’m a longtime internet explorer of sorts, who first made a personal website in the mid-90s, but I had long left behind coding in favor of working in social media and digital media. I was familiar with Anil Dash’s work and had followed Glitch’s mission with interest from afar for a longtime. At BuzzFeed, I worked with a talented young writer, Anjali, who had an interest in coding and later recommended her to Anil for a job at Glitch and was happy to see that come through (she’s now an engineer at Etsy). I had remained interested in coding but when I finally came back around, Glitch instantly rose to mind as the “easy place” to go. 

Have you ever tried to code (or learn to code) before? What got in your way?

I coded HTML obsessively throughout the ‘90s and then let those skills totally deprecate as I became more obsessed with social platforms like Livejournal and Myspace. I wrote a bit about my autobiography-by-way-of-platforms for BuzzFeed back in 2014 for anyone else for whom this is a special interest, but suffice to say I have always been interested in tech but I gravitate more towards “soft skills,” potentially because of my total lack of technical education (I was unschooled after third grade). I’ve always been an autodidact, which works for coding, but I’m also sometimes someone who quits when it gets hard. 

“I am most interested in software that unlocks human creativity...I guess when I’m coding, ever since I was a kid, I’m just trying to entertain myself.”

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