Self Taught Developer

I’m a self-taught developer. I logged my daily coding progress for all of 2019, every day for 365 days, on my github. I did a “365 days of code challenge” in 2019. I logged my progress everyday: Day 1-100, Day 101-200, Day 201-365.

After I completed the challenge, I continued to log in my 2020 coding log and my 2021 coding log.

The Dream Phone

I plan on am going to be the first person to live Tweet from a dream using my dream phone.

What is the dream phone?

I’m currently building a lucid dream lab the[that] will induce lucid dreams and enable a user to communicate from a lucid dream to the outside world. I started this project in 2012. But it’s been an on and off adventure.

Log entry 04/05/20

After participating in a study at Northwestern in 2020 in which participants communicated with researches while in a lucid dream, I was inspired to revisit my project and add some features that Northwestern had.

Here’s more explanation on how the device works and how I got it to send a text (while awake but can theoretically also work while asleep). By connecting the dream phone to the Twitter API I’ll be able to send Morse code messages from my dream to Twitter.

WishTender

After learning to code I built WishTender, a wishlist app for content creators to get gifts from fans. This was my first experiment in tech entrepreneurship. WishTender took me a year to code by myself.

In the beginning traction was slow. Now, the site is growing and doing well with over 10k content creators. Today, my spouse works on the site with me as the DOO. It’s completely bootstrapped, meaning we never took investments and haven’t spent much money on the business. Being CEO of my own tech business is a dream come true!

I hope to use the revenue to fund lucid dreaming projects and research.

Interests

Outside of coding, I’m a study participate (and sort of collaborator) with Northwestern lucid dream research. I’m an active member and co-organizer (although it’s really all Brian Gilan) of Tech For Dreaming. I practice stoicism (see discomfort challenges below). Love pranks. And have an interest in optimizing health.

Discomfort Challenge & Stoicism

In 2019 I took on my #100DaysOfDiscomfort challenge, where I tried something uncomfortable every day for 100 days. You can read about my discomfort journey on my Discomfort Blog.

Some of my notable discomfort challenges include Wear A Ball Gown To The Gym, Public Humiliation Sign, Talk To My Hand, and Make An Announement on the CTA.