Hello – I'm Omar. I've been interested in new computer interfaces and new ways of programming (aren't these the same thing?). I've worked at Dynamicland (check out ⭐️Geokit) and at Khan Academy.
Among other things, I'm the creator of ⭐️Screenotate, a tool for macOS and Windows which captures the text and origin (URL, window title, ...) whenever you take a screenshot.
I also made ⭐️TabFS, a browser extension that exposes your browser tabs as virtual 'files' on your computer (so you can manipulate them like any other files).
Get in touch if you want to talk or work together—
e-mail | osnr on GitHub | @rsnous on Twitter
hmm
I also tweet a lot about computers these days, on topics including:
- wanting provenance everywhere, throughout the computer, whether you're programming or looking at data or typing or taking a screenshot or whatever; knowing how the thing was made / the soil that it grew in / the context in which it's actually valid
- getting functionality 'for free' from the architecture of the computer system
- how end-user programming can simplify & improve systems, empower users, remove the need for 'configuration'
- against separating 'content' and 'presentation' / what does "serving a function" really mean?
- the role of dread in computing; weird, intense, consequential feelings that are produced by seemingly-incidental details in how the software works
- how we should lean into existing user 'folk practices' like taking photos, taking screenshots, and using hacked-together spreadsheets
- programming environments as culture; knowledge (of programming, of reading and writing, etc) as something that exists in a community, not a property of one person's head; how the social (imitation) drives what people want to learn and make
- how the grain of underlying materials and the tractability of doing certain things ends up silently guiding what people do (not necessarily a bad thing -- it can be a source that you can learn from!)
- speculation on how software could have more physicality, spatiality (1, 2, etc), vitality, how a 'toy' might be better than an 'app' or a 'game'
wrote 🖋 (rss)
- 'Skew' in the history of computer systems
- October 12, 2021
- Against recognition
- June 28, 2021
- Notes from Dynamicland: programming Raspberry Pis
- December 7, 2018
- ⭐ Notes from Dynamicland: Geokit
- August 6, 2018
- Pinhole: a falling ball demo
- August 7, 2014
- My favorite regional transit maps
- July 18, 2014
- Functional reactive Twitter bots
- March 18, 2014
- Micropolis/SimCity Classic Mac download and build guide
- August 31, 2012
talks and podcasts
On communicating with demos (Build Software Quickly)
(Feb 2023)
Folk practices (Metamuse)
(Jan 2023)
Shaping computers into friendlier forms (Notion Tools & Craft)
(Nov 2021)
TabFS (Hope in Source)
(Feb 2021)
Emotional Programming (Hope in Source)
(Aug 2020)
Playing Breakout... inside a PDF!! (!!con)
(May 2020)
HTML Energy
(Apr 2020)
Humane computing at Dynamicland (ELDM workshop)
(Feb 2020)
Exploring Dynamicland (Future of Coding)
(Aug 2018)
Four fake filesystems! (!!con)
(May 2018)
We found chat in a hostile place! (!!con)
(May 2014)
etc
The Computer is a Feeling (with Tim Hwang)

three things

"It's BELL SYSTEM TECHNICAL JOURNAL!"

att

Paperclip Maximizer
tetris.asm
bring on the real computer revolution
projects 🖍

pretty-print
animate between minified and pretty (Mar 2021)

Hijack Your Feed
replace ads in your Twitter feed with todos (2020)

⭐ TabFS
mount your browser tabs as files (2020)

rpi-bitbang-ethernet
send Ethernet frames straight from Pi 4's GPIO pins (Sep 2020)

⭐ Screenotate
take screenshots you can search (Jun 2015–)

reactions-spreadsheet
tiny multiplayer spreadsheet with reactions (May–Aug 2020)

little-editor
minimal (live-scriptable) text editor stub for macOS (Jul 2019)

LiveGB
Game Boy live editor (Feb 2017)

Dewdrop
cloning a 1980s window system (Aug 2016–Dec 2016)

⭐ horrifying-pdf-experiments
a Breakout game inside a PDF (Jul 2016)

rpi-kernel
writing bare-metal Pi code in Rust (Feb 2016)

rpi-logic-analyzer
playing with the Pi (Mar 2015)

ten-hundred
recursive explanation editor (Mar 2014)

⭐ Cruncher
scrubbing calculator (Feb 2013—)

Geom
geometry workspace (Jun 2014–Sep 2014)

Birdhouse
functional reactive Twitter bots (Mar 2014)

fritz3
wiki of an alternate history (2012)

OTRon
end-to-end encryption for Facebook chat (Dec 2013–Feb 2014)

Pinhole
a falling ball toy (May 2013, Aug 2014)

Gambo
Game Boy emulator (2011–2012)

Fiat
history generator (2011)

Pokénet
fan-made Pokemon MMORPG—see Tom Cashman's post about it
(2008–2009)