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), at Stripe, 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

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

three things

"It's BELL SYSTEM TECHNICAL JOURNAL!"

att

Paperclip Maximizer

tetris.asm

bring on the real computer revolution