Index

Blog

Stuff I say, conveniently accessible on the internet.

Against being against rote memorization
28/01/2023
A common criticism of school is that it focuses overmuch on rote memorization. While I don't endorse school, I think this argument is wrong.
Site tech stack
20/12/2022
Learn about how osmarks.net works internally! Spoiler warning if you wanted to reverse-engineer it yourself.
RSS: good and useful
14/05/2022
RSS/Atom are protocols for Internet-based newsletter/feed services. They're surprisingly well-supported and you should consider using them.
Against the "Online Safety Bill"
19/08/2021
In which I get annoyed at yet more misguided UK government behaviour.
Other things you may like
17/11/2020
A nonexhaustive list of... content/media... which I like and which you may also be interested in as a visitor of my site.
'Problem Solving' Tasks and Computer Science
20/05/2020
Is solving Sudoku and similar puzzles by hand really useful in building computer science ability? We don't think so.
FTL tips
08/03/2020
We are not responsible if these tips cause your ship to implode/explode. Contains spoilers in vast quantities.
Not Everyone Must "Code"
09/02/2020
Why I think that government programs telling everyone to "code" are pointless.
New site design!
25/01/2020
It's slightly different now!
On Phones
24/01/2020
My (probably unpopular in general but... actually likely fairly popular amongst this site's intended audience) opinions on smartphones today.

Experiments

Various random somewhat useless web projects I have put together over many years. Made with at least four different JS frameworks.

Apioform Game
A game about... apioforms... by Heavpoot.
Arbitrary Points
Collect Arbitrary Points and achievements by doing things on this website! See how many you have! Do nothing with them because you can't! This is the final form of gamification.
AutoScorer
Automatic score keeper, designed for handling Monopoly money.
Colours of the Alphabet
Colorizes the Alphabet, using highly advanced colorizational algorithms.
Emu War
Survive as long as possible against emus and other wildlife. Contributed by Aidan.
Flying Thing
Fly an ominous flying square around above some ground! Includes special relativity!
FractalArt
A somewhat unperformant generator for pleasant watercolor-y "fractalart" images. Ported from a Haskell implementation by "TomSmeets".
GUIHacker
My fork of GUIHacker. Possibly the only version actually on the web right now since the original website is down.
Game of Life V2
Obligatory (John Conway's) Game of Life implementation.
Heav's Game
It is pitch black (if you ignore all of the lighting). You are likely to be eaten by Heavpoot's terrible writing skills, and/or lacerated/shot/[REDACTED]. Vaguely inspired by the SCP Foundation.
Idea Generator
Generates ideas. Terribly. Don't do them. These are not good ideas.
IncDec
The exciting multiplayer game of incrementing and decrementing! No cheating.
Infipage
Outdoing all other websites with INFINITE PAGES!
JHLT
Tells you how late Joe's homework is.
Lorem Ipsum
Lorem Ipsum (latin-like placeholder text), eternally. Somehow people have left comments at the bottom anyway.
RPNCalc v2
A Reverse Polish Notation (check wikipedia) calculator, version 2. Buggy and kind of unreliable. This updated version implements advanced features such as subtraction.
RPNCalc v3
Reverse Polish Notation calculator, version 3 - with inbuilt docs, arbitrary-size rational numbers, utterly broken float/rational conversion and quite possibly Turing-completeness.
RPNCalc v4
Reverse Polish Notation calculator, version 4 - increasingly esoteric and incomprehensible. Contributed by Aidan.
Site Theming
Apply custom CSS to most pages on here.
Tic-Tac-Toe (4³)
Your favourite* tic-tac-toe game in 3 dimensions, transplanted onto the main website via a slightly horrifically manual process! Technically this game is solved and always leads to player 1 winning with optimal play, but the AI is not good enough to do that without more compute!
Websocket Terminal
Type websocket URLs in the top bar and hit enter; type messages in the bottom bar, and also hit enter. Probably useful for some weirdly designed websocket services.
Whorl
Dice-rolling webapp. Not very useful pending me writing a good parser.
osmarkscalculator
Unholy horrors moved from the depths of my projects directory to your browser. Theoretically, this is a calculator. Good luck using it.

Get updates to the blog (not experiments) in your favourite RSS reader using the RSS feed.

View some of my projects (and whatever else) at my git hosting.

From other blogs

Hidden Open Thread 260.5

...

via Astral Codex Ten 27/01/2023
Screening the Big Libraries - How's It Going?

This is a useful look at the gigantic virtual screening libraries that are now available in the drug discovery world. A big change that’s taken place over the years is the connection of these to real-world synthesis. Mixing and connecting smaller fragment…

via AAAS: Keyword search for query 27/01/2023
ADS-B Exchange Acquired by Private Firm JETNET

Today news has come out that ADS-B Exchange (ADSBx) founder Dan Streufert has sold ADSBx to a private firm called JETNET for (an estimated) $20 million. Dan was the sole owner of ADSBx, and after the sale he remains employed by JETNET. JETNET is a firm th…

via rtl-sdr.com 25/01/2023
My plans at FOSDEM: SourceHut, Hare, and Helios

FOSDEM is right around the corner, and finally in person after long years of dealing with COVID. I’ll be there again this year, and I’m looking forward to it! I have four slots on the schedule (wow! Thanks for arranging these, FOSDEM team) and I’ll be talkin…

via Drew DeVault's blog 24/01/2023
Stanley Kubrick, Mick Jagger, David Bowie, and Neill DeGrasse Tyson walk into the Mines of Moria…

…and turn this… …into this… and and and and and …and I gotta say, I was skeptical that they could surpass the steampunk menagerie of Nantes’ Les Machines de l’île—but the Frawnsh seem to be absolute fucking masters at this sort of thing. The still photos …

via No Moods, Ads or Cutesy Fucking Icons 23/12/2022
Loops in HATETRIS

Code » The HATETRIS algorithm has always been perfectly deterministic, with no "RNG". When I originally created it in April 2010, the way it worked was to examine the current well state only and use this to determine which piece to return. If the …

via Things Of Interest 06/12/2022

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