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Foxtrot's Space

001: Cool code edition

TL;DR: a talk about how code can be art in itself, a bunch of little games that run completely independently of anything else on a single webpage, a tool that visualizes encryption on images and also makes them look pretty cool, an in-browser version of decorating a secret Pokémon base and a guide how to create your own static website image gallery with 11TY.

Dylan Beattie’s “Art of Code” talk

Screenshot of Dylan’s talk, with him in the corner and ‘ROCKSTAR: …a dynamically typed Turing-complete programming language, designed for creating computer programs that are also song lyrics. Rockstar is heavily influenced by the lyrical conventions of 1980s hard rock and power ballads.’ written in a metal font in his presentation.

Here’s some links: recording of the talk on YT, page for the talk itself on Beattie’s personal website

I love Beattie’s talks. He’s casual, funny, and knows how to be entertaining and personally I love the topics he posts. They’re often more philosophical and less technical than one would expect from a tech conference. This one in particular is very close to my heart and I consider it a talk that even someone who hasn’t written a line of code in their life can appreciate and take something away from. Of course, it’s fit for nerds too ;)

willow.lol’s little internet games and co.

Screenshot of a hexagon-based game.

Here’s some links: willow.lol home page, an image-based sudoku, a little bullet hell, a hex-board plant game, Conway’s Game of Life with an angel twist

Self-contained pages are something of an artform for me. I’m always skeptic about dependencies for small projects - or even big ones that have dependencies that are incredibly superfluous, like the left-pad debacle. So I truly appreciate when someone takes the slightly bonkers approach of stuffing everything, including graphics, for a small game into a single webpage. You can literally download these onto your own computer and play them offline, if you want! So cool.

espy.world’s encryption visualizer

Screenshot of an example encrypted image: an unaltered image of a dragon is on the left, and an ecrypted, wildly colorful and striped version is on the right.

Here’s some links: online version of the tool, a little more in-depth article about how it works

I love funky stuff with images. I love running weird transformations on them and seeing what comes out, whether to see if an algorithm is running well, or if I simply want to look for interesting patterns with things you really weren’t supposed to run on images in the first place. Espy created this tool to visualize simple encryption algorithms and the potential vulnerabilities and predictable patterns in them. It also makes some really funky looking stuff!

pamtre-berry’s secret base builder

Screenshot of the ‘Pokémon secret base decorator’ with a default empty secret base.

Here’s some links: the builder itself, pamtre-berry’s homepage

Let’s go fan projects! This is just really cute. Secret base are such a fun concept, but we hardly got them in any format where it was easy to truly decorate them meticulously. This little game/tool makes that possible, and you can simply screenshot the result! :)

Screenshot of an article titled ‘How to set up an image gallery with 11TY’.

Here’s some links: the guide itself, 11TY

I’m putting away my “I <3 static sites” shirt as we speak, you didn’t notice, shhh. I came upon this one because I was fidgeting around with my own galleries, and I love people doing the same. I don’t use the generator myself, but it looks very similar to HUGO in how it works, and the results are really neat. Maybe this will help someone reading this!