]> About Chortos‑2 (Oleg Oshmyan)

Page version:, actual information (the leftmost three version numbers) last changed on 18 December 2017

Chortos‑2’s Homepage

About Chortos‑2

The Long-Awaited Proper Description, and Even in English

Finally. This page is here. 来まして有り難う御座います、ページ様！ (Does not look like a smilie?) Now everybody will be able to enjoy the only authoritative and the fullest one description of Chortos‑2 in the world. I mean, the world even including the outside of the Internet. Believe me.

Who I Am (Most Important Information)

I am a 26-year-old man whose home is in Riga, Latvia, the European Union, Europe, Eurasia, Afro-Eurasia, the Earth, the Solar System, the Milky Way, the Universe.

What This Page Contains

What I Am Called

My full name for use in English is Oleg Oshmyan; ideally, the correct stress in both names is on the second syllable, but even I tend to stress the first syllable in ‘Oleg’ in English. My surname is unrelated in etymology to the name of the Belarussian town Ashmyany, but it is spelt the same way in Russian (my mother tongue). Because of this I have defined for myself a simple way of transcribing my surname into any language: I take the name of Ashmyany in that language, drop the final ‘y’ and replace the first ‘a’ with an ‘o’ if it is not already an ‘o’; however, any language-specific rules take precedence over these changes. Thus I get:

My nickname is Chortos‑2 (the character in front of the digit 2 is an unbreakable hyphen), whose pronunciation follows the most usual rules: /ˌʧɔːtəsˈtuː/, /ˌʧɔɹtəsˈtuː/. A long time ago, I was known as Astiob, but currently I use Astiob only as a user name. Finally, I am known as Louise.de.La.Valliere in Google Code Jam.

My usual user names are Chortos-2 (with a hyphen-minus instead of the unbreakable hyphen), chortos and astiob.

When and Where I Was Born and How Old I Am

I was born on 21 July 1992 in Riga, the capital of Latvia. Consequently, I was approximately 26 years, 11 months and 26 days old when you loaded this page. I (pretend to) intentionally hide the time at which I was born to reduce the possibility of dark magic being used against me in case it exists.

How I Can Be Contacted

There is one perfectly reliable way to contact me:

If you want to send encrypted email, my PGP key is 8079D18C21AAAAFF.

There are also several other ways that are less reliable but still reliable enough:

I am also registered in many other services that I use very seldom, such as:

What I Speak

As I have already mentioned, my mother tongue is Russian.

What I Do

I program and script (see below), do maths and occasionally play piano (I have received an education on that).

I also watch Japanese animation and keep a list of what I have watched, am watching and am going to watch sometime at MyAnimeList and a list of what I have downloaded, have watched and am watching and a list of what I am going to watch sometime at AniDB.

I listen to Japanese music. If you happen to have copies of AiM’s early songs (i. e. songs from the following albums: Boys&Girls, hikari no tiara, ashita e no jumon, BREAK OUT!!, LIKE A CANDLE; see the list of AiM’s albums at Amazon) or generally any songs in good quality related to anime that I have seen, especially in lossless formats, share with me—do it quickly, while you still remember!

I occasionally tweet. When I have events such as high-profile informatics competitions, I try to report on them but usually fail to properly do so.

Probably more often than not, I am humming or singing something.

In a significant portion of my free time, I dream on many various topics and speak and write Japanese without purpose.

I could probably spend less time recompiling software on my laptop and making it compile when it does not want to.

I contribute to the following pieces of open-source software:

Unfortunately, I do and want to do so many things that I can barely keep up with them—or in some cases, cannot keep up.

What I Have Done

I have graduated (in 2008) from the Latgalian Suburb Music School (in Riga) with honours and stayed there for an extra year. My speciality was violin for three and a half years (during which I went through four grades because I started mid-year, and during some of which I received piano classes), then piano for another five plus one. I graduated with only piano as my speciality, although I think I may have received some certificate proving that I did finish the fourth grade being specialized in violin. In total, the years I have been studying at the music school are 1999–2009.

I have studied at Riga Secondary School #57 (in 1999–2001) and Riga Secondary School #51 (in 2001–2004) before switching to Riga State Gymnasium No. 1. (I would prefer to use the number sign in the last name just as in the first two, but the school uses ‘No.’ and ‘No’ interchangeably but not ‘#’ in official English-language communication.) During 1999–2002 (yes, the numbers are right), the class I was studying in did not change. (The truth is that the whole class moved from the one school to the other.) However, in the beginning of school year 2002/2003, I moved one grade up, hence the total number of years I have been at school is eleven and not twelve as it is supposed to be. At Riga State Gymnasium No. 1, I studied for a programme combining the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme with standard Latvian secondary education, and I graduated in 2010 with 39 points on the IB Diploma and 7+6 on the extra certificate. Unfortunately for me, there were multiple places where a single extra mark would have brought my score to 40.

I have graduated (in 2014) from the University of Cambridge with a BA (Hons) and MEng degree in Computer Science, finishing each year respectively with a I, a I, a II.1 and a distinction, and eventually (in 2017) received a traditional automatic upgrade of my BA degree to an MA. I belong to Robinson College. I was on the committee of the Cambridge University Anime and Manga Society as the webmaster for more than three years.

I have spent about half a year (the second half of 2014) working as a software engineer at Scuderia Ferrari before quitting and returning home.

I have authored some open-source mods for Invision Power Board back in the times of versions 2.0 and 2.1.

What Programming Languages and Standard Libraries I Can Use Well

A detailed list with version numbers and proficiency levels used to be here. However, I never remembered to update it when learning new things and it was hard to determine proficiency levels, so I have removed it.

I primarily use the latest Python, C and C++. I also use or have used and still at least vaguely remember many other languages, among them Java, C#, PHP, JavaScript, Bash, Bourne shell, Ruby, Mathematica, Prolog, Pascal, Visual Basic, Cmd.exe, AutoIt v3, Taxi, ERM.

What Software I Use

These are the products I currently use for personal purposes (not necessarily all with the same frequency):

What I Would Like to See in Media Library Management Software

Most of these features should be easy to implement, and my life would be so much easier and my hard disk would be so much emptier, and my iPod’s flash memory would too be so much emptier—until I loaded it with videos, of course. Some of them are partly implemented in some media library management software, some are not.

What I Like and Dislike

My favourites in various areas are:

In Web pages, I like, approve and appreciate:

In Web pages, I dislike and disapprove:

In Web applications, I dislike and disapprove:

In text-based things including Web browser engines, text input controls, programming languages and word processing, I dislike and disapprove:

In syntax definitions for syntax highlighters, I dislike and disapprove:

In text entered using computers, I like, approve and appreciate:

In languages, I like, approve and appreciate:

In parts of life not covered by the above, I like, approve and appreciate:

In parts of life not covered by any of the more specific lists above, I dislike and/or disapprove:

What I Have Achieved

I have participated in the following olympiads and contests of at least state-level significance and received the following prizes. (The selection stage of the Latvian Informatics Olympiad is the hardest stage in the entire Olympiad in Informatics stage chain available for Latvian residents, being harder than the basic Latvian Informatics Olympiad, the Baltic Olympiad in Informatics and the International Olympiad in Informatics. The total number of contestants is specified according to official information, which sometimes includes those who did not attend the event and sometimes does not.)

Grouped by year:

  1. Latvian Open Mathematics Olympiad, form 5 students: a silver medal (absolute place between 8 and 17 inclusive [precise data not available] out of 611),
  2. Latvian Open Mathematics Olympiad, form 6 students: an honourable mention (absolute place between 36 and 83 inclusive [precise data not available] out of 554),
  3. Latvian Open Mathematics Olympiad, form 7 students: the only gold medal (absolute 1st place out of 438),
  4. Latvian Open Mathematics Olympiad, form 8 students: a silver medal (absolute place between 5 and 19 inclusive [precise data not available] out of 369),

Grouped by subject and competition: