About: I'm a friendly, non-dev, cisgender guy from NC who enjoys playing music/making noise, hiking, eating veggies, and hanging out with my best friend/wife + our 3 kitties + 1 greyhound.
Hey! 👋
You made it. It's officially Friday. 😎
Looking back on this past week, what was something you were proud of accomplishing?
All wins count — big or small 🎉
Examples of 'wins' include:
Congratulations on reaching 1,000 subscriptions, Marsel! Your article on macrotasks and microtasks in JavaScript is a treasure trove of insights.
Thanks, Anton! I hope it helps many developers write performant and optimized apps.
Wow! You're a really promising and talented technical author. Have you considered writing your own book?
Thanks for the wonderful feedback! I might write a book about JavaScript in the future.
Wow, this is wonderful. Nicely done, Marsel! And thanks so much for pointing this out to me. 😀
Thanks, Michael! Sharing our successes is a great idea—thanks for suggesting it.
📰 I published a new post on DEV! ✨
💟 I received a new badge on DEV! ✨
The Featured Moderator of the Month article can be read, here!
💡 I learned about a cool HTML tag which was new to me! ✨
The <area> tag defines an area inside an image map (an image map is an image with clickable areas).
💻 I completed three singleplayer levels on CodeCombat! ✨
I also earned the following achievements:
💟 I received three new badges on Codecademy! ✨
Wooohoo, congrats all around!
Sorry for the lateness in getting ya that badge, Anita — that was def my bad, haha. 😅
And thanks so much for all the awesome help you give us as a mod! 🙌
Thank you so much! 😀
I even sent you a friendly reminder via email before I eventually took to Discord lol because I thought it took a little long. Aw, but it is okay. I get very excited about badges, I could hardly wait to get the Mod of the Month one! 😁
Thank you again! 😊
Oh I'm sorry for that! I must've missed your email. Anywho, totally cool to hit me up on Discord!
I'm very happy about your achievements. It's great to see your hard work paying off, and I'm looking forward to seeing what you do next. 🙌
Thank you so much 😊
I think you will like the article I am going to post tomorrow 😊
Nice work, @anitaolsen! Quite the badge happy week for you, and great discussion prompt, too. I see it sparked lots of good convo, and pics of penguins, too! 🐧
I finally won the fight with my tmux.conf, and life is working much better. Keeping things simple is hard sometimes, but important.
Keeping things simple is hard sometimes, but important.
Well said!
I'm glad to hear things are going well for ya, Mike, and congrats on the tmux.conf win!
Updated my WP plugin and started working on the 2.0 version
Massive update on LinkedIn and UpWork profiles
Awesome stuff all around, Paulo!
Gahhh, Auty is such a cool concept for a bot. I'm glad to hear the reception has been so positive. 🙌
Also, big ups on the posts! You're sharing lots of good stuff.
+1 to Auty -- super impressed with this concept -- and thanks for all the great content you've been sharing on DEV. 🙏
Wow! Good one, Stefan. That's quite an accomplishment and harder than it seems...
My wife and I did a no-frivolous-spending month for February (note that we chose the shortest month lol) and it was no joke. We allowed ourselves gas money (but really didn't travel far), ate all our meals at home, and cut ourselves off from online shopping (and IRL shopping). It was a good move though... definitely felt proud afterward and the bank statement put a big smile on our faces. 🤑
Congrats on having a supportive wife. Mine just wants to spend and spend. Seeing that small growth shows there is hope.
Awwww yeah, Salika!! Major congrats on the PR.
By the way, in case ya didn't know, you can actually embed PRs (and other stuff) in comments and posts here on DEV... the way to do so is with this MarkDown - {% embed https://github.com/langchain-ai/langchain/pull/20723 %} which converts to:
docs: [Retrieval > .. > PDF] update package installation instructions for Unstructured and PDFMiner
#20723
Description: Adds the command to install packages required before using Unstructured and PDFMiner from langchain.community
Documentation Page Being Updated: LangChain > Retrieval > Document loaders > PDF > Using Unstructured
Issue: #20719
Dependencies: no dependencies
Twitter handle: SalikaDave
Anywho, just a fun little trick to have up your sleeve if you ever wanna embed things... you can use this method ({% embed https://... %}) with other places too like YouTube, Wikipedia, Twitch, etc.
If you have any questions about this, def hit me up. 😀
Again, major congrats on the contribution to LangChain and hope ya have an awesome weekend!
Published the tutorial which I have been working on for 3 weeks. Here's a link : apyhub.com/blog/building-ai-powere...
This week can be called "Learn to create Coze AI Bots and plugins" 🌟
Happy Friday! 🤗
Woohoo! Look at all those red moons in a row, haha. That's a lotta submissions — nice one(s)!
Wrote 12 articles, made 1200+ views and 707 readers !
And also I dealt with LangChain/LangGraph doc and made a nice custom AI Agent.
My win(s) this week :
Congrats, @grimkillingbeck! That is a great response on your resume. Wow! Good luck on the interviews. ✨
I have been very much a perfectionist, and I always find really hard to finish the projects I start, so I decided to start with something small to cheer me up to do greater things... still then, even though it was small, I couldn't hold myself and what It's supposed to be like a 1-week project ended up being like two and a half week project.
The project in question:
I’ve been working on a little trancey electronic track recently that I call House Party — that's a Google Drive link btw! 😀
Notably, I played this on different synths (Moog Grandmother + Moog DFAM) and a drum machine (Roland TR-8S) all in real-time (I made it the other morning and was basically twiddling a bunch of knobs on different parts that I sequenced ahead of time) — also the kinda airy, ambient guitar part that plays throughout is a synced loop. So yeah, there were some non-real-time aspects of it, but hopefully ya get what I mean that it's like a DJ performance.
I kinda wanna return to it and work on it more. Anyway, it’s been fun and is quite different than a lotta music I make!
Alrighty @montyharper this isn't exactly the track that I was planning on getting your feedback on. I have other music that is more song-based with lyrics and singing... one tune I'm working on is kinda influenced by 60's Motown, so I def wanna hear your thoughts on that one.
But, for the time being, I'm curious what ya think about this (admittedly kinda odd) electronic track I'm working on linked above ☝️...
If you're curious about my influences for this one, it's John Hopkins. I wasn't necessarily going for that (haha, I didn't realize until after creating it) but it seems to be kinda in that realm.
Hi Michael, thanks for tagging me in on this.
First a disclaimer - as you hinted at, this is not my genre; I'm more of a lyrics and melody kind of writer. The music in this vein I'm most familiar with would be Paul McCartney's second Fireman album, and he's mostly dabbling around with trance/electronica as an experiment, so it's not really his thing either. But I'm a big enough Macca fan to listen and enjoy.
I watched the first Jon Hopkins track in the video before listening to yours, just to give myself the proper context.
So with all that in mind, I tried to come up with one or two worthwhile things to say...
I like your track. The different rhythms juxtaposed keep it interesting and hooky. It sounds well-balanced and I find it relaxing to listen to.
Since I'm not super familiar with the genre I will fall back on more basic music principals to try and make some constructive comments. In music there is always interplay between repetition and novelty, tension and release. I know repetition is a big part of what makes trance music "trance-y." So I find it interesting how trance artists manage to base entire pieces on repetition while also keeping them interesting. What I've noticed in general is that over the long arc of a piece, gradual change is one technique for keeping things fresh. Another is introducing and releasing tension.
In Jon Hopkin's piece, there seem to be two distinct sections to the music, and each section evolves over time, adding and removing different parts. He also introduces tension by cranking the pitch of the main synth sound up a notch so it doesn't quite sit harmonically with the rest of the track. This holds the listener's attention, creating a slight discomfort while the rhythms build, until he brings the pitch back down and you get satisfying sense of release.
Those techniques are not as apparent in your piece. New parts build in at the start, but once you hit your groove, I don't hear a lot of parts fading out or in. I hear a couple of sections where you play with (I think) an EQ filter that makes things sound thin, or underwater-y, then you bring it back to normal. That provides a bit of variety and tension/release, but it isn't as effective as what I'm hearing in the Jon Hopkins piece.
You said you want to play with it more, so I would encourage you to try some bolder techniques. Bring in new parts and fade out old ones so that the feel changes more over time. Bring in a part that's pleasantly out of key to create some palpable tension and release, giving the piece more of an overall shape. I think what you have is a fantastic basis from which to work and you could end up create something really compelling.
That's my two cents, for whatever it's worth. I hope it helps!
Fantastic advice all around, Monty! 😀
Thank you for taking the time to listen and offer up such thoughtful feedback. Even though I realize this is a bit outside your regular listening and what you play, I think you've definitely identified solid areas for improvement and I'm feeling inspired to take another crack at it — adding in more tension and variation.
After playing this, I found a way to manipulate the guitar loop in real-time via Ableton (using even more MIDI cables, haha), so I think I'd like to try performing it again and wielding that to my advantage. Plus, the looper I'm using for the guitar (a Boss RC-500) allows for 2 different loops and I'm only currently using 1. Maybe I can get a separate loop in to create another distinctive section.
My only real limitation/goal is to keep it so that I can perform everything live — like the Jon Hopkins video above. But I've got ideas brewing now... 🙌
Anywho, thank you very much! And I'll keep you in the loop when I make updates. 🙂
Ooh! You mentioned Jon Hopkins in the other comment. But I'm also getting some WhoMadeWho (and partly Bob Moses) vibes from this! It's just missing the vocals!
As someone who loves music (and DJs and makes music), I love this and I really hope you continue to work on it!
@michaeltharrington For context:
youtube.com/watch?v=fh-LJdvs1Ig
(I'm not telling you what to do, but I tried singing along with your track in their style and just saying that it could work.)
Thank you sooo dang much for listening and appreciate the encouragement! 💚
Also wow, I'm honored by the comparison. I've never heard of WhoMadeWho or Bob Moses, but am absolutely loving this video that you linked to. 😍 This is def the kinda thing I wanna do and am going for!
So, I still really need to explore more music from this space. I've been leaning more into the whole electronic/house/techno music space these past couple of years, but I still don't know a lotta the groups that well. I reckon I do a lot of see-sawing back and forth to more traditional band-based music too. Just to say, there's still so much I don't know, but I really like this group you introduced me to and wanna hear more like'em. Thanks for the suggestion... it's good inspiration!
By the way, I'm def up for trying to put some vocals on top of my track. I love singing and it would be fun to try and find something that fits well! Will let you know if I make changes in that direction. Thanks all around! 😀
No worries! I found myself headbopping along with your track earlier and imagining it with those kinds of desert rock vibe kinds of vocals was really inspiring.
Also the other way around, thank you for the inspiration! Now I'm wondering if I should get myself a guitar!
So, right back at you! No worries, thank you and you're welcome!
(And, yes! Please let me know!)
After a lot of dilly-dallying pushed out a small professional website for the better half. Uses #nuxt under the hood and is deployed on #Cloudflare using #NuxtHub.
i've came up with a new idea that i now need people to validate:
so you can enter a prompt
and it will use music theory to create a 20 second intro to that prompt
will also help you build upon that idea
will have a credit based system (gotta pay to get credits)
so basically a music intro creator which uses purely music theory to create it
my audience are people who are creating music and have a knowledge of music theory
but just don't have a starting melody
there are definitely a lot of ai related tools for music creation out there but none of them focuses on the theory aspect of it
Honestly, I don't know if that's something that can really be monetized.
In my experience, the people who do music a lot will usually know their theory just fine, and the beginners who don't just want something that will "make it go" for them without regard to any limits in knowledge.
There's the Captain software by the Mixed in Key people. That's an offline thing.
And it would be relatively easy to write a VST that generates random melodies from some base key and tonal preference.
I could maybe see it work for those who make music for commercials/ads and if/when they're stuck for inspiration.
Let me rephrase all of that; there might be a market for it, but I have no idea if there would be a sufficiently big paid audience for it.
If you're thinking about making a product with the goal to make money, you should always have 1) a great idea and 2) a specific idea of what your customer base would look like. Because if you invest a whole bunch of resources into it without a good idea of your target audience, it's going to be an uphill battle.
Regardless, I would build something just for fun just to get a feel for it!
okay i've got another idea
i'm a student who struggles to memorise things like quotations so how it works would be:
enter themes
for each theme have a few quotations
when testing for each theme:
Doesn't need to be quotations
just helps with memorising in general
could be for definitions so the quotation would be "[x] means [definition]"
my target audience would be students who struggle to memorise things
Let me get back to you!
Because I feel I might be able to give you better advice that's better tailored to the underlying motivations for your requests for feedback.
Finally completed the new post on Caching concepts.
It covers key concepts and emphasizes the importance of analyzing requirements for an effective caching strategy. Check it out and share your thoughts!
dev.to/paras594/caching-in-depth-5abj
I reorganized the bat cave to create a separation between my desk space and my reading / library space. This had a pleasant side effect of giving me a nice central standing area for talk rehearsals and video recordings.
Also, this is why they're called tech stacks, right?
Oh! And I hit 100,000 views on my YouTube channel, Matt on Data Science, making it officially eligible for monetization!
Started transforming Figma designs into code 😊
dev.to/nadiafedev/my-favorite-reac...
My wins this week are:
Started Writing from this week's goal is to share my views on JS with everyone consistently.
I was working on dev.to challenges and developed an AI bot called "Pantry Chef"
Motto for Pantry Chef: Discover the joy of cooking with Pantry Chef, the innovative bot designed to help you create delicious meals from the ingredients you already have at home. Upload an image of your available ingredients, and the Pantry Chef will suggest various recipes.
In addition to that, I got two more badges added to my list.
Really proud that I learned some new stuff like mixing tailwind and styled-components, sliderjs or helping out other aspiring Devs with bug fixing. shoulder tapping myself 😂
I did some 3D printing this week.
Also, I wrote my first post in almost a month, after returning from a trip to Iceland and Norway!
Mostly still recuperating from my trip. 😅
Norway! 😯
Awesome, I have not tried 3D printing but it sounds cool! Grats on writing your first post in a while! You must have had an awesome trip!
Thanks! I heard you got featured as a mod. 🤩
Keep up the good work, and congrats! 👍
I got notified about a type error in one of my open source packages a few hours ago. While it stopped me from working on something I had planned, not only did I fix the types, I also simplified them.
This week I made some progress on my mega project, and got an opportunity to prove myself and get a full time internship! So excited for this!
I conducted a rage war between gemini and chatgpt.
It was very fun
I started back coding this week. I haven't coded in 3 years so it feels good to be back.
My website lost almost 95% of its traffic because of Google's March update :)) lol
This week I just release LibSQL PHP Extension and LibSQL Client PHP.
My Turso Achievements:
I got badge as a Turso Contributor Champion after I build TursoHTTP and TursoSyncd. I know, I am too handsome for anything 🤣
And I don't know about my total 9480 followers in DEV
This week, I published a new article about macrotasks and microtasks. I also reached 1,000 subscriptions during the week.
Unraveling Macrotasks and Microtasks in JavaScript: What Every Developer Should Know
Marsel Akhmetshin ・ Apr 24