In a comment I’ve made a little bit ago, I mentioned that I was tasking myself to discover music that was played on an old radio program that I listened to from the 2000s. And it is looking to be a lot more prolonged and tedious than I had thought. I’ve been able to find a program that has done an amazing job at removing the host’s voices to where, I can’t tell where they start or stop talking, I get hints that there were points of voices being there, but it’s non-existent.
I’ve tried before in the past to use Audacity, but being that all recordings were done in Mono and not Stereo, no matter what I tried, the voices would still remain. So now that hurdle is done with, the next task is to go through all 139 episodes and all episodes average 1 hour to 2 hours. That’s a long time if you’re doing radio or podcasting, it’s a lot of talking to do. Then it’s a matter of listening back and forth at one points certain songs begin and end, marking times to point them out with.
I might pick out some standout favorites, episodes that contained the most songs that I would have wanted the most from them. Then once all of that is figured, the next course of action is to clean up the sample audio, because most of these episodes were recorded in Mono so there’s going to be a lot of distortion and muddiness.
Then once all of that is done, the next challenging task is, actually finding someone who’ll be able to identify what is played. I don’t know electronic/techno music too well, I’m not entirely familiar with artists outside Daft Punk, Celldweller, 3Teeth and Pendulum to name a few. The only thing that sortof helps narrow things down is that they were all played on DI.FM at the time, so it may or may not help.
From there, it’s just hoping I find them out there online.
It’s a big project, but I’ve listened to these episodes for 18 years now and what kept me coming back to them besides nostalgic purposes, was the music played in them that never got identified.
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I have been working on myself and somehow improved my mental health a bit through reflecting, journaling, talking openly with my close ones and a bit of therapy.
On a technical side I have been redoing the architecture of my home lab without it ever working before. My end goal is pangolin on my vps, a dmz, a vpn net, opnsense firewall vm, authentik and the of cause all my services. I am working backwards as I want to build a functional base so my buddy can deploy services again if he wants to, using authentik finally. Its a journey. It can be exhausting but to be honest I rely on llms writing boiler plate or example ansible configs for me to take off quite some load. It speeds up the process quite nicely.
My other project I am working on is a light controller software based on a steam deck that is supposed to work like the robe robo spot follow spot system. Most of my backend is done, I need some redesign of how data flows but basically its only the output layer that is missing. Its a huge project and I am learning soo incredibly much about software architecture and software engineering. I am very grateful for my prof that he sometimes takes time to help me rethink my architecture.
I saw a few people about how they find it overwhelming that so many people work on stuff. Donr be hard on yourself. We only portrait here what we choose to. My server project just crossed the 2 year mark. It tales time to learn and learning is exhausting. Some people don’t like working on a project for this long wich is fine. Some people find life exhausting wich is also fine. I have a few privileges in life that makes it easier for me and also enjoy working more than social life which can be tough mentally as well. Also, if you find stuff interesting, just dip your towes in. No one expects anything of you. I often find myself having 2-4h more energy a day than expected, specially if I like the topic or project.
New campaign in my D&D world.
700 years ago the moon fell and devastated the land.
This island in particular almost split in two entirely, and a minor god died in the process of saving it.
Now the characters are sent on a mission to prevent a war by destroying one side of the land. In the process they may uncover how they are being used, by who, what really happened back then, who the god was, and the real danger to the lands.
Or they can just do what they were told and blow stuff up… except one character is a secret agent hoping to destroy the other side if it comes to that.
I’ve been writing a new players guide for Elite: Dangerous in detail along with putting together a squadron to teach new players. It’s been the most involved I’ve ever been with an online game by far.
I got really into ED for half a year or so when I got my VR headset. It made everything feel so immersive, and the fact there was no space legs at the time actually worked out well. I still have fond memories of the time I found a group of old timers doing a mining event and they all brought their huge ships, showed us the ropes, and shared the wealth.
After the engineering grind though I sort of lost interest. I remember doing an in game event, which was essentially "shuttle supplies from X to Y, N times. I took my headset off to be able to use my other monitor and decided to just leave it off because nothing complex was happening. That’s when I realized that I wasn’t in my ship moving cargo, I was sitting at a computer playing a “game” that is just mindlessly moving cargo. The VR immersion meant SO much to the thrill of it.
I was never a good enough pilot for full flight assist off combat, and the devs seemed hellbent on just making all gameplay based on endless loops with only the tiniest bit of lore to hold it together. I stopped when the space legs came out since it wasn’t VR compatible and left it there.
It’s really good to hear people like you are making the effort to onboard new players. I’m glad it still has a following because honestly, the bones of it were great and I had a lot of fun. If you don’t mind my asking, what keeps you engaged and playing it today?
For me, Elite is all about alone time. Sure the loops are “repetitive”, but there’s well over 20 or 30 loops in the game. A lot of people share your experience because it’s ultimately more of a sandbox than a traditional experience like most other mainstream titles. It’s time for me to meditate and explore.
Another major factor is that I’m allergic to “the grind”. Many, many other players feel that Engineering is goal #1 and want the biggest, fastest, baddest ship, but I just don’t care about most of that. I like flying space ships and this game does it better than almost any other out there.
Add on the fact that now I have a squadron and it’s become a place to hang out with friends. Elite is less a game with a win state and more a universe to explore.
Lastly, it’s very easy to ignore major parts of the lore thanks to all the farming guides that skip past how those sites were originally discovered. It’s a game meant for you to reach these points hundreds of hours in instead of dozens.
I’m making a graphic audiobook for my novel. I’m close to finishing recording all lines with the voice actors and I’m now assembling all of the 20 chapters together. I’ve been working on this since October so I guess you could say it’s a major project.
Any teasers you’d share?
This is the cover art for chapter 0
I’m just out here surviving. Who has time, energy or money for projects?
It’s a little shocking to read about successful people who apparently have 36 hours in a day and don’t sleep. I can’t figure out where the energy comes from and how they do everything in such compact periods of time.
been writing a novel. almost done with the first of three books.
Wow!
What’s the genre? And do you have a “pitch”?
a generation ship journey, 400 years of how history changes in an oNeil cylinder, how ideas change, how nations raise and fall, revolutions, crisis, how history gets corrupted into myths… It’s structured as short stories that follow a family line.
it’s very ambitious, some stories are hard sci-fi thrillers, others are slice of life, coming of age, queer romances, political thrillers, myth making… so far I’ve only written the first 160 years (enough for a part 1 of 3) and I’m over 60 thousand words.
I’m trying to keep a holistic view of society and technology. Example the crisis in the current section I’m writing; After 100 years of journey, they build heavy industry in a city, run using the electricity meant for the lights, cooling the light. Colder light has less UV, resulting in Vitamin D deficiency, but only for the poor workers who live in the city, as the wealthy live further away under healthy lights. resulting in a health and economic crisis. that chapter is very political as it involves unions and revolutions, and follows the previous chapter when they attempt to solve it with only science.
Imagine 100 años de soledad but instead of magic realism its hard science fiction.
I’m saving up for a new gaming machine and/or a mini pc. I have a Mac mini right now, but I’m mostly done with Apple since Tim Apple keeps bootlicking drumpf. So I’m looking to get back to Linux. Plus with all this fucking age verification shit, I wanna go to Linux since that may be the last bastion of freedom.
Anyway, it’s gonna take me a long fucking time. But I want to do this
I finished Microtonal music grid :
https://newdawnowl.itch.io/microtonal-gridIt’s a step sequencer that lets you play in arbitrary scales, and arbitrary even temperment music systems, and it’s so simple to use a child could do it.
I finished a bill database manager in django. It sounds fancy but you just choose where a file is and where you want it to go, or where a file is, and say how much the payment was and why it was done. It’s to help manage tax returns or the like. I made it very, very simple on purpose.
I’m working on a spending tracker, in django again, and trying to create an android app that can scan receipts so you can send data from pictures you take into it. I’ve got the DB running, I’ve got the android app sending data into a placeholder in the DB, and the next step is to create some adjustments to the android app so that you can clean up and structure the text into decent entries and put them into the db that way.
I need to clean up the microtonal grid codebase, put the bill db manager on my personal server, and start recording videos for publicity and code breakdowns and demos etc so I can build some kind of publicity arm.
Tiny home that I’m moving into in two weeks. And then a larger home that I plan on moving into at the end of the year if i can ever get my contractor to fix the mess his “buddy” made on the last roof repair.
And then, in addition to those two, just myself.
Not here to self promote but one thing I’ve started and have actually been sticking to, surprisingly, is game streaming. I’m just playing doing my thing, but eventually I’d like to take it one step further and get viewers.
I started a skacore band, and it looks like we’re finally coming together!
After the non interest of my (revolutionary!) P2P project, I’m just building a “slow game”, 12 action points twice a day to go do quests and slay dragons 'n stuff.
It’s up and running, gotta hone out some stuff and finalize the first months of quests before putting it live (maybe a beta-run first) to see if there is any interest.
This sounds so fun. And overwhelming. Truly the hallmarks of a major personal project!
There might be a way to use technology to help with some of the song ID.
MusicBrainz Picard is a free service with apps and an API you can call to identify a sonic fingerprint of a song. It might be able to help you, but I don’t know if the audio artifacts you’re cleaning up would interfere with the matching.
There’s also apps like SoundHound and Pandora that were all the rage. They are half decent at identifying songs even with a lot of background noise, so they might have some extra processing that does a better job.
But that all assumes you’ve already separated all the recordings into individual tracks…
Too bad DI.FM didn’t publish their track lists. That would have made life easier!
Also there’s AudD, that’s pretty neat for that purpose.
Definitely will be trying that, sounds and seems very interesting.
This is awesome!
I love that they position themselves as identifying music to catch “pirates”. Seems only fitting that it can also be used to help pirate music.
I think MusicBrainz Picard is more for local tracks you already have on your drives. Like it’s an advanced version of what Windows Media Player would do with downloading metadata when you’re using it to rip CDs.
With EDM-type of music, there’s a wide array of artists, remixes and versions of songs that it can be difficult for even some of these programs to narrow down. So the samples I have to make, have to be clear enough to be heard to be identified and even then, there’s a low chance.
I haven’t even started separating tracks because there’s show segments I have to identify and remove, there’s figuring out when a song starts and when it ends. It’s a process, for sure. Not to mention, the time available to me to even do all of this. It takes over 45 - 50 minutes to have Ultimate Vocal Remover 5 to go through each file. Then it’ll probably be like another hour and a half to figure things out.
I don’t think the responsibility lies on DI.FM than it did on the hosts of the show, I mean, I tried looking up archived show notes when they were on Rant Radio and nothing could be found. It wouldn’t have hurt to credit what music you’re playing but, this was at the time, a one of a kind show that was very makeshift and took its time to find its identity. So I think the hosts and everyone working on the show, haven’t had a thought of letting listeners in on what was being played.
I mean, maybe they did at the time? But I’m not sure because I was not an active listener of the period of which I’m targeting the music being played the show is on. I discovered them in 2008 and the shows I’m doing are 2003 - 2005.
So, it is what it is, I’m doing what I can with what I have available to me.
Been working in a little app in my spare time for the last 3 years. Hope it goes well.
What does it do?
Two apps. One for youth coaches the other to teach novices how go play a position in a soccer formation.
Good luck. I’d like to see how that turn out
Thanks, I’m debating open sourcing the second one, it’s a simple app to show formations and movement for in posession and out of possession formations. I’m making it specifically for my indoor soccer team, but I’m making it have outdoor 9v9 and 11v11 formations too.
If you want to follow the progress I will be posting on mastodon about it soon.
The first one is a much bigger app, written in Rust/Slint with a hosted back end. It’s primary goal is to make it easier for youth soccer coaches to have access tons drill library, automated practice plans that take into account when your games are and focus on keeping your players healthy. It applies a little data science to wellness based on subjective player ratings. I built in a very simple 5 question email to the players that is basically, 1-5 how is your fatigue, how tired do you feel, how sore do you feel etc… The coach gets a player fitness score when they make their lineup for the game. Which is a neat drag and drop roster to field UI.
Im pretty proud of it. I’ve already got it on the play store using the internal testing track and am trying to find coaches to test it.
That’s cool. I’ll definitely follow this.
