HN user
https://github.com/cyrusadkisson
My topcolor is #bada55
Location: USA
Remote: No preference
Willing to relocate: Yes, to any major US city
Technologies: JS, Linux, AWS, blockchain, Three.js (see resume)
Resume: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qMnCVQbl65PkN9xfd_LNKGwVq62SfDa6EDKjetxKVCg
Email: resume4@mailcyr.(USA TLD)
ZZ Top figured this out a long time ago.
Lebron James. I thought for sure he was gonna crash and burn after the absolutely insane hype.
On the first point, Amazon should strictly prohibit gifting free Vine items to others. It is inherently antithetical.
On the second point, no. I don't think it's possible to give free items to people and get honest reviews. The free-ness will often induce either charity or laziness in reviewers. The only way to get an accurate review on a product at its price point is to sell the item at its price point in the wild.
"non-guitarist Mom of skeptical daughter who didn't want or ask for Thingamagig but 'hey it's free'" is not our market, though. Thus, it is not a valid read on "market reception".
Actual market reception is positive: https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R14HJYCSIBF2R8
The whole point of my post is that Vine is pushing units onto the wrong people and for the wrong reasons and that others in my shoes should avoid it. I.e. I'm admitting an error using Vine at all.
Early reviews are critical to a product's trajectory. Of course I'm going to get upset about Vine giving my free guitar product to non-guitarists who turn around and leave poor reviews. It's absurd.
What do you want to know about the product? This is the best primer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9haR4CCeh9o
This blog post was about Amazon Vine. Not Thingamagig.
I have made dozens of improvements to Thingamagig based on valid user feedback.
On the first, am I supposed to improve based on something the user's kids said without trying the product?
On the second, what exactly did she complain about aside from "hardware improvements"? I'll make the changes. But what are they, exactly?
I thought about this and it's a good point. Maybe there is a carve-out for folks who can't review on their own - like elder care products or kids toys. But this is not that.
Is "susie" not anonymized enough for you? I blacked out her email address. There's no picture.
July 21st was when I had the "ok I have to pursue this for real" moment and it's been 24/7 coding and tinkering since then. I really need to go for a walk or something.
Give thingamagig a shot. I think you'll find that voice-control is faaaaaar from a gimmick. I have kicked my feet up and lost hours jamming along from track to track. The frictionlessness of it is really something.
Also, you seem to know quite a bit about the market. Would you be willing to talk? Email me at cyrus@ my product's domain name.
I thought about this too. Multiple choice A, B, C, etc... just play the chord. :)
But that's pretty challenging from an engineering standpoint and Alexa skills can't be controlled externally yet. I briefly added a footswitch and could get Thingamagig to cycle through the tones of a particular song with it, but the Alexa screen won't update on that "outside" information.
Amazon has said they'll consider it but my gut says that's way down the list of things they're trying to do.
(I asked him to email me, he did, now I've removed the address for spam reasons.)
I became aware of Spark a couple of weeks ago. On the one hand, I was irritated that someone else was on the same "voice-controlled guitar playing" thread as me, but then (a) it's validating and (b) they're not really going the same place I am.
Thingamagig understands the underlying composition which means it can automate tones, loopers, lights, cameras, etc. That need was the genesis of this project and that's where its going. Everybody else (including Spark, Fender Play) seems to think the playalong is the end goal, which is why they short circuit the hard work of building the composition library by integrating Spotify or whatever.
Maybe they're right. Maybe I'm right. Maybe we're both right. We'll see, I guess.
Sorry if it was short on software details.
It's realtime raspbian. Headless ardour (lua implementation). A mix of guitarix and other amp sims. Proprietary cab sim IRs. Various other effects packages like rkr, ardour-native plugins.
Person speaks to alexa, alexa calls a series of lambdas (basically the not-yet-public API), and sends MQTT messages to the device which is tied to the user's Thingamagig account which is linked to their Alexa account.
https://github.com/raspberrypi/linux/tree/rpi-4.19.y-rt
Let me know if you have any other questions.
I was able to get 48000/256/3 working.
Guitarix is really, really impressive and I'm eternally grateful, but it is raw. It takes a lot of work to get it to sound the way you want and is inconsistent from sim to sim. However, by having control over the hardware and the sessions (i.e. presets, basically) and totally bypassing the Guitarix GUI, I was able to make it work for this project.
BTW, I'm not using any of guitarix's cab sims. Instead I purchased a commercial license to professionally-shot proprietary cab simulation IRs which make all the difference in terms of tone quality. That metal portion of the demo is all about the cab sims.
Why the hate?
Do you know of any modeling solution where you can pick up your guitar and play without your hands ever leaving the guitar?
Do you know of any modeling solution that will automatically change your guitar tones during playback?
And automate your loopers?
And scroll lyrics and chords in perfect time?
And (eventually) automate your vocal effects, lights, fog machines, drone cameras and dancing baby Groot?
For < $150?
Thingamagig understands the underlying composition which is a critical component of advanced automation. No other solution on the market does this. If it did, I would have bought it and been done with it.
He's making a subtle point here. There's
"do x"
vs
"Alexa, do x"
vs
"Alexa, ask AppName to do x"
The first is when the skill does a thing and then immediately starts listening again. The blue bar is already there and you don't need to say "Alexa".
The second is when the skill is still open but not currently listening. Takes a bit of hackery to keep the skill from constantly closing, namely, long-running APL commands.
The third is when the skill is closed and you're trying to get it to do something. I call this "deep launching" but it almost never works. Amazon has built an amazing system here, but the Alexa system needs work on recognizing skill names for deep launching.
Yeah good question. Alexa skills don't want to be long-lived so you have to force them to stay open so you're not constantly saying "Alexa ask <app name> to <x>" which, by the way, hardly ever works.
With a video skill like this, I can submit APL documents and then long-running commands to make it keep "doing something" throughout the playback. There is a limit to how long you can command it to "delay" but I think it's more than 5 minutes or something.
I haven't tried it, but for non-video skills I've read that you can play silent audio for a period of time to keep the skill open.
Janky, for sure.
Bug report here.
Last part didn't format correctly and I couldn't edit. Here it is:
Location: Any large tech hub, including those outside the US
Remote: No, I want to relocate. Have done so 3x before.
Technologies: Java, Spring, Javascript, everything AWS, Ethereum/Solidity
Resume: https://bit.ly/36T5rsi (github profile, email for resume pdf)
Email: hnjobs2019@mailcyr.usI'm primarily an early-stage full stack dev; I do and learn whatever is necessary to ship. But I also have extensive experience in customer-facing, sales-y roles in companies above 200 employees.
Most recently, I went fully serverless on a Node-based hardware IOT personal project. Before that, I was a post-sales, professional services, API integration engineer at a mid-sized startup. Before that, I built one of Ethereum's first working dApps and presented it at Devcon 1. Before that, a pre-sales consultant at a networking-oriented BigCo.
So yeah. I'm hard to describe, but open to everything!
Location: Any large tech hub, including those outside the US Remote: No, I want to relocate. Have done so 3x before. Technologies: Java, Spring, Javascript, everything AWS, Ethereum/Solidity Resume: https://bit.ly/36T5rsi (github profile, email for resume pdf) Email: hnjobs2019@mailcyr.us
News flash: it already popped. 70‰ from top. ICOs dried up.
Blockchain market cap is about $300 billion now. Should the next major tech wave be worth half a Facebook? IMO, yes, and more.
Blockchain has already proven 2 major use cases (e-gold and ICOs) and several minor ones (unstoppable casinos, prediction markets). Doubters are in for a bunch of regret.
Thank you. That article was insanely long winded.
Our big brains didn't pay off for millenia, until they did, and in a big way.
That's not how evolution works. Each step along the way must produce a net benefit or it gets discarded. Just as insect wings served as propulsion for water skimming before actual flight, big brains paid off, then got bigger and paid off some more, etc. The only hiccup is the benefit has to outweigh the cost (eg big brains need more calories).
Side note: I think our wide array of modern mental disorders are costs of our brains' continuing enlargement. I.e. brains are trying to figure out how to get even bigger and more powerful without also having OCD or schizophrenia.
I think a few dozen tiles were purchased at 1 ETH when it was about a dollar per ETH. People seemed to like it although it was challenging to build things. I can see in the contract data that some people bought tiles, mined blocks, but didn't understand how to place the blocks on the tiles, so the blocks remain hidden.
Anyway yeah I'm thinking of resurrecting it soon. I've kept an entrepreneurial/techie ear open since I built it and I think I finally know what I want to do to bring it back to life.
As far as ownership, I'll probably just buy all the remaining tiles myself (the money goes to me anyway) and then sell at more reasonable prices on the secondary market.
I built something like this 2 years ago. And it's 3D!
"I maxed out my credit cards, put it all on the hard 8, and won!"
A positive outcome does not equal a wise choice.