I’ve had several announcements about pet-projects of mine that got to the front page of HackerNews and some technology-related subreddits. And although that doesn’t mean that the projects were promising, game-changing, or investor-attracting, it at least means they are somewhat noteworthy in the technology world. My pet projects are not a startup, but nevertheless I …
Category: Opinions
Jun 02
The Point of Knowledge
We read. We watch. We learn. We gain knowledge. What’s the point? The point of knowledge is to allow our imagination to make unexpected connections between more and more elements. In other words, we feed our serendipitous imagination. Then many things may come out of it – ideas, inventions, art. Anything, in fact. Einstein wouldn’t …
Apr 25
Algorithmic Music Now Has A Business Model
When I first released Computoser (my service for generating music, without any human input), I didn’t think of a business model – it was just something interesting to play with. And the lack of business value was one of the factors affecting the success of previous attempts at algorithmic composition (as I mentioned in my …
Apr 23
A Rant Against Removing Comedy Sketches From YouTube
Comedy series are a great thing. But how do you get to choose a comedy series to watch? You can either listen to a friend’s advice, or dedicate 2 hours for watching a couple of episodes, before you know you like it. Well, there’s another option – that was the case of how I got …
Mar 28
Should you be concerned about your job when tweeting?
Yesterday I had to part with my company. I was a senior software engineer and team lead, but it turned out we are no longer a good match. I was opposing too much of management decisions on one hand, and many of these decisions were rather irrational at times. It appeared, though, that the person …
Mar 13
Computoser Accepting Bitcoin For Algorithmically-Generated Music
I just made my algorithmic music composer (Computoser) accept Bitcoin (only if you need tracks for commercial purposes, they are free otherwise). First, why Bitcoin? there are no fees, there is no business entity verification process – you just set it up and start accepting payments it is practically the only payment solution that works …
Jan 26
The Social Media Landscape Is Boring
I’ve been following social networks and social network news and analysis for a while (because of welshare), I’ve even written a couple of articles. But recently I stopped doing that. And not only because welshare became an “on hold” project. Social media is boring. Nothing interesting is happening there. Neither from a technical perspective, nor …
Dec 14
Too Big To Fix Bugs
The top three social networks (even though Google+ is getting up to speed) are considered to be Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Reddit is a huge site as well. And it won’t be news to you if I say that there are a lot of bugs there. Including basic functionality: On twitter every third tweet ends …
Nov 26
Generating Music Online
Last week I released my latest project – computoser – an online service that generates music algorithmically. Feedback has been very positive and this certainly means I’ll continue improving it. But what could that service actually become? First, as I noted in my technical description, the idea is not new at all. Many people, including …
Oct 10
Twitter And New Lines
Twitter does not display new lines. And that’s it – you can’t configure it to do so, you are stuck with no new lines. And I know this is a minor thing, but these things stack up. Why do you need new lines? If you are tweeting a short poem. Or a dialog (e.g. a …