ffmpeg: make a video with a static image and an audio file
tsia ffmpeg -loop 1 -i image.png -i audio.mp3 -c:a copy -c:v libx264 -shortest result.mp4
Video grids with ffmpeg
I wanted to create a video that is a 3×2 grid of 6 other videos. This one to be precise: I was hoping I can use ffmpeg, because the thought of using a proper video editing software gives me the chills. In fact at some point I thought things will require iMovie and went to […]
Randomizing music with MuseScore and Node.js
One of my esteemed professors from Santa Monica College, Dr. Driscoll asked for an opinion on how one can use a sheet of music and reshuffle some measures to generate a unique exercise for each student. This turned out more fun than anticipated and here’s a solution I came up with using the free notation […]
Natively lazy-loading Facebook social plugins
tl;dr: Add data-lazy=”true” to your Facebook social plugins that are below the fold and reap the benefits. In code: // before <div class=”fb-like” data-href=”https://phpied.com”></div> // after <div class=”fb-like” data-href=”https://phpied.com” data-lazy=”true”></div> The following 18 seconds video demonstrates the difference. Where currently your visitors load Facebook iframe content even if it’s way down the page, after you […]
Life after Facebook?
Yesterday was my last day at Facebook. After 9 1/2 years it was high time for a change. I dropped the news on twitter/fb and thought now it would be nice to answer the question of “what’s next?” that friends are wondering. The trajectory I myself have wondered sometimes what the life after Facebook could […]
A programmer’s job dimensions
I’m not the one who philosophizes often in public, but indulge me this thought on the types of work we do as programmers and feel free to add your own dimensions. I’ve thought about how sometimes I like to work on user-facing products and sometimes on developer-facing ones. Real products that my mom can see […]
WebAudio Deep Note, part 5: gain node
Previously on “Deep Note via WebAudio”: intro play a sound 2.1. boots and cats loop and change pitch multiple sounds nodes In part 4 we figured out how to play all 30 sounds of the Deep Note at the same time. The problem is that’s way too loud. Depending on the browser and speakers you […]
WebAudio Deep Note, part 5: nodes
Previously on “Deep Note via WebAudio”: intro play a sound 2.1. boots and cats loop and change pitch multiple sounds Nodes WebAudio makes a heavy use of the concept of nodes. A node is something that does a thing (I know, very helpful), for example makes noise or manipulates sound somehow. Then you connect the […]
WebAudio Deep Note, part 4: multiple sounds
Previously in this series: intro play a sound 2.1. kick and snare (a fun distraction from the main series) loop and change pitch We need to play 30 sounds at the time, that is 30 instances of the same cello sample, all pitched all over the place and over time. (If that sounds odd, please […]
WebAudio Deep Note, part 3: loop and change pitch
This journey started here, then continued, then took a slight turn, just for giggles, and now we’re back. After you learned how to play a sound, now let’s loop it, because the DeepNote goes on for about 25 seconds and we play the exact same sample of a cello that is under a second long. […]
WebAudio Deep Note, part 2.1: Boots and Cats
In the previous installment we came across the idea of creating noise via an oscillator and via a buffer filled with your own values (as opposed to values being read from a pre-recorded file). I thought a bit of elaboration is in order, even though we’re not going to use these ideas for the Deep […]
A bookmarklet: dataURI, please!
Ever had a string of a data URI image and you want to see said image? Simple: type data:image/png;base64, followed by the base 64 string. Except… it’s too much syntax to remember. I mean c’mon: colon, semi-colon, comma. And you probably don’t do this often enough. A bookmarklet is called for to aid the memory. […]
WebAudio Deep Note, part 2: play a sound
(Part 1 (intro) is here.) Now that we know what to do, let’s go for it! First rule of business: load an audio file and play it. UI Let’s build a simple HTML page (demo) to test things: <button onclick=”play()”>â–¶ play</button> <button onclick=”stop()”>STOP!!!!</button> Now let’s implement this play() function. Fetch… Loading means fetching from the […]
WebAudio Deep Note, part 1: intro
You’ve heard of WebAudio, but have you done any experimenting with it? This is a series of posts on exploring and discovering various APIs that WebAudio has to offer, by doing something concrete, namely recreate the THX Deep Note sound. If you cannot wait for me to write up everything, the code and slides (these […]
Exploring prefers-reduced-motion
Animations and transitions on the web are cool and all, they can make the UI feel snappier and responsive (if used judiciously). However there are problems with motion like this. A whole lot of people are sensitive to motion and you don’t want your site to cause motion sickness and dizziness, right? Luckily, most modern […]
Integrating React Profiler
Say hello to the new perf hotness – a profiler built into React. This announcement blog post shows how to use it as a Chrome Extension, but you can also use it in your code, to get insight into real world interactions, even in production. Let’s see how. Create a new react app If you’re […]
Prettier in TextMate
Prettier is a code formatter, great for following consistent coding conventions with 0 effort. Here’s how to add it to TextMate, my text editor of choice. Install Prettier Globally, so you take advantage of it in any old directory. npm install –global prettier If that doesn’t work, you probably need to install Node first. So […]
Asynchronous inline scripts via data: URIs
Inline scripts are synchronous. “Well, duh!” you may say. That’s a feature, not a bug. Because accessing a variable after an inline script should succeed. And that’s fine. But not great. When is this bad? Well, inline scripts cause stylesheets to be blocking. Wait, what? Steve explained it 10 years ago, and it’s still relevant […]
Defining user styles
User styles have been around since the early days of the web. They are a way for users to specify their browsing preferences using CSS cascade. I remember way back when this option was fairly prominent in Internet Explorer settings. Now, I don’t even know how to find it in most browsers. But I did […]
Using ESLint in a script
Instead of running ESLint on the command line and passing files to it, I wanted to require() and use it with code from strings. That is because I want to lint and unit-test the code from the book I write in AsciiDoc. (Will post the complete script once it’s running properly, some taste) Had to […]
Organizing a React component these days (H1/2018)
I started typing an answer to a question by @alexharrisonsax since my React book is written for the recent past (React 14) and things change. Twitter is not great for code discussions, so here goes. Import dependencies import React, {Component, Node} from ‘react’; Declare the component class App extends Component {} Unless it’s functional stateless […]
This page loaded in X seconds
I was just admiring Tim Kadlec eye-pleasing site. Nice, simple, see what I’m talkin’ ’bout. The feature I liked most was the footer that said “This page loaded in 0.186 seconds”. First of all – fast! Second – I thought all sites should have that. And what better way than an on-demand bookmarklet you carry […]
Do Search Engines speak JavaScript?
A quick survey… So my onlinemusictools.com is a bunch of little React apps. I was wondering – is the JS-generated content of the apps visible in search engines? A quick survey was in order. The answer is – out of Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Yandex, only Google search crawler speaks the lingua JavaScript. Google screenshot below. […]
OnlineMusicTools.com
Finally managed to cobble together an index page for the bunch of tools I’ve been hacking on in the past year as I progress through my music education. Is it better UX than the Apache default file listing? Hmm… Say hello to onlinemusictools.com! Not the best domain name, I know. But everything is bloody taken […]
How it’s made: flashcards with Italian slang for musicians
Update: Now in French too Update 2: and in German Update 3: now with Web Speech API (scroll to the bottom) Here’s a little app that gives you flashcards of Italian words used in music: https://www.onlinemusictools.com/italiano/ It also pronounces the words in four different voices. The code for the tool: https://github.com/stoyan/italiano A few implementation notes […]
