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Michael Tharrington Subscriber for The DEV Team

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What was your win this week?

Hey! πŸ‘‹

You made it. It's officially Friday. 😎

Looking back on this past week, what was something you were proud of accomplishing?

All wins count β€” big or small πŸŽ‰

Examples of 'wins' include:

  • Starting a new project
  • Fixing a tricky bug
  • Going out to get ice cream 🍦

A claymation version of Patrick, the starfish, from Spongebob gorging himself on ice cream. He stops mid-bite and hangs on the side of the ice cream cone while swallowing ice cream satisfactorily. Notably he is out of the water and on a populated beach.

Top comments (87)

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bymarsel profile image
Marsel Akhmetshin

This week, I published a new article about macrotasks and microtasks. I also reached 1,000 subscriptions during the week.

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dsitdikov profile image
Daniil Sitdikov

Wow! You're a really promising and talented technical author. Have you considered writing your own book?

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bymarsel profile image
Marsel Akhmetshin

Thanks for the wonderful feedback! I might write a book about JavaScript in the future.

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Viktor Shcheglov

Congratulations on reaching 1,000 subscriptions, Marsel! Your article on macrotasks and microtasks in JavaScript is a treasure trove of insights.

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Marsel Akhmetshin

Thank you! Feedback like this makes writing articles worthwhile.

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Anton Konev

Legendary publication. Thank you for sharing!

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bymarsel profile image
Marsel Akhmetshin

Thanks, Anton! I hope it helps many developers write performant and optimized apps.

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Anita Olsen

HUZZAH! Well done! ✨

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bymarsel profile image
Marsel Akhmetshin

Thank you Anita πŸ‘

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Michael Tharrington

Wow, this is wonderful. Nicely done, Marsel! And thanks so much for pointing this out to me. πŸ˜€

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bymarsel profile image
Marsel Akhmetshin

Thanks, Michael! Sharing our successes is a great ideaβ€”thanks for suggesting it.

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Anita Olsen • Edited

πŸ“° I published a new post on DEV! ✨


Β  Β 

πŸ’Ÿ I received a new badge on DEV! ✨
The Mod of the Month badge
The Featured Moderator of the Month article can be read, here!
Β 

πŸ’‘ 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).
Β 
πŸ’» I completed three singleplayer levels on CodeCombat! ✨
I also earned the following achievements:
CodeCombat achievements
Β 

πŸ’Ÿ I received three new badges on Codecademy! ✨
Codecademy badges

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Michael Tharrington

Wooohoo, congrats all around!

Sorry for the lateness in getting ya that badge, Anita β€” that was def my bad, haha. πŸ˜…

And thanks so much for all the awesome help you give us as a mod! πŸ™Œ

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Anita Olsen

Thank you so much! πŸ˜€

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! 😊

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Michael Tharrington

Oh I'm sorry for that! I must've missed your email. Anywho, totally cool to hit me up on Discord!

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Erin A Olinick

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! 🐧

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Anita Olsen

Thank you so much! 😊 Yes, indeed! People seemed to like it! πŸ˜ƒ

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Marsel Akhmetshin

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. πŸ™Œ

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Anita Olsen

Thank you so much 😊

I think you will like the article I am going to post tomorrow 😊

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GrimKillingbeck

My win(s) this week :

  • I finally sat down and practiced scripting with Bash and found that I am happiest when I am playing around in CLI
  • After revising my resume for the umpteeth time, and using this iteration for 45 applications, I received 4 invites for interviews and two in person interviews (so far)
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Paulo Henrique

Wow, that would be cool to write about both experiences πŸ˜€

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Erin A Olinick

Congrats, @grimkillingbeck! That is a great response on your resume. Wow! Good luck on the interviews. ✨

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a.infosecflavour

Congratulations, may you have positive experiences! 😊

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phalkmin profile image
Paulo Henrique
  • Published a new post on dev
  • Auty got good feedback after I showed it to some friends, a parent even praised how his kid with ASD interacted with it. After the challenge, I need to think about how to continue with it as a free product.
  • Updated my WP plugin and started working on the 2.0 version

  • Massive update on LinkedIn and UpWork profiles

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Erin A Olinick

+1 to Auty -- super impressed with this concept -- and thanks for all the great content you've been sharing on DEV. πŸ™

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Michael Tharrington

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. πŸ™Œ

Also, big ups on the posts! You're sharing lots of good stuff.

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Michael Tharrington

I’ve been working on a little trancey electronic track recently that I call House Party β€” that's a Google Drive link btw! πŸ˜€

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) β€” 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!

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TyIsI • Edited

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.)

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Michael Tharrington • Edited

Thank you sooo dang much for listening and appreciate the encouragement! πŸ’š

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! πŸ˜€

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tyisi profile image
TyIsI

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!)

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tyisi profile image
TyIsI

Oh! The Bob Moses Cercle set before I forget!

youtube.com/watch?v=R3wwPJCDumw

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Michael Tharrington • Edited

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.

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Monty Harper

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!

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Michael Tharrington • Edited

Fantastic advice all around, Monty! πŸ˜€

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 β€” 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 β€” like the Jon Hopkins video above. But I've got ideas brewing now... πŸ™Œ

Anywho, thank you very much! And I'll keep you in the loop when I make updates. πŸ™‚

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tyisi profile image
TyIsI

Such a great set!

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Michael Tharrington

Right?! I love that set. Jon Hopkins is on fire. πŸ”₯

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Stefan Moore

2 weeks and I haven't used my credit card(s).

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Michael Tharrington

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. πŸ€‘

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Stefan Moore

Congrats on having a supportive wife. Mine just wants to spend and spend. Seeing that small growth shows there is hope.

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Michael Tharrington

Woohoo! Look at all those red moons in a row, haha. That's a lotta submissions β€” nice one(s)!

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a.infosecflavour

Yeah, it's a great learning experience and exercise!😸

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Schemetastic (Rodrigo) • Edited

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:

A set of gradients, the first row says β€œCSS gradients” and has 4 samples of colorful gradients, below the words β€œCSS gradients” there is a label that says β€œCopy & paste”, the second row says β€œMesh gradients” and next to it 4 samples of colorful gradients, below the words β€œMes gradients” there is a label that says β€œ1080x1080 & 1920x1080”

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Fabrikapp

Wrote 12 articles, made 1200+ views and 707 readers !
And also I dealt with LangChain/LangGraph doc and made a nice custom AI Agent.

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Medea

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

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tyisi profile image
TyIsI

What's your audience and are there any other tools in that space?

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vulcanwm profile image
Medea

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

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tyisi profile image
TyIsI

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!

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vulcanwm profile image
Medea

that makes sense, thanks!

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vulcanwm profile image
Medea

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:

  • Enter a quotation
  • If it is fully the same as another quotation in the list then it is marked as correct
  • If not then it matches how similar the quotation entered is with all the other quotations
  • The quotation with the closest similarity is assumed as the one the user is trying to enter
  • It tells the user the correct quotation and then will be repeated in the next round
  • Rounds will continue until all the quotations have been correctly guessed

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

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tyisi profile image
TyIsI

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.