robeastham

I was very impressed with the TTS examples in the original DeepMind article (https://deepmind.com/blog/wavenet-generative-model-raw-audio...).

Can someone elaborate on the usefulness of this implementation for Text-to-Speech?

I'm keen to experiment with voice synthesis. I want to create dialog, from multiple voice sources, for some characters in a VR application that I'm working on.

Perhaps this lib is a better option for TTS:

https://github.com/ibab/tensorflow-wavenet

I guess I could do with an ELI5 on how I'd approach this with either of these libraries. I'm not familiar with any deep learning frameworks. But I am pretty handy with Python and have implemented SciKit stuff.

Also thinking this will give me a reason to try Azure K80 instance vs the AWS GPU instances I've been using for other stuff. That said, is a Tesla K80 the only option for WaveNet? I'm guessing I could run it on other GPU's but had read that memory might be an issue on some cards. If so what the lowest card I can run it on and will one of the AWS GPU instances suffice? I also have a GTX 970 at home, but I'm guessing that won't cut it.

Cinema screens at home might actually get bigger than those at your local cinema very soon. How's that even possible I hear you ask? Well anyone who has tried a virtual cinema in VR will know what I'm talking about.

It's pretty clear to me that this is the way a lot of people will want to watch movies in the future once resolution in VR is increased. This will either by higher pixel density or a move to retina projection based technologies. Both of these things are likely to hit the market with the required resolution within the next 2-5 years.

I go to the cinema a lot, but usually only if I can see the film I want on to on Screen 1 - i.e the biggest one.

VR will negate the need for me to do that so often, though I'm still sure I'll go with friends once in a while.

Had been on OSX for desktop pretty much exclusively for the last 15 years up until recently. Have jumped to Windows due to my current focus on VR.

I used OSX for the first time in a few months yesterday, having installed Windows 10 on my Macbook a few months back.

For about 5 minutes I started to think that I missed it, it looks so nice, but within 10 minutes I'd had two fundamental networking issues crop up that slowed and then stopped me from doing my work without a reboot.

I own a fully pimped out top of the line 2014 15" Retina Pro ($4k to buy at the time). For at least a year it had a WiFi bug that required me to enter a command at the terminal in order to disable some aspect of networking so that I get full WiFi speed. If I don't my WiFI is limited to 10Mbps, once the command is run I get nearly triple that (i.e same as when I plugin ethernet). Why was I having to manually type commands at the command line in order to get my $4k laptop to connect properly to WiFi? 229 pages of people's issues here in just one thread:

https://discussions.apple.com/message/29742198?tstart=0#2974...

Also google "slow wifi MacBook pro"

It's possible this has been resolved in more recent updates and/or El Capitan.

Final issues yesterday was network access to my NAS, just random connectivity. Sometimes I can get access sometimes I can't. If I try to connect with an incorrect account password then access hangs and I'm not prompted to login again, so I have to reboot to get a network login window. It's just so frustrating, because I would love to stick with Apple. I've had none of these issues with Windows 10, or even Manjaro when I tried it again recently. But I do really miss lots of 3rd party software that I can only get on OSX.

Take a look at Susy for layout, bit more flexible than Bootstrap:

https://github.com/oddbird/susy

Also for static site generators take a look at:

https://middlemanapp.com/ (Ruby) http://gohugo.io/ (Go) https://github.com/getpelican/pelican (Python)

When you need to go beyond static sites and take a look at the web frameworks - Ruby on Rails is the obvious one, but I reckon that Meteor (https://www.meteor.com/) could be a good bet now that it has matured. Might save you a lot of time when compared to RoR for certain tasks.

As a London based developer (VR these days), I have to say that I immediately recognise the hammed up picture this guy paints of IT recruiters in the UK.

I only ever found one recruitment company that I liked who I felt was consistently top notch when I was freelancing. They didn't ever call me unless I signaled I was looking for work and always negotiated better rates than I felt I was able to when I was first starting out. They were called Recruit Media, but they were later swallowed up by a larger company that I cannot vouch for.

Some former employees set up a new agency that continued in the same vein as Recruit Media - http://www.wearefutureheads.co.uk/. They focus on web and digital content creation specialists. They know what the acronyms mean as well as how to spell them properly. If you're looking for a no-bullshit web/digital recruiter in this in the UK then you could do a lot worse.

Disclaimer: I have never worked as a recruiter and I have no links with Futureheads beyond being placed by some of their staff and also using them to recruit freelancers for projects I have led.

Obviously it goes without saying that you're much better off developing your professional network, negotiating a good rate and going direct if you can.

Just felt compelled to write this to illustrate that not all of them are bad. Sadly I'd estimate that at least 99% of the firms here in the UK are complete time wasters.

For those not in the know:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xgx4k83zzc :-)

Checkout http://deis.io/ and follow the Heroku buildpack instructions to take some of the headache out of all the DevOps questions that Dockerfiles etc might pose if you are just a humble web developer. Deis run's on CoreOS which is an excellent base OS that requires you to use Docker. CoreOS upgrades automatically in the background too.

Deis is a fully opensource PaaS inspired by Heroku. You can dip your toe in the water by spinning up a Deis cluster and then just following the Heroku inspired/compatible workflow described in the Deis docs. When you are ready to experiment Deis let's you use Dockerfiles instead of a Heroku inspired workflow.

Once you have your Deis cluster up you might even want to sidestep it entirely and run Docker containers directly on your CoreOS cluster.

Deis can be used with Vagrant and VirtualBox and it can also deploy to multiple clouds (EC2, Rackspace, Digital Ocean, Bare Metal (e.g. Kimsufi should be possible http://bit.ly/1t2PPXB). I've been playing around with it and it looks great so far.

And tonight was the night where I was going to figure out how to use my Oculus Rift with WebGL.

This looks to have awesome potential. Well done!

MightyCV is a London based venture too!

My little side project supports points 1 - 4. It has a neat disposable cover letter system built in.

I'll continue to slowly bootstrap MightyCV, it's a resume creation app with hacker leanings. It has integrations with HN, github and StackOverflow along with some other cool features. You can see an example of what one looks like here:

http://robeastham.mightycv.com

If you like the look of it you can sign up for a beta invite at:

http://www.mightycv.com

I'm hoping to redo the management interface over the next few months and push out a largish update to the service along with some bug fixes.

I've always avoided being too elitist when it comes to a candidate's school/university when hiring people. Partly I guess because I didn't go to a particularly prestigious one myself. I guess my point is that it depends who is reviewing your resume and what their background is as to whether this really matters.

For me I found that the best way to stand out when looking for a new position was to work on a side project. Sneakily my side project was a resume building app. Which meant I got a nice new resume out of the deal too. It definitely got me noticed and people came to me rather than me having to apply for jobs. I even got some telephone interviews for startups in the Bay despite being located in the UK.

Overall I think if you build out some form of beta app and execute to a minimum viable product level of service then that's going to be a good thing for your chances of employment.

So now for my shameless plug. I'm continuing to slowly bootstrap MightyCV - my resume creation app with hacker leanings. It has integrations with HN, github and StackOverflow along with some other cool features. You can see an example of what one looks like here:

http://robeastham.mightycv.com

If you like the look of it you can sign up for a beta invite at:

http://www.mightycv.com

I'm hoping to redo the management interface over the next month or two and push out a largish update to the service along with some bug fixes.

Another shameless plug. I'm slowly bootstrapping MightyCV - a resume platform with hacker leanings. It has integrations with HN, github and StackOverflow along with some other cool features.

http://robeastham.mightycv.com

If you like the look of it you can sign up for an invite at http://www.mightycv.com

This app seems to use similar paradigm to Campaign Monitor's superb template builder, going slightly further even and providing a completely blank canvas from which the user can create and design an email. I think this can work really well in some scenarios.

For us we've found that the workflow for creating a professional HTML email is more often that a marketing/design department create a design and then the web department receive a PSD or TIFF that they have to HTML-ify. I think web apps like yours are really targetted at a different kind of user and workflow where the assumption is that the web department will be designing and buidling the email from scratch within one tool.

The one thing we wanted to avoid with Mailrox was trying to reinvent Photoshop or Illustrator as part of a web app. This means that providing a blank canvas to create an email was never really part of the grand vision - most professional designers are not going to give up their Adobe products without a fight. What we wanted to do was focus on creating a tool that does a really good job of letting you take an exisitng design and turn it in to bulletproof code. All this without actually having to code and faff about with tables, layout and multiple painful trips to tools like Litmus to ensure client compatibility. With Mailrox all you have to do is slice up an image and export it ready for your favourite mailing list app. It's dead easy.

We've got Uservoice powered support and so if you have any other suggestions it'd be great if you add them over there so we can better track which features to prioritise.

http://support.mailrox.com/

We've added one for this request and so feel free to upvote and make comments on what you'd like to see included in a future text editor:

http://support.mailrox.com/forums/163882-general/suggestions...

Tom you can signup for an invite on the homepage:

https://www.mailrox.com

Your invite should come straight through :)

LOCATION - Central London, UK

ROLE - Mid/Senior PHP developer with custom CMS experience...

We’re looking for an personable and creative mid-weight/senior web developer to undertake approximately 7-10 days freelance work. This will involve taking some static templates that have already been built using HTML, CSS and jQuery and creating a brand new custom CMS to support the site. The site and CMS will need to support multiple language and so experience with localisation is also required. Ideally you would use Cake PHP to fulfil these requirements. Editing of the existing templates may be required and/or additional new templates may need to be built and so you will also have strong client-side development skills too. We are keen to get started on this ASAP and get the bulk of the work done before the Xmas break. We hope to choose someone after receiving CV's over the coming weekend (Sat 10th / Sun 11th Dec 2011). Initially you'll work on-site at our offices in Fleet Street but we would not be averse to a least few of the days being worked remotely.

REQUIREMENTS

• At least 3 years experience in web development

• Significant experience of PHP as well as CakePHP

• Experience architecting and planning web builds

• A great eye for detail, both visual, textual and in code

• Effective communicator

• HTML/CSS/Javascript/jQuery and SQL should be second nature to you

• Ideally you'll have a good understanding of Git

THE COMPANY

We’re a young fast growing digital agency based in the Fleet St area of London. There are currently 4 of us and we’re hoping to grow to 5 by the end of the year. We’re an easygoing bunch and we share our offices with a larger firm.

REMUNERATION

Day rate will be competivie and depend on the individual

HOW TO APPLY

If you’re interested please send an email to jobs.tinderfields@gmail.com along with a brief cover note containing some links to your work (including github profile) and attach your CV. Don't worry if you've just got lots of GitHub watches and not too many actual projects.

I'm thinking about adding a follow feature and a map based directory to http://mightycv.com soon. It might make the service a bit more useful for those looking for good hackers to work with and hopefully help put a nail in the coffin of traditional recruiters - at least the bad ones anyway. I'm hoping that if MightyCV becomes a popular place for hackers to create and home their resumes then it might allow people to bypass recruiters completely on occasion.

It's early days, but if you're interested in what a MightyCV looks like then take a look at mine:

http://robeastham.mightycv.com

Hope you like the look of it, if so then feel free to sign up for the private beta on the main homepage.

Anyone got any thoughts on how to convert these figures to an equivalent for London in the UK?

It'd be great to compare for those of us based in the UK.

Incidentally I also noticed a comment here that mentioned that everyone is hiring, presumably in the Valley, and suggested you brush up your resume and go to networking events and look for a better offer. If you do decide to dust off your resume then you may be interested in my new startup http://www.mightycv.com/. You can sign up for the beta with this code: 22MARCH2011. It's a resume builder aimed at developers/hackers and integrates with HN, StackOverflow and Github. It imports from LinkedIn too. Here's my MightyCV by way of an example: http://robeastham.mightycv.com .

I am currently bootstrapping MightyCV - a resume platform with hacker leanings. It has integrations with HN, github and StackOverflow along with some other cool features. I've built and designed the whole service myself with the help of some great ruby gems. Thanks guys! Signing up for an account will therefore give you some idea of what sort of web app I'm capable of building. I'm looking for web development contract work, either remote or in London, while I continue to bootstrap MightyCV.

Here's what my MightyCV looks like:

http://robeastham.mightycv.com

If you like the look of it you can sign up for your own MightyCV resume by joining the private beta at http://www.mightycv.com (use this beta signup code: 22MARCH2011 after clicking the sign-up link on the homepage).

I agree, there is no substitute for working on a real problem together outside of the pressures of an interview room. This'll really give you an insight as to how a candidate is likely to perform within your team.

I'd have to disagree that all resumes are nearly useless though. We need some way of screening people and I think we just need to improve the resume format. Perhaps by making a tech resume more structured and uniform across candidates things could be improved. I built MightyCV with the aim of doing this - it's a resume platform with hackers in mind. I'd like to see MightyCV become a service that shepherds candidates towards producing a resume that is actually useful to tech recruiters. A MightyCV allows you to hook into the API's for HN, Github and Stackoverflow. When integration is activated this means recruiters get a useful at-a-glance overview of what people have actually been up to in the community. I'm toying with the idea of using an aggregation of these metrics to produce an overall MightyCV score. I'd then like to create a MightyCV map that resume owners could choose to place themselves on. Candidates electing to be included on the map would only appear if they had attained a certain score. It'd be a little like how down-vote privileges work here on HN, i.e. you have to earn your way on to the MightyCV map. I guess if I set the score threshold high enough then this map could become a good source of resumes within our sector that weren't entirely useless.

Also I liked the OP's suggested list of questions too:

- What's the last project you worked on at your former employer? - Tell me about some of your favorite projects. - What projects are you working on in your spare time? - What online hacker communities do you participate in? - Tell me about some (programming/technical) issues that you feel passionately about.

I'm going to give some thought to how I could incorporate these questions into MightyCV. I might even consider making them compulsory for all MightyCV owners. What do people think? Is forcing people to include something in their resume a bad idea?

Anyway, if you've read this far you might be interested in seeing what a MightyCV looks like. Here's mine: http://robeastham.mightycv.com (For those paying attention I don't think my theoretical MightyCV score would be high enough to get me on the MightyCV map at the moment. Answering SO questions is on my list of things to do in April).

If you like the look of it and want your own MightyCV then sign up for the private beta. There is a beta code and link in the first entry for experience within my resume. There are a couple of bugs I'm ironing out at the moment, mainly associated with the LinkedIn profile importer, but otherwise it's fairly robust. If you try it, I really hope you like it.

Thanks for the feedback. Though currently Mighty CV doesn't actually display the number of repos watched. My feeling was that listing the last five repos watched would act as a top line indicator as to what someone was currently working on or interested in. The link to your real github profile provides a much better way of showing your activity than can fit in Mighty CV sidebar. That said, I really like your idea of allowing for a couple of handpicked choice commits. I'll give some thought to how to integrate this.

Also my choice to use watched items rather than commits stems from my assumption that there are more non active github users, lurkers if you will, watching repos than actively contributing to them. People like me who don't commit or contribute as much as they should probably still watch a lot of stuff. There are likely many reasons for lack of commits from folks such as myself. These could range from lack of time and/or confidence to things like work and family commitments etc. For me I know it's something I need to work on finding the time for, I really hope that I'm able to do this sooner rather than later.

Thanks to you and others for the broken link report. Fixed now.

The consensus seems to be that my skill list sucks. I've modified it a little, but I think there's still room for improvement.

Martin is right, but I did want some feedback on the first draft of my résumé too.

I agree my skills list does look bad. Just listing a selection of gems and mentioning a few website does not a skill set make. I'll take a look today and try and improve things. Thanks for the feedback.

Apologies for the link bait nature of the title. I'm a bit new to the business of self promotion. Perhaps I sometimes get carried away when dreaming up ways to get Mighty CV noticed.

Agreed - skills list looks lame. Time to refactor.

If any of you guys actually go and sign up for a Mighty CV I must apologise if you encounter a fail whale when you try to view your résumé. This is most likely to happen if you use the LinkedIn importer to create your résumé.

My number one priority tomorrow is to squash whatever bug is causing this. Pretty sure it's to do with blank months in the LinkedIn profile. Hope you don't encounter the bug but just thought I should mention it. Any feature request you have please ad via the uservoice feedback button. Thanks!

I sort of figured this when building Mighty CV. It's a résumé building app aimed at hackers that I've just launched. As Jason's point illustrates, I think what's most useful to potential employers is to be able to see a snapshot of activity across a broad number of relevant sites. That's why Mighty CV allows you to include stats on your résumé from StackOverflow, Github and Hacker News. You just have to supply your user id for each site when creating your résumé.

Here's what my Mighty CV résumé looks like:

http://robeastham.mightycv.com

The service is in private beta at the moment but I've just added a beta signup code in the first entry for experience in my résumé above. If this service sounds interesting to you then check then sign up for the beta. I really need as much feedback as possible at this point as I only launched the private beta yesterday.

I'm hoping to provide integration with pinboard soon so the last five posts from pinboard with the tag 'mightycv' will also automatically show up on your résumé. All Mighty CV's have an on demand PDF export feature, private cover letter URL's and a bunch of other cool stuff too. Hope you all like it.

I agree the original poster doesn't really seem to get what LinkedIn is for. It sounds like he might be looking for something like the app I just launched about an hour ago after 2 months working on getting it to MVP stage. It does have a neat way of saying that you're a freelancer, working for yourself and not a company. It also integrates with HN, Github and StackOverflow. It's really more of a résumé platform than a rolladex platform like LinkedIn. Though you can import work and education experience using the LinkedIn importer.

It's 6.54am and I haven't been to bed yet. I promised myself I'd get the first version out for private beta this weekend. Anyway check out my launch post if you are interested:

http://www.mightycv.com/86lxv6vi

This post also includes a limited time private beta invite code. Check it out if you want a early chance to play with Mighty CV. Must sleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep now......

That's exactly what I'm banking on with the new app I'm developing http://www.mightycv.com. I needed a new résumé and didn't like the more generic builders I found out their. I wanted a résumé builder that worked for hackers and integrated easily with HN, github and stackoverflow and so I built one. I really hope that by scratching my own itch I've executed well and made something that others will find useful.

If there's lot's of competition in a particular area then I think it might be a better plan to focus on a niche part of that larger market. Remember facebook was only for college kids to start with.

I suspect this guy heard 'You can't do that' quite a few times before doing this:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-12773427

I think the first 10k a month app will inevitably be the hardest, but like Justin says it'll be a lot easier than becoming the next Facebook or Google. Most people chase/fantasize about being the next Google because they think it will buy them freedom. If you are lucky enough to get close, depending on how you play it, it might do exactly that for you. But I agree with Justin the odds are just so small it's difficult to justify spending your life in eternal lustful pursuit of such dreams.

I'm sorry to roll out the cliché, but gaining time is more likely to make you happy and free. And a few slow grown bootstrapped 'dipshit companies' are much more realistic and likely to provide you with that time along with a boatload more autonomy. Instead it seems everyone is aiming to be the head of the next big thing and indebted to VC's in to the bargain. What do I know though, perhaps it's not all that bad...?

I do think that with a couple of $10,000 a month semi-automated apps in your pocket you've got a lot of choices. Especially if you are young. It can give you the free time to really work out what you want to get out of your life. With time to think you might find it's not what your doing and/or aspiring to right now.

For me if my startup ever starts to make 10K+ a month it'll simply mean trying to spend a little less time sat behind my keyboard. Spending more time outdoors travelling and experiencing the world instead of too much time indoors reading about it sounds like a good plan to me.