I'd Rather Be Scripting

This episode was recorded on April 14th, 2024

So, it's been a little while since we last posted an episode... it feels like it's been about a hundred years or so! How is it possible we're already so far through the year?

We have a lot of topics in this episode given that it was a long time since our first episode of the year, so buckle up, get settled, and enjoy as we cover topics ranging from developing an cool email app, talk about interfacing with FPGAs, and cover a series of quick picks.

• DevRel and AI: a department lead’s self-evaluation one year in
• Using AI in Developer Relations
• AI for the mere mortal web developer (YouTube)

Ash's team at Nylas built such a cool web app that mixes AI and email to let you view emails in a new way—now your inbox is full of good vibes!

We discuss the development of this app, including Ash's attempts to use v0 by Vercel and Render for hosting.

Go check it out at https://vibebox.app.

As Kerri's mentioned in the past, she's busy learning FPGA development. In this section, she talks about some of the tools that she's been using to help connect with and debug her FPGA project.

• Retroputer FPGA (in case you want to follow along—reminder that Kerri is not an expert with FPGAs, so take this code with a very large grain of salt)
• Retroputer Emulator (also in progress)
• Serial Port library for Node.js—Kerri uses this to create custom debugging tools written in JavaScript to explore the state of the CPU on the FPGA including a monitor and terminal. If you want to do something like this in the browser, it turns out that's an option too!
• Ever want to build a dynamic text UI in Node.js using React? Turns out you can with ink! Kerri uses this to build out a live updating monitor that reflects the state of the CPU she's building in the FPGA.
• Want to incorporate a cute TFT LCD into your hardware projects? Kerri's using this LCD from Adafruit and is slowly learning how to drive it.
• Also mentioned: the Pinecil soldering iron

We end the episode with some quick picks of sites, tools, and apps we'd been playing around with recently.

• From Ash: task management by Godspeed
• From Kerri: AI Music by Suno
• From Kerri: Calca app
• From Ash: Tydlig app

Some of the songs that Kerri and her sister created with Suno AI:

• Wrapped in plastic (prompt: "Country song about that plastic thingy on the bread bag")
• Forever in motion (prompt: "A peppy song about the meaningless of time")
• The Jumpin' Kitty Kat (prompt: "A peppy kids song about a happy kitty") (second variation is also cute)

This episode was recorded January 14th, 2024.

Welcome to a near year and new season of I'd Rather Be Scripting! In this episode Ash and Kerri chat about the things they'd like to learn or do in 2024. Buckle up—we've got a lot to talk about in this one!

Kerri's topics:

• FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) development using the Alchitry Au kit and Vivado. One learning already: getting the toolchain working on an Apple-silicon Mac is challenging! (Way easier with an Intel-based Windows machine.)
• 3D Printing. Bambu Lab is one of the mentions as a potential buy: https://bambulab.com/en-eu.
• Learning Latex (pronounced lay-tech). Of note, Texifier is a nice piece of software for having live previews of your latex documents. It's not free, but it's definitely worth the price if you're into latex. And it comes with a lot of latex packages available for download, so one doesn't have to spend a lot of time manually configuring your environment.
• Musical topics, including learning more classical music and figuring out polyrhythms. https://4four.io/ploop is a great way to explore how two (or more) competing rhythms sound. Also looking to get into finger drumming a bit, with a Korg Nanopad.

Ash's topics:

• Exploring Makey Makey. During the conversation, Ash mentioned his sound maker Github repo named Chikurin. Go check it out!
• Coding topics, including Deno and asynchronous APIs
• Generative AI in product
• Native app development
• Also mentioned a single monitor arm that Ash has been using during the intro.

This episode was recorded on December 17, 2023. Since we mention a lot of companies and products in this episode, it's worth noting that our episodes (including this one) are not sponsored. Our opinions are entirely our own. Links to any products do NOT contain affiliate links.

In this episode, Ash and Kerri look back at the year that was 2023, including some notable work and personal milestones while also looking at some hardware, software, and media that they found interesting in 2023.

Kerri's Top Hardware

1. ESR 3-in-1 Charger Stand for MagSafe
2. Samsung T7 Shield
3. Insta360 Link Webcam
4. Stream Deck (Honorable mention)
5. Iphone 15 Pro Max (Honorable mention)

Ash's Top Hardware

1. AudioTechnica Sound Burger
2. Mac Studio
3. Moleskin Cahiers

We have a brief chat about e-readers as we both have been considering getting one. The following were mentioned:

• Remarkable 2
• Boox Tab Ultra C

Kerri's Top Software

• Rocket Money
• BackupLoupe
• DaisyDisk (honorable mention, along with a mention of GrandPerspective)
• Adobe Firefly & Adobe Express

Ash's Top Software

• Adobe Lightroom (honorable mention)
• Ollama
• Drafts
• CheckYourList

Kerri's Top Games

• Super Mario Wonder
• Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (honorable mention)
• Dredge
• Bugsnax

Ash's Top Media

• Storyworthy
• The Art of Leadership
• The Boy and the Heron

This episode was recorded on October 1, 2023. The events mentioned in this podcast episode have already occurred, but you should be able to watch them online by visiting the Adobe MAX website.

In this episode, Kerri shares some Adobe updates with Ash, including some new features for Adobe Firefly and the general availability of the developer platform for Adobe Express add-ons. She also mentions a MAX session for more about using Adobe add-ons: Adobe Express Add-ons: Spark Creativity with Powerful Gems [S6712]. At the time of this recording some APIs were gated behind experimental flags, but these APIs are now available for all developers. (Note: Kerri is a product manager for extensibility at Adobe, but her opinions are her own.)

Links:

• Adobe Firefly
• Adobe Express
• Adobe Express Add-on Documentation, including Audio and Editor (now Document Model) APIs

Ash also mentions the DevRelX summit, and a panel he was about to host on AI: 2.0 of your DevRel team - How DevRel teams can use AI today? (Recording) You should absolutely go check this panel session out — it was fantastic, with lots of great insights from the panelists.

Near the end we also chat about the new iPhone and upgrading from previous models.

This episode was recorded on September 4, 2023

In this episode, Ash and Kerri talk about the various resources they use to stay up-to-date with technology and related news. But first, they chat about some events that were coming up (in the past as of the release of this recording).

Traveling & Events:

• apiDays London 2023 (YouTube playlist)
• Adobe Max

We also chat a little bit about setting up kiosks for conferences and setting up education setups using GitHub Codespaces and Replit.

Before we delve into the main topic, we also make a few detours, as per usual:

• Vergecast (Aug 23): Mythical computers and super apps
• Hacking the Timex m857 (Found on Hacker News)
• Atari 2600 reissue

Ash and Kerri go back and forth sharing some of their sources for staying up-to-date in the ever-changing world of technology and related topics.

• Hacker News
• Reddit & Reddit-likes, including Tildes, Lobste.rs, and Lemmy's technology forum
• Product Hunt
• Indie Hackers
• YouTube — and a channel right up our alley: Work From Hype. Also check out this interesting related article: "The $60 Monitor Worth Having on Your Desk"
• Stratechery

Honorable mentions (including apps) that didn't get called out in the episode, but you should go check out anyway:

• Techmeme
• NetNewsWire (App)
• GoodLinks (App)
• Daring Fireball (& The Talk Show podcast)
• Morning Brew
• Technology Connections (YouTube)
• Dave's Garage (YouTube)
• Brad Colbow (YouTube)
• PetaPixel (Site & YouTube)
• Fan the Deck (YouTube)
• Accidental Tech Podcast
• Syntax.fm

Recorded July 23, 2023

This episode is all about desk setups! (And a little about desktop menu bar setups…)

But first, Kerri and Ash catch up on We Connect the Dots, Apple II Basic, and summer movies. 

It's been alluded to a few times, and now it's actually happening—Kerri and Ash share all about their home desk setups.

Some of the gear they cover includes:

• Insta 360 Link webcam: https://www.insta360.com/product/insta360-link
• Wave XLR: https://www.elgato.com/us/en/p/wave-xlr
• Stream Deck+: https://www.elgato.com/us/en/p/stream-deck-plus-black
• Stream Deck SDK: https://docs.elgato.com/sdk/plugins/overview

Kerri and Ash then pull the trigger on doing a dive into their respective iStat Menu setups for monitoring their Mac hardware in real time. CPUs, GPUs, RAM, network, and more!

Recorded Jul 9, 2023

Kerri and Ash kick things off by talking about their 4th of July celebrations. Also they talk about learning Japanese and not learning German.

Kerri has some follow-up regarding a recent episode on music and ML.

Topics covered include:

• Google’s AI Music Kitchen
• MusicLM (Example; Dataset; Paper)

Kerri notes how these tools today can be great for idea generation, but won't necessary write your albums for you... yet.

Ash is interested in exploring beyond calling OpenAI APIs for creating smart features.

On reason for the timing of this exploration is that Ash's team at Nylas is sponsoring WeAreDevelopers World Congress in Berlin and his team needs an AI tool that doesn't require a credit card when running a workshop.

Hugging Face joins the chat...

Hugging Face—which Ash will refer to as the GitHub for AI models—is quite useful with its free tier.

There's a Node.js module for Hugging Face, which Ash built a tiny, tiny demo around (GitHub repo here).

Ash notes that there is some dialog in the developer community around whether LangChain is pointless or not (Reddit; HackerNews).

You can decide for yourself by checking out the LangChain docs.

Also... LocalLlama is something Ash and Kerri want to play with.

Ash refrained from talking about his new Mac Studio in the last episode. He gets into it a little more in this one.

Our co-hosts marvel at comparing their lived experiences with MacBooks on Intel i9 vs Apple Silicon M1 vs a Mac Studio with M2 Ultra. Nothing scientific here in the comparison, but DiffusionBee speed gets discussed.

Kerri and Ash talk about their different approaches to cable management:

• Kerri: avoid
• Ash: obsess

Obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/2810/

Ash also brings up the topic of KVM switches.

• Ash got: ELECABLE USB C Switch Bi-Direction 2 in 1 Out or 1 in 2 Splitter 8K@60Hz Video / 10Gbps Data Transfer Compatible with Thunderbolt Device (Black)
• Kerri is eyeing: SABRENT KVM Switch, USB-C, 1-PC to 1-Display with 60 Watt Power Delivery (USB-KCPD)

Recorded Jun 25, 2023

To kick things off, Kerri gives us an update on Adobe Creative Cloud Partner Days, where Creative Cloud platform developers gather to learn more about in-app and cloud APIs for Creative Cloud.

Kerri also tells Ash about the Star Trek Resurgence game, while Ash is trying to avoid talking about his new Mac Studio.

Ash is excited he didn't have to debate what to name Adobe Express extensibility products: add-ons, addons, plug-ins, plugins, scripts, apps, widgets, etc etc. They are called add-ons! Please don't alter our current timeline by calling them something else!

Then our co-hosts do a deep-dive. To start, Kerri gives Ash a recap of what Adobe Express is.

Building on this basic understanding, Kerri and Ash look at what developers can do with the Express Add-on APIs:

• Storage and content I/O
• Icon generation
• Recoloring
• Workflows and automation

Then Kerri and Ash get into the how by talking through the Adobe team's priorities for APIs, which—at recording time in June 2023—were in private beta:

• OAuth
• Drag and drop
• I/O
• Networking

You can get the docs here.

Some early examples of Adobe Express Add-ons that come up:

• Accessibility (A11y): add-ons for color blindness
• Attention Insight: heat map based on AI
• Notion: this add-on doesn't yet! But developers: go build that please! - Love, Ash
• MediaGrab: scrape assets from web pages
• Clipping Mask Pro: now with blobs!
• NFTs: add-ons for managing them
• VisionBoard: mood boarding

Kerri then walks Ash through the end user flow:

1. Make a new blank asset
2. Select add-ons in the left-hand nav
3. Select and add-on and click the “Add” button

All-in-all, our co-hosts, while surely biased, are quite excited about the possibilities Adobe Express extensibility APIs represent.

Questing for info on a Safari color picker bug: https://xkcd.com/979/

Ash kicks things off by sharing his recent appearance on the API Intersection podcast. The API Intersection episode covers best practices in Developer Relations (DevRel), particularly around Ash's 3 C's of hiring Developer Advocates (with a new 4th C added in the convo!), kickstarting your company's DevRel function, and making space for Developer Advocates to get great work done.

Then back to our own podcast episode: it's AI and creativity with Kerri and Ash from there!

Stardate: zero degrees kelvin. Join our co-hosts as they traverse the exciting galaxy of generative AI technology for image creation.

Even as the technology is constantly evolving, Kerri and Ash consider the universal implications for creativity, the future of visual content creation, and what this could mean for digital artists and designers.

This episode takes a tuneful turn (thx ChatGPT, we'll allow this) as Kerri guides Ash into the world of AI music production. They explore a range of technologies that are reshaping how music is composed, produced, and performed:

• Soundraw and Loudly, exploring new frontiers in AI music creation: Soundraw, Loudly
• Fadr, the future of music generation: Fadr
• Ecrett Music, revolutionizing music creation: Ecrett Music
• AIVA, AI that composes emotional soundtrack music: AIVA
• MusicLM from Google's AI Test Kitchen, an experiment in music language modeling: AI Test Kitchen, MusicLM
• Muzic, an open-source project for generating music with AI: Muzic
• Amadeus Code, the iOS app for creating unique song ideas with AI: Amadeus Code
• MuseNet by OpenAI, a deep learning model that can generate 4-minute musical compositions with 10 different instruments: MuseNet

Join Kerri and Ash as they discuss these developments, their potential implications for the music industry, and what they're excited about in the fusion of AI and music.

In the 2020's, my SoundCloud checks out you! ♫

Kerri and Ash talk trees! Unfortunately for us all, Ash turns this into a recurring analogy about giving in to our AI overlords.

If a tree is going to fall on your house, do you ignore it... or talk to ChatGPT?

Well, Ash is excited about OpenAPI specs that talk back. Our co-hosts talk through a fun approach to this:

1. Paste in your OpenAPI spec
2. Ask some yes/no questions about capabilities, correct as needed
3. Ask some how-to questions, correct as needed
4. Have fun!*

*Fun = ask for Getting Started guides, look for issues, get it to code, etc**

As part of this, Kerri and Ash talk about learning how to ask good questions:

• ❌ "What would a Getting Started guide look like?" → (You get an outline of best practices.)
• ✅ "Write me a Getting Started guide for Node.js 18 developers." → (You get an actual Getting Started guide that a developer could use.)

Thank you AI. We are better humans now.

ChatGPT can't scrape webpages at the moment, but it caaaaan tell you how!

Ash talks about using ChatGPT to write a webpage scraper in Node.js and clobber it together with the Google Books API.

ChatGPT does a great job functionally, but requires some guidance on coding opinions. Ash has coding opinions, so he asks the AI to:

1. Use ESM imports instead of CommonJS requires
2. Use async/await syntax instead of Promises
3. Use Node.js-native fetch instead of axios

Kerri points out how interesting it is that ChatGPT fumbles with ESM imports in the same way that a human would.

Mid-project, Ash teeters on the edge between the theory and reality of an xkcd automation classic... but he triumphs in the end? (He does!)

• Kerri mentions that she's looking into a game streaming setup. Ash plans to be the first sub.
• Ash mentions that he recently spoke at apiDays. The video will be on the apiDays YouTube channel soon.

===

** ChatGPT advised that:

But we're confident the real human scripters know what fun means 👾