I built a panel etched with a QR code that lights up to your own personal colors when you scan it.
Tag: aws
Using the Adafruit Feather Huzzah With AWS IoT
Getting an ESP8266 or ESP32 working with AWS IoT isn’t difficult, but also isn’t straightforward or well documented. This lays out the necessary infrastructure and code.
Turning a bucket of MP3s into a podcast
I wrote a Python script, s3cast, to convert an Amazon S3 bucket of MP3 files into a podcast feed. You see, there is a satellite radio show that I really enjoy called The Saturday Night Safety Dance with DJ Bueller. It’s one of the few shows on Sirius XM that they don’t allow you to … Continue reading Turning a bucket of MP3s into a podcast
(Intelligent) Live Video Streaming for Protesting
It’s not always the best idea to livestream from a protest directly to social media. There’s good reason to redact the faces of fellow protesters. This guide steps you through setting up a stream to a private location, where a friend can grab the video and redact faces in near-real-time.
Building the AdjectiveNounBot on AWS
Long ago, during the wild times of the 2004 internet, I ran a site of web experiments called Adjective Noun. The site’s header had random (but curated) pairings of adjectives with nouns, each coupled with a clever stock photo. Some of my favorites were “Dumb Snowman” (sitting in front of a fire) and “Mysterious Clock” … Continue reading Building the AdjectiveNounBot on AWS
Video Rekognizer
This year at Amazon’s re:Invent conference, Rekognition premiered as a new service. It is a “deep-learning AI” service that performs image recognition on pictures you show it. It provides labels of objects and concepts it finds in the image. It can also do facial recognition. Hitting the Rekognition API is only a few lines of … Continue reading Video Rekognizer
Designing Amazon Web Services Playing Cards
I have used a few of Amazon’s more popular web services, both on the job and on my own. I’ve deployed code to EC2 and Lambda. I’ve synced files and stored backups on S3 and Glacier. I’ve experimented with a few others. But what is WAF? SNS? CloudTrail? I wasn’t even sure I could tell you what those acronyms … Continue reading Designing Amazon Web Services Playing Cards
Developing For Alexa
I got a new Amazon Alexa a few weeks ago. [Full disclosure: I work for a company that’s owned by Amazon Web Services.] I find the technology a fun novelty, but I’m not sure it’s mature enough to be promoted to a central part of my home life beyond a music player and todo-list maker. That … Continue reading Developing For Alexa
ssh for Programmers
Overview Way back when, just after the dot-com-bomb, I found myself working for a media company named Metapa. We made mp3s and 30 second preview clips from boxes of CDs that tech-clueless record companies snail-mailed us. Metapa was staffed with a ton of Unix-heads and I received a great schooling in the ways of the … Continue reading ssh for Programmers