A friend and former colleague of mine, Marcus Udokang, hosts and produces a podcast called The Inquisitive Analyst. Marcus interviews business analysts and project managers about their professional experience.

I’ve appeared twice: first in 2021, where I spoke about my career experience in FinTech, and in 2024, where our discussion was about how to maximize what you can get done with limited resources.

There were a few talking points from this most recent episode that I’d like to share here.

I have been bouncing around ideas on how to make generated content more interesting for a couple years now. In April 2023, I created a video with generated content, using a green-screen type effect to put a real street scene in the background. In January 2024, I tried emulating the podcasts I love, and added a co-host - I had ChatGPT generate a dialog between two characters, and then used different voices to create a discussion.

Updated 2025/01/12: Added go-haystack link and AirTag + IMU Proof of Concept

In 2022, I spent a week working with a small team analyzing how Bluetooth item trackers (eg: Apple AirTags, Tile) can be covertly used for malicious purposes, and developing processes and tools to detect them, as a part of GeekWeek 7.5, the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security’s (CCCS) annual cybersecurity workshop. I wrote about my experience here: /exploring-bluetooth-trackers-at-geekweek-7-5/.

The Call with Problem Statement

I got a call over my lunch hour one Thursday from my daughter:

I have an art project. I need a part of it to light up, in purple, on a timer, in sync with a video. The lighting has to fit in a space that’s 24" x 10" x 3". I need it for Monday.

Having seen installations everywhere, and many projects online, I’d been wanting to play around with programmable lighting, but had never found an application, and I just got the call. There are a ton of colour LED systems out there. Seemingly all of them driven are driven by phone apps or smart home ecosystems. My expectation was that most of these apps would have pre-programmed effects, and wouldn’t be able to run a timed pattern - it was hard to tell without buying them and testing their capabilities.

The featured image is a mash-up of the BWM C1 and Piaggio MP3 scooters, generated by OpenAI’s Dall-e 3.

I think cycling is a great way to get around the city, but not everyone can ride them, only the most determined will ride them through the winter, and sharing space with cars is sub-optimal from a safety perspective.

For personal mobility, I sometimes thought it would be cool to combine a BMW C1 scooter (some crash protection, seat belt, some enclosure, helmet optional) with a Piaggio MP3 scooter, which has 3 wheels for stability. Ideally, add doors for weather protection and make it electric.

I am not an audio person, but I have occasionally had to edit audio, and I’ve always used Audacity - it’s a great tool. Some time ago, I had to normalize sound levels on hundreds of voice recordings. A podcaster asked how I did it, I wrote it up in an email, and, thinking back, I decided it might be useful to others, so I’m posting it here. As I review the problem today, I think I would probably explore Audacity’s macro functionality to solve this type of problem - I don’t know why I jumped to scripting solution at the time. I did try the PyAudacity library, and found it was easier to interface directly though pipes.