Soundbarrier Blog

Personal blog about hardware, software, data and other interesting things.

Bazel Python TUI Bootstrap

by
Sebastian Schaetz
written
I recently discovered Textual, a Python library for building terminal UI applications and thought it would be fun to figure out how to package an application that is built with textual for Linux, macOS and Windows. This is what I came up with. Continue reading..

Version Control Beyond Git

by
Sebastian Schaetz
written
Git has been around since 2005 and has become the de-facto standard for controlling versions of source code. I recently asked myself if Git will continue to dominate and if innovation is possible or even necessary. I will go through some of the major drawbacks of Git, that could motivate innovation, list Git alternatives and conclude with my personal thoughts on the future of version control. Continue reading..

More than the Sum of its Parts - Musing on Monorepos

by
Sebastian Schaetz
written
Monorepos are great. They implicitly enforce the One Version rule, which means that for any dependency, there is only one version used across the code-base. This can mean that there is only one set of lock files for the entire repository (think single `requirements.lock`, `Cargo.lock` etc. for the repo) as well as automated integration testing of all of the latest code. Continue reading..

Mess Up

by
Sebastian Schaetz
written
Recently I came across the concept of "messing up as much as possible" so one can learn as much as possible. I first encountered it when following and reading about SpaceX Starship April 20 2023 orbital test flight. Continue reading..

AI Conceptual Art

by
Sebastian Schaetz
written
The most significant art exhibit I ever attended to date was the 2013 remake of a 1969 art show in Bern, Switzerland called "Live In Your Head: When Attitudes Become Form" where Harald Szeemann "wanted to show everything that we had not yet seen, everything that came after 'Pop Art' and 'Minimal Art'" (Grégoire Muller, exhibition catalog). Continue reading..

3D Sound Rendering Engines

by
Sebastian Schaetz
written
Recently I've been interested in generating "3D" acoustic soundscapes; I looked into tools that allow creation and rendering of such immersive audio scenes. Continue reading..

Containers and Pods

by
Sebastian Schaetz
written
I never learned about containers. The OS-level virtualization kind. In this article I'm documenting my journey of trying to understand what it is all about and hopefully getting excited about virtualization. Continue reading..

Tinkering with Audio and GUIs

by
Sebastian Schaetz
written
I recently quit my job at Butterfly Network and am now spending some time writing code I am excited for, covering topics I want to learn more about. It is an incredible feeling to start with a blank source-code file. It can also be somewhat intimidating - many decisions must be made. But in my case it was quite liberating as I did not care about technical debt or making the perfect decision. I am just tinkering. Continue reading..

Glitch Art in Medical Imaging

by
Sebastian Schaetz
written
As a computer scientists working on image processing algorithms I know about the frustrating process of hunting bugs on massively-parallel architectures like GPUs. Sometimes those bugs can produce completely incorrect images or sequences of images but with a certain aesthetic appeal. Continue reading..

Measuring the Speed of Sound

by
Sebastian Schaetz
written
Inspired by an old but brilliant Clifford Stoll [video](https://www.ted.com/talks/clifford_stoll_the_call_to_learn/up-next?language=en) and by my desire to get back into running experiments and reporting the results, I recently set out to measure the speed of sound using a set of Roland CS-10EM binaural microphones and a Zoom H2n I borrowed. Continue reading..

More posts can be found in the archive.