A general update for this week.

Programming Challenge

My attention was recently brought to web services like HackerRank, which provide time-based programming challenges. The challenges are interesting and fun to approach, but I have minimal experience “programming for time.” I am excited to see how that will change in the coming weeks. I may post solution snippets in the blog if appropriate.

Audiobook Project

The audioreader prototype was completed about a week ago and has been in use since. Unfortunately, I have not had time to exhaustively test the prototype. Before I get back to testing, I will clean up the implementation slightly. For now, the calculation is off by ~5 pages on average. This is due to underlying issues in comparing audiobooks to actual prints. To name a few:

• Books have pages dedicated to maps, images, table of contents, etc. and narrators seldom verbalize this information (intro/outro biases)

• There are page gaps at the end of chapters that narrators can ignore

• Assume narrators read at different paces and audiobook files are organized differently for every series

It is also worth noting I have issues with the fact that I am testing this prototype on a single series. I would like to use this in the long run, and it wont do if I have to modify source for each series. I need to find a solution for automating this process with audibooks and eBooks, so I can quickly gather average values for the offsets and biases. At later point, I can use the averages to (hopefully) get closer to the actual page. I will also be adding a manual tuning feature for special situations.

EDIT (5/4): I will change the blog feed soon so that the three most recent posts are displayed and the entire list is hosted on a separate page