Projects | Hey, ruX is here.

Project: PhrasesHub introduction

16/12/202311/12/2023 by ruX

Even when one thinks in English, it doesn't guarantee fluency or that one will sound like a native speaker. To me, one of the most expressive ways to communicate is through the use of phrases and idioms, as they convey rich meanings in just a few words, somewhat acting as memes.

Since I got quite fed up with crypto, I decided to jump on the hype train and try to make use of democratized AI, particularly locally deployed LLMs and StableDiffusion.

Much like how I missed the Ethereum "smart contract" revolution, I soon realized I was late to the AI party. But I suppose it's all relative; for some, Kotlin is still a new language, and for others, crypto is synonymous with drugs and money laundering.

Introducing My New Project: PhrasesHub.com

Pi-Hole and DNS-over-HTTPS using docker-compose

27/05/202027/04/2020 by ruX

I'm glad that people started to think about the privacy more than ever

In this post I'll share my experience of configuring pi-hole and Cloudflare DNS-over-HTTPS on Raspberry Pi using docker-compose. Before we dig into the configuration a few words what it's all about

UPD: Post has been updated with newest version of pi-hole

Installing docker-machine on Raspberry PI

16/01/202012/01/2020 by ruX

One of the nicest things about docker is reproducibility and containerisation. It is possible to run multiple applications which requires different environment on the same computer and make them live happily altogether. Although Raspberry Pi has ARMv7 instructions set, we still can run docker on it - we just need different images. One would be surprised there are some official images available on docker hub.

The configuration can be very simple - literally two commands in terminal, thanks to widely available devops tools such as docker-machine and ansible. Having this setup there won't be need to login to the RPi and perform any manual configuration per service anymore. Instead, services can be configured and deployed right from your computer.

If you don't have your Rasbperry configured yet refer to previous article for the initial setup.

Project Sunset: PronounceMe

11/01/202022/12/2019 by ruX

In year 2019 one of the projects I launched was PronounceMe. It's a service which automatically generates videos with pronunciation of the English words and publishes them on YouTube. For more details about the hypothesis and technical implementation check out all posts under #PronounceMe

Unfortunately, I have to shut it down due to recent changes in the YouTube monetisation policies.

Project Update: PronounceMe – implementation details

16/11/201902/11/2019 by ruX

I have several post about the PronounceMe project experiments - automatic video and voice generator for English learners. If you missed previous posts please review #pronounceMe for more information about the project, ideas behind and some statistics. In this post I'd focus on the technical implementation with some diagrams and noticeable code snippets.

Project update: Alexa London Bus Stop

11/01/202009/10/2019 by ruX

A while ago I have published post about the first skill for Alexa I developed. Personally I use it since then practically every day and I found it very useful. I didn't even bother to check analytics since, well, it does work for me and I expected people to use it as well if it's useful.

Thanks to my wife, I recently learnt London Bus Stop skill:

still in the top 30 skills in the area because I'm receiving $100 credit for AWS every month;
it's not listed anymore! That fact slipped through the cracks!

Update: PronounceMe

02/11/201905/06/2019 by ruX

It's been 3 months since I announced PronounceMe project I was working on at the beginning of 2019.

The initial approach was simple - build and run the MVP, see if it gets some organic traction. MVP included:

Written expectations and desirable figures
Generator engine - core which renders videos
Endless data source - video production process should be never stopped
Basic internal analytics for metrics I focus on
Autonomous deployed a system which restarts itself if something breaks

New project: PronounceMe

27/12/202006/03/2019 by ruX

I'm a big believer in the power of API Mesh and automation at scale. In December 2018, I got an idea of the project for potential passive income I started to work on in early January 2019

The Problem

For me, English is a second language. Although I read in English since 14 and speak since 20, there is a long way to go. As for Eastern, the pronunciation is incredibly challenging, especially while living in the Great Britan. There are 1 billion people for who English is not the first language.

2o18 – overview

04/06/201921/01/2019 by ruX

2019 is just around the corner - it's time to look back on this year.

This time I've got that rare feeling of partial accomplishment in 2018, although I can't say I've done everything I planned. Amusingly it could mean two very different things: I either lower my goals or actually performed well this year.

So here I am

Nexmo Voice API demo: voicemail app

03/07/201802/07/2018 by ruX

This article features voicemail service built using Nexmo Voice APIs and Spring Boot

As a business owner it's not always easy to handle huge volume of calls 24/7. On another hand each customer is important and it deserve to be served well.

To kick off development you can checkout demo repository

What to expect in this tutorial

In this tutorial we build simple voice mail forwarder where callers asked to leave a voice message which will be sent to the email using Nexmo Voice API as an attachment.
Example of result: