4 ms·

The sound of GitHub

56 points by treskot 13y ago

joezhou 13y ago
Perhaps use drum set sounds?
- cortesi 13y ago
  There are so many possibilities. A few weeks from now, we should have the ability for users to create, edit and share their own soundpacks.
gberger 13y ago
I'd use it as background noise at work if it wasn't for the sudden alarm sounds for issues. I also couldn't click to change the sound set: the popup thingy disappeared when I tried to click it.
- nwh 13y ago
  Was quite relaxing to watch until a huge crowd of foghorns rocked my apartment. It does, admittedly, feed my desire for pretty realtime data.
  - cortesi 13y ago
    Apologies! The demo is tuned to be way more intrusive than a real-world data stream would be. Our theory is that if we have people's attention for 15 seconds, we should show them the full range of sound intrusiveness. Hope it wasn't too startling.
    - nwh 13y ago
      Not at all. More hilariously maritime than actually irritating. A minor bug report though; if you toggle playback on and off quickly you can end up with double/triple notifications for events — http://i.imgur.com/mu6Jr2o.png http://i.imgur.com/mu6Jr2o.png
      - cortesi 13y ago
        Thanks for the heads up. We'll track that down.
    - gala8y 13y ago
      if we have people's attention for 15 seconds, we should show them the full range of sound intrusiveness Great behind-the-scene thinking. Alarming, sound for issue still made a nice connection in the brain. We have an issue, its software, but its real. 'Houston, we had a problem' feeling. Funny. Should be less alarming 'in production' for sure. Fantastic project. Themes of sound pollution, ambient sounds, silence, hearing, listening (inside your head included) are much overlooked (!) stuff. And this modality is a very powerful one (as all the others). Reminded me of http://onesquareinch.org/ http://onesquareinch.org/ and myriads of other projects, people attentive to sounds, recording them, sharing them. Universe in itself. Apologies for emotional tone, just some quick thoughts.
- cortesi 13y ago
  We're looking at the sound set bug right now. Also, see my other comment about the intrusive sounds. We plan to have some demo streams tuned for real-world use (i.e. not as alarming) soon.
alexdong 13y ago
A bit more background on this project for those curious minds: Aldo and I each wrote a blog post on why we are building this: http://beachmonks.com/posts/intro/choir.html http://beachmonks.com/posts/intro/choir.html http://beachmonks.com/posts/explained/choir-explained.html http://beachmonks.com/posts/explained/choir-explained.html We've been slowly onboarding brave alpha users. We want to learn as much as we can from these early adopters, and plan to share our results in the form of short interviews published on our blog. The first of these - with Ryan Baker of Timely - is up now. http://beachmonks.com/posts/interviews/timely/that-siren-sound.html http://beachmonks.com/posts/interviews/timely/that-siren-sou...
CrLf 13y ago
What's up with this trend of doing stuff that only works on Chrome? On Firefox this works for a minute and then stops working.
- alexdong 13y ago
  Hey, that's not quite true. ;-) I wrote most of our javascript on firefox. My firefox has no add-ons except the Firebug. Could it be one of your extensions? Have you tried refreshing it? Which version/OS? We use howler.js to play the sounds. I have to say that I was a bit surprised to find Chrome/Safari/IE can play mp3 but Firefox plays ogg. I even had to submit a patch[1] so that howler.js can work on firefox under some weird edge cases. [1]: https://github.com/goldfire/howler.js/pull/62 https://github.com/goldfire/howler.js/pull/62
  - trycatch 13y ago
    I tried Linux x64/FF23 and FF Nightly on a clean profile, and both leaked insane amounts of memory on this page, hundreds of KiBs per second. Interesting that according to about:memory, memory used by tab with choir.io stayed stable, but "heap-unclassified" grew uncontrollable. Bug in Firefox?
    - alexdong 13y ago
      This is fascinating. Thanks for sharing. My gut feeling is that those leaks are the "socket connections" that Firefox hasn't garbage collected yet. The demo you are seeing is using long poll so there might be some good number of socket churns. FWIW, WebSocket support is high on our priority list. We just need to find the time to implement that.
  - CrLf 13y ago
    Firefox 23.0.1 on Windows here. No extensions other than Firebug 1.12.1.
    - alexdong 13y ago
      Roger.
Void_ 13y ago
You know how computer always makes some sort of sound in a Hollywood movie? I always liked that. And from all software with sound effects, this is the closest to useful. Good job.
snogglethorpe 13y ago
Neat concept, but browser sound support seems ... dodgy... Ipad: no sound; Firefox 24 on android: instant browser crash; Chrome on android: finally works.
- alexdong 13y ago
  Audio support on mobile devices is ... shitty. You're right that there is no sound on iPad but weirdly enough, iPhone+Safari seems to work, at least last time I checked. Our focus in the next 2-3 months is on the desktop clients. We'll release a OSX desktop app next week, then a Windows app after that. Mobile is crucial in the long run but unfortunately we can't do much until the browser vendors provide better support for playing sounds.
  - cocoflunchy 13y ago
    Why not a mobile app before a desktop app then? It would allow you be everywhere.
benjojo12 13y ago
Is there any possibility that we can also hear the small projects?
- alexdong 13y ago
  We chose neutral, low intrusiveness sound for the small projects. If you listen carefully, you should be able to distinguish the quick and light taps. It's much faster than the other sounds. The text stream will move too fast to be readable if we also display the contents from the small projects.
cji 13y ago
At first I thought you meant The Song of Github, which is also really cool. http://song-of-github.herokuapp.com/?username=ajacksified http://song-of-github.herokuapp.com/?username=ajacksified
toblender 13y ago
Very nice. I was expecting angelic voices, but the click, pop thing is nice too.
jwcrux 13y ago
Small suggestion - please load all resources over HTTPS, including the gravatar images. :)

The sound of GitHub

56 points by treskot 13y ago

joezhou 13y ago

Perhaps use drum set sounds?

cortesi 13y ago
There are so many possibilities. A few weeks from now, we should have the ability for users to create, edit and share their own soundpacks.

gberger 13y ago

I'd use it as background noise at work if it wasn't for the sudden alarm sounds for issues. I also couldn't click to change the sound set: the popup thingy disappeared when I tried to click it.

nwh 13y ago
Was quite relaxing to watch until a huge crowd of foghorns rocked my apartment. It does, admittedly, feed my desire for pretty realtime data.
- cortesi 13y ago
  Apologies! The demo is tuned to be way more intrusive than a real-world data stream would be. Our theory is that if we have people's attention for 15 seconds, we should show them the full range of sound intrusiveness. Hope it wasn't too startling.
  - nwh 13y ago
    Not at all. More hilariously maritime than actually irritating. A minor bug report though; if you toggle playback on and off quickly you can end up with double/triple notifications for events — http://i.imgur.com/mu6Jr2o.png http://i.imgur.com/mu6Jr2o.png
    - cortesi 13y ago
      Thanks for the heads up. We'll track that down.
  - gala8y 13y ago
    if we have people's attention for 15 seconds, we should show them the full range of sound intrusiveness Great behind-the-scene thinking. Alarming, sound for issue still made a nice connection in the brain. We have an issue, its software, but its real. 'Houston, we had a problem' feeling. Funny. Should be less alarming 'in production' for sure. Fantastic project. Themes of sound pollution, ambient sounds, silence, hearing, listening (inside your head included) are much overlooked (!) stuff. And this modality is a very powerful one (as all the others). Reminded me of http://onesquareinch.org/ http://onesquareinch.org/ and myriads of other projects, people attentive to sounds, recording them, sharing them. Universe in itself. Apologies for emotional tone, just some quick thoughts.
cortesi 13y ago
We're looking at the sound set bug right now. Also, see my other comment about the intrusive sounds. We plan to have some demo streams tuned for real-world use (i.e. not as alarming) soon.

alexdong 13y ago

A bit more background on this project for those curious minds: Aldo and I each wrote a blog post on why we are building this: http://beachmonks.com/posts/intro/choir.html http://beachmonks.com/posts/intro/choir.html http://beachmonks.com/posts/explained/choir-explained.html http://beachmonks.com/posts/explained/choir-explained.html We've been slowly onboarding brave alpha users. We want to learn as much as we can from these early adopters, and plan to share our results in the form of short interviews published on our blog. The first of these - with Ryan Baker of Timely - is up now. http://beachmonks.com/posts/interviews/timely/that-siren-sound.html http://beachmonks.com/posts/interviews/timely/that-siren-sou...

CrLf 13y ago

What's up with this trend of doing stuff that only works on Chrome? On Firefox this works for a minute and then stops working.

alexdong 13y ago
Hey, that's not quite true. ;-) I wrote most of our javascript on firefox. My firefox has no add-ons except the Firebug. Could it be one of your extensions? Have you tried refreshing it? Which version/OS? We use howler.js to play the sounds. I have to say that I was a bit surprised to find Chrome/Safari/IE can play mp3 but Firefox plays ogg. I even had to submit a patch[1] so that howler.js can work on firefox under some weird edge cases. [1]: https://github.com/goldfire/howler.js/pull/62 https://github.com/goldfire/howler.js/pull/62
- trycatch 13y ago
  I tried Linux x64/FF23 and FF Nightly on a clean profile, and both leaked insane amounts of memory on this page, hundreds of KiBs per second. Interesting that according to about:memory, memory used by tab with choir.io stayed stable, but "heap-unclassified" grew uncontrollable. Bug in Firefox?
  - alexdong 13y ago
    This is fascinating. Thanks for sharing. My gut feeling is that those leaks are the "socket connections" that Firefox hasn't garbage collected yet. The demo you are seeing is using long poll so there might be some good number of socket churns. FWIW, WebSocket support is high on our priority list. We just need to find the time to implement that.
- CrLf 13y ago
  Firefox 23.0.1 on Windows here. No extensions other than Firebug 1.12.1.
  - alexdong 13y ago
    Roger.

Void_ 13y ago

You know how computer always makes some sort of sound in a Hollywood movie? I always liked that. And from all software with sound effects, this is the closest to useful. Good job.

snogglethorpe 13y ago

Neat concept, but browser sound support seems ... dodgy... Ipad: no sound; Firefox 24 on android: instant browser crash; Chrome on android: finally works.

alexdong 13y ago
Audio support on mobile devices is ... shitty. You're right that there is no sound on iPad but weirdly enough, iPhone+Safari seems to work, at least last time I checked. Our focus in the next 2-3 months is on the desktop clients. We'll release a OSX desktop app next week, then a Windows app after that. Mobile is crucial in the long run but unfortunately we can't do much until the browser vendors provide better support for playing sounds.
- cocoflunchy 13y ago
  Why not a mobile app before a desktop app then? It would allow you be everywhere.

benjojo12 13y ago

Is there any possibility that we can also hear the small projects?

alexdong 13y ago
We chose neutral, low intrusiveness sound for the small projects. If you listen carefully, you should be able to distinguish the quick and light taps. It's much faster than the other sounds. The text stream will move too fast to be readable if we also display the contents from the small projects.

cji 13y ago

At first I thought you meant The Song of Github, which is also really cool. http://song-of-github.herokuapp.com/?username=ajacksified http://song-of-github.herokuapp.com/?username=ajacksified

toblender 13y ago

Very nice. I was expecting angelic voices, but the click, pop thing is nice too.

jwcrux 13y ago

Small suggestion - please load all resources over HTTPS, including the gravatar images. :)