Adrian Holovaty

https://social.holovaty.com/@adrian

Web developer, guitarist, cocreator of Django web framework. Currently making Soundslice.

Web development + music notation tech + machine learning + indie web culture + creativity

Website: https://www.holovaty.com/
Location: Amsterdam

Public Key

npub1k3lq2v28u6uzl8qywyzvfrpdk8fuahgq5yj6lgjw4dj2dzkhn86sq73e8u

NIP-05 Address

[email protected]

Profile Code

nprofile1qqstgls9x9r7dwp0nsz8zpxy3skmr57wm5q2zfd05f82ke9x3ttenagpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0dsvadr7d

Publishing to

relay.damus.io

nos.lol

Author Public Key

npub1k3lq2v28u6uzl8qywyzvfrpdk8fuahgq5yj6lgjw4dj2dzkhn86sq73e8u

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Last Notes

2026-06-30 10:34:52 UTC

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While you’re in Gent, don’t miss the crazy lighting/art store Dupe Design. They have weird hours, but even if they’re closed, it’s cool to see their stuff through the windows.

2026-05-14 18:47:00 UTC

This new Paul McCartney interview is really good. He's tended to rely on the same, well-worn anecdotes over the years, but this one's packed with fresh questions and insightful answers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNQY-zIL4zg

2026-03-26 15:52:15 UTC

New Paul McCartney song is out, with a full album being released May 29.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2n1IhyF6R0U
This one gives me similar vibes to the last Beatles single, Now And Then. Nostalgic, melancoly and not particularly musically interesting. I'm glad Paul's still making music, though.

2026-03-23 16:43:57 UTC

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What's happening in Amsterdam? Welcome to town!

2026-03-23 16:41:04 UTC

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Unfortunately this was happening frequently for me, for GPU instances — leading me to use other providers for doing ML training. Interesting to see it happen for a CPU instance. Turns out the cloud isn't infinite...!

2026-03-17 21:37:37 UTC

I've started a new project: notationref, a taxonomy of music notation concepts for developers:
https://w3c-cg.github.io/music-notationref/
Info on motivation, etc., is in the readme:
https://github.com/w3c-cg/music-notationref

2026-03-14 20:26:07 UTC

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Congrats on this new chapter! Reading this made me reminisce about my favorite high-school math teacher, and I realized that personality-wise you remind me of him. I can easily imagine you thriving and making a lasting impact on young minds.

2026-03-06 18:21:32 UTC

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Hey, thanks so much, that means a lot. Best wishes with your music, whatever direction you take practice-tool-wise!

2026-03-05 09:57:42 UTC

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Have you given Soundslice a try? It’s an excellent music practice app, with a built-in editor, PDF scanner, ability to sync with real audio/video and tons more. We’ve put a lot of love into it over the years.

2026-01-14 13:13:21 UTC

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Just wanted to say thanks for your Split Fiction recommendation back in October. I played it with my kid recently and we both loved it. Amazing game!

2025-12-18 12:36:55 UTC

I wrote up the highlights of all the stuff we built and improved at Soundslice this year: https://www.soundslice.com/blog/302/soundslice-year-in-review-2025/

2025-12-14 17:00:03 UTC

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Thanks, glad you like it. Yes, it's possible to add a voice track — we've got a tool for syncing real audio recordings (video or just audio) with the notation. You end up creating a custom learning environment for that piece of music.
Here's a classic Tom Lehrer tune for example, public domain sheet music synced with his public domain recording: https://www.soundslice.com/slices/pKlHc/

2025-12-14 13:25:08 UTC

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Sounds like an interesting project that Soundslice would be uniquely equipped to help with. We've got an excellent OMR system, plus interactive music practice tools that can optionally use the original score as a backend. @npub1jre…alex can vouch for us!
Here's the first tune from the Grange book, for example: https://www.soundslice.com/slices/DYpJc/

2025-11-17 21:10:59 UTC

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People I deliberately followed: around 500? People whose work has otherwise come across my feeds: around 10,000?
Either of these figures could be way off…

2025-10-13 15:03:43 UTC

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Which boss are you stuck at? 🙂 I don’t mind the boss difficulty as much as the (sometimes) tedious runbacks from the bench to the boss. If I could immediately redo the boss battle after losing, instead of losing momentum by doing the runback, I’d improve more quickly and get less frustrated.

2025-10-08 16:38:03 UTC

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Nice one! Will try to attend this.
[Tiny typo alert: "their video's" -> "their videos"]

2025-10-05 21:25:32 UTC

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The seven-string definitely takes it to the next level — both in musicality and scariness :)

2025-10-04 22:52:55 UTC

I hope Stevie Wonder gets to hear this fantastic new guitar arrangement of “Overjoyed” by Antoine Boyer. Just spectacular. https://youtu.be/KjpvJh5VGhM

2025-10-03 12:30:11 UTC

Typing console.log() in Python code, and typing print() in JavaScript code.
If these were Olympic sports, I'm not necessarily saying I'd win the gold, but I'd at least be on the national team.

2025-09-17 06:56:29 UTC

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What!? I’m playing the game now and can confirm that is an incredible feat. Big congrats to him.

2025-09-09 15:47:52 UTC

I’ve been on a few podcasts in the last month. Four interviews, four separate topics: ChatGPT hallucination, Django's 20th birthday, Soundslice and my latest EP.
https://holovaty.com/writing/podcasts-sept-2025/

2025-08-31 13:54:55 UTC

Acoustic Guitar Magazine reviewed my Layer Cake EP:
https://acousticguitar.com/review-adrian-holovatys-layer-cake-is-an-irresistibly-joyful-acoustic-confection/

2025-08-21 16:55:02 UTC

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I played it today at Gamescom and it was solid. Very similar to the first one, which is not a bad thing.

2025-07-23 22:33:25 UTC

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That’s a bit derivative

2025-07-19 20:55:27 UTC

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Mrs. Robinson, Oh Darling, and basically any CCR song.

2025-07-17 09:04:05 UTC

This short tribute to Brian Wilson's life is so well done. A rare example of tasteful/artful AI video generation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCoo4tc61-w

2025-07-13 17:01:55 UTC

Wow, Django was open-sourced 20 years ago today. I’m glad it continues to be useful to people, and I’m thankful there’s a new generation of maintainers doing good work. I may not be involved directly anymore, but I still use it daily. :-)
https://www.djangoproject.com/weblog/2025/jul/13/happy-20th-birthday-django/

2025-07-09 19:11:35 UTC

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No worries, and in any case I think you might find Soundslice interesting from both a music and tech perspective :)

2025-07-09 18:57:13 UTC

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Nope, that's not true. I don't recall a single person ever requesting ASCII tab support since I founded Soundslice in 2012. Otherwise we likely would have added it. In fact we're very responsive to users and sometimes even implement feature requests the same day they're requested.

2025-07-08 09:10:09 UTC

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Too early to tell, as the feature is brand new. But overall I’m happy with having added it (it’s the kind of thing that runs itself and doesn’t require any upkeep, so it’s mainly a one-time cost).

2025-07-08 09:07:46 UTC

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I wrote it over two sessions — an evening at home and a transatlantic plane ride. So I didn’t need to deprioritize anything aside from watching airplane movies.

2025-07-07 15:57:45 UTC

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Haha, one can dream!

2025-07-07 14:54:56 UTC

Good news: ChatGPT is pointing a lot of people toward Soundslice.
Bad news: It's telling people Soundslice has a feature that doesn't actually exist.
Here's my story about how we added a feature purely because ChatGPT was telling people it existed.
https://www.holovaty.com/writing/chatgpt-fake-feature/

2025-06-11 20:54:05 UTC

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Please support the Web MIDI API. That would mean Safari users of Soundslice could use MIDI piano keyboards to enter sheet music. Chrome and Firefox have supported it for years.

2025-06-11 18:39:45 UTC

RIP Brian Wilson.
The pure creativity, the gentle humanity, the bold melodic and harmonic ideas that nobody else would have thought of yet feel inevitable.
❤️

2025-06-04 07:29:05 UTC

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Sounds like a difficult but gratifying move — I admire the courage. I hope you have a chance to write about the EMT world, as I have no doubt you’d have interesting and well-written insights. Good luck and best wishes!

2025-05-27 06:44:10 UTC

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I don’t have an inner monologue, and here’s how it works. Thinking happens in a sort of “thought language,” which is much faster than normal language.
I don’t understand how internal monologues work. If you’re waiting for thoughts to be expressed one word at a time, that seems…slow?
Introspection is still possible because it is indeed possible to replay conversations. It’s just that we’re not limited to *only* conversation-formatted thoughts.

2025-05-25 21:50:23 UTC

I'm trying a new thing: here's a behind-the-scenes peek at the multitracks in one of my recent EP tunes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHwGuv0ylGg

2025-05-24 07:23:10 UTC

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That was great — thanks for putting this into words.

2025-05-21 12:23:00 UTC

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You’re heading to Amsterdam? Drop me an email if you want to grab a coffee

2025-05-21 09:34:42 UTC

Just discovered Neural Viz and it's so good. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHb-3oIAFTs

2025-05-10 15:31:43 UTC

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Followup: Whew, that was fun!
The controller has a new "mouse" mode, which I found very smooth and intuitive. The new Mario Party mouse-only minigames were a blast: classic Mario Party shenanigans.
Also did Mario Party with the camera/microphone addon, and that was perhaps a bit gimmicky but still a joy.
The highlight of the event was 24-player Mario Kart knockout (the last-placed racers get removed each lap).
Also, the event had close to 50-50 male-female attendance, which was great to see.

2025-05-10 15:18:53 UTC

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I'm not enough of a hardcore gamer to have an informed opinion about it — but everything I played seemed very smooth indeed!

2025-05-10 12:11:47 UTC

I’m at the Nintendo Switch 2 preview event in Amsterdam, and I’m happy to report Mario Kart World is awesome.
Metroid Prime 4 and the new Donkey Kong game are also excellent.

2025-05-02 18:26:57 UTC

At Soundslice we've launched a lot of great new stuff specifically for drummers and percussionists. Percussion maps, auto-generated percussion legends, better synth playback and more.
https://www.soundslice.com/blog/288/tons-of-percussion-improvements/

2025-04-06 16:40:12 UTC

Hey, it's my first YouTube video in more than a year. Here's my tune "Senseless Swing."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsJihAhX5P4

2025-03-05 19:45:56 UTC

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Hi, I'm pretty sure I'm the person who insisted on that style for Django.
I continue to believe "past tense" is the best way to do it. Commit messages are used for many purposes, but the *most common* (at least, speaking for my own experience) is looking at history. In which case reading things in the past tense is much more natural, easier to understand.

2025-02-12 09:36:08 UTC

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Hey, thanks very much! Upright bassists are the best! Glad to virtually meet. 🙂

2025-02-11 14:58:14 UTC

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Hey, thanks for giving it a listen! All of that (harmonic surprises, bright vibe) was fully intentional, so it's gratifying to hear this. Much appreciated.

2025-02-11 13:10:23 UTC

My new EP is out today! It's called Layer Cake and has five original tunes.
https://www.holovaty.com/layer-cake/
It's my take on modern gypsy jazz, trying to bring fresh colors and textures into the scene. Give it a listen next time you have 13 minutes. :)

2025-01-16 14:21:41 UTC

Nintendo Switch 2 finally formally announced! This video does a superb job of communicating the new features/differences. I'm excited about this. :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itpcsQQvgAQ

2025-01-14 22:01:38 UTC

Hadn't heard this reported elsewhere: evidently Ray Brown's upright bass got destroyed in the LA wildfires. :-(
https://www.talkbass.com/threads/r-i-p-ray-browns-silvestre.1665738/

2024-12-13 16:33:30 UTC

Here's what I've been working on — lots of new Soundslice improvements:
https://www.soundslice.com/blog/282/new-features-dec-12/

2024-11-28 19:41:52 UTC

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Solid argument could be made for CCR as the best rock and roll band of all time, not just '60s and not just America.
(I'm not counting the Beatles in this comparison, as they're classified differently!)

2024-11-24 20:45:44 UTC

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Thanks for this recommendation! I watched it tonight with my wife and kid, and we all loved it.

2024-11-13 12:04:27 UTC

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Welcome to Amsterdam! Looking forward to your talk. :)

2024-11-13 10:12:43 UTC

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See you there!

2024-10-07 16:05:51 UTC

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At 0:30 in this one, there's a proto-"Man On Wire" scene in 1947, with tightrope walkers doing a crazy stunt between two buildings, high above the ground in Paris:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGFeu7ILR7o