ASR with PyTorch: Exploring Phoneme Representations

I have a fascination with the sounds of languages (phonemes) and how they are processed. This came about from a project I did a few years ago in grad school. How ASR (automatic speech recognition) used to work did not include breaking down the sounds of the language and present them as pieces of the solution. You typically just got a final text representation.

I’m interested in seeing if the phonetic or phoneme representations can be pulled from the modern machine learning ASR pipelines. This is just an interest of mine with no defined goals beyond learning.

Introducing oneworldsync

A Python Module for 1WorldSync Content1 API Access

I’m pleased to introduce a Python module I’ve developed from scratch called oneworldsync. For those who need to programmatically access product content data from the 1WorldSync Content1 API, finding a streamlined solution was challenging to say the least. The only path provided was a very simple Python example, some older PDF documentation and a reference Java SDK. I work primarily in the Machine Learning space so Python first was a priority. Those were my primary motivations behind creating oneworldsync as I stumbled towards building a library.

I have been studying for several technical certifications and recently an online MBA program with Exams that require studying. A goal in the back of my mind was to study for those using an application that replicates the certification and exam process. With that in mind, I started looking around for a simple test or quiz web application that lets me plugin a pile of questions in multiple-choice format with a timer as a baseline.

While, I did find a couple of promising projects, found in the Research section below, each had some downside or gaps that would require a good bit of rework to make them usable for what I wanted to accomplish. A secondary requirement is to have a somewhat modern web interface and to use a tech stack that I can use to refresh my full-stack programming skills with modern tools.

Another goal is to use this as something that is a break from studying. This little project might be the ticket by having a second thing that keeps my brain from imploding. I cannot use my proxmox clusters or ceph or even networking as those spiral out of control at every chance. This project has to be something infinitely interruptable.

My super lean Proxmox 8.3 testbed cluster running Ceph occasionally just decides to lockup a node based on it being incredibly limited on RAM and CPU. As much as I hate rebooting Linux/UNIX systems, this is a case where a nightly reboot of the nodes might help with reliability.