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Artificial Intelligence Security What I’m Up To

A simple AI fake voice and face example

This past Tuesday (July 15, 2025), I appeared on a news segment on Tampa’s WFLA Channel 8 evening news, where I was brought in to comment about ways to not fall for AI-powered phone scams. The video from that news segment is pictured above.

While the segment talked about using AI to mimic people’s voices and faces and have them say whatever you want, there wasn’t time to demonstrate this capability — so I’m doing it here.

Here’s a video I recorded back in October 2023 to promote a Python course that I was teaching:

I then fed that video to HeyGen, the AI avatar service,  and used it to translate my video into Spanish. Here’s the result:

I don’t speak Spanish anywhere as fluently and smoothly as my HeyGen-generated version, and note that HeyGen went so far as to sync my lips with the Spanish words!

The Spanish voice is also a decent approximation of mine — close enough that it might fool even people who know me well, given a stressful situation full of emotion and other distractions, which is the sort of scenario that con artists try to create in a phone scam.

You should also note that the Spanish video was made with the version of HeyGen from October 2023. I’m sure it’s undergone significant improvements since then.

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Artificial Intelligence Business What I’m Up To

Catch our webinar about rethinking the way we pay for knowledge work in the age of AI this Thursday, July 10!

On Thursday, July 10 at 2:30 p.m. Eastern (11:30 a.m. Pacific / 1830 UTC), tune in to a webinar on rethinking the way businesses pay for knowledge work featuring:

Fatin Kwasny, Founder and CEO of Fractio
Yours Truly, Sales Engineer at Fractio

If your business is still pricing or accepting labor from knowledge workers…

  • by the hour,
  • by the project,
  • or even worse, by retainer or
  • by time & materials…

…you’re already losing — and AI will only make it worse.

In this webinar, we’ll discuss how:

  • Companies are leaking up to 50% of labor spend due to idle time, misaligned scopes, and outdated compensation models.
  • AI as a capital cost is shifting the rules of value creation — and why time-based knowledge work is the next labor bubble to burst.
  • A usage-based labor model like Fractio’s can eliminate muda (a Japanese term for wastefulness that the Six Sigma crew like to use) and protect your bottom line in a future where efficiency is non-negotiable.

We’ll also show some actual data from companies already seeing at least 10x ROI by shifting how they price or accept knowledge work.

Join us this Thursday, July 10 at 2:30 p.m. Eastern (11:30 a.m. Pacific / 1830 UTC) for our webinar, From Time to Throughput: Rewriting Labor Economics in the Age of AI!

It’ll be an entertaining, informative discussion, featuring 45 minutes of presentation followed by a 15-minute Q&A session.

Click here to register for this FREE online event.

Fractio is a SaaS that enables companies to pay for knowledge work on a “per-thing-done” basis instead of the less efficient per-hour, per-project, or on retainer. (Think paying for a rideshare versus paying for a taxi.)

At Synapse Summit 2025, Fractio was the winner of the of the Startup Innovation Award, which recognizes emerging ventures that are making waves and redefining what’s possible.

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Hardware What I’m Up To

My travel setup

I’m away from home over the next several days, which means I’m currently using my travel workstation setup!

It includes:

  • My MacBook Pro (refurbed 2021 model, M1 with 32GB RAM; if it’s good enough from Tampa Bay’s most notorious Python programmer, it’s probably good enough for you)
  • Not one, but two portable monitors (one I bought, one’s a freebie from an old workplace)
  • Small Bluetooth keyboard (Logitech K380, still the best travel keyboard) and mouse (Logitech M325S; nice and small, but not too small)
  • External webcam (Logitech Brio) and microphone (Blue Yeti; a Christmas present from Anitra from years back that still works like a charm)
  • Donner M-25 MIDI keyboard and good ol’ GarageBand for Mac (I’m working on some videos)
  • Sony MDR-V500 headphones that my deadbeat ex-housemate left behind back in 2001, and which I use only when traveling

I’ve also using books I left here as laptop and monitor stands:

For the smaller monitor, Volume I of 101 Windows Phone 7 Apps from my time as a Microsoft developer evangelist and Windows Phone community champ.

For the bigger monitor, the old “Holy Trinity” from the Apple Technical Library from back in 1992: Inside Macintosh Overview, Macintosh Toolbox Essentials, and More Macintosh Toolbox, which were essential reading if you wanted to write applications for the Mac during the days of System 7.

And for the MacBook, I’m propping them up with the Software Engineering Classics box with Debugging the Development Process, Dynamics of Software Development, and Software Project Survival Guide, topped off with a copy of the original Dive Into Python autographed by the author, Mark Pilgrim, as a thank you for the review I wrote in Slashdot all those years ago.

Categories
Conferences Programming What I’m Up To

Slides from my upcoming Ren’Py presentation for KCDC 2025

A couple of months back, I wrote that one of my proposed talks was accepted for this year’s edition of KCDC — Kansas City Developer Conference, which takes place from August 13th through 15th (Wednesday, August 13 is the workshop day, while the conference days are Thursday and Friday, August 14 and 15).

KCDC draws 2000+ attendees each year and features tracks for the following topics:

  • Architecture
  • AI and Data Science
  • Cloud
  • Data
  • DevOps
  • Human Skills
  • Java
  • JavaScript
  • Methodologies and Process Management
  • .NET
  • Other Technologies
  • Security
  • Testing and QA
  • UI/UX and Design

My talk’s title is The Best, Most Fun Python Platform You’ve Never Heard Of. It’s a programmer’s introduction to the powerful, fun, and all-too-often-ignored Ren’Py. While Ren’Py is called a “visual novel engine,” I prefer to think of it as the fastest, most fun way to create Python applications.

I’ve been working on my talk for the past little while, and I thought I’d share the first couple of slides from my presentation. I may update them between now and mid-August, but if you’re curious, it should give you a sense of what my presentation will be like.

Here’s the description for my talk:

Python’s occupied the number one spot on the TIOBE Programming Community Index for the past couple of years, and it’s the preferred programming language in for AI and data science. Perhaps you’ve been thinking about learning it, but the thought of having to do another set of “Hello World” style exercises is filling you with dread. Is there a more fun way to get up to speed with Python?

Yes, there is, and it’s called Ren’Py. It’s billed as a visual novel engine and often used for writing dating simulation games, but it’s so much more than that. It’s a platform that lets you code in Python (and more) and deploy to desktop, web, and even mobile platforms, and with a fraction of the effort required by React, Vue, or Angular. It’s a fun framework that’s been used to produce games you can find on Steam, but it’s got applications well beyond amusement.

In this session, we’ll look not just at the basics of Ren’Py development, but the building of a dating game based on KFC’s official game, “I Love You Colonel Sanders,” a simple turn-based combat game starring Florida Man, and building mobile apps in a way that’s less frustrating than usual.

I’m thinking about doing a dry run of my presentation here in Tampa — and for free! — at a Tampa Bay Python meetup in early August. Watch this space (or my LinkedIn account) for the announcement.

Would you like to get the anime template that I used for my slides? You can get it from SlidesGo for free — it’s called Lovely Chibis Anime Characters for Marketing!

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What I’m Up To

Wearing the red shirt

Here’s a screenshot of my half of a Zoom meeting that I was on earlier this morning. I assure you that I had a valid, strategic reason for wearing an old-school Starfleet command/engineering uniform.

I’ll post more details later as events warrant.

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Hardware What I’m Up To

The stickers on my Windows laptop

Joey de Villa’s 2020 Acer Nitro 5 laptop, which is covered with stickers.After seeing my previous post about laptop stickers, a couple of people noted that they thought I was a Windows guy. I’m more of an “anything programmable” guy, and I do have a Windows machine that I use regularly (in fact, there’s an interesting story behind how I bought it).

Pictured above are the stickers on my Windows laptop.

Categories
Hardware What I’m Up To

The stickers on my 2014 MacBook Pro

Joey de Villa’s 2014 MacBook Pro, which has a grey case and is covered with stickers.I’m helping out at a Tampa Bay Python workshop for people who are new to Python programming as I write this. It often helps to bring a spare laptop to events like this, so I brought my 2014 MacBook Pro.

Even after all this time, it’s still useful as a spare computer for workshops. It’s also a handy computer for travel; if it gets stolen or damaged, it’s no great loss.