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Beth Haubert

How are you supposed to sing along with your favorite TV theme song every week if it doesn't have lyrics? At my house, we "meow" along (loudly). We also code, so I built 'Meowifier' to convert any song into a cat's meows. Join me in this exploration of melody analysis APIs and gratuitous cat gifs.

I built an application that takes a song's audio and outputs a new audio file with that song's melody **sung by cats**. It's a technical feat. It's hilarious. It's beautiful. It's a new way to waste time on the internet.

[Beth](https://www.bethanyhaubert.com/) is a software engineer who loves Ruby, little-known APIs, handcrafting SQL queries, and as many monitors on her desk as possible. She’s also a former airborne cryptologic linguist for the US Air Force, fluent in Mandarin. Things you can ask her about include cats, board games, karaoke, and building applications that convert songs into auto-tuned cat meows. Things she'll have to kill you if you ask her about: the airborne linguist part. Also, she likes to make emojis look like they're farting. 🐈💨"

#ruby #rubyconf #rubyconfau #programming

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In her presentation at RubyConf AU 2019, Beth Haubert showcases her whimsical application, the 'Meowifier', which transforms audio songs into cat meows. This concept is not only humorous but also a technical achievement that blends creativity with programming.

- **Background**: Beth’s journey began in the US Air Force, where she served as an airborne cryptologic linguist, later transitioning into software development and specializing in Ruby on Rails.  
- **The Meowifier**: The application's purpose is to add lyrics to instrumental songs, exemplified by an interactive session where attendees meowed along to the Game of Thrones theme song.  
- **Technical Challenges**: Throughout her development process, Beth encountered three main challenges:  
  - Extracting just the melody from songs, which required using a tool called Sonic API to identify melodic lines without harmonic clutter.  
  - Modifying the duration of meows to match the length of the melody notes. For this, she utilized FFmpeg to adjust audio lengths appropriately.  
  - Creating a multi-octave library of meows since cats do not naturally produce a full musical range. She experimented with different methods, eventually sourcing auto-tuned cat sounds online.  
- **Conclusion**: Beth emphasizes the excitement of creating playful applications while facing programming challenges. The Meowifier exemplifies how fun and complex coding can be, encouraging developers to embrace unconventional ideas. This presentation is a celebration of creativity in technology, showcasing Beth's unique approach to programming and her passion for both cats and coding.

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