I've been thinking...

[Jay]

Hey all,

I know we have been a bit radio silent for a while. Life, it gets you and this past year has been no different. I won't mince words, the Software Engineering world is changing and I have to keep pace with those changes. I have been spending a LOT of time re-skilling for a new reality for my career. I learned long ago that when it comes to work, nothing is guaranteed. You must stay marketable. The last few years I've really been out of the radio world. I left my career in building software for online radio stations because things had stagnated a bit. I stayed within the streaming world though, but moved into video streaming. Which really drastically changes how you look at media on the web.

You all know where I am going though, today the landscape is changing fast when it comes to technology. Everyone has their feelings about it, but growing up in a world where not keeping up with the changing landscape meant you lost a job, I am determined to keep pace. That has led me to AI. My journey into AI has not been a smooth one. I started experimenting with AI almost 10 years ago, largely to see if we could apply it to some of things that Radio Toolbox does. However it just wasn't there. The technology hadn't advanced enough to be a meaningful change. I learned how to train models back in 2021. Going through various technology guides and Jupiter notebooks to learn what it was how it worked. At that time it was good at categorization. It could take messy data and give it a little meaning, but not in any way that I saw could apply to radio nor my career.

Fast forward to Fall of 2024 and things were changing, rapidly. Not only was AI able to be used to meaningfully change software pace through auto completion, it started generating code (albeit not in terrific or consistent ways) that could meaningful increase a developer's pace. Through 2025, I have been elevated into a career in AI. I went from an AI skeptic to fully immersed in it in the matter of a year. I promise that this isn't an AI posting this though. So what has happened? Well for the past 9 months I have been fairly intense in development with AI.

Early starts were promising, but not terribly great for long term use or in large projects. I have moved up my skill-set and models have changed and improved to a point where I can complete massive projects in a month that once took several months, if not a year. That leads me to my next bit of news. Radio Toolbox will be getting an update soon. Radio Toolbox 3 is on the board to be completed soon. If things go well with what I am working on now, it will be a multi-platform effort. If you have anything that bothers you about v2, let me know, and I will get it on the list. This will be a complete re-write and re-imagining. The other bit of news, is my current project. I have always wanted to build a DJ automation solution. For various reasons through my career it didn't make sense to do so. Often due to the monumental effort to build a good system as well as the saturated market for automation solutions. Now is the time for me to make this work. So I am going to throw my hat in the ring and I am using AI as leverage to make it happen.

If you are in the market for a new Automation solution and want the freedom to work with it on any platform, or just want to see what I built please join me over at: https://jaicast.com/

I hope to have something in the next week or two to download and try out. I started this work last weekend. That is just how amazingly rapid this has been.

More soon.