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Emotional Arabic Audio Datasets

I'm collecting emotional Arabic audio datasets across six dialects: Modern Standard Arabic, Najdi, Hejazi, Moroccan Darija, Egyptian, and Jordanian. It's part of Alconost's voice & speech data service — native-speaker training data for ASR, TTS, and conversational AI. I work through the vendor managers and project managers who hold the talent relationships day to day, and I keep the pipeline pointed at people, not just throughput.

I automate the parts that should be automated, but the human part stays human. Every conversation with a speaker is person to person, no AI in the room. I treat the relationship like a bank: you deposit trust before you withdraw.

To make it run, I built a platform that covers the whole pipeline — from voice talent recruitment to final dataset delivery. Speakers apply, get qualified, and record scripts through it, and every submission moves through a multi-stage validation flow before it ships:

1. Content & Performance — script accuracy and dialect match
2. Audio quality — technical standards for clean recordings
3. Emotion & expressiveness — does the delivery match the script's intent?
4. Final audio validation — a dedicated tool for reviewing recorded audio before it goes into the final dataset

Playable ads

I run Alconost's playable ads — a service that helps app and game companies grow user acquisition. I built the AI pipeline that turns out playable HTML5 game ads plus matching videos, with every platform resize generated automatically. It's fast: more ads shipped, more campaigns and ideas tested, more conversions for the client.

The purpose of an ad is to drive a player into a game. The ad doesn't have to be perfect — the game is the perfect thing. If the ad works, engages, sets the mood, gets someone ready to play — that's enough.

I don't polish ads until they shine. They're work horses. A little dirty. Not ideal. Cheap. But they do the job.

And what matters most: they scale, enough to reach every niche in the player audience. Manga lovers. Mini-drama fans. Vocaloid kids. Sonic runners. Grill-meat eaters. Cowboy girls. Each one gets their own superlocalized ad — one they like, play, and install the game from.

Alconost Studio

I'm working on Alconost Studio — an AI-powered video production platform — improving it side by side with the CEO of our company. A sentence in, a finished video out. You describe an ad in text and about fifteen minutes later you have a broadcast-ready video, in 9:16, 4:5, 1:1, or 16:9, with native voiceover in more than 120 languages. Revisions and reformats are unlimited, everything comes brand-customized to your logos, colors, and platform safe zones, and it handles static images, carousels, HTML5 banners, and AI-presenter, UGC-style video with lip-sync. The first video is free; after that it's $49 a credit.

What I care about most is the part behind it. It lives inside Alconost, a video and localization studio that's been doing this work for twenty years, so it isn't a generic AI generator spitting out clips. It's professional creative direction, made fast.

beside the point

I released the EP Añoranza under beside the point, my solo lo-fi project, put out with the British label Homework Radio. Ambient and lo-fi, music made for focused work.

Right now I'm working on a few feats, sitting with other people's ideas and finding where mine fit against them.

New tracks are on the way: September 7, October 23, and November 6. You'll find them all through linktr.ee/besidethepoint.

Nick Zaleski

I'm working on an album in Russian. One of the songs is called “Что такое любовь” — “What is Love” — and I wanted the question to live outside the studio before it lived inside a track. So I take a camera into the street and ask people that, and sometimes a few more things, and I listen to what they say.

Before the release I post those short interviews on my socials, one at a time. When the song is out, I'll put the full compilation up on YouTube, so the answers and the song finally sit in the same place.

Animate Cover

I built animatecover.com — a tool that turns a static album cover into a looping vertical video for Spotify Canvas. You drop a cover, describe the motion you want, and get an MP4 ready to upload in Spotify for Artists. Runs on credits now — one credit per Canvas, with a $9.99/month plan for 10.

It also shows per-artist royalties — you can explore them at animatecover.com/royalties.

Traveling Europe with pets

I travel Europe using Trusted Housesitters — a service that lets me take care of owners' pets and stay at their houses for free while they're away. In the end I make friends not only with cats and dogs, but also with their parents — people who trust me with their lovely creatures.

If you just want to browse the options — you don't need to buy anything. But if you want to apply for sits, you'll need a yearly subscription (which pays off after one night). If you're interested, feel free to use my referral link.