Useful when it’s useful
This lovely bronze age sword appeared in my Twitter today, with no further information. No link or nothing. I don’t believe anything without a link nowadays (and probably not even then, once everything is written by AI).
But speaking of AI, someone asked if the sword was real, and Grok found the article.
AI taketh away and AI giveth. Good weekend, all!
January 30, 2026 — 4:53 pm
Comments: 1
I learned so much today
I hate learning stuff.
There’s a book about the history of this region written in the 1830s, long in the public domain. Google Books has it as a pdf file, but it’s a shitty pdf file that isn’t searchable. I’m looking for something specific in it.
So I went hunting.
Turns out, there’s a reputedly powerful command line tool called OCRmyPDF that looked like it would read and OCR it in one go. But it’s open source and natively Linux, so I had to install WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) and a distro (I chose Ubuntu because it’s for babies). Which is kind of awesome, because I like Linux, but not enough to make it my main computer.
Command line for the win.
But turns out I also needed a copy of Ghostscript (which is a program for handling pdf files). And Tesseract (which is the thing that actually does the OCR). They just would not play nice with each other. Until they did.
And yes, it successfully OCR’ed the whole six-hundred-some pages and the resulting text is…pretty much shit. Which I don’t understand because I thought the original scan was okay. I’ll have to think on’t.
Bonus thing I learned today: the regular old command line terminal is not exactly the same thing as the Windows Power Shell. You can get either, but the latter is what it defaults to.
January 29, 2026 — 7:15 pm
Comments: 6
My robot pal
I had a recalcitrant problem with the web page I’m trying to make – on first load, it showed a 404 File Not Found error. Worked fine when you started clicking links, but it loaded ugly.
If you can’t read the text:
Niceee glad that fixed it!
Two-panel layouts are sneaky like that — one tiny name/target mismatch and the whole thing acts haunted.
Now your users won’t be greeted by a sad 404 anymore, which is a big UX win.
If you want to level it up later, a little “Select a document from the left” welcome page in the iframe looks super polished.
If you hit any more weird iframe behavior, feel free to toss it my way — happy to debug with you.
Something about its chummy tone creeps me out, but ChatGPT fixed it. Or rather it kept explaining what I should do until I saw the problem. I hadn’t replaced a placeholder filename with the real filename. It’s the HTML equivalent of having a t-shirt made up that says [your text here].
Wait. I’d kind of like that. Note to self…
January 28, 2026 — 6:41 pm
Comments: 4
Did they though?
Twitter outrage of the day is this altered picture of Daniel Pretti. He’s been tweaked to make him ever so slightly more attractive and the altered picture has been used in several places, including MSNBC.
The buzz is, imagine dying for your cause and your comrades don’t think you’re attractive enough to be a martyr.
But there’s a twist. I can’t find the post, but somebody asked Grok whether the photo had been altered. Yes, Grok answered, it had – but it looked like the altered photo had been released by the White House.
Now, that there is some 4D chess.
I tried asking Grok myself, but it’s being a little bitch tonight.
January 27, 2026 — 7:50 pm
Comments: 6
“normal and expected”
I registered a domain name for a local club a few days ago. Poking around the Cpanel (as you do) I noticed I already had ten pages of visitors from all over the world – Hong Kong, Singapore, Canada. Mostly trying to get into the WordPress installation.
This site doesn’t have a WordPress installation. So I axed AI it and said:
WordPress sites are frequently targeted by automated bots that scan the internet for websites using the WordPress platform. These bots attempt to log in to your site’s admin area (typically at /wp-admin) using common usernames like “admin” and weak passwords such as “password” or “123456.” This activity is extremely common and does not indicate a breach—your site is likely secure if you’re using a strong password.
You’re not alone: This behavior happens to nearly every WordPress site, regardless of size or niche. The “visitor log” you’re seeing is likely from failed login attempts, not real visitors.
This activity is normal and expected. As long as your credentials are strong and your site is updated, you’re not at significant risk.
It makes you wonder how much Internet traffic is mindless bots. I understand USENET is completely consumed by bottage now.
Fun fact: Uncle B and I met on USENET.
January 26, 2026 — 6:19 pm
Comments: 4
Do you feel lucky?
So, where do you fall on the Weather Map of Doom? My old neighborhood, as always, was right on the borderline between ice and snow.
Here? The usual. Drizzly and miserable.
Take it easy with the snow shovel this weekend!
January 23, 2026 — 4:35 pm
Comments: 21
Sigh. I’m learning things again.
I couldn’t stand it. I had to play with the map data myself. I like maps and I’ve worked with them a lot over the years, but always in the context of, like, Google maps with fearsome copyright protections.
The idea of playing with free map data using free tools was just too tempting.
Of course, the tools to do this are hella complicated. At least, tools like QGIS are. The simple Java tool Java Open Street Map editor is more amenable to the casual tinkerer.
If you want to play, go to Open Street Map, pan and zoom to the place you want to map, export to an .osm file and import it to your preferred tool. Have fun!
The image is Mount Teide on the island of Tenerife, the highest point in Spain, visualized by Saber Razmjooei using QGIS.
January 22, 2026 — 6:02 pm
Comments: 2
Say hi to my grandpa
The family farm that got turned into a cemetery. My grandpa was allowed to pick his own plot, so he picked a beautiful hillside he used to plough. It is now nestled between a state highway and an interstate highway.
There’s a plot for me, if anyone cares to ship me over there when I croak.
I’ve been struggling with openstreetmap data (not this – this is Google maps). Does anyone have experience with it?
In theory, I love it – open source mapping that I can download and use without licensing. In practice, you have to download the whole world if you want to slice it up yourself, or ask a third party to do it for you. Downloading out of the app only gives you xml text data (as far as I can tell).
More learning stuff!
January 21, 2026 — 7:01 pm
Comments: 2
Wales. Welsh. Health. Health ambassador.
Health ambassador from Wales is opening a dialogue on female wellness. I’m so not kidding.
I tried to find the item on the BBC site with no luck, but multiple source confirm (and I’m too lazy to be one of them).
When I asked ChatGPT to redraw this in the style of Thomas Nast, it described her as “determined Muslim woman.” No, ChatGPT…fat gives you a permanent frowny face.
January 20, 2026 — 7:13 pm
Comments: 6
Untangling my empire
I just registered a domain name for a local club and went to hang their site off my server and discovered…I have no idea how it works any more.
Actually, not true. Considering I haven’t designed a webpage in a serious way for 20 years, it’s amazing how little the technology has changed. I can navigate my way around just fine, thank you. That’s weird.
But I’ve got thirteen websites hanging off my account, most of which have been dead for years. And somehow Uncle B’s account has been set to the master account. And it would be nice to fix the thing making this website flag as dangerous.
I have some learning to do. I hate learning.
January 19, 2026 — 6:54 pm
Comments: 6