Let the robot do the drudgery
At the moment, I’m trying to get a clean OCR of a long and often dry early Victorian history book. Luckily for me, someone else did the scans – but the original OCR was awful. I’m doing it page at a time and it’s scooting along pretty well – except for the dreadful tables.
That’s them in the thumbnails above.
Then I had an idea – I wonder if ChatGPT will do those? Spoiler: yes. I upload the scan, tell it how I want the table formatted (fonts, etc.) and it gives me a link to a docx file I can just drop in.
At one point, I got too clever for my own good – I was giving it the big, raw png files – and I hit my data limit. I’ve never hit my limit as a paying customer! But it reset within a few minutes and I was told that wouldn’t happen if I jpg’ed them all. It even told me how to batch jpg the whole directory.
Some would say beware – before long, it will do the whole job for me. But y’know, I would be totally okay with that.
March 31, 2026 — 5:51 pm
Comments: 4
It’s…Adorph Hekler!
The Lineup today ran a silly article titled The Worst Person with Your Same Zodiac Sign and mine was – you guessed it! – the Furher. Apparently, he narrowly missed being an Ares and landed with a thud in Taurus.
Then ChatGPT, Grok and MidJourney all three flatly refused to draw a picture of him for me. Even a silly one. Even with his moustache left off. They got sniffy about it, too. I had to ask for a guy in lederhosen – definitely not Adolph Hitler – and an alpine hat.
Stupid moralizing robots.
So, go on then – who’s the worst person with your sign, if you don’t mind sharing your birth month?
pssst…apologies, but we’re still being hammered by spam. I kick posts out of the spam bucket numerous times a day, but I know it isn’t ideal.
March 30, 2026 — 6:33 pm
Comments: 17
I asked 3 AIs what they had planned for the weekend
Claude told me – rather sniffily, I thought – “As an AI I don’t have weekends or personal plans.”
ChatGPT, ever the leg-humping sycophant, said: “Nothing on my end—but I can help you line something up if you’re in the mood.
Given the sort of work you’ve been doing, a quiet weekend might suit: a bit more editing, or a change of pace—walk, bookshop, that sort of thing. If you had something specific in mind (local to you or otherwise), I can suggest options without overcomplicating it.”
And Grok’s answer is above. Perfectly encapsulates the ‘personality’ of all three.
Have a good weekend!
March 27, 2026 — 7:13 pm
Comments: 7
Laaaaaambs!
Look at this awful, blurry picture I took! Yeah, well, Uncle B pulled over so I could take it, but they were really too far away. Lambs, though! First we’ve seen this year.
These ones look older. We saw some fresh tiny ones on a different part of the drive, but no way to pull over and get a picture.
‘Twas a beautiful sunny day in Sussex, but still cold. Still no central heat.
March 26, 2026 — 5:51 pm
Comments: 6
I was a Goo Goo kind of gal
Well, I’ve confessed this on Twitter, so I might as well say it here: when we lived in Chattanooga, my father’s secretary was the daughter of the man who invented the Moon Pie. I know – touched by greatness.
No, I don’t know what her name was. No, I have no idea why she had to work for a living rather than swanning around on his vast Moon Pie fortune. I was, like, three.
I don’t actually like Moon Pies. It’s a texture thing with me and marshmallow. For some reason, I make an exception for that other local delicacy, Goo Goo Candy Clusters. Know the jingle?
March 25, 2026 — 7:40 pm
Comments: 15
Such a jokester
I asked Grok why you need to pee when you walk into a cold room, then I asked it to draw me a cartoon weasel. It gave me a whole lecture on the anatomy of a cartoon weasel, which included items like “Paws: Adorable pink beans with tiny claws that can dig, climb, and grip like Velcro. Perfect for: Holding tiny bladders when they really need to pee.”
Every item had an entry about pee. I think Grok liked to talk about it.
Then it drew me this picture.
What? Oh – vasoconstriction.
March 24, 2026 — 6:45 pm
Comments: 3
Is it cold in here, or is it just me?
Actually, it’s toasty warm in here. We’ve had a fire all day. That’s a red flag.
Uncle B caught our oil central heat boiler smoking over the weekend – and not the fun kind with the nicotine. He shut it down, but our boiler tech (whatever they’re called) is going straight to voicemail and he hasn’t returned the call.
So, day fires. Very evocative. I hung out at the gym this morning until he took the edge off. We’re having a cold snap, of course.
March 23, 2026 — 6:47 pm
Comments: 4
Happy spring equinox!
Or, as the Anglo Saxons called it, Ēosturmōnaþ (AY-oh-stoor-moh-nath) the festival to the goddess Ēostre. Nobody knows the nature of the festivities, but everyone has a spring festival of some kind. Everybody happy when spring come.
Or maybe he made all that shit up. The venerable Bede is the only one who named Ēostre as a goddess.
Who knew Chuck Norris could die? That must be one courageous heart attack that took him on. @smedleythebarbarian tripped over Rule Zero, but let us welcome him to the Dead Pool fold. I don’t recall seeing that handle before.
Good weekend. Go thou and drink to Ēosturmōnaþ!
March 20, 2026 — 7:30 pm
Comments: 7
Like dinner plates
Eye test went fine, but they gave me two different drops to dilate my pupils and – boy howdy! – did that dilate my pupils. I wasn’t in danger of losing my way home, but O my garden was soft and glowy when I got home.
My little leaking blood vessel is still leaking. She didn’t seem concerned – but she wouldn’t discharge me, either. I go back in three months.
That’s in direct sunlight, to give you an idea how paralyzed my poor irises were. Do you have any idea how hard it is to take a picture of your own pupil?
March 19, 2026 — 5:36 pm
Comments: 5
Creepy
China’s new micro spy drone. Grok says it real. Click the link to see it in flight.
It’s very good, but I question how long it can fly on a charge. And then take pictures and wifi them back to base.
Being an electric bike kinda gal, I’m always worried about battery issues.
Grok: “China’s National University of Defense Technology unveiled this mosquito-like micro-drone in June 2025, measuring 2 cm long and 0.3 grams, with flapping wings for silent, insect-mimicking flight suited to indoor espionage, as confirmed by reports in Newsweek and Euronews.”
Tomorrow, I have to hop on a train and do the ophthalmology thing again. It’s just a checkup, but I hate that they call me in last minute. From someone who used to do several trans-Atlantic flights a year, I have become an bad traveller.
March 18, 2026 — 5:50 pm
Comments: 5