Here's how to run a fast OCR process on your own computer.ConceptOCR stands for opitcal character recognition. It's the ability for a computer to read something that's not in text but contains text, like an image or a pdf, and turn it into text, like an ascii text file.There are hosted services that...

Use voxtype to set up an on-device-only voice-to-text.voxtypevoxtype is a local-only voice to text program that works on Linux, under Wayland or X11.It downloads models, like OpenAI's whisper model, to your box and processes audio there. No voice recordings are sent to any server.InstallI'm on Pop!_...

Wouldn't it be cool to have your wallpaper and all app and desktop colors match in a unified color scheme!Concepteylles/pywal16 is a tool that extracts dominant and accent colors from an image and creates a 16-color scheme from it.Once this program has extracted a color scheme, it outputs that color...

Here's how to make Nvidia GPU available to a Docker container.ScenarioI was trying to run OpenRAG. It starts docker containers. These containers want access to the GPU so that it can be used to turn documents into matrices that describe meaning as well as content. In the docker-compose.yml file, Ope...

How to write the git author.I use a single set of dotfiles over multiple machines and multiple git authors. The problem is that sometimes I forget to change the author based on the machine or repo I'm in.In the first place, it's best to keep your git config set how you like:git config user.name "jak...

Here's how to print in the terminal on Linux.CUPSCUPS is a printing system that has come standard on Linux for a long time. It should detect printers on the same network and allow you to address themAvailable printersTo see available printers, run:lpstat -p | awk '{print $2}'This will return a list ...

We must expose reality and recognize the power of perception.PerceptionAs a young programmer, I had a seasoned coworker tell me that perception equals reality. True enough.He had seen things. He had been through perception working against him. He knew its power. His warning was now passed on to this...

How to put a local app server on https.WhyWhy would you want https on a local app server? Well, it's cool, put it on your resume. It looks cool, impress your friends. There are also browser capabilities that require https, such as hardware access for camera.Local IP MappingTo set this up, the first ...

Keeping the initiative helps me to see the usefulness of AI and not be repulsed by it.Sometimes DisturbedI will look back on these entries during these years of transition in AI usage, and I will see myself attempting to navigate things. I hope I will think well of myself and my decisions.Anyway, I ...

Here's how to set the battery charge threshold on a Linux system.WhyBy default, your battery will charge to 100%. But there is something about battery chemistry that makes that hard on batteries. To increase long-term battery health, limit battery charge to a maximum of 80%.Check batteryTo check bat...

Here's a way to check if a command is executable before running it.I have a command that I want to ensure exists on my computer before running it. The command is dwmblocks. I use the same config file on some hosts that have it as some hosts which don't have it.To check if the command exists, then ru...

This is an experience report on a week of AI maxxing.Earlier, I had tried to do the autonomous swarm orchestration at the end of last week. I'm not ready for that. So I maxed on what I could handle: One or two agents at a time with my feeding and intervention at key moments.The gistI have spent 4 da...

Here's a way to ssh into a machine on your local network.A Tale of Two MachinesSSH is a protocol that allows us to connect from one machine to another. We can connect via ssh in the shell, and it'll be as if we're in the shell of another machine.Our players: You have two machines. They are on the sa...

Here's how to find the dimensions of r avideo in the terminal.Pretty straightforward. Use ffprobe. This comes with ffmpeg:ffprobe -v error -select_streams v:0 -show_entries stream=width,height -of default=noprint_wrappers=1 myvideo.webm width=1920 height=1080-v error shows just error output; no info...

A cool thing about AI is that it can show you something you hadn't seen before.This is like what a friend would often do. You'd be asked to review a PR. Or you're perusing a code repo. You'd see things you didn't know how to do or which hadn't occured to you. It would be intriguing and potentially u...

It's too deceptively easy to give an AI your personal info.Competing PrioritiesWe want personal privacy. It's our business, not someone else's. I am the arbiter of my own self and information about myself.Simultaneously, others want our data. It's worth a lot of money. It's the potential for influen...

What are some of the dangers of information centralization? Here are a few.Centralization, FinallyCentralization, at its apotheosis, contracts to a single point. AI currently trends toward data centralization. Many reconfigure habits to look to companies who create LLMs for answers to questions or r...

Here's the current best way to enable Figma MCP on Opencode.ConfigAs shown in the opencode config docs, add Figma MCP to your ~/.config/opencode/opencode.json config like this:{ "$schema": "https://opencode.ai/config.json", "mcp": { "figma": { "type": "remote", "url": "https://mcp.figma.com/mcp", "e...

Here's how to run an AI model locally.It's easy to get started with ollama. It's free. It's local.Get ollamaDownload ollama:curl -fsSL https://ollama.com/install.sh | shNow you have an ollama command. This command will be used to install models, chat with it, or launch other clients.Choose a modelFi...

This sounds like a good idea, doesn't it? Hehe.The situationI run npm audit in CI. This helps discover security issues, published as CVEs, in the 3rd-party dependencies on the project.Recently, a CVE came up for ajv, a validation library that was found to be subject to a regex DOS attack. It was fix...

What is the difference between the X startup scripts?X is a display server. Depending on how you start your X session, different X-related startup scripts may be important to you.AllThese are usually places to export your environment variables, including PATH. You can set different X-related attribu...

Here's how to apply a software patch.What is a patchA patch is a file that describes changes to one or more files. The changes are line-oriented. This means that the patch file will specify that certain lines in your source file are to be added or deleted.Surrounding lines are also shown in order to...

This is a helpful (to me) listing of some layers of components in the Linux Desktop stack.We'll go approximately from the foundation up through the things that build on it.KernelThe Linux kernel is the core code that enables it and other software to run on the hardware. It is the low-level interface...

Here's a way to map hotkeys in X11.Of course there are a bajillion ways. It's Linux. But this way relies on an stable, battle-worn library that has a simple config.ScenarioLet's say that you want to map a keyboard shortcut for your screenshot utility. You'll need to map a key combo to launch it.Inst...

Here's an implementation for polling using an async function.GoalWe want to call checkTheThingAgain until we get TheThing back. We're poll, meaning check this thing repeatedly, on a regular schedule until it succeeds or we run out of patience and time it out.The implementationcheckTheThing returns a...

I watched an inspiring and hopeful talk from Brandon Sanderson about our art in the time of AI.Brandon Sanderson is a fantasy fiction writer. He is doesn't like AI art.Read his essay, The Hidden Cost of AI Art. Or watch it:{{}}He acknowledges that there are many concerns about AI. But if you were to...

Here's how to post an html form to a google spreadsheet.WhyWhy might you want to do this? Because Google has a many servers, and you won't have to have one. Your form is light traffic. You can view this data in a spreadsheet instead of Postgres database. Cheap. Fun? I don't know.Along with this arti...

Here's how to install picom 12 on Ubuntu 12 from source.Ubuntu 24.04 doesn't have a picom 12 package in apt. It's stuck on picom 10. Upgrade to Ubuntu 25, or build from source.picom 12 is cool because you have animations built in now.Let's build from source.Install prereqsThere are a few. Check em o...

Here's how to create, apply and rollback db migrations with ecto.List all ecto migrationsmix ecto.migrationsGives something like:mix ecto.migrations Repo: BookStore.Repo Status Migration ID Migration Name -------------------------------------------------- ... up 20260107001015 my_other_migration up ...

Here's a way to change audio output to HDMI from within the terminal.The DiscoveryI've tried to do this for some time. The missing link was the fact that each sound card has profiles that define which of their inputs are used. HDMI is one such input.Now... enjoy the journey.List Sound CardsA sound c...