I watched Batwoman, reluctantly, because of Ruby Rose. The show was too dark and gruesome for my taste. So I’m partly sad and partly relieved that Ruby Rose Is Done With Being Batwoman Now. I liked that Batwoman was a gorgeous lesbian hero. Didn’t care for the cruelty. Photo. 🌈
I’ve been part of only a very few Zoom calls and everyone else knows more than me about using Zoom. That’s why I’m reading Take Control of Zoom by Glenn Fleishman.
will take you from your current level of Zoom knowledge to full expertise through task-based, bite-sized chunks.
Take Control of the Mac Command Line with Terminal by Joe Kissell
harness the power of the Unix underpinnings of macOS! … become comfortable working on the command line in Terminal … provides numerous “recipes” for performing useful tasks.
Book recommendations challenge. 📚
Last week I thought we had a frost. This morning we definitely did!
The Retrieval Artist Series by Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Mystery and Sci-Fi all wrapped up in space with a superb cast. One of my all-time favourite authors. Intelligent, well-written, so readable.
Book recommendations challenge. 📚
Dawn is on its way.
Tl;dr: the website Free Online OCR does a fantastic job extracting text from screenshots.
I really really dislike the service called Issuu. Many newspapers use it to publish online. I find it hard to read: zooming and scrolling are generally obnoxious. What's more, some publications make it impossible to copy text.
That problem struck today when I wanted to quote a couple of paragraphs in an item from the Ōtaki Mail for our local Waikawa Beach Ratepayers Association blog where a member had referred to a particular article. I ended up making a screenshot of the approx 200 words and apologising for not offering a text version. Totally inaccessible!
Then I went searching and turned up the website Free Online OCR which claims to get text out of images. What the heck, it was worth a try! Last time I tried OCR was more than a decade ago and the results were execrable.
Well, I was flabbergasted: the website rendered the text perfectly! It lost paragraph breaks and somehow an em dash went missing, but the text itself was perfect.
I noticed another article in the same paper was relevant to a discussion I'd been having with a neighbour the other day, so I tried the approach again. Make a screenshot, OCR the screenshot. This other 700+ word article was also rendered perfectly, a missed macron notwithstanding.
I'm so impressed!
The Renegat by Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Sci-Fi. One of my all-time favourite authors, this particular novel is brilliant.
A ship of misfits and screw-ups sent on an impossible mission. All alone in deep space.
Book recommendations challenge. 📚
Every 6 weeks or so I move the quail to a new spot. Here they are, near the house. It was a major effort to move the run uphill, but we got there in the end. The quails favourite shelter is the low plastic thing with the tree branches on top. 🐦
Book recommendations challenge. 📚
I’m being totally self-indulgent and hopping in a time machine. From 2006: WordPress 2: Visual QuickStart Guide, 1st edition by Maria Langer and Miraz Jordan. So out-of-date now as to be essentially useless. 😒 Back then it was very useful.
We watched Fisherman’s Friends, an excellent British film based on a true story. 🍿
… about a group of Cornish fishermen from Port Isaac who were signed by Universal Records and achieved a top 10 hit with their debut album of traditional sea shanties.
A film with heart.
We watched and thoroughly enjoyed The Half of It, a movie about love and friendship. 🍿 It’s a very different story about a nerdy student, Ellie, a football player, Paul, and a beautiful girl called Aster. I totally recommend it.
I watched the first episode of The Bionic Woman which dates all the way back to 14 January 1976! 📺 I was struck by just how many men were taking charge of Jaime’s life, and how much more sophisticated TV has become in the last ~45 years. Screenshot. I first saw it in my 20s.
We’ve been watching Miss Scarlet and the Duke. 📺 It has potential but doesn’t seem to quite gel. Scarlet is whiny and unappealing. Writing or actor? I think Jaime Murray from Warehouse 13 would really bring the character to life. Scarlet wears fabulous hats though. Photo.
Oh hooray! Years ago the National (conservative) government cut adult education to shreds. Our Labour government, in today’s Budget, are restoring adult education! What excellent news!
With confirmed daily new cases of Covid-19 in single digits or 0 for 4 weeks now, today Aotearoa New Zealand drops to Alert Level 2. Most businesses can open, domestic travel is allowed, gatherings are still very restricted. Now we wait to see if things flare up again. 🦠🤞🏼