Projects

I hate ads. I especially hate ads when I’m listening to a podcast first thing in the morning. So I wrote a simple command line utility, adwatch, that watches a given directory for MP3 files, detects ads in them, and removes them. It is intended for use with Audiobookshelf, which provides exactly this sort of directory. The way this tool works is by using OpenAI’s Whisper Speech-To-Text transcription service, along with the OpenAI Chat Completions API. The latter takes the transcription from the former in chunks of segments, and uses OpenAI’s tool functionality to point specifically to where the ads begin and end. Then we can split the MP3 into different parts, drop the ads, and recombine. It also adds a short bell-like notification where ads were removed. ...

Tattoos are seen as something permanent, so I think a tattoo that changes challenges that idea, and with a little work you can change what a QR code redirects to. I’ve also wanted a QR code tattoo for a long time. So last summer, I finally did it, and posted the code on GitHub. To do it “correctly” was a fun challenge, and I’m very happy with the result. Functionality / Longevity Obviously, I want it to work. Making a QR code is simple, but in order for it to scan, it needs to be visible and not distorted. So it needs to be large enough to be scannable, and large enough so that it can fade/blur over time and still be functional. After reading through some Reddit comments, I got an idea of how large it needed to be. Mine ended up being a little larger than 3.5" in width and height. ...

Note: Images best viewed in light mode, figures censored for privacy Introduction ClamNet is the name of my homelab. It started in early 2021 so I could better understand computer networking. My initial curiosity was to answer the question for myself: “When one computer communicates with another, how does that work?” as well as to have better control over my own digital privacy. The name was chosen because at some point I thought it would be funny to buy domain names about clams. It was. Accordingly, I named the different hosts after different types of clams (in retrospect, there are not a lot of clam names that are short and memorable). ...