ocr on S Anand

Read Tamil on TV with Gemini

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 21:32:50 +0800

I’ve been reading books using AI. Today, I used Gemini while watching a TV show. (Not to watch TV - just while watching TV.)

There’s this scene in Iru Dhuruvam Season 2 with a sheet of paper with Tamil text on it.

The script was small and I couldn’t read it clearly. (I’m pretty slow at reading Tamil anyway.) So I took a screenshot (Linux is great that way - you can record screenshots from any video player) and asked Gemini:

OCR and translate

(I was eating dinner and had just one hand to type - minimally.)

It said:

Original Tamil Text: வினைபகை என்றிரண்டின் எச்சம் நினையுங்கால் தீயெச்சம் போலத் தெறும்

English Translation: When you consider the remnants of an incomplete action or an unconquered enemy, they will destroy you like the unextinguished remnant of a fire.

This is Thirukkural 674, written by the ancient poet Thiruvalluvar. It serves as a stark warning against leaving tasks or conflicts half-finished. Given the gloves and the torn paper, this looks like a classic cinematic trope—a cryptic, high-stakes warning left behind in a thriller, signaling that the job (or the revenge) is far from over.

Spot on. The rest of the scene made perfect sense!

This is not the first time I’ve used AI while watching TV. I’ve passed screenshots to identify cities, transcribe newspapers, and more. But this is the first time I’ve used it to read Tamil.

(BTW, the image in the screenshot above is a Gemini-upscaled with the prompt “Draw the same image, upscaled and sharper”.)

Gemini 3 Flash OCRs Dilbert accurately

Mon, 02 Feb 2026 18:53:15 +0800

Scott Adams, the author of Dilbert, passed away last month. While his work will live on, I was curious about the best way to build a Dilbert search engine.

The first step is to extract the text. Pavan tested over half a dozen LLMs on ~30 Dilbert strips to see which one transcribed them best.

Here are the results.

Summary: Gemini 3 Flash does the best, and would cost ~$20 to process the entire Dilbert archive. But if you want a local solution, Qwen 3 VL 32b is the best.

Model	Score (%)	Text (40)	Spkr (25)	Caps (15)	Panel (10)	Halluc (10)
gemini-3-flash-preview	99.3%	39.9	24.4	15.0	10.0	10.0
qwen3-vl-32b-instruct	96.0%	39.8	21.6	15.0	9.9	9.7
llama-4-maverick	85.1%	38.5	16.3	13.2	9.1	8.1
llama-4-scout	84.1%	39.0	16.4	12.5	8.7	7.5
gemma-3-27b-it	81.3%	37.8	13.1	14.4	8.4	7.6
nemotron-nano-12b-v2-vl-free	81.3%	38.6	13.1	14.4	8.5	6.6
molmo-2-8b-free	70.4%	36.2	16.4	0.5	8.8	8.4

That accuracy of 99.3% is impressive. Here’s the biggest error it made:

Dogbert: CHAPTER IV. “TIME MANAGEMENT”
Dogbert: “ALWAYS POSTPONE MEETINGS WITH TIME-WASTING MORONS.”
Dilbert: “HOW DO YOU DO THAT?”
Dogbert: CAN I GET BACK TO YOU ON THAT?

Can you spot the error? The model attributed the text to Dogbert instead of the computer. (But you could argue that Dogbert is the one typing it…)

Here’s another error:

Dilbert: I’VE DECIDED WE SHOULD OPERATE ALONG MORE CLASSIC LINES, LIKE DR. FRANKENSTEIN’S LAB.
Dogbert: YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MAKES YOU?
Dogbert: I’VE GOT A HUNCH…
Dilbert: LET’S PRACTICE…
Dilbert: DOGBERT, FETCH ME A BRAIN!
Dogbert: LIKE YOUR PRESENT MODEL, OR ONE THAT WORKS?

Can you spot the error? In Panel 2, it’s Dilbert speaking, not Dogbert.

In fact, the only transcription errors Gemini 3 Flash made was writing “McDONALD’S” instead of “MCDONALD’S” (see panel 2), and not hyphenating a line-break in “PRESEN-TATION” (see panel 4).

Qwen 3 VL 32b made almost as few errors. The bigger gap is in speaker detection, where the models fall off steeply.

This incredibly low cost + high accuracy enables a number of new things. For example:

Infrastructure Serial Tracking: Extract serial numbers and maintenance dates from photos of utility meters, fire hydrants, streetlights, etc. to build a live digital twin of city assets.
Small-Business Permit Audits: Process photos of street-facing shop permits to flag expired licenses.
Evidence Label Transcription: Annotate small-text labels on physical exhibits in legal archives, e.g. “Exhibit A” becomes “Exhibit A: Photo of the crime scene taken on 03/15/2020 at 14:32 by Officer J. Smith.”

I spent 7 years typing out every one of the ~3,000 Calvin & Hobbes strips by hand. For these ~12,000 Dilbert strips, it might take a few hours and a few dollars for the same.

Things I Learned - 09 Mar 2025

Sun, 09 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This week, I learned:

In Jan 2025, ChatGPT included images as part of their data chat export. They also have a 30 second limit for the export. As an extensive user, my export is about 1GB which takes well over 30 seconds to download. Like many others the export option pretty much doesn’t work for me any more.
Bharathi said மெல்லத் தமிழினிச் சாகும் in a poem that has been often quoted (and parodied). Here’s the context.
The Zettelkasten note-taking method proposes that you:
- Capture: Write down every idea or piece of information on a separate note. Use your own words to ensure understanding.
- Organize: Consolidate fleeting notes into permanent ones. Assign unique identifiers to each note for easy reference.
- Connect: Link related notes to form a web of knowledge. This can be done with tags, references, or hyperlinks in digital systems.
- Review: Regularly revisit your notes to strengthen connections and discover new insights.
I agree with almost every point on this LinkedIn post on scoring candidates for AI roles. Rob Balian
- Uses DeepSeek R1 or Claude 3.7 +5 points
- Uses Langchain -5 points
- Uses Langgraph +5 points (I don’t know enough to comment)
- Built a RAG in 2023 +3 points
- Built a RAG in 2025 -3 points
- “pinecone” -5 points (I don’t know enough to comment)
- “What is cursor” - 50 points no coming back from this
- Uses Cursor composer +10 points
- “You don’t need a full agent for this” +5 points
- Did hackathons to learn AI outside of work +5 points
- “We probably need to fine tune for this” -3 points unless you can explain why
- “Gemini is making a comeback” +3 points (I have a soft spot for Gemini)
- +3 points each for mentioning reasoning trace, structured outputs, MCP, chain-of-thought, prompt caching, TPM limits
“Export to prompt” can be a useful feature in apps (or even as a bookmarklet). It would let you export content in an LLM-friendly Markdown format. You can paste it into an LLM and ask questions. Here are things I would find useful:
- Copy an entire issue (with history) from GitHub, Gitlab, or JIRA
- Copy an entire PR (with code changes) from GitHub, Gitlab, or Bitbucket
- Copy CI/CD logs from GitHub Actions, Gitlab CI, Azure DevOps, etc.
- Copy entire conversation thread in Gmail or Discourse, Service now etc.
- Copy product reviews from Amazon, Shopify, etc.
- Copy page(s) from wikis and content sites like Wikipedia, StackOverflow, etc.
- Copy survey responses from Google Forms, Typeform, etc.
- Copy all interactions with a contact (including interactions, proposal history) from HubSpot or Salesforce
- Copy transcripts from Zoom, Teams, Google Meet, etc.
- Copy as Markdown from Word, GDocs, PDF or HTML
- Copy the summary of an analysis as well as all key metrics from any dashboard
- Copy SAP invoices
- Copy JDs, CVs, and reviews from Workday, BambooHR, DarwinBox, etc.
- Copy design specs, component libraries, and style guides from Figma, Miro, etc.
- Generated with the help of ChatGPT – link not working
Ancient languages tend to have fewer words for hues than brightness, since they didn’t need them. So “Krishna was blue” or “the sea is wine-dark” is more an indication of darkness than shade of color. Ajit Narayanan
Mistral released an impressive OCR model.
- Marker from DataLab seems comparable but is CC-BY-NC-SA.
- MinerU convert medical textbooks to Markdown well.
- Gemini Flash may be more cost effective and better
From How I Write with Tyler Cowen
- Keep researching. Use LLMs as an altemative to books and other reading material. Keep publishing what you learn regularly.
- While reading a chapter, keep asking the LLM. What did you think of that? What just happened there? What should I focus more on? What’s puzzling about this? How do I connect this to something else later or earlier in the book?
- LLM is better used to support you rather than replace you in areas of your expertise. Where you are an expert it’s best for you to be yourself and have AI fill in the gaps.
- Ask the AI: “What is in my writing that some people might find obnoxious? Or cold / heartless? Explain it to me in great detail.”
- The first input is context setting and should be really long. Use voice dictation for that instead of typing.
- Send your blog post to an LLM. No need to explain it. Just let it be the reader and see what it understands and doesn’t understand.
- His PhD students don’t have a textbook, which saves them some money. But they are required to subscribe to a large language model which ends up costing less.
- Today, it makes sense to use the best models and pay $200 for it if required. The differences are large. But in some years in the future, the cost of these models may come down for the free versions.
- Humans know secrets. AI does not. So at least in some areas, humans will have an advantage.
- Secrets full matter a lot more in the future. Gossip will matter a lot more. How good are you at keeping and trading secret? Travelling and meeting people will become more important. So will the value of social networks.
- Since everyone has access to better intelligence, the value of mobilization or being able to do things with people will have higher value. Leadership is an example. The value of your network therefore has gone up a lot.
- There’s more value in prompting one thing 10 times then 10 things one time. Follow up questions work better than long prompts.
- There are so many AI note-takers (and transcribers) these days that you are not just writing for an AI but speaking for AIs as well!
- Which model to use:
  - O1 Pro is the best model. Claude does a decent job. DeepSeek is full of hallucinations but is interesting. It is more imaginative.
  - Use O3 mini to write your prompt first, and then ask the model
  - Use DeepSeek and other somewhat wacky high-end models once a day so that you stay in touch with what is models are capable of (beyond the conventional.)
  - Perplexity has entirely replaced Google for many people.
  - Anthropic’s models are the best writers.
  - Gemini is good for long documents and hence for things like legal work. Gemini also has excellent YouTube integration and hands can directly read the transcripts.
  - Grok is very good at fact checking tweets.
- Converting data into LLM consumable forms will be a huge project. Lot of a knowledge is not in such a form and a huge human project will involve this conversion.
Indians do not need a visa to enter Thailand. Ref
Build apps (not just content) for agents. In the next 3 to 5 years, agents will surpass humans as the top product users.
Reliably creating interactive tutorials is hard today. Claude 3.7 Sonnet ran out of tokens when I tried creating an interactive tutorial on diffraction. Cursor got the tokens but failed to get the application right after 3 attempts. This is not yet reliable, and when it does become reliable, education will change a fair bit. #IMPOSSIBLE
Tools and solutions should fit within existing workflows. That means almost all capabilities need to be exposed as APIs.
LLMs make many different kinds of errors that are useful to differentiate between. Here are a few
- Model errors. The model itself makes a mistake. E.g. hallucinations, not following the prompt, etc.
- Context errors. The model makes a mistake because the question was out of context, or the context was missing.
- Input errors. The input to the model was parsed incorrectly, e.g. poor audio, poor image OCR, etc.
- Tool errors. The model’s tools are wrong or not good enough, e.g. Retrieval errors.
Most browsers are moving away from third-party cookies. Here’s Google’s recommendation on alternatives. The simplest of these is CHIPS, which requires adding a Partitioned cookie attribute.
Notes from AI Engineering Summit, NY, Day 1
- An agent requires 3 things: a router, tools or skills, and memory.
- Agents are often sequential, but sometimes parallel execution makes sense for independent tasks that you consolidate.
- Always allow LLMs the option of NOT answering a question if there is no good answer.
- Focus prompts on the happy path. Use guard rails for edge cases.
- Here are a few “tools” an agent would need to call:
  - Clarification from user
  - Saving to memory
  - Google search
  - Edit a file introducing SPECIFIC changes
  - Search in codebase using embeddings
  - Run scripts on the shell or in a REPL (Python, Node, etc.)
  - Run code in a new container for isolation
  - Automatically discover, read an API documentation and use it
- Modify environment to enable logging and other system changes.
- When code is cheap, you can explore more ideas and hence design and product management need to approach things differently. We also need to reaching testing completely because it makes very different kinds of mistakes and we don’t often have an intuition
- You can have an agent explore all the issues and full request and recent comments against the repository and summarise it for the project manager
Notes from AI Engineering Summit, NY. Session by Lux Capital.
- Agents make multiple LLM calls. Errors accumulate. So the quality of the model is key
- What’s really critical: data + context + user preference
- Set up evals for subjective responses by collecting signals continuously.
- Create scaffolding for agents where errors don’t accumulate. Better yet, make it FIX errors
- UX is critical. We need lots more UX styles
YayText converts text to Unicode that has strikethrough, bold, italics, alternate fonts, and other interesting features. So does Unitextify, ConvertCase, and LingoJam.
10 red flags I look for as an angel investor is an interesting read.
1. No real customers: A deck, a landing page, and a “vision” don’t impress me. Show me paying customers. Even better, show me customers coming back.
2. No path to profitability: I don’t care if you raise $100M – if there’s no plan to make money, you’re just burning oxygen. Growth is great, but cash flow keeps you alive.
3. Founders who won’t sell: If you’re scared to get on sales calls, that’s a red flag. The best founders sell in the early days – whether it’s to customers, employees, or investors.
4. No differentiation: “Like X, but cheaper” isn’t a strategy. If your only edge is price, you’ll get crushed. What do you have that no one else does?
5. No urgency: The best founders operate like time is running out. If you’re “exploring ideas” or “thinking about raising next year,” you’ve already lost.
6. Raising money before proving anything: Too many founders try to fundraise their way out of bad ideas. If you need VC to get off the ground, you’re building the wrong business.
7. No clear distribution strategy: Product alone doesn’t win. First-time founders obsess over features. Second-time founders obsess over distribution. How are you getting customers?
8. No ownership mentality: If I hear “I need to hire someone to do that” too early, I’m out. Founders who win figure things out before they delegate.
9. A CEO who can’t attract talent: Your first hires are everything. If great people aren’t willing to join, either the vision is weak – or you are.
10. No skin in the game: If a founder won’t invest their own money or take a pay cut to make it work, why should I?
By contrast, this OpenAI Deep Research report feels a lot less actionable.
Inception Labs offers “Diffusion LLMs”. (No API yet.) They start with random text and refine it in parallel. The benefit is:
- It’s faster and cheaper due to parallellalization and better GPU use
- It doesn’t commit to tokens and can fix hallucinations, JSON structure errors, reasoning fallacies, etc.
- It’s better with multi-modal since images are diffusion based already.

Windows PowerToys is my new favorite tool

Wed, 25 Dec 2024 04:07:17 +0000

Windows PowerToys is one of the first tools I install on a new machine. I use it so much every day that I need to share how I use it.

I’ve been using it for a long time now, but the pace at which good features have been added, it’s edged out most other tools and is #4 in terms of most used tools on my machine, with only the browser (Brave, currently), the editor (Cursor, currently), and Everything are ahead.)

These are the toolsI use the most:

Text Extractor (🪟+Shift+T) is a brilliant feature that copies screenshots as text (OCR)! I use it when someone’s screen-sharing presentations, to extract text from diagram images, or when I’m just too lazy to select text.
Advanced Paste (🪟+Shift+V) is another brilliant feature that pastes text as Markdown. Now it also supports converting the clipboard to HTML, JSON, or any other format (using an OpenAI API key).
Crop and Lock (🪟+Ctrl+Shift+T) is another brilliant feature that clones a portion of the screen in a new window. Very useful for keeping an eye on progress, reading notes, taking notes, etc.
Mouse without Borders is another brilliant feature that controls PCs by just moving your mouse across, with your keyboard, clipboard and files!
Color Picker (🪟+Shift+I) helps me find the exact color of a pixel from an image, quickly.
Always on Top (🪟+Ctrl+T) is another useful feature to keep a (small) window always on top of all other windows.
Keyboard Manager helped me a lot when my old laptop’s keys started conking off. I could map one key to another.
Hosts File Editor. I find this a lot easier to use than manually editing C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts.
File Locksmith tells you which process has locked a file.
Mouse utilities help you find and highlight the mouse pointer. Useful for screen-recording or sharing.

Tools I don’t use because I have alternatives:

Run (Alt+Space) launches apps. But I use Everything since it opens documents too.
Environment Variables edits environment variables. But I use the Control Panel since my fingers are used to it.
Image Resizer quickly resizes images. But I use Paint.NET for the control it offers (WebP compression percentage, etc.)-
PowerRename renames files. But I prefer bash scripts.

Tools I don’t use because I don’t have a need:

Awake disables sleep for long-running tasks. But that’s my default setting anyway.
Command Not Found suggests a winget package for missing commands. But I don’t use PowerShell.
FancyZones creates window layouts. But I find Windows’ default window snapping enough.
Workspaces creates pre-defined window layouts. But I find Windows’ default window snapping enough.
File Explorer Add-ons preview SVG, MD, PDF, etc. But I don’t use previews.
Peek previews files. But I don’t use previews.
New+ creates files or folders from templates. But I use VS Code, mostly.
Quick Accent lets you type accented characters. But I usually don’t type them.
Registry Preview simplifies editing the registry. But I usually don’t.
Screen Ruler measures pixels on the screen. But I usually don’t.

Things I Learned - 15 Sep 2024

Sun, 15 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This week, I learned:

Hume provides a voice-to-voice model (EVI 2) that handles emotions at 7 cents/minute.
OpenArt workflows has image generation workflows
Pixtral seems quite good at OCR
LLM coding
- Makes you more ambitious
- Lets you code without stress. (Just pass it the error and have it fix it. Or find another approach)
- Is unlimited. You can run dozens of agents in parallel
Simon Willison’s crowdsourced list of prompt engineering hacks
“Invest in things that don’t change.” Jeff Bezos. Like faster delivery, SQL, web platform.
Medical cost in Singapore (for insurance coverage) - via Kumar
- Root canal at clinic: $1,300
- Crown replacement at clinic: $1,300
- Periodontist (gums) at hospital: $2,500
OAuth from First Principles is a SIMPLE explanation of OAuth. Conclusion: “You probably shouldn’t implement your own OAuth client.”
Alphaxiv is Arxiv.org but with author comments and chat
The Impact of AI on Computer Science Education:
- Eric Klopfer divided his undergrad CS class into three groups and gave them a Fortran task.
- One used ChatGPT. Another, Meta’s Code Llama LLM. Third, only use Google.
- ChatGPT group was faster than Code Llama was faster than Google
- When tested on the approach, the ChatGPT remembered nothing. Half the Code Llama group passed. The Google group passed fully
Server-side implementation of an OAuth2 client is too complex. Best to delegate this to Auth0
Via Pratap Vardhan:
- At Khan Academy, every developer working on Khanmigo has cursor. Everyone who’s contributed to a Khan Academy GitHub repo has GitHub Copilot.
- I stopped using Google + StackOverflow 2 years ago. I use ChatGPT, Copilot, etc. For humans, I ask Reddit.
- Excited by async agents. Things that do my job while I sleep.
  - Zapier notifications.
  - Monitor what happens. Put it into a flow diagram and alert me.
  - Every month, did my broker trade? Did my bank transaction fail? Did I pay my electricity bill?
  - Every time you delegate, use an agent instead.
  - Read my RSS feeds.
  - Read my browser history and suggest interests.
- Plan a session in Bain, BCG, etc. on Artifacts.
- Explore sparse embeddings. More effective. ColiPali, ColBERT

Things I Learned - 09 Jun 2024

Sun, 09 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This week, I learned:

httpretty can mock ALL Python HTTP libraries
Japanese pray to dead parents instead of gods. The dead are preserved in plates by priests. Japanese are generally non religious
Looks like GPT-4o is using CNNs to create vector embeddings of images, with images gridded into a 1x1, 2x2, etc. PLUS OCR. Ref
The sum of a sinusoidal series is like a spirogram. Spinning circle linked to another and so on https://www.andreinc.net/2024/04/24/from-the-circle-to-epicycles

What does Gramener ask ChatGPT?

Sun, 14 Jan 2024 07:23:38 +0000

I looked at how Gramener uses ChatGPT Plus by evaluating 600+ chats asked over 3 months from Oct 2023 to Jan 2024.

The team asks 6 questions a day. We don't track who or how many actively use ChatGPT Plus. This also excludes personal ChatGPT accounts. Still, 6/day is low for an entire team put together.

The questions fall into 8 categories.

Category	%
Excel, data exploration & analysis	25%
Text extraction and summarization	13%
HTML, CSS, or JavaScript code	13%
Python code	13%
LLMs, AI and use cases	9%
OCR and image analysis	9%
Generate images, logos, and designs	7%
General knowledge, policy & environment	5%
Audio and translation	5%

Here are some questions from each category - to give you an idea of emergent ChatGPT Plus usage.

Excel, data exploration & analysis (25%)

Excel clean and merge. There are 2 worksheets in this excel with data, can you clean up the data and merge the data in both the sheets
Excel CO2 Data Analysis. You are an expert Data Analyst who is capable of extracting insights out of data. Analyze this sheet and let me know the findings
Excel Chi-Square Analysis Guide. how to perform chi square analysis in excel
Log Data Insights & KPIs. Looking at the columns from this excel, what kind of insights are possible, what are key KPIs to be looked at

Text extraction and summarization (13%)

Complaint Investigation Summary. The following is the summary of an internal investigation for a customer complaint. Now this internal summary is to be paraphrased (in 3-4 lines) as part of a closure
Extracting Tables from RTF. Can you write a script to extract the tables from this document
Extracting Entities from Text. [{'word1': '(P)', 'nearest_word1': 'P/N:', 'nearest_word2': '0150-25034', 'nearest_word3': 'CARTIRIDGE'}, {'word1': 'P/N:', 'nearest_word1': '(P)', 'nearest_word2': '015...
Extract PDF Font Details. Extract text formatting information from this document. Especially find font styles, families and sizes.

HTML, CSS, or JavaScript code (13%)

HTML/CSS Chart Template. Give me HTML, CSS and chart code for this design.
CSS Font Stack: Explanation. Explain this CSS font convention: Arial, Helvetica, Segoe UI, sans-serif
Checkbox Validation with JavaScript. In HTML form, I have a set of checkboxes. How do I write the form so that at least one of them being checked is mandatory?
Prevent Text Wrapping CSS. <span class="text">Chief Communications Officer</span> I need CSS such the text inside should not wrap create new line
ReactJS App with Routing. Give me developed version using ReactJS use react router for sidebar section navigation to the pages use Tailwind css for styling. Use styled components for conditional …

Python code (13%)

Python Code Documentation Guide. Can you generate documentation for a project code written in python?
Linux Commands for Python. Give me list of linux commands to work on python coding
Code explanation request. What's this code about? …
FastAPI Async Testing. Write a fastapi code and a python client to test the asynchronous nature of the fastapi package.
Streamlit App for Translation. Given the following python code, give me a simple streamlit app that takes file upload and converts that into a target language: …

An interesting sub-topic was interview question generation.

Python Decorator for Database Queries. Create one medium level question for Decorators in python Industryy usecase specific with solution

LLM, AI and use cases (9%)

LLMs for Data "What Ifs". You are an LLM Expert. Can you tell me how can we leverage LLM for implementing What IF scenarios on Data?
LLMs: Current Challenges & Concerns. what are current challenges with LLMs
LLM Applications in Marketing. Show LLM applications for the marketing function of a music company.
Gen AI usage. What industries are using Gen AI the most
Best LLMs in 2023. Search the internet for the most recent LLMs and list the best LLMs in terms of performance
Best Image Classification Models. suggest best models to tell what there in the image

OCR and image analysis (9%)

Browser history OCR. This is a screenshot of my browser history. Convert that to text. Categorize these into common topics.
Extracted C Code. This image contains C code. Extract it.
Image text extraction and annotation. Extract the text from this image and annotate the boundaries of the text
Detecting Document Image Orientation. oreientation detection of documnet image
AI Project with OpenCV & YOLO. Consider yourself as Open CV and Yolo expert and help me with AI project
Image Correction Techniques. what are the approaches we have in computer vision where my image is tilted or rotated in reverse or image is not in readable format

Generate images, logos, and designs (7%)

Google Chacha and ChatGPT Bhatija. Generate an image of Google Chacha and ChatGPT Bhatija
Regenerative Systems Group Image. Generate an Image with below context > "A group of people interested in Regenerative systems. The focus is on reusing food, energy and mental health"
Twitter Reply Icons Design. Give me three icons: icon16.png, icon48.png, icon128.png for an extension that I'm building that suggests replies to tweets
Generate flowcharts. Make a flowchart of the underlying working of a web app. Here's how it works. 1. The user uploads a document - a PDF or an image. They then select the language that …
Create Animated GIF from Photos. I have 4 photos I want to make an animated gif out of them. How can i do that?
Climate Impact Illustration. An illustration showcasing the impact of climate change on daily life, focusing on a rural setting near the coast. In the foreground, a small farm is visibly struggling, …

General knowledge, policy & environment (5%)

Design Thinking Overview. What is Design thinking
Arthashastra. What can Arthashastra teach us about modern politics?
Community Impact on Habits. Is there research to suggest the impact of community on habit building?
Focus at Age 28. What should a 28 year old focus on?
Superconductors. Explain superconductors like I'm five years old.
Climate Career: Impactful Choices. You a career counsellor at a University campus. You want to create 4 to 5 talking points for students to consider a career in Climate space.
Sustainability Division Vision. I run a software outsourced product development company. I want to start a new division that focuses on sustainability services offerings. Please draft a vision…

Audio and translation (5%)

Audio Timestamp Mapping. timestamp mapping for transcribed audio
Transcribe Lengthy Audio: Segment. Transcribe this audio file.
Traducción del MOU al Español. Translate this document to Spanish, and create a new translated document. Maintain text formatting.
Telugu Transcription into Hindi. Transcribe the following telugu text into hindi. You are supposed to transcribe, not translate. శ్రీనివాస పూజావిధానము …
GPT lacks native audio support. Does gpt support audio in audio out natively?

Things I Learned - 03 Dec 2023

Sun, 03 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This week, I learned:

Gwern Branwen says LLMs nudge his “… making heavier use of the languages I don’t know well (Emacs Lisp & Python) since I increasingly trust that an LLM can help me maintain them.”
Undetectable.ai checks for AI content. But it had false positives AND negatives in the 5 checks I ran. GPTZero got 2/2 right and seems better at detecting AI content.
CoVA scrapes web pages via OCR
When coding with LLMs, have SHORT, RELIABLE feedback loops. Ref

Excel - Never type in data

Tue, 08 Nov 2005 12:00:00 +0000

Rule #2: Never type in data in Excel.

You rarely spend time creating voluminous data. Usually, you’re just processing it (copying, transforming, whatever).

Sometimes data is on a web page – typically tables. To copy such data, open the page in Internet Explorer and paste it in Excel. You won’t like the formatting. So copy the cells you just pasted, go to a different sheet, and Edit-Paste Special just the values (Alt-E-S-V-Enter).

Sometimes data is on a text file. You can open text files directly in Excel. Each line becomes a row. You can split lines into columns if there is a “delimiter” between any two cells. Just load a text file, select all the rows, and play with the Data - Text to Columns menu (Alt-D-E).

Sometimes, data is on a PDF file. Usually, such data is in a table. If you have Adobe Reader, tough luck. Just select and copy the table, paste it into Notepad, manually format it (painful), copy again from Notepad and paste in Excel. If you have Adobe Acrobat, it’s slightly better. You can use the “Select Column” tool to select and copy entire columns of the table in one shot.

Sometimes, data is on paper. Scanner often come with an optical character recognition (OCR) software. If not, Microsoft Office 2003 comes with a Microsoft Office Document Imaging tool has OCR. Just scan the image, open it in the Microsoft Document Imaging tool, go to the Tools - Recognize Text Using OCR… menu, and pray.

After all this importing, the data is never “clean”. Errors due to unintended delimiters, extraneous blank lines, etc are fairly frequent. I’ll talk about how to manage this when discussing Rule #3: Automate the task

Comments

A benificiary 9 Nov 2005 5:29 am: this is S Anand of IIMB days - making lives easier
wasted_psuede 17 Nov 2005 9:58 am: what about rules 3 and 4?
james chacko 1 Nov 2006 12:45 pm: how to avoid copying extraneous blank lines while impoting data from text file to excel
Egads 19 May 2009 10:14 pm: “If you have Adobe Reader, tough luck.” Well, maybe not - if one holds down the ‘Alt’ key while using the pointer (arrow) select tool, it is possible to select and copy columns from PDF tables to Excel…