I hate creating Alexa skills. What should be a 3-click process inevitably ends up requiring trips to multiple websites, to set up weird parameters, and reading outdated tutorials for obsolete libraries. So this is how to create a self-hosted Skill, using PHP. It runs on your own server and doesn't require any interaction. The Skill…
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I want to convert YouTube's auto-generated subtitles into a plain transcript. Why is this so hard? This blog post gives a more detailed explanation than my answer to this StackOverflow question. Here's what the subtitles look like when you view a video: And here's what the code which generates those subtitles looks like: 00:00:00.930 -->…
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This is a quick guide for setting up your new mouse with Ubuntu. I'm a big fan of the Evoluent Mouse range, and I've agreed to publish this Linux guide in return for a review sample. The Basics The only way to configure this mouse is via the command-line. This may look a bit daunting,…
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Here's an interesting conundrum. My TV can automatically detect when 3D video is being played and offers to switch into 3D mode - but how does the detection work? This post will give you a few strategies for detecting 3D images using Python. Firstly, some terminology. 3D videos are usually saved either as Side-By-Side images,…
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As ever, mostly notes to myself. I have a bunch of old images which don't have any timestamp associated with them. This quick Python script will add a DateTime EXIF metadata tag to an image. This uses piexif which can be installed using pip install piexif This simple script reads a photo, adds a timestamp,…
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Here's how to solve a common WordPress problem. I want to re-import all my blog's images into the media library. I've moved my blog to a new host - but kept the same domain name. I started with a new WordPress install, the uploads folder still has all my images, but WordPress can't see them.…
Continue reading →This is part of my redecentralisation efforts to liberate my videos from YouTube. MPEG-DASH is a simple method of streaming videos which doesn't require any specialised server software. You convert a high resolution video into a series of smaller resolution videos. You chop each of the videos up into several chunks. As the video plays,…
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Play with the demo I was lucky enough to go to Number 10 Downing Street for a meeting a few weeks ago. A perfect opportunity for a photo of me by that famous door. Being the vain man that I am, I wanted to set it as my avatar photo. But Twitter and other social…
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Here's a very simple introduction to getting started with Tweepy - a Python program which lets you access Twitter. This will work on small computers like the Raspberry Pi. Everything here takes place in the Terminal on the Command Line. This should work on Windows and Mac - but I'm using Linux. Get Python Open…
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I read a Guardian article about an artist who set up an analogue camera in front of their TV, set it to long exposure, and set a movie playing. The result was a rather wonderful collection of images. You can see more of Jason Shulman's works Is there a way to automate this process? Yes!…
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