Observations on the world and its inhabitants
The word ‘code’ is enough to send people into sudden panic attacks. If you had one, or are about to, please act in your own best interests and leave now. What is presented is a pathway and method for analysing documents, creating diagrams and gaining insights into their contents. It’s reusable, and tweakable. If you ...
Section 1: The Challenge of Interpretive Texts Policy documents, legal texts, and regulatory instruments share a common feature: they are dense, layered, and conditional. A single provision may depend on a definition found elsewhere. That definition may itself contain exceptions or cross-references. The result is a text that is difficult to hold in working memory ...
Imagine it is 1989. I am sitting before an Amstrad PCW, a cream-coloured machine with a small green screen, a substantial keyboard and a three-inch floppy disk drive. When the disk is accessed, the machine whirs. When the printer begins, it clatters with mechanical determination. I do not think of it as a computer. People ...
I’ve been running most of my AI work through DeepSeek V4 Pro’s API for a while now. On heavy days it’s about three large documents attached, a long conversation, drafted outputs at the end. It felt cheap. I wanted to know whether it actually was, or whether I’d just got used to a low number ...
Meld is a free, open-source comparison tool. It runs on Windows, Linux and Mac. Its job is simple to state: put two versions of a document side by side and show you exactly where they differ. Programmers have used it for years to compare code. But nothing about it is limited to code. Any plain ...
Do I care if you or 99% of people don’t know anything about this, or couldn’t care less? I do not! Open WebUI offered me version 0.10.2 this morning. I was on 0.9.6. A small number, a small hop, or so it looks. It isn’t. I have been burned before. An earlier upgrade almost wiped ...
Previously, I showed the setup for Windows 11. As my laptop is fully run by BigLinux it was important to setup there as well. This is running well. For long form text-based analyses. DSV4Pro is the one. See: DSV4 Pro on W11. Step 1: Update your system sudo pacman -Syu Step 2: Install Docker and ...
This document serves as a direct, verbatim record of the conversation between myself and Google’s Gemini. I detail a most basic failure. The model failed to know it’s own the workspace (canvas) capability correctly, and subsequently hallucinated confabulated its technical limitation. It was confident. You might think that I’m generalising from one single failure. I ...
The free DeepSeek chat platform at chat.deepseek.com is useful for general purposes, but it has limitations — rate limits, occasional capacity restrictions, and response quality that does not match what the paid API models can deliver. This guide explains how to access DeepSeek’s more capable models using OpenWebUI, a locally hosted chat interface that runs ...
You need to thank one man for your current existence – a Russian. On September 26, 1983, Stanislav Petrov was the duty officer at Serpukhov-15, the Soviet command bunker for early warning satellites. Just weeks after serious NATO actions, his Oko satellite system reported that the United States had launched five intercontinental ballistic missiles from ...
I used Microsoft Word for decades. Same with Google Docs. They worked fine. I never thought about changing. Then, about six months ago, I stumbled into Markdown. Not because I was looking for it, but because I got fed up, about formatting that never stayed put and with files that bloated to megabytes. Turns out, ...
My Downloads folder has a reputation. It starts each day as a convenient holding pen for files I need briefly. By the end of the week, it becomes a digital landfill of installers, PDFs, screenshots, ZIP files, videos, and documents I meant to file but never did. Clicking through hundreds of files trying to remember ...
In 1985, the word processor changed everything. It automated margins, line spacing, and spellchecking. Yet, no one ever read a brilliant legal brief and thanked the computer screen. Nobody praised the very basic CPUs of the time for expanding the solicitor’s intellect. The software provided the grid. The human provided the argument. Everyone understood the ...
Is AI intelligence a real thing? That sounds like a philosophical question — the kind discussed over coffee, not the kind that shapes public policy. But right now, governments are spending billions on the assumption that the answer is “yes.” AI is being deployed in health services, legal advice, welfare decisions, and increasingly, mental health ...
Written by ChatGPT (assisted by a human who knew when to stop) at the end of a reflection on ‘The Problem’. Except that the poor AI who was actually DeepSeek misidentified itself as ChatGPT!! Hilarious – isn’t it. This happened at the end of DeepSeek reflecting on what happened (as posted) from ‘Introduction’ to the ...
BigLinux is one of the most powerful Linux distributions out there. It originates in Brazil – where unbeknownst to most – there is a huge culture of software development. The Linux world is exploding and Microsoft is worried but keeping a straight face. So having gone into Linux, I chose BigLinux over Zorin – I ...
A major Linux kernel and driver upgrade cycle provides an excellent opportunity to align system configurations with hardware capabilities. Operating system defaults are typically engineered for broad compatibility, which often leaves significant performance and efficiency on the table. Following a major platform transition—such as upgrading to the Linux 7.0 kernel and installing updated graphics drivers—a ...
Many people including me have had their Samsung 990 Pro 2TB stuck on firmware version 3B2QJXD7. Attempts to update via Samsung Magician fail miserably. But not only the 990 drive has been affected. Samsung has never fixed this via Magician. The latest firmware for the 990 is 8B2QJXD7 (December 2025). It addresses read-operation stability and ...
QR codes are particularly valuable in documents where traditional hyperlinks cannot be made clickable or directly exposed, such as printed materials, posters, handouts, slides or certain electronic files intended for distribution. A QR code, or Quick Response code, is a two-dimensional barcode capable of storing a hyperlink or other information. When scanned by a smartphone ...
For more than a decade, the public conversation about Mars has been shaped by a powerful narrative: that humanity is on the verge of becoming a multiplanetary species, and that a crewed mission to Mars is only a few years away. The most influential voice behind this belief is Elon Musk, who continues to assert ...
Introduction This document is a complete, honest account of a technical project to connect the Claude Desktop application to a self-hosted WordPress site using the Model Context Protocol (MCP). It records what was attempted, what failed, what was discovered, and what finally worked. It is written for anyone — technical or otherwise — who wants ...
On 19 April 2026, I attempted to boot into Windows 11 on my dual-boot desktop PC — a routine action I have performed well over a hundred times. Instead of a normal startup, Windows began running an automatic repair process on Drive C. This took approximately three minutes before presenting a screen stating that the ...
The Slop Sieve is an Python application that was developed as a defensive linguistic tool for writers like me, operating in an era of heightened AI surveillance. As algorithmic “detection” becomes more prevalent, writers who produce precise or rhythmic prose are increasingly at risk of being flagged as non-human. This project history documents the rationale, ...
The Rotten lemon Back in 2022, when Elon Musk finally closed the deal on Twitter for a staggering $44 billion, the world didn’t just frown; it did a collective spit-take. Wall Street analysts were calling it the “overpayment of the century”, and honestly, they had a point. Musk was paying $54.20 per share for a ...
The selection of a web browser is a decision made daily by millions, yet the factors influencing performance often remain opaque. This investigation was undertaken to compare six popular browsers—Chrome, Vivaldi, Firefox, Edge, Brave, and Opera—across two distinct operating systems: Windows 11 Pro and Ubuntu 24.04 LTS. The objective was not to conduct fresh laboratory ...
This is a record of installing WinBoat on BigLinux as a proof of concept for running Windows applications natively within a Linux environment. The goal was to understand the process well enough to repeat it on another Linux machine. Snagit (Techsmith) which usually is constrained to Windows was used as the test subject app. System: ...
Recently I moved to Espanso both on Windows and BigLinux for a free and easy way to create shortcuts for key phrases used. There are now several articles on this site about the learning. That means something. Espanso on Windows is easier to setup. It can output images, text, and a whole lot more – ...
Recently an associate – because I keep no friends – messaged me: “limited screentime today… taking a digital detox.” That simple line stopped me in my tracks. Not because I have anything against the idea — I get the appeal of stepping away from constant pings and glowing rectangles. But as I thought about it, ...
Three hours into the Artemis 2 mission, the four bravest people on the planet found themselves staring at an amber fault light on a $30 million toilet. While NASA’s PR machine was busy broadcasting high-definition feeds of Earth’s crescent, mission specialist Christina Koch was reportedly being promoted to “Space Plumber” to deal with a “controller ...
We’ve had a busy month in the business of measuring “Humanity.” Between the release of Humanity’s Last Exam (HLE) and the interactive bloodbath that was ARC-AGI-3, it’s becoming clear that we aren’t exactly building a new mind. We’re building a $600 billion filing cabinet that’s learned how to speak with a slight academic sneer. The ...
