Wordle cheat becomes a proper Open Source project

 

Some time ago I wrote the wordle_cheat tool. Although I created it as an open source tool on GITHUB, I never thought anyone else would help with it's development.

I was pleasantly surprised when a user mpa-LHutchinson volunteered to fix the issue We need a better dictionary

It seem that he/she was taking part in hacktoberfest - I wish them the best of luck.

How to sort Irish surnames which begin with O'

Many Irish surnames (including mine) start with O'. This can be troublesome on websites that treat the apostrophe after the O as an unmatched quotation mark. However, when dealing with names in the Irish language (a.k.a.. Gaelic), it gets even worse.

My name in the Irish language in Briain Ó Donnabhain. The word Ó in the Irish language means "from" - in this context it means "descended from"According to this web site, it is derived from the words "donn," which means "brown," and "dubhan," a derivative of "dubh," which means "black." Apparently my distant ancestors had black and brown cows and hence the name stuck and got passed down the generations.

Where it gets confusing is for the female members of the family. In the Irish language, the Ó prefix is reserved for males only. My daughter's Irish name is N. ní Donnabhain (the prefix ní indicates she was born to a Donnabhain). If my wife chose to use her Irish name it would be F. uí Donnabhain (the prefix uí indicate she is married to a Donnabhain).

It gets really complicated when producing a phone directory (if such things still exist) and voting register. Using normal sorting rules a single family would be sorted all over the register rather than having them grouped together as would be normal for families with English names.

However, a number of years ago a politician named Éamon Ó Cuív who was a politician representing an Irish speaking area managed to solve the problem (in fact he sorted it out - pun intended). He decided that the prefix in Irish should be ignored for sorting purposes. Unfortunately the authorities did not agree with Éamon and he was fored to take lega action in the High court to get his proposal adopded.

Some people claimed that his real reason for takin the case is that his name Ó Cuív is now appearing with the C names ar the top of the ballot paper rather than in the middle/end with the O names

Proud of my older brother the Life Coach

My older brother Cormac is a Professor of Neurology at Wake Forest University in North Carolina. This is impressive enough already, but now he has launched a 2nd career as a life coach (although most people of his age would be planning retirement instead).

If you are interested to learn more, check out his new web site https://www.cormacodonovan.com/

I am accidentally breaching Facebook's code of conduct?

 My last post to this blog was about a hack to eliminate advertisements on YouTube. I could see why Google would object to the post because following the instructions given would eliminate some of their revenue. However, it seems that Facebook has taken grave exception to the post.

Whenever I post to my blog, I normally cross post a link to it on my Facebook page. This means that Facebook users can easily find the cotent. However, this time Facebook notified me that it had breached their community content guidelines. Specifically they said I "used fraudulent means to induce users to click like on another site". I was so puzzled by this accusation, I tried sharing the link again. This time the content was removed within seconds. I could not see any way to appeal the decision.

Does anyone know what I can do to get the article un-blacklisted?

Eliminating advertisements in YouTube videos

 YouTube is a great site. It includes an amazing collection of educational and entertaining content. The only problem is that most videos have annoying advertisements. Google realise that these ads are annoying so they offer the possibility of signing up for a premium account, but since the cost of such an account can be over 150 euros per year most people decide to tolerate the ads.

Luckily one of my students told me about a free hack to eliminate advertisements for free. When you play a video on YouTube you will see that the URL is something like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXX where XXX is the unique ID of the video you are watching. If you alter the URL to insert a minus sign - between the t and u in youtube you will be brought to an ad free version of the same video (e.g. https://www.yout-ube.com/watch?v=XXX)

Like all hacks, there are limitations.

1. Sometimes when you try to load a video from yout-ube.com for the first time you will get an error message "cannot locate video". I am not 100% certain why this error occurs. It is probably somehing to do with content caching. However, simply prerssing the "reload" button in your browser (or type ctrl/cmd-R) will solve the problem.
2. When using this service the video will occupy the full screen and so you won't be able to see the "related videos" that you see when you visit the normal YouTube site. Many people will consider this an advantage.

Don't ask me how this works behind the scenes. All I know is the description from their website, but this describes how to use the service rather than describing what happens under the covers. However, I am sorry to say that the site will probably stop working once Google figure out how to block it - there is too much revenue at stake for them.

Is AI able to write a good song?

 

There is a lot of hype recently about Artificial Intelligence and so I decided to try out how good it would be at composing a song.

I used ChatGPT. First I fed it some basic facts about my daughter and her new husband. Then I asked it to write a song about them in the style of Christy Moore. Here is a video of my brother performing the song at their post wedding party.

I think the result is pretty impressive. Let me know what you think.

I don't think this song is going to be top of the charts, but if it was their might be a fight over who deserves to get the royalties. Is it me, my brother, Christy Moore or the creators of ChatGPT.

Planting my retirement tree

 When I retired last August, I had an idea to plant a tree to mark the occasion. It is a testament to how busy I have been that it has taken me 8 months to finally get around to it. 

What is really cool about this tree is that it has parts of a James Grieve apple tree combined with cox's orange pippin so the tree should be able to pollinate itself.

Fallng into the manosphere

Recently, my daughters were horrified to hear that I was listening to Jordan Peterson's podcast about his 12 rules for life. They worried that I was accidentally going to fall into the manosphere, but to be honest I find his rules to be more bizarre than offensive. In any case shocking my daughters is just a bonus :-)

Eventually  stopped following Jordan's blog, but more due to boredom than in shock. In general I think that people like Jordan should be allowed to speak freely. The whole point of free speech is that we tolerate people we disagree with rather than just people we agree with.

How fast is a drone delivery? Very fast

 

After I posted a video of a drone delivering coffee to my home, two questions arose:

• How fast was the delivery and was the coffee still hot on arrival?
• Was the coffee secure and was any spilled en-route?

The delivery was very fast - either 5 or 0 minutes depending upon you count:

• 8:06pm - I decided to order coffee
• 8:11pm - I pressed the 'confirm order' button. (The time taken was because it was my first order so I needed to input my address and card details etc.)
• 8:16pm - They sent me a message to say the order was on its way and to make sure no people or pets were in the landing area.
• 8:20pm - The delivery was made.

The coffee was in sealed cardboard containers and no spillage happened.

Why I am planning to vote Yes/No

Ireland will have 2 referendums on next Friday 8th February 2024. Both referendums are related to family status, but they are separate. I am planning to vote Yes in the first and No in the second. My reasons are influenced by this article and this article.

1. The first referendum concerns a commitment in the current constitution to support "the family based on marriage". The proposal is to replace this with a commitment to support families whether based on marriage or a "durable relationship". I think this is a welcome change reflecting the fact that many modern families do not consist of a married couple and their children e.g. single parents.
   Some people have complained that the new wording will effectively make people who have consciously chosen not to get married still have marriage type responsibilities. My take on this is to have no sympathy to people who have formed a family and are trying to evade the consequent responsibilities.
2. The second referendum is not quite as straight forward. The existing clause in the constitution says that the state shall value the caring done by women within the family. This clause has rightly been criticised for being sexist (when the constitution was drafted back in .the 1930s, nobody thought about house husbands). As the FLAC article states, it is unfortunate that we don't have the option to simply delete the offending clause. Instead the referendum proposes to replace the clause with a new one which values caring provided within the family. This might seem innocuous, but disability rights campaigners have said this wording will be used to force family members to do all of the caring. I am not as clear in my opinion on this referendum, but if in doubt I will vote no.

Which social media site to use

There are many different social networks in use at the moment. I thought I should write a quick summary of when each of the most popular ones is suitable to use:

• Main sites
• Facebook - is the default social network.  It has almost 3 billion active users (out of 8 billion people on earth) so there is a good chance that whoever you want to interact with is using Facebook.
• Instagram - Has 1.4 billion active users so it is almost as popular as facebook. In particular it is popular with the younger generation. It's main appeal is that it comes with cool photo touch up tools so everyone can look their best. Interestingly younger users like the fact that the older generation don't use Instagram so they can interact with their peers without any interference from their parent's generatiom.
• LinkedIn - Is a social network for professional use with an impressive 1 billion users. There is no need to feel embarrassed to be seen to be boasting on LinkedIn, because boasting about your achievements is more or less the point of the site. People post here to say things like:
• I passed an exam
• I moved to a new company
• I got promotion
• etc.
• Twitter/X - has only 500 million users. It is more of a broadcast site than a social network. Twitter users follow other users,  but this is not comparable to a friendship relationship on FaceBook. Because posts can be seen by anyone, Twitter is not suitable for semi-private updates that you only want your friends to see. Instead Twitter is used by politicians, journalists and other public figures to share thoughts with the world.
  Instead of having a fixed friend list, Twitter users congregate around hash tags. For example, if I was watching an international rugby match I might post my opinion of the referee's poor decision using the #6Nations tag. This post might be seen and responded to by other active users also using the same hash tag, rather than by a fixed friend list.
• TikTok - has 1 billion users, but only a small proportion of these post videos. The bulk of users mainly watch videos and/or share videos created by others. So it is not really a soocial network site as such.
• In addition to the major sites above, there are some interesting niche players such as:
• Strava - Is not a social networking site as such. It is a site for athletes (mainly runners and cyclists) to record their training. However, it has a number of social features where users can:
• post photos of their training spin.
• give kudos to each other (similar to a FaceBook like) 
• leave comments on a training spin
• Engage in competition with other athletes who are cycling/running the same sections of road even if they don't know each other 
• BeReal - aims to help you to find out what people are. really doing. People only post on a site like Instagram when they are doing something cool so users browsing their feed get the mistaken impression that everyone else is having fun. BeReal combats this by forcing users to post a status photo at a random time.

Wahoo colour codes

When my Wahoo is showing the route recorded, it uses a colour coding scheme to show how severe the climb is. I did some experiments today while cycling up and down Howth Hill and figured out what the colours mean.

• Downhill = Gray (no matter how steep the descent)
• Grade 0-4% = Green
• Grade 4-8% = Yellow
• Grade above 8% = Red 

For example, the picture on the right shows my screen after climbing the steep side of Howth hill. As you can see the climb is mostly yellow (4-8%) with only a bit of red (after passing the church) and a little bit of green (near the top of the climb it levels out).

Drone delivery comes to Dublin 15

 I was recently  notified that the Manna drone delivery service is coming to Dublin 15. This was a cause of great excitement. I know that drone delivery has been going on for some time in North Co. Dublin, but I personally never had the thrill of eating drone delivered food yet.

The first step is to install the phone app which I did last week. This automatically detected that I was in the greater Blanchardstown area and so they told me the service was coming soon.

This morning (about 9:10 am) the app notified me that I could apply for a free trial of the service. I love free stuff so I instantly click on the necessary buttons to say I wanted it dropped in the back garden (there are cars parked out front). They told me that expected delivery was 10:03am, so I felt free to run a quick errand before it arrived. This was a mistake because the delivery arrived early around 9:45am and I missed seeing it.

Nevertheless I did get to consume the free goodies. The delivery was in a sturdy paper bag as you can see in the picture. A long thin string was used to attach the bag to the drone and this was dropped in the garden too.

I tried to order a real meal from the service, but they are not taking orders yet. Therefore I can't comment on whether it is good value for money.