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  <title>Vin-Dit.org</title><description>John Holland's Blog</description>
  <link>https://vin-dit.org</link>
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  <lastBuildDate>Sun, 15 Mar 2026 07:10:00 EST</lastBuildDate>
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  <title>Charlie Don't Surf</title>
    <description><![CDATA[<a href="https://vin-dit.org/CharlieSub.mp4">CharlieSub.mp4</a>The Clash "Charlie Don't Surf" with subtitles. ]]></description>
   <link>https://vin-dit.org/index.html#2026-07-20</link>
<guid>https://vin-dit.org/index.html#2026-07-20</guid> 
   <pubDate>Mon, 20 Jul 2026 12:19:17 -0400</pubDate> 
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  <title>Little Marco</title>
    <description><![CDATA[I'm like militantly against Generative AI; I mean it's like an article of faith. But I had to get this in HD, it's funny: <a href="https://vin-dit.org/LittleMarco.mp4">LittleMarco.mp4</a> ]]></description>
   <link>https://vin-dit.org/index.html#2026-07-13</link>
<guid>https://vin-dit.org/index.html#2026-07-13</guid> 
   <pubDate>Mon, 13 Jul 2026 13:16:14 -0400</pubDate> 
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  <title>www.rfc.org</title>
    <description>The Rosenberg Fund for Children was established in 1990 to support the children of people in trouble for their activism. I found out about it in an article in the Atlantic by someone who interviewed their (Julius and Ethel Rosenberg's) children (who are now grandparents). I also found out, which I hadn't known, that Abel and Anne Meeropol took them in when that became possible, allowing them to have as normal of childhoods as was possible. Abel Meeropol wrote "Strange Fruit", which Billy Holiday made famous, and which earned him some money that helped this family (Abel and Anne had had two children stillborn prior to adopting Michael and Robby) have a nice life. When Michael and Robby were older, they took up for their birth parents. The Atlantic article is very interesting and moving. #AbolishTheDeathPenalty. </description>
   <link>https://vin-dit.org/index.html#2026-07-10</link>
<guid>https://vin-dit.org/index.html#2026-07-10</guid> 
   <pubDate>Fri, 10 Jul 2026 19:21:51 -0400</pubDate> 
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  <title>2026-07-08</title>
    <description><![CDATA[<img src="https://vin-dit.org/DharmaBums.jpeg" width="50%" alt="picture of a book cover for The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac"> ]]></description>
   <link>https://vin-dit.org/index.html#2026-07-08</link>
<guid>https://vin-dit.org/index.html#2026-07-08</guid> 
   <pubDate>Wed, 08 Jul 2026 18:30:13 -0400</pubDate> 
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  <title>XScreensaver work</title>
    <description><![CDATA[ <a href="https://www.jwz.org/xscreensaver/">https://www.jwz.org/xscreensaver/ </a> I improved my xscreensaver situation today. Got the Linux desktop to keep it on, rather than blanking the screen, then on the MacBook and Mac Mini, the Random Screensaver was not working, it's somewhat better. I downloaded the source, and trying to build the whole project with Xcode was failing, but I was able to build the Random one and after installing it, that's working much better. XScreensaver is the bomb! Not powering down displays on plugged in computers to enjoy the show but hey, we're on solar (or at least we are according to the electric company.) ]]></description>
   <link>https://vin-dit.org/index.html#2026-07-02</link>
<guid>https://vin-dit.org/index.html#2026-07-02</guid> 
   <pubDate>Thu, 02 Jul 2026 16:23:24 -0400</pubDate> 
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  <title>Adri Galler Lastra</title>
    <description><![CDATA[created this page <a href="https://vin-dit.org/adri.html">adri.html</a> about our wonderful friend, Adri Galler Lastra. <img src="https://vin-dit.org/adri2.png" width="50%" alt="Adri Galler and a dog smiling at each other in the water"> ]]> </description>
   <link>https://vin-dit.org/index.html#2026-07-01.2</link>
<guid>https://vin-dit.org/index.html#2026-07-01.2</guid> 
   <pubDate>Wed, 01 Jul 2026 12:58:59 -0400</pubDate> 
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  <title>First of the month</title>
    <description>Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit!</description>
   <link>https://vin-dit.org/index.html#2026-07-01</link>
<guid>https://vin-dit.org/index.html#2026-07-01</guid> 
   <pubDate>Wed, 01 Jul 2026 05:09:39 -0400</pubDate> 
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  <title>2026-06-26.2</title>
    <description><![CDATA[Found my way to the history of my viewing that Youtube maintains. OMG! 1. That's scary. 2. I've been on about the same crap for over a decade! I like this: <a href="https://vin-dit.org/Unix.mp4">Unix.mp4</a> I want this file manager. And I think that's a three-button mouse with no wheel. I love computers in movies! ]]></description>
   <link>https://vin-dit.org/index.html#2026-06-26.2</link>
<guid>https://vin-dit.org/index.html#2026-06-26.2</guid> 
   <pubDate>Fri, 26 Jun 2026 16:57:44 -0400</pubDate> 
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  <title>Eleanor Rigby</title>
    <description><![CDATA[<a href="https://vin-dit.org/EleanorRigby.mp4">EleanorRigby.mp4</a> ]]></description>
   <link>https://vin-dit.org/index.html#2026-06-26</link>
<guid>https://vin-dit.org/index.html#2026-06-26</guid> 
   <pubDate>Fri, 26 Jun 2026 15:42:55 -0400</pubDate> 
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  <title>Java</title>
    <description><![CDATA[<a href="https://vin-dit.org/DeadMen.mp4">DeadMen.mp4</a>]]></description>
   <link>https://vin-dit.org/index.html#2026-06-23</link>
<guid>https://vin-dit.org/index.html#2026-06-23</guid> 
   <pubDate>Tue, 23 Jun 2026 15:04:28 -0400</pubDate> 
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  <title>2026-06-21</title>
  <description>
	  <![CDATA[You've found it - something worthwhile. You're maybe in a hurry or impatient. And it says: "To continue, please create an account or log in with Google or Apple." . So you say, "sure" and click. Then you have to enter your Google/Apple password, maybe even email. Guess what? You just gave access to your main email to some scammers. And with that, they can wreak huge havoc on your life. 
		  <br/><br/> I just read something that went into this at length. You really have to see that URL address bar and scrutinize the address in it. <br/><br/> In related news, "AI" is giving bad actors a lot of new tools to "spearphish" you (Carefully constructed targeted attempts to get you to give up that password, etc. ) It worked for John Podesta.....Be careful out there.  ]]>
  </description>
   <link>https://vin-dit.org/index.html#2026-06-21</link>
<guid>https://vin-dit.org/index.html#2026-06-21</guid> 
   <pubDate>Sun, 21 Jun 2026 08:38:35 -0400</pubDate> 
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  <title>What I wanted to read but it was more than three minutes.....</title>
    <description><![CDATA[<a href="https://vin-dit.org/DataCenters.pdf">DataCenters.pdf</a>&nbsp;Something I wrote. What I wanted to read to the County Council, but it would have taken more than 3 minutes.]]></description>
   <link>https://vin-dit.org/index.html#2026-06-18</link>
<guid>https://vin-dit.org/index.html#2026-06-18</guid> 
   <pubDate>Thu, 18 Jun 2026 12:13:19 -0400</pubDate> 
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  <title>I appear in public....</title>
    <description><![CDATA[<a href="https://vin-dit.org/MeCountyCouncil-06-16-2026.mp4">Me at the County Council today trying to make the case that generative AI is a bad thing for society....</a>]]></description>
   <link>https://vin-dit.org/index.html#2026-06-16</link>
<guid>https://vin-dit.org/index.html#2026-06-16</guid> 
   <pubDate>Tue, 16 Jun 2026 18:58:14 -0400</pubDate> 
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  <title>Arch, Windows, Debian, port forwarding,.....</title>
    <description>Think maybe deleting and recreating the port forwarding rules in the Fios router that send web traffic to a Linux server internally resolved the problem. So it may not have been Windows' fault. Things working now. Also, somewhat concerned about the Arch Linux AUR supply-chain attack. I've been worrying about supply chain stuff for a while, and this is as close as I've come to being compromised by it. This is giving me doubts about the whole idea of open source collaboration. Right now this (the home.vin-dit.org version) is on a Debian VM. Is Debian more trustworthy than Arch? I looked at a post by a Debian developer on planet.debian.org of some commits he made to backport security fixes. Looked like a lot of tricky C code, completely beyond me. Should I have faith in that? Really HATE that this security/hacking crap ruins the Free Software utopia, as I like to imagine it.</description>
   <link>https://vin-dit.org/index.html#2026-06-14</link>
<guid>https://vin-dit.org/index.html#2026-06-14</guid> 
   <pubDate>Sun, 14 Jun 2026 06:56:28 -0400</pubDate> 
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  <title>Oh, Windows.....</title>
    <description><![CDATA[Windows is vexing me, it's not forwarding traffic again. Booting that box back into Arch!]]></description>
   <link>https://vin-dit.org/index.html#2026-06-11.3</link>
<guid>https://vin-dit.org/index.html#2026-06-11.3</guid> 
   <pubDate>Thu, 11 Jun 2026 09:40:42 -0400</pubDate> 
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  <title>Stella mp3 </title>
    <description><![CDATA[The recording: <a href="https://vin-dit.org/StellaByStarlight1964.mp3">StellaByStarlight1964.mp3<img src="https://vin-dit.org/MyFunnyValentineCover.jpg" width="50%" alt="the cover of the album My Funny Valentine by Miles Davis" /></a>]]></description>
   <link>https://vin-dit.org/index.html#2026-06-11.2</link>
<guid>https://vin-dit.org/index.html#2026-06-11.2</guid> 
   <pubDate>Thu, 11 Jun 2026 09:18:53 -0400</pubDate> 
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  <title>Stella By Starlight</title>
    <description><![CDATA[OK jazz folks - I have a transcription (I've had for almost 50 years!) of Herbie's solo on Stella by Starlight on the My Funny Valentine album. I don't think I ever really digested it before. I've been playing along with that tune a little, aided by finding these changes that are somewhat like what they're doing. The chord substitutions/reharmonizations they do are incredible! The bass notes Ron Carter plays go to some very interesting places. I've listened to it so many times, but never really tried to pick it apart. It's kind of beyond me, but fun to attempt to understand. They're not doing the Real Book changes, in large part. It's like they have ESP.  I love that album so much.
A starting point in looking at it was realizing that Herbie's solo starts about eight bars into the chorus and ends at a strange point as well, where Miles comes back. It's like a perfect piece of music that is very loosely based on the tune. <img src="https://vin-dit.org/Stella-By-Starlight64-changes.jpg" width="50%" alt="chord chart for Stella by Starlight as performed by Miles Davis live in 1964">(right-click or whatever to see at normal size) <a href="https://vin-dit.org/StellaByStarlightHancock.pdf">StellaByStarlightHancock.pdf <img src="https://vin-dit.org/StellaScreenshot.jpg" width="50%" alt="an image of the first page of a transcription of Herbie Hancock's solo on Stella By Starlight(1964)" /></a> The penciled in changes from the Real book should not be paid much attention to. Transcription by the great Bill Dobbins of Eastman. ]]></description>
   <link>https://vin-dit.org/index.html#2026-06-11</link>
<guid>https://vin-dit.org/index.html#2026-06-11</guid> 
   <pubDate>Thu, 11 Jun 2026 09:10:50 -0400</pubDate> 
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  <title>Claude prevails</title>
    <description>Gave Claude (free version) online AI the same prompt deepseek locally didn't do well with. (the long one, with "you're confused. throw away all your previous reasoning." skipped.) It nailed it immediately, including unit tests. Kind of scary.
</description>
   <link>https://vin-dit.org/index.html#2026-06-09</link>
<guid>https://vin-dit.org/index.html#2026-06-09</guid> 
   <pubDate>Tue, 09 Jun 2026 17:15:27 -0400</pubDate> 
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  <title>Bad AI. Bad, bad AI.</title>
    <description><![CDATA[OK, looked at the code it generated - it's fundamentally wrong! It gets a number of spaces to go between each word but then doesn't use it, just putting one space between each word, plus one if the gap number is &lt; the remainder (see the prompt below). So it'll never be right. It compounds it by putting padding (spaces) at the end of the line, which is completely the opposite of the assignment!]]></description>
   <link>https://vin-dit.org/index.html#2026-06-02.3</link>
<guid>https://vin-dit.org/index.html#2026-06-02.3</guid> 
   <pubDate>Tue, 02 Jun 2026 11:54:28 -0400</pubDate> 
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  <title>More AI fun</title>
    <description><![CDATA[More about deepseek and justifiying text; <p></p>
Prompt that it spun around on for a long time: <p>
generate a Rust program with Cargo.toml file to justify an ASCII text file. take as input the file name and the desired line width. justify each line by inserting additional spaces between words, distributing the spaces evenly.
</p>
A prompt it's churning on now, seeming to be putting out code:
<p>
    you’re confused. throw away all your previous reasoning. generate a Rust program with Cargo.toml file to justify an ASCII text file. take as input the file name and the desired line width. justify each line by inserting additional spaces between words, distributing the spaces evenly. That is, for each line: if the line as 0 or 1 words, output it as is without changing it. Otherwise, add up the length of the words into total_word_length, add the number of gaps between words to that to get total_content_length, subtract that from desired line width to get number of spaces to add. Do integer division on number of spaces to add to get the quotient (base number of spaces to add between words to the existing space, which will be 1) and the remainder (additional number of spaces to add to the line). remainder should be &lt; number of gaps. as you construct the spaces for each gap while building the output line, if the index of the gap &lt; the remainder, add an additional space so as to use up the remainder from the division. So each gap will have 1 space (which was there already) plus additional spaces of an amount equal to the quotient of the division (base number of spaces to add) plus the extra space from the remainder, when it is one if the first i &lt; remainder gaps.
</p>
The churning on the first prompt was hard to take, it was like a very confused dim programmer. 
<p></p>
    Playing right now with the result of the second prompt. It doesn't compile and referenced an old version of a dependency. Playing with it more, it really got into trouble with that dependency, called "clap" which is used for command line argument parsing.  I gave it this prompt: <p>
    this is good but it doesn’t quite work, the clap stuff for argument parsing isn’t working. Can you generate the same program using a different library for argument parsing?</p>
    It's yammering away. 
    <p></p>This reminds me of a joke a comedian told, where a person is vacuuming the floor, and sees that the vacuum won't pick up something. So they pick up the something and look at it, and then put it back down and try again to get the vacuum to pick it up. They are more interested in the vacuum working right than in getting the floor clean. (Always bad when you have to explain a joke). 
    <br><br>The idea of a sort of robot that writes code is very compelling, and when it doesn't work right away, I want to get it to work. It makes the idea of using my head to write the code seem like too much effort.  I'm writing this as I play with the AI and running its output. I hardcoded the filename and width as it still was making up command line parsing that didn't work. It runs, but panics. As a test, my hand-coded version can work with the same input and width. Trying a couple other tweaks, but still panics. I really don't want to get into the weeds of fixing this program. Maybe it would have better luck in Python? 🤷]]></description>
   <link>https://vin-dit.org/index.html#2026-06-02.2</link>
<guid>https://vin-dit.org/index.html#2026-06-02.2</guid> 
   <pubDate>Tue, 02 Jun 2026 11:15:49 -0400</pubDate> 
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  <title>Playing with "AI" again</title>
    <description><![CDATA[Fired up "deepseek-r1:14b" again on my Linux desktop and watching it try and write a Rust program to justify text. see <a href="https://vin-dit.org/justify.html">justify.html</a>. A problem I worked on long ago. (It's not very hard. ) The 'openweb-ui' docker image puts a web front end on it. It's painful to watch the words trickle out as it "reason"s . It's sort of hard not to look at, like a video of a car crash or something.  Installing and running this stuff required a lot of downloading, but it supposedly is self-contained after that. I guess it is sort of a massive blob of data in a very complex structure with a complex algorithm that has some randomness, to put it in old school computer terms. So far it's still toiling away on little tests of its inner function. It seems to have confused extra spaces to be added between words with the total desired amounts of space between words. It did better on the card game "War". <p></p>
It is pretty remarkable this is possible, and presumably a higher quality model could do better. I wish people weren't saying this stuff is inevitable, though. Is anyone steering the ship of humanity?]]></description>
   <link>https://vin-dit.org/index.html#2026-06-02</link>
<guid>https://vin-dit.org/index.html#2026-06-02</guid> 
   <pubDate>Tue, 02 Jun 2026 10:45:55 -0400</pubDate> 
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  <title>Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit!</title>
    <description>Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit!</description>
   <link>https://vin-dit.org/index.html#2026-06-01</link>
<guid>https://vin-dit.org/index.html#2026-06-01</guid> 
   <pubDate>Mon, 01 Jun 2026 05:10:16 -0400</pubDate> 
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