I’m afraid I saw the headline and immediately flashbacked to this:
Category: Weird Science
How to Use Claude.ai for Cleaning Up Transcriptions
This article is primarily about the Claude.ai feature called “projects,” but his example project is about using Claude to cleanup the nasty, incoherent speech-to-text output that Word and similar programs spit out. I’ve tested the commands involved in the free version of Claude, and they work reasonably well. I still went back and reworded and expanded a bunch of stuff after I used it, but it was nice having something that would reliably cut out the nonsense words and repetitions and add some kind of punctuation. Here are the commands; just copy and paste into Claude’s chat window, and upload a short document with your latest chunk of dictation. As always with AI, check the company’s privacy and training policies before feeding it anything of a personal or sensitive nature.
Continue reading “How to Use Claude.ai for Cleaning Up Transcriptions”Goodbye, Wide Books
For most of my time self-publishing, I have tried to make my books available on a wide variety of platforms, sometimes after a period where a newly published book was exclusive to Kindle. However, Apple has decided that self-published authors must register as traders under the EU’s Digital Services Act, which places additional responsibilities on the authors, which may potentially include exposing their legal name and address to the public, and which in turn may enable cyberbullying of authors. Amazon has made no official statement, but the chatter among veteran writers on the Kindle Direct Publishing forums suggests that self-publishing writers might be more correctly viewed as “consignors” rather than traders. The other e-book platforms have also made no official statement.
As a precautionary measure, I have delisted all my books on non-Amazon platforms, and will soon delete my mailing list. As an unfortunate side effect, Slaying a Tyrant and Marrying a Monster will no longer be “permafree” at some point in the near future, but I hope to enroll my formerly wide-release books in Kindle Unlimited, which will at least reduce the expense of reading my books for KU subscribers. If you are interested in what Jaglion Press has to offer, including the upcoming sequel to Wolf’s Trail, please follow me on WordPress or on Amazon. Thank you!
Sign of the Times, Austen Edition…
(Disclaimer: I do have a Mr. Collins plot bunny I might write sometime, in which he commits Obfuscating Stupidity and is actually a pretty smart guy underneath, but I don’t intend to invalidate the Bennets’ experiences of him, or demonize Charlotte in the process.)
Rather than give us what would be the first traditional P&P adaptation in 20 years, and the first BBC adaptation in 30 years, the Beeb opts to adapt some fan novel that tries to nice-ify the self-centered hipster known as Mary Bennet, and the clueless buffoon known as Mr. Collins, at the expense of more interesting characters like Charlotte Lucas. And of course, flawed but self-aware Mr. Bennet has horns and a tail. (Although in fairness, it sounds like the author is an equal opportunity hater when it comes to the Bennet parents, which is a reasonable take). And somehow this deserves to be ten episodes(1) long, nearly twice as long as any actual P&P miniseries ever made? And it’s from the modern Dr. Who(2) people?
No, thank you.
(1) of an unspecified length, but it seems like the BBC’s norm in recent years has been for episodes to run about an hour.
(2) Disclaimer: am not a Doctor Who fan in general, so I generally don’t see the involvement of behind-the-scenes people from that franchise in other stuff as being a good thing.
Music by Suno Monday: Rikki Tikki Tavi
I know the female vocalist is kind of a different choice, but just pretend that it’s Rikki’s ally, the female tailor-bird, singing: https://suno.com/song/9b369786-912d-41d6-aa94-9c456021ea54
Also none of the male versions that Suno generated really captured the menacing agility of Rikki the mongoose and Nag the cobra.
If you’re not familiar with the story, the Chuck Jones adaptation is pretty faithful, with word for word narration by Orson Welles, and can be viewed here: https://archive.org/details/rikkitikkitavi_201701
State of the Author, Late 2024
The sequel to Wolf’s Trail is in the late stages of drafting – about 48K with maybe a couple thousand more words to go. Just moving very slowly because I’ve been sick with some respiratory thing for over a month and a half at this point. Starting to do better, which means the creative brain(1) is starting to come back online. With some luck, I should be done by the end of September, take some time off to work on other stuff in October, polish it in November, release by the end of December (around the same time the first book did last year).
(1) as opposed to the critical brain, which you’ve seen a lot of lately with the Jane Austen adaptation posts and the Rings of Power posts
Music by Suno Monday: Gods of the Copybook Headings
https://suno.com/song/b9544b42-9186-4039-a749-493aeea897b8
For those concerned about the misuses of LLMs, aka AIs, it’s worth noting that Suno will literally block you from using artists names in prompts, and this Kipling poem is to the best of my knowledge in the public domain.
Adapting Jane Austen: Sense and Sensibility, the Rest of the Characters
I felt that the Dashwoods, Ferrarses, and Edward’s secret fiancee needed to all be treated in one post, so here we are with the rest of this large cast of characters…
Continue reading “Adapting Jane Austen: Sense and Sensibility, the Rest of the Characters”Adapting Jane Austen: Sense and Sensibility, The Dashwoods and Ferrarses
I recently finished listening to this book on Librivox (the Karen Savage reading), and decided to start blogging again about adapting Jane Austen. For an introductory essay on the subject, go here. For subsequent essay, click on the Jane Austen category in this blog. As usual, we start with the characters:
Continue reading “Adapting Jane Austen: Sense and Sensibility, The Dashwoods and Ferrarses”Weird Wednesday: Prisencolinensinainciusol
Okay, from a certain point of view, this should be kind of disturbing: an Italian singer, father of the actress who played the devil in Passion of the Christ, is practicing Babel-style confusion of tongues while his grimaces, imposing teeth and bad hair make him look a bit like Henry Blake, Sir Christopher Lee’s Hyde-style persona from I Monster.
But really, it’s just a fun parody of American style pop songs done with nonsense lyrics. Enjoy!
Jaglion Press 