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Python code to list movie details
This post and code has been updated as on 21th November 2019. The other day, I wanted to retrieve posts from my own blog corresponding to a list of movies from IMDB. If not found in my blog, it should retrieve the information from Wikipedia. I thought I can cook-up a Python script for it in an hour or so. It turned out to be nearly more than a full days work. Reasons for the long time taken were my level of Python skills, the unavailability of public APIs for IMDB, learning on how to call IMDB package, Wikipedia package, the WordPress APIs (initially I went with using RSS from…
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Batch convert image files in Windows
Having been a Windows GUI guy for nearly two decades, I am rediscovering the charm of command-line and Windows Batch files to automate repetitive tasks. A few weeks back, I had shared a batch file to backup my WordPress blog running in Windows. In this post, I am sharing a simple batch file to resize all the images in a folder using the powerful image manipulation library called ImageMagick. Earlier, I was using Adobe Photoshop Elements’ “Process Multiple Files” applet for this purpose. ImageMagick is open-source and free! An awesome tool chest that offers numerous image editing functions, and, it runs on Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, Android and iOS.…
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Making a PDF ebook with Tamil text searchable and to get a clean scan copy
சில நாட்களுக்கு முன் நண்பர் மணி மணிவண்ணன் அவரது பேஸ்புக் பக்கத்தில், தமிழ்நாட்டுப் பாடநூல் நிறுவனம், சென்னை, 1985இல் வெளியிட்ட”தமிழ்- தமிழ் அகரமுதலி” என்ற நூல் இலவசமாக மின் புத்தக வடிவில் கிடைக்கிறது எனவும், அதன் இணைப்பையும் கொடுத்திருந்தார். பயனுள்ள நூல் இது. உடனே பதிவிறக்கம் செய்தேன். தமிழ் இணையக் கல்விக்கழகம் இந்த நூலை நல்ல முறையில் வருடி, நகல் எடுத்திருக்கிறார்கள். ஒரே ஒரு குறை, மின் நூலில், தமிழில் தேட முடியவில்லை – அது ஏனென்றால், எளிதாகக் கிடைக்கும் ஒளி எழுத்துணரி செயலிகளில், தமிழ் இப்போது தான் வந்திருக்கிறது. அதனால் இறக்கம் செய்த மின் நூலை தேசாரக்ட் என்னும் இலவச செயலியைக் கொண்டு ஒளி எழுத்துணரிச் செய்து புதிய பதிவாகக் கொடுத்துள்ளேன். அதை எப்படிச் செய்தேன் என்பதைக் கீழே சொல்லியுள்ளேன். Recently my friend Mr Mani Manivannan had shared a link to download for free, a Tamil-Tamil-Dictionary published in 1985 by Tamil Nadu Text Book…
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A Windows batch file to do a simple backup of a WordPress site
I have a production WordPress blog site that is hosted on IIS & Windows Server 2016. To do regular backups of the web folder and the MySQL database, I use the super-useful WordPress Plugin – UpdraftPlus. It creates backup files and uploads them automatically to Google Drive/One Drive/AWS/DropBox & more. Once in a year or so, I do a manual backup, which involves me (manually) selecting the folders, then running 7-Zip to create the backup files. Every time I do this, I have to remember to exclude the UpdraftPlus temporary folder, otherwise, the resulting backup file will be ginormous as they will be including the huge UpdraftPlus backup files. Today,…
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Python and Google Cloud Vision for Tamil text
Update: If you are looking for a simpler way to do Tamil Text OCR, then check this post which shows how you can do with batch files. Learning anything new is NOT easy. And doing it yourself is tough after for years you had a team who can do it faster and better than you. I am talking about me (learning &) writing code in Python programming language. A few weeks ago, I wrote (mostly copy ‘n’ paste) a couple of snippets in Python to do Speech To Text, and, Text to Voice, for the Tamil language – the blog post is here. I followed that with a small program…
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Python code snippets for Speech in Tamil
Using Python is fun. In a matter of minutes, I was able to build a rudimentary speech to text recognition app, for Tamil. And after that, in reverse, that is, to speak out loud a sentence of given Tamil text. Speech to Text: I got the base code from here. You need to install SpeechRecognition package (available through PIP) and PyAudio (available through PIP in Linux, but on Windows, you need to install appropriate package from here). Text to Speech: When I posted the above code, I got a reader request for a code that does the reverse – to speak out loud a sentence of given Tamil text. I…
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Writing .NET Core apps for Windows, Mac OS & Linux
Having got the newly released “Visual Studio 2017” installed in my PC, I decided to try writing cross-platform .NET Core Apps. I started with the simplest of apps, to write a console app and see how it goes. To follow along you can download Visual Studio Community edition, which is free or the commercial versions. You can refer to this Microsoft doc titled “Building a C# Hello World Application with .NET Core with Visual Studio 2017” for additional information on what I am doing here. The next step is IMPORTANT. You need to access the .csproj file by right-clicking on the project in solution explorer and select “Edit MyConsoleApp.csproj”. CSProj…
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Visual Basic 6.0
Almost after two decades, today I ran “Visual Basic 6.0” installer and setup the programming platform that I love a lot. In a “Windows 7” OS the setup ran fast. I was able to quickly write a “Hello World” program, compile and generate an application EXE. The EXE that got generated was just 16KB in size!!! and it ran perfectly in “Windows 10”.
