{"id":255,"date":"2024-10-21T11:07:11","date_gmt":"2024-10-21T15:07:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/xlab\/?p=255"},"modified":"2024-10-21T11:08:02","modified_gmt":"2024-10-21T15:08:02","slug":"homebrewed-software-a-handwriting-transcription-app","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/xlab\/2024\/homebrewed-software-a-handwriting-transcription-app\/","title":{"rendered":"Homebrewed Software: A Handwriting Transcription App"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Shawn Graham<\/em><\/p>\n

Continuing from the last experiment <\/a>and ruminating on Drew Breunig’s taxonomy of use cases for AI<\/a> (in short: gods, interns, cogs, and toys) as well as ‘homecooked software<\/a>‘ I undertook to use Anthrophic’s ‘Claude’ model to see what I could do. I’m building a cog via Claude’s ‘artifacts’ feature which allows you to iterate on small code snippets, html, etc – Simon Willison does this a lot<\/a> so blame him.<\/p>\n

Anyway, the result is a web-app that I called ‘handwriter’ – which is a terrible name – but permits someone to pass images and multi-page pdfs through the Gemini vision model and get transcribed text back. It handles the prompting and image manipulation.<\/p>\n

You can find it at https:\/\/github.com\/shawngraham\/handwriter <\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"\"

An image from the 1917 wartime diary of Captain William Andrew White, used in Jeff Blackadar’s Programming Historian tutorial on transcribing handwriting.<\/p><\/div>\n

\"\"

Transcription provided by Gemini<\/p><\/div>\n

Azure’s transcription, as reported in Jeff Blackadar’s Programming Historian lesson:<\/p>\n

DECEMBRE\r\n28 VENDREDI. Ss Innocents\r\n362-3\r\nclear and cold, - lovely out.\r\nVisit from mme Thomas D\r\nfive daughters from\r\nPontarle\u00edr.\r\nyour Doctor, Major merletti\r\narrived- good fellow\r\nNot orders to go with Capt\r\nMarrison Vit Road and 200\r\nmen to another part of\r\nFrance\r\nprote Inier\r\nSittley wip mess account\r\nCash so francs you the mouth<\/code><\/pre>\n
<\/p>\n
Gemini’s transcription, via my little app:<\/p>\n
\r\nDECEMBRE\r\n28 VENDREDI. Ss Innocents 362-3\r\n\r\nClear and cold - lovely out.\r\nVisit from Mme Thomas &\r\nfive daughters from\r\nPontarlier.\r\nNew Doctor, Major Merritt\r\narrived - good fellow.\r\nGot orders to go with Capt.\r\nMorrison (Lt-Hod) and 200\r\nmen to southern part of\r\nFrance.\r\nWrote Dyer my account -\r\nSettled up mess a\/c for the month\r\nCost 30 francs for the month\r\n\r\n<\/code><\/pre>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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I’m building a cog via Claude’s ‘artifacts’ feature which allows you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[68,41,97],"yoast_head":"\nHomebrewed Software: A Handwriting Transcription App - 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