python Archives - How To Train Your Robot

2026-01-262026-01-26

Importing old Silence Texts/SMS to QKSMS/Android

If you’re like me you may have preferred the old open-source Silence app, over the default Android’s text messages for many years… It had an optional encrypt option that sometimes worked, it had its own backup/restore to restore to a new phone, but unfortunately that is incompatible with others and now has an incompatibility warning with Android 15…

2024-03-142024-03-22

Green-screening a recursive green screen for a unique Pie-day effect

If you’ve seen any behind-the-scenes view of any movie you probably are familiar with the green-screen – generally a way to combine an actor with some prerecorded or computer generated background. There are some unique effects you can do with this yourself using OpenCV!

2023-12-052023-12-05

Learning from previous mistakes – pulling historical vulnerability information from various plugins

If you keep a watch on software security newsletters or blogs like the Wordfence blog, you’ll know there are a good number of new detected defects and vulnerabilities on a regular basis, even on well known plugins and software. It’s worth looking into the details of how this happens especially if you work on PHP software from time to time. Thankfully there are public records which let you compare to look at how these are fixed:

2023-06-242023-06-24

How to build your own ChatGPT-style chat bot

In recent months, new inventions like ChatGPT have been said to be possibly the end of society, or the saving of society… but maybe this is something that is something very similar to what has been hyped before?

2023-04-022023-04-19

Another look at Zipf’s law, and you can chart it yourself!

In a previous post I showed some interesting facts about Zipf’s law and how many different things show a pattern of logarithmic decrease with the most popular or numerous item largely being much more so than the very rare ones – in a logarithmic pattern. Let’s look at that pattern and how you can chart it…

2022-11-232022-12-05

Wordle game analysis with Python

Wordle is an interesting word game in the style of the old mastermind game. You can try it out on NYT puzzle page or other places. Check it out and try a round!

2022-10-222022-10-22

Plus codes as an easy location-sharing option

You may know of grid squares for general location in a ham radio contest, or the What3Words system with its easy access if you have network access, but there is another often-used location project you may not have heard of which is also easier than sharing a long latitude and longitude number!

2022-07-032022-07-03

Testing solutions to the 100-prisoners puzzle.

Both Matt Parker and the Youtube Veritasium channel have reviewed the surprising best practice for the 100 prisoners puzzle. The puzzle is a way to find a solution that will let the prisoners win with the most probability. If you have not seen this already please see the video here before some spoilers below.

2022-06-182022-06-18

OpenShot on Ubuntu 22.04

If you install OpenShot on Ubuntu 22.04 or other newer Linux distributions you may note that it doesn’t run – which is an easy fix. Running the program from the terminal gave an error:

2022-05-232022-05-30

Packaging a Python application for ArchLinux/Manjaro Linux

In a previous howto I showed how to build a .deb installer file for a Python program. This would work for the majority of systems with Debian/Ubuntu/Linux Mint etc. However there are many users on Arch Linux or Manjaro, which do not take this .deb installer file. Some Linux computers such as the popular (and currently out of stock 🙁 ) Pinebook laptop, and Pinephone come with Manjaro Linux, which takes Arch packages. Thankfully there is an easy way to add a package to the AUR for these Arch-based devices.