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Micah Flee: Using Signal groups for activism . “Millions of people are taking to the streets against Trump’s rising authoritarianism. Communities around the US are organizing to defend against ICE raids, to protest Israeli genocide, for mutual aid, and for other forms of fighting fascism. Signal can help people safely organize in all of these contexts. Signal groups, in particular, are more […]

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/07/15/micah-flee-using-signal-groups-for-activism/

ResearchBuzz: Firehose | Individual posts from ResearchBuzz · Micah Flee: Using Signal groups for activism | ResearchBuzz: Firehose
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Easy ways to add watermarks to images and videos in Linux

shkspr.mobi/blog/2016/08/easy-

Mostly notes to myself :-)

Here is a quick way to add watermarks to photos and videos. All Linux command line based - so perfect if you've got a lot of images you want to manipulate.

Here is a delightful photo I've taken of a bee covered in pollen. I want to add a little copyright notice to it in order to discourage people using it without permission.

This command uses imagemagick's "annotate" option.

convert bee.jpg -gravity SouthEast -pointsize 16 -font TinyUnicode-Medium -fill "#fffdc3" -annotate +10+10 "(C) @edent" bee1.jpg

It produces this:

As you can see, a small watermark in the bottom right - specified using -gravity SouthEast. I've chosen a yellow colour for the font - in homage to the EURion anti-counterfeiting symbols.

The -annotate command contains the distance in pixels from the edges

For small text, I favour a Pixel Font like TinyUnicode - but feel free to choose one which suits your needs.

In this example, I position the message in the top left, with a larger font size, in pale blue, closer to the horizontal edge and further from the vertical edge.

convert bee.jpg -gravity NorthWest -pointsize 32 -font Helvetica -fill "#cee3f8" -annotate +1+50 "(C) @edent" bee2.jpg

Video

Adding a watermark to a video is more complex. This will require either ffmpeg - which isn't always installed by default on Linux - or avconv (I don't pretend to understand why ffmpeg and avconv split - but there we are).

I am going to overlay a transparent image on top of the video.

I've created this watermark image with a transparent background.

To overlay it, I use:

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -i watermark.png -filter_complex "overlay=1500:1000" output.mp4

or for avconv's overlay:

avconv -i input.mp4 -i watermark.png -filter_complex 'overlay=x=main_w-overlay_w-10:y=main_h-overlay_h-10' output.mp4

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/small.mp4

ffmpeg's overlay= option allows me to specify where the top left of the image will appear on the video. So adjust those number based on the resolution of your watermark and of your video.

avconv has a more complex syntax. It's possible to specify the absolute position using overlay=x=1500:y=1000 or to use relative positions with overlay=x=main_w-overlay_w-10:y=main_h-overlay_h-10.

Or, for a one-liner:

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vf "drawtext=text='@edent':x=10:y=H-th-10:fontfile=/home/edent/.local/share/fonts/OCRAEXT.TTF:fontsize=15:fontcolor=#cee3f8" -vcodec h264 -strict -2 output.mp4

So, there you have it - hopefully simple ways to watermark your media files.

Terence Eden’s Blog · Easy ways to add watermarks to images and videos in Linux
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How-To Geek: How to Turn an Image Into Google Sheets Data With OCR in Google Drive. “Copying data from an image into a Google Sheets file manually can be time-consuming and increases the chances of typos. Luckily, you can extract the information into your spreadsheet in just a few simple steps using the Optical Character Recognition (OCR) tool in Google Drive. Here’s how.”

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/07/14/how-to-geek-how-to-turn-an-image-into-google-sheets-data-with-ocr-in-google-drive/

ResearchBuzz: Firehose | Individual posts from ResearchBuzz · How-To Geek: How to Turn an Image Into Google Sheets Data With OCR in Google Drive | ResearchBuzz: Firehose
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Build your own "On This Day" page for WordPress

shkspr.mobi/blog/2023/07/build

I blog. A lot. Too much really. One of the things I like to do is see what I was rambling on about this time last year. And the year before that. And so on.

So, here's my On This Day page and here's how I built it.

WARNING Extremely quick and dirty code ahead!

This allows you to add a shortcode like [ edent_on_this_day ] to a page and have it auto generate a list of posts you published on this day in previous years. You may need to exclude that page from your cache.

Add these functions to your theme or to a new plugin:

function edent_on_this_day_shortcode() {    $today = getdate();    $args = array(        'date_query' => array(            array(                'month' => $today['mon'],                'day'   => $today['mday'],            ),        ),    );    $query = new WP_Query( $args );    $posts = $query->get_posts();    $today = getdate();    $pubDate =  date("D, d M Y") . " 00:00:00 GMT";    $output  = "<h2>From the " . date("jS \of F") . " archives</h2>";    $output .= "<ul>";    foreach($posts as $post) {        $title = $post->post_title;        $id    = $post->ID;        $link  = get_permalink($id);        $date  = $post->post_date;        $postDate = date("D, d M Y") . " " . date("h:i:s O", strtotime($date));        // $thumb = get_the_post_thumbnail($id, 'full');        $archive = "" . date("Y", strtotime($date)) . ": ";        //  Only add an item if it is before *this year*        if (            intval(date("Y", strtotime($date))) <  intval($today['year'])        ) {            $output .= '<li><a href="' . htmlspecialchars($link) .'">';            $output .= html_entity_decode($archive . $title) . '</a></li>';        }    }    $output .= "</ul>";    return $output;}//  Set up the shortcodefunction edent_on_this_day_shortcode_init() {    add_shortcode( 'edent_on_this_day', 'edent_on_this_day_shortcode' );}add_action( 'init', 'edent_on_this_day_shortcode_init' );

I really can't be bothered to deal with WordPress's complicated plugin publishing system - so feel free to copy the above with or without attribution.

I originally built this as an RSS feed - but decided recently that a regular HTML page was more useful. If you spot any bugs, you can contribute on GitHub.

Enjoy!

A graphic of a calendar showing the date "February 25 Sunday"
Terence Eden’s Blog · Build your own "On This Day" page for WordPress
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#blogging#HowTo#php

The Complete Guide to Installing, Configuring and Operating Plex Media Server on Ubuntu Server (14/14)

📺 Final Configurations through the Plex web app. (Beginner-Friendly!)

We complete the setup by configuring the Plex web app, adding media libraries and adjusting advanced settings like remote access, transcoding, and performance optimizations.
youtu.be/XLMJmpZ7QXs

youtu.be- YouTubeEnjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.

The Complete Guide to Installing, Configuring and Operating Plex Media Server on Ubuntu Server (13/14)

📺 To stream media, you need to transfer it to your PMS (Beginner-Friendly!)

This segment explains how to add media content to your Plex Media Server so you can start streaming. It covers how to transfer files from a Windows/Linux machine to you PMS.
youtu.be/iSovPnbwLZc

youtu.be- YouTubeEnjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.