Mon 14 September 2026

Shell Script Reference for NATO Phonetic Alphabet

Posted by Al Sweigart in misc   

If you've ever had to spell something out over the phone by saying, "D as in Dog", you've reinvented the NATO Phonetic Alphabet. This is an international standard set of words for letters in cases where you are likely to be misheard. Every now and then I like to practice it by reading out words using it. I'd always look up the Wikipedia page for a reference but I wanted an easy, offline reference as well. I generated simple shell scripts for macOS, Windows, and Linux so that when you enter nato into a terminal window, you get a reference. You can also give the scripts text to spell out as well: nato foo produces Foxtrot Oscar Oscar.

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Fri 04 September 2026

Image Border Remover / Cropper and Adder Apps

Posted by Al Sweigart in misc   

View the Image Border Remover / Cropper app in your browser. View the Image Border Adder app in your browser. A pair of apps for adding or cropping borders from a batch of images. Includes automatic border detection. All data stays on your computer; you do not upload anything. These apps work offline and you own them forever. No ads. No registration. No subscriptions. No trackers. Just right-click and save the .html page. Git repo.
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Fri 04 September 2026

Twin Sync Scroll App

Posted by Al Sweigart in misc   

View the Twin Sync Scroll app in your browser. An offline JS web app that lets you scroll two text fields in sync for side-by-side reading and review. It's designed side-by-side comparison of documents that are mostly similar but occasionally drift out of alignment. Scroll either pane independently when needed, then use the center gutter to move both documents by the same number of logical lines. This app works offline and you own it forever. No ads. No registration. No subscriptions. No trackers. Just right-click and save the .html page. Git repo.
screenshot

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Thu 03 September 2026

Pre-AI Slop Searching

Posted by Al Sweigart in misc   

Google, Mojeek, and Yandex let you add directives to search for pre-2024 results, which filters out AI slop. (Though it also filters out recent news events.) For Google and Mojeek, this filters out any pages updated in 2024 or later. For Yandex, it filters out pages that have a listed publication date of 2024 or later. (Though a web page can always list whatever publication date it wants.) I've created a separate web page that autofills the pre-2024 directives for these search engines so you can download it or set it as your New Tab default page. Or you can use the form in this post.

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Sat 29 August 2026

Al Sweigart's Endorsements for PSF Board 2026

Posted by Al Sweigart in misc   

The nominees for the Python Software Foundation's Board of Directors 2026 election have been announced. You can find a full list on the nominees page. I've gon through the candidate list and have chosen to endorse folks based on their organizational experience, list of nominations, history of contributions, and consulting with other members of the Python community. I'm pleased to announce I'm endorsing the following nominees for PSF Board: Calvin Tsang, Cecilia Tivir, Christopher Neugebauer, Ee Durbin, Elaine Wong, Georgi Ker, Jeremy Tanner, Karo Ladino-Puerto, Keith Murray, Kojo Idrissa, LaĆ­s Carvalho, Nina Zakharenko Also this year is the inaugural Python Packaging Council election. I'm please to announce I'm endorsing the following nominees for PPC: Bernat Gabor, Brett Cannon, Donald Stufft, Henry Schreiner, Pradyun Gedam, Ralf Gommers, William Woodruff

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Tue 25 August 2026

Graphviz Viewer: Just Render the Graphviz, Please

Posted by Al Sweigart in misc   

A minimal, offline Graphviz renderer contained in a single HTML file. It has the dot, neato, fdp, sfdp, twopi, circo, osage, and patchwork tools just the command line version. I generated this because I wanted a simple Graphviz editor without ads. Think of it as a text editor with a Graphviz preview, along with some examples to help remember Graphviz syntax. Paste the Graphviz source, open or drop an .dot file, inspect the result in a sandboxed preview, pan and zoom, tidy the source, and export the image again as SVG, PNG, or WebP. Run the app in your browser. This app works offline and you own it forever. No ads. No registration. No subscriptions. No trackers. Just right-click and save the .html page.
screenshot

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