Travel, Tech, Thoughts…
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Estonia – Suur Munamägi
Summit Date: 2025-07-08 Summit Party: Ryan Cragun and Thom Pittz This was the last highpoint on my quick tour through three Baltic countries – Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. We left Riga early that morning, stopped at the highest point in Latvia, then headed north into Estonia. It was a couple of hours between the two…
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Latvia – Gaiziņkalns
Summit Date: 2025-07-08 Summit Party: Ryan Cragun and Thom Pittz As part of a short visit to the Baltic countries, I visited the highest points in Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. This is my brief high point report for Gaiziņkalns, the highest point in elevation in Latvia. I spent the previous day in Riga. A friend…
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Lithuania – Aukštojas Hill
Date: 2025-07-05 Summit Party: Ryan Cragun and Thom Pittz I never would have thought I’d find myself in Lithuania, but a conference I regularly attend for work was held in Kaunas. A friend wanted to tour around a bit after the conference in the Baltics. Because it’s what I do, I immediately looked up the…
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Convert Text to Audio on Linux – Coqui TTS
In a separate post on my blog, I documented a simple way to convert text to audio using Google’s Text-To-Speech service. This works for small projects. But, during a recent conversion, I ran into an error where my requests were getting blocked by Google for using the service too much. I didn’t realize they capped…
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VTT Editing – Simple Editors for Removing and Adding Content
I have a podcast I run with one of my brothers and a friend. We record the podcast via Zoom, which generates a transcript in VTT format with timestamps. Occasionally, we have an issue with the recording where we have some banter at the beginning of the podcast or something goes funky in the middle…
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Best 3D Printed Sunglasses Clip for Car Visor
I’ve needed a place to put sunglasses in my car for years. My sunglasses have typically ended up in one of the cup holders. Recently, it dawned on me that I could print a clip or holder that would attach to my sun visor to hold my sunglasses. I looked at the various 3D design…
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On the Future of Sociology
I had an interesting discussion a few days ago with my wife. We were talking about the futures of our disciplines (hers: genetic counseling; mine: sociology). I haven’t said this publicly before, but I’ve been thinking about it for a while. I don’t think sociology is long for academia. Before I go down this path,…
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Redacting PDFs on Linux
I had an odd situation pop up where I needed to redact a PDF. It wasn’t anything nefarious or super exciting, but it did involve a complicated PDF that included images and tables in addition to text. In figuring out how to redact the PDF, I ended up learning a few things and thought it…
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Fixing Zotero Corrupt Database Issue on Linux
I use Zotero to manage my references and have for decades since it was first developed. I’m a huge fan and teach all my students how to use it. But I also don’t follow one of the programmers’ recommendations on where to store my Zotero database. As soon as I install Zotero, I change the…
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Kubuntu 25.04 – Reset Wayland
I just installed Kubuntu 25.04 on my laptop and started running into an issue. It started when I tried to load Spectacle to take a screenshot. Spectacle froze and so did my panel, but I could still hit Alt+F2 to open new programs. I could also use Alt+Tab to switch between non-frozen programs. I couldn’t…