More Accurate Speech Recognition with whisper.cpp

I have been using OpenAI's whisper for a while to convert audio files to text. For example, to generate subtitles for a file, I used

whisper "$INPUT_FILE" -f srt --model turbo --language en

Especially on long files, this would sometimes over time change it's behavior leading to either extremely long or extremely short sentences (run away). Also, whisper took a long time to run.

Luckily, there is whisper-cpp. On my system with an M2 Pro chip, this can now run speech recognition on a 40 minute audio file in a few minutes instead of half an hour.

2026-02-27

How To Run Services on a Linux Server

I have been running services myself for a few years on Linux servers. It took a while to figure out what works best. Here's what I've learned.

First of all, all maintenance is done on headless servers via SSH. Learning this might seem daunting for some at first, but it is truly unbeatable in terms of productivity and speed. To easily log in via SSH, add the SSH keys to the server and then add the server to your ~/.ssh/config. For example,

Host arnold
    Hostname 123.456.789.012
    User rik
    IdentityFile ~/.ssh/arnold

2026-02-24

Setup a Syncthing service on Debian

Install via the APT instructions.

Next (source):

useradd -u 1010 -c "Syncthing Service" -d /var/syncthing -s /usr/sbin/nologin syncthing
mkdir /var/syncthing
chown -R syncthing:syncthing /var/syncthing
chmod 700 /var/syncthing
systemctl enable syncthing@syncthing.service
systemctl start syncthing@syncthing.service
systemctl status syncthing@syncthing.service

2026-02-16

Raspberry Pi as Forgejo Runner

In my instructions on how to setup Forgejo with a runner, I used a Hetzner server for the runner. This costs roughly 5 euros per month, so 60 euro annually.

A full Hetzner server might be a bit overkill for a simple runner. Especially if you are just running Shell scripts or static site generation. The Hetzner server supports things like high bandwidth, low latency, unique IPv4 address, high uptime guarantees. Most of these are not necessary for your own runner.

Therefore, in many cases it's probably a good idea to run the Runner on your own hardware. What I have tested and works for me is to use a Raspberry Pi 4 with 1 GB RAM and a 32 GB Class A MicroSD. At the time of writing, the price for these was €44 for the Pi and €10 for the MicroSD card.

2026-02-15

Adam Fannin on Voting

“There is more power in praying than there is in voting.”

Source: https://youtu.be/3Ltwhq-UpPg

“Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help.” (Psalm 146:3)

2026-02-15

Installing and running Spleeter to separate audio files

Here are up-to-date installation instructions for running Deezer's Spleeter on Ubuntu 24.04. Minimum requirements are around 16 GB of RAM. (During the processing, it uses around 11 GB at the peak.) I ran this on a temporary Hetzner server because my Apple Silicon system, after lots of fiddling with version, ran into AVX issues.

Install Conda.

conda create -n spleeter_env python=3.8 -y

conda activate spleeter_env

2026-02-12

Jesse Strang in 2019

At a shooting on a high school in Tumbler Ridge, Canada, 10 people were shot, as reported at 03:30 in Dutch national media.

There are two suspect names going around, however. For example, on Feb 11, 2026, 7:25 PM IST the Hindustan Times reported the name Jesse Strang. A few hours later, however, the name was suddenly reported as Jesse Van Rootselaar without mention of the previous name.

2026-02-03

Picture of Epstein Eating Cake

A picture of Jeffrey Epstein eating a cake with what seems to be the Talmud visible behind him. Seems to have been released a few weeks ago. Source.

Epstein eating cake with Talmud behind him

2026-01-29

Castopod configuration

I just setup a castopod instance to self-host some audio files, and so far it seems to work. To get it to work, I used tweaked the default configuration a bit as follows.

On a server, make a new folder called castopod and added a new docker-compose.yml file:

services:
  castopod:
    image: 'castopod/castopod:1.14.0'
    container_name: 'castopod'
    volumes:
      - './media:/var/www/castopod/public/media'
    environment:
      MYSQL_DATABASE: 'castopod'
      MYSQL_USER: 'castopod'
      CP_BASEURL: 'https://'
      CP_ANALYTICS_SALT: ''
      CP_REDIS_HOST: 'redis'
      MYSQL_PASSWORD: ''
      CP_REDIS_PASSWORD: ''
    networks:
      - castopod
      - castopod-db
    ports:
      - '3005:8000'
    restart: unless-stopped

  mariadb:
    image: 'mariadb:11.2'
    container_name: 'castopod-mariadb'
    networks:
      - 'castopod-db'
    volumes:
      - './mariadb:/var/lib/mysql'
    environment:
      MYSQL_DATABASE: 'castopod'
      MYSQL_USER: 'castopod'
      MYSQL_PASSWORD: ''
      MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: ''
    restart: 'unless-stopped'

  redis:
    image: 'redis:7.2-alpine'
    container_name: 'castopod-redis'
    command: --requirepass ''
    volumes:
      - './cache:/data'
    networks:
      - 'castopod'

networks:
  castopod:
  castopod-db:

2026-01-28

Peter Ruckman on Professors

After having been in academia for many years and having obtained a PhD, I agree with Dr. Peter Ruckman's opinion (starting 9:52):

[...] Always correct the Greek with English. Oh how they hate that. Oh my God how they hate that. Every professor in America just "Oh oh... Ah! Heresy!" You say, "Why?" They want you to come to them, can't you figure that mess out?
Now listen, never let scholarship intimidate you no matter how stupid you are. If the scholarship says one thing and you read in your Bible that it doesn't say that, don't let them intimidate you. Say, "Well, I don't understand it, but I'm sure the Bible is right and you are wrong." I don't care how many degrees they wave in your face, some men die by degrees. BA (Bachelor of Arts) is a Bunch of Apple sauce, MA (Master of Arts) is More Apple sauce, and PhD (Doctor of Philosophy) means Pile Higher and Deeper.