I'm into astronomy as a hobby, and it's useful to have a log of the things in the sky you've seen. Many people take handwritten notes, but my handwriting is awful and having to write notes takes away from enjoying the views through the telescope.

So after being inspired by AI note taking applications I've read about online, I decided to give it a try while out observing.

First, I take my recordings and run them through Whisper's speech to text engine. Because my recordings have frequent astronomical terms, it seems to be more useful to run the larger models (or the new turbo model), because they seem to do better identifying the names of moons and constellations.

Next, I run Ollama and give it a prompt like:

Here is a speech to text transcript of an observation session. Create a detailed log of the session, using only facts found in the text. Do not add your own interpretation to the text.

I'm still experimenting with prompts and models, but oddly it seems like shorter prompts give better results. So far, the type of model doesn't seem to matter so much as the number of parameters. Gemma2 27B outperforms llama 3.1 7B, but llama 70B outperforms both of them (again, I think the larger models have more context about which astronomical terms are important). Here's what that gets me with basically no work on my part:

**Observation Session Log**

**Session Details**

* Date: October 3rd, 2024
* Location: Wolf Street
* Telescope: Teleview 85 (also referred to as 80)
* Observer: [Not specified]

**Targets Observed**

1. M29 (Open Cluster in Cygnus)
	* Time: 2057 - 2101
	* Eyepiece used: 18.2mm
	* Notes:
		+ Found using star hopping from Sater
		+ Appears as a faint open cluster with 6-7 distinct stars
		+ Stars are fairly even in brightness and color
2. M39 (Open Cluster)
	* Time: 2109 - 2116
	* Eyepiece used: Ultra-wide angle, 18.2mm, and 8.5mm (noted as a mistake, actually
using 7mm)
	* Notes:
		+ Found using star hopping from Deneb
		+ Appears as a larger open cluster with more differentiation in star magnitudes
		+ Stars appear bluer than surrounding stars
3. Alberio (Double Star)
	* Time: 2120, 2155
	* Eyepiece used: Ultra-wide angle and 7mm
	* Notes:
		+ Found easily without a guide
		+ Appears as a beautiful contrast between colors with constituent parts standing out from the surrounding stars
4. M15 (Globular Cluster in Pegasus)
	* Time: 2120 - 2130
	* Eyepiece used: Ultra-wide angle, 18.2mm, 7mm, and Barlow (2x) with 7mm
	* Notes:
		+ Found using a bright naked-eye star as a guide
		+ Appears as a slight smudge or fuzzy patch with averted vision
		+ Not resolving individual stars at any power
5. Saturn
	* Time: 2140 - 2150
	* Eyepiece used: Low power, highest power (with a star chart to confirm moon positions)
	* Notes:
		+ Three moons visible: Rhea, Enceladus, and Titan
		+ Striping on the surface of Saturn visible at highest power

**Session End**

* Time: 2157

I'm very happy with the quality of the notes. It's much, much better than my handwritten notes and much less work, so I'm likely to do this more consistently.

This topic is part of a series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss creative projects they have been working on.

Projects can be personal, professional, physical, digital, or even just ideas.

If you have any creative projects that you have been working on or want to eventually work on, this is a place for discussing those.

Hi,

Thanks for looking at this. There is a specific comment in a reddit conversation that I want to share in a few different places. It's important to me.

I tried this a few years ago when I wanted to participate in r/bestof and I could not make sense of the instructions that they provided.

I am not a technologically skilled person but I have learned a few tricks using markdown while participating here on tildes.

Can someone please give advice and possibly help me troubleshoot ? I will be returning to my computer and hopefully trying out suggestions about four hours from the time stamp on this post.

I am very confused. I want to buy my wife her first ever sewing machine (she seems quite dedicated on learning it, and she has done basic repairs on clothing before).

The problem is that I see that lots of people on Reddit that don't recommend too many newer models due to lack of reliability or using poor quality materials (plastic housing/gears, etc.), but at the same time many people are saying don't pay too much for an older machine (like even $50 USD seems to be too much for some people lol) which does not have these problems because you don't know how they maintained the machine, but any of the machines that seem to be decently cared for (with my very limited knowledge) are at least $100 CAD.

So does anyone have a recommendation for a decent sewing machine? For reference, I was eyeing a Kenmore 158.13200 I found locally for $150 CAD, which seems to include lots of accessories and the carrying case.

If you love language, etymology, or just plain collecting interesting words, where do you look to feed your interest? I’ve seen many RobWords (YouTube) posts here, and I really like his content. I also love the traditional word hunt through reading authors like Dickens.

In addition to “where do you look?”, what does your hobby look like? Do you keep lists of words that you review and learn about? Do you make effort to include your newly found words in writing or conversation? I have the (probably very annoying) habit of interrupting a conversation to say, “you know, there is an interesting word for that!”. What else do you do?

I'm stuck in a bit of a rut for work and trying to help out a department. We're going through a massive cash flow problem that we will see the other side of. There is zero budget for this, but I have spare kit.

The problem is that Legal have pulled all paper archives for all of the projects for the past 20 years of operating and need them digitally stored. Right now, we have a company runner scanning in a document to email, who then saves it off to a folder structure and renames it. The structure is on SharePoint, but the scan is image, not even OCR'd.

I have discovered Paperless NGX and wonder if this would be a better option for fast ingest. I can host on prem easy enough, either on a bare metal or VM. It looks like it can SSOd via many different options.

Any input would be great before I just go ahead and do this. I'm after pros and cons, alternatives, etc.

Thanks.

I'm looking at some recommendations for books about childhood trauma and abuse. Every book is almost the same. Something with a very long title like "You Are Your Own Blorbo: 25 Strategies and Steps to Overcome Your Hurdles and Achieve CHIM".

Then there is the uninspired and very fake summary. And then some supposedly impressive quotes by some supposedly bigshot people.

When you check out the author, they're often mentioned as a therapist with [insert experience of a few decades that doesn't necessarily mean anything]. They don't generally even mention what kind of therapist the author is (a psychologist, a psychiatrist, a mental health councillor, a different type?). They certainly don't give too much specifics about the therapy techniques they're specialized in and actual education, you know, two very important things.

It all feels disingenuous and scammy.

Thanks to this dishonest marketing style of virtually every single book in the industry, none of it means anything. You could write the absolutely worst, actively hurtful book, and still get all of this plastered on.

Beyond this marketing illusion, I know there to be some books that are actually helpful (have read a few), but vast majority of self-help books are either scams or overselling their quality. The problem is, even quality books seem to have this marketing shtick going on. Internet isn't too helpful either, because people -especially laypeople- too often misjudge. The only way seems to be seeing what the fuss is about yourself. But that takes a lot of time, and there's also the possibility that you will come out of the other end with internalized crap. It's genuinely a soulless ordeal to sift through all this utter shit to find something of worth.

I know it's not hopeless, as I read some good books throughout the years, but damn can it feel that way. It's especially more frustrating when you're just trying to find something to help tackle problems, and you're met with a capitalist epistemological nightmare.

This is a rant, I absolutely detest this industry, but this post is also meant to start a discussion. There is something rotten about this, and I wonder what other people have experienced and think about it. Experiences, frustrations, solutions, etc. are all welcome.

What have you been watching and reading this week? You don't need to give us a whole essay if you don't want to, but please write something! Feel free to talk about something you saw that was cool, something that was bad, ask for recommendations, or anything else you can think of.

If you want to, feel free to find the thing you're talking about and link to its pages on Anilist, MAL, or any other database you use!

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

After several bad experiences lately, I am interested in grinding meat at home. Does anyone have experience in this practice? I have a KitchenAid stand mixer and after some research, I am interested in buying the meat grinder attachment. However, there are literally dozens of weird Chinese brands on Amazon purporting to sell an identical set for much less. AliExpress is even cheaper.

Has anyone bought and used the KitchenAid version? Has anyone tried a cheaper version?

Thank you for your advice.

Thank you to everybody who commented; I'm going to look for the official KitchenAid attachment at a good price.