3 screenshots of the merlin app, recording and identifying bird song.

Since dawn chorus day I’ve been noticing bird song more than ever. This has lead to wondering which birds are singing. A recognise a very small number. I’ve tried a couple of apps and my favourite so far is Merlin.

Merlin identifies bird sounds using breakthroughs in machine learning technology to recognize species based on spectrograms—visual representations of sounds

Sound ID.

Rather delightfully you see the names and thumbnails of bird the app recognises. This are hi-lighted each time the bird is heard. Even better you get the same effect playing back the audio. Hopefully this will lead to me being able to recognise a few more bird songs without the app.

How accurate the app is I do not know, but I have seen most of the ones it has identified nearby.

Bookmarked Locus Sonus Stream Project (locusonus.org)
Locus Sonus Stream Project offers a worldwide network of "open mikes" that permanently stream local soundscapes to a dedicated server. The resulting live audio is used in a large variety of artistic projects. The microphones are installed and maintained by volunteer participants.

Looks really interesting.

A montage of phones lock screen showing photos of nature

I don’t usually pay a lot of attention to new features when an OS updates nowadays. But the other day I discovered the “photo shuffle” Lock Screen feature on my phone. Now every time I unlock my phone I see another random image. I picked nature as the subject. I am not sure what algorithm is picking the photos but the results are delightful.

Bookmarked Images from HTML, CSS, and Shortcuts - All this (leancrew.com)
The important thing I’ve learned here has nothing to do with Wordle or WordleBot. It’s that I can use Shortcuts to make an image out any HTML/CSS. As long as I can stuff it into a data URL, I can make an image from it. Could be very useful.

I don’t use shortcuts all that much, but this looks interesting.