Scott Baker

A reusable bag... er... blog of stuff.

AI generated image of a creature

 

Yep, this is my little slice of the net, hopefully some of the information here is as useful for you as it has been for me.

(please don't ask what that creature is, I have no idea, just something that the AI spat out)

 

Cybersecurity

Invisible AI

The cybersecurity risks associated with AI/ML tools are slowly but surely being documented and communicated. People are starting to understand these risks and consider them. However as vendors rush to integrate AI into anything they can cram it into, even beer! It becomes far less certain if you may be using AI and not even know it.
AI/ML

LoRA Training (Stable Diffusion 1.5)

 

I have been playing with Stable Diffusion for over a year now and seen a lot of erroneous information online about how to train LoRAs (Low-Rank Adaptation). I've specifically been experimenting with taking 3D game characters and training LoRA models based on these game character images to create photo realistic images after they are passed through the Machine Learning Model (because it's really not AI at all!).

Food

Hearty Beef Stew

A fantastic beef stew that is the result of coming across a very good sale on a top sirloin at the grocery store and spontaneously inventing based on what was at hand from there.
News

Ransomware Before Christmas

'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a laptop was whirring, even those with a mouse;
The screens were all flashing with an eerie red glow
All Files Encrypted, All your secrets we know!

All the presents were nestled all snug in the sleigh
But poor Santa had no clue with whom they should stay.
After moving his list to a computer based tracker
It's all now encrypted, and in the hands of some hacker

Food

Armenian Basterma

Basterma is an air-dried cured spiced beef, sliced paper thin. Having never before cured any sort of meat, this was all new. The final result turned out to surpass my expectations and the result was a goodly amount of some the best Basterma I have ever had. I'm happy to share how I make it, in the hopes of keeping the tradition alive.
News

CARA West 2023

Given the option, I present at the Canadian Association of Research Administrators (CARA) National and CARA West conferences each year. This year I have been fortunate enough to have been granted enough time for a double session at their CARA West conference.

News

Nextcloud 27.1.3 on Ubuntu 22.04

I've been running Nextcloud at home for almost a decade now. It's been invaluable and I don't really think we could easily live without it at this point. The time had come to migrate from my fairly old server to a new one backed by our internal network storage. Here's the story (complete with gotchas & tweaks) that got it running under Ubuntu 22.04.

Cybersecurity

Mozilla Observatory

Since it has been a few years since I needed to set up a new web site, I haven't been to the Observatory for a while. For those that don't know, it's an excellent way to check your web site against modern standards for configuration. I'm glad to see Mozilla still has it up and running and (at the time of writing) is planning a new version!

To use it, simple visit: https://observatory.mozilla.org/analyze/ 

Edit the URL to add the site you wish to analyze eg: