Best Wordle Words Mathematically

Best Wordle Words Mathematically

TLDR: Best Wordle Words

AROSE

UNTIL

DUCHY

BLIMP

GAWKY

How to select the best words to guess in Wordle?

Here's my strategy:

1.  Find the frequency of letters in words for five letter words:

AESORILTNUDCYMPHBGKFWVQJXQ

2. Now going left to right find words that contain the most frequently used letters.

AESOR ILTNU DCYMPHBGKFWVQJXQ

How to find what words contain AESOR?

We can use the tool "grep" on unix with something like this which finds all five letters words with AESOR.

[Trigger warning: actual unix tools code😱:]

grep "^[a-z]\{5\}$" /usr/share/dict/words | grep a | grep e | grep s | grep o | grep r

One word pops out: “AROSE”.

2. Now look at the letters that are next:

ILTNU DCYMPHBGKFWVQJXQ

Fortunately one word fits the bill, "UNTIL"

3. Looking at the next letters, we don't have a word that contains "DCYMP", so we get as many as we can and then get the next most frequently used letters:

DCYMPHBGKFWVQJXQ

Which produces "DUCHY".

Then the next word is "GAWKY".

Enjoy.

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PS: A bonus graphic showing probability of letter distribution within a word.

So when you get a "w", it's usually in the first two letters, and a "y" is near the end.

How to Programmatically Add Tags to Files in OS X on a Mac Using C# Without Libraries

While working on photos, I wanted to programmatically add tags to photos. The tags would be read from a file. I formally used Finder to do this, but it can be tedious for a large universe of tags and there's no record of the association. Here's my solution which is really awkward and brittle. Surely there is a better way. Please add your comments on that way. Until then, I'll use this code.

using System;
using System.Diagnostics;

namespace ImageDescriptions
{
    public class Utilities
    {
        public static string? executeShellCommand(string scriptFile, string arguments)
        {
            var processInfo = new ProcessStartInfo()
            {
                FileName = scriptFile,
                Arguments = arguments,
                UseShellExecute = false,
                RedirectStandardOutput = true,
                CreateNoWindow = true
            };
            string? result = string.Empty;
            Process process = Process.Start(processInfo);   // Start that process.
            while (!process.StandardOutput.EndOfStream)
            {
                result = process.StandardOutput.ReadLine();
                System.Console.WriteLine("result: " + result);
            }
            process.WaitForExit();
            return result;
        }
        /// 

        /// Sets tags on a file in OS X.
        /// This is really awkward and brittle.
        /// 
        /// Comma separated list, e.g., "red,black,green"
        /// file to which we add tags
        public static void SetTags(string? tagCsv, string filename)
        {
            System.Console.WriteLine($"SetTags: '{tagCsv}', '{filename}'");
            var tagXmlString = string.Empty;
            if (tagCsv == null || String.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(tagCsv)) { return; }
            var tags = tagCsv.Split(',');
            foreach (var tag in tags)
            {
                tagXmlString += "" + tag.Trim() + "";
            }
            var scriptFile = "/usr/bin/xattr";
            var arguments = " -w"
               + " com.apple.metadata:_kMDItemUserTags"
               + @" """
               + @" "
               + tagXmlString
               + @" """
               + " " + filename;
            System.Console.WriteLine($"executeShellCommand: {scriptFile}, {arguments}");

            Utilities.executeShellCommand(scriptFile, arguments);
        }
    }
}

Here's a program that reads a data file and then calls "SetTags()":

using ImageDescriptions;

public class ImageDescription
{
    public static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        if(args.Length < 1)
        {
            Console.WriteLine("usage: ImageDescription ");
            Environment.Exit(1);
        }
        string filename = args[0];
        FileStream file = File.OpenRead(filename);

        var lines = File.ReadLines(filename);
        foreach (var line in lines)
        {
            Description description = new Description(line);
            Console.WriteLine(line);
            Console.WriteLine(description);
            Utilities.SetTags(description.tags, description.name);
        }
    }
}

A line from the data file looks like this:

2013-01-23-0702-IMG_8252.jpg "Dessert pie with fruit -tags:dessert,fruit,healthy,pie"

How to find Mac OS tags from the command line

 I'm playing with tags for labeling photos and found this MacOs command to search for all files with a tag, like "awana":

mdfind 'kMDItemUserTags == "Awana"'

By the way macos tags are stored in the binary file '.DS_Store' in the same directory as your files, and as an Extended Attribute (EA) of the file.

Fixing EXIF Errors in JPEG files like "Error: Bad format (0) for IFD1 entry 0"

I've been working on my greatgrandmother's photos and find jewels from 1910 like this one:

Unfortunately, many of the photos from 110 years ago do not have any names written on the back.

As I think about how to preserve my family's story for the next 110 or 300 years, I'd like to write the description on the back of my digital pictures by injecting EXIF image descriptions into the photos themselves.

To do this I downloaded the free command line tool "exiftool" for my mac.

Then, I added photo captions into jpeg files with this command:

exiftool -imageDescription="My image description" mypic.jpg

but got errors like this:

"Error: Bad format (0) for IFD1 entry 0"

I purchased the tool "metaImage" from the Mac store to add descriptions into the jpeg, but it wouldn't inject the caption into my files. I contacted their tech support and got a quick solution.

Jérémy Vizzini from neededapps.com (creator of "metaImage") solved the problem for me. The issue was my jpeg files were corrupt. (Some of the photos were from 2003, so the EXIF standards may have changed, or not have been rigoriously followed decades ago). Jérémy gave me this snippet of exiftool code to fix the jpeg:

  exiftool -all= -tagsfromfile @ -all:all -unsafe -icc_profile mypic.jpg

This fixed the problem. Thanks Jérémy! Now my jpegs will be ready for the next 300 years.

How do you archive your photos to preserve them for 300 years?

How to Find Duplicate Images on a Mac or Linux Machine

This is how to search recursively all directories on a Mac or Linux machine for duplicate images with a single line of awkward bash script. This method will find duplicates anywhere on your disk below your current directory (try "~"), and find multiple versions.

Many commercial products exist to easily find and delete duplicate images like those reviewed here, but if you are like me, and don't like to download apps willy nilly for a single task, and have a bit of shell scripting experience, you can use the following line of tortured bash script to find duplicate files.

find . -type f \( -name "*.jpg" -o -name "*.gif" \) | awk '{print "\"" $0 "\""}' | xargs shasum -a 256 | sort > checksumAndFilename.tmp && cat checksumAndFilename.tmp | awk '{print $1}' | uniq -D | uniq > checksum.tmp && grep -f checksum.tmp checksumAndFilename.tmp | tee duplicates.tmp && echo "output in \"duplicates.tmp\"" && rm checksumAndFilename.tmp checksum.tmp

The basic idea is to search the current directory and all subdirectories for images files, calculate a hash for each file, then sort the hashes and then list adjacent hashes, which would be duplicates. (If this is too much for your brain, just go to imymac and buy an app.)

Ok, let's go through the command in detail.

1. Get all the image files in your directory and below. Update "*.jpg" to "*.png" or whatever you need.

   find . -type f \( -name "*.jpg" -o -name "*.gif" \)

2. Surround the file name with double quotes, since some people still insist on the horrible, dasterdardly, awful practice of including spaces in names.

   awk '{print "\"" $0 "\""}'

3. Pipe the names of the files into shasum to generate a hash

   xargs shasum -a 256

4. Sort by the hash value so duplicates will be adjacent and write to a temp file

   sort > checksumAndFilename.tmp

   checksumAndFilename.tmp looks like this. The files with the same hash value would be duplicates.

   ff45b77226369d27b67772e72dfe8dc3387eff06  ./2010-07-04-2224-July4_036.jpg
   ff65e3611973092e61127439af6b3c82d0ee055a  ./2010-12-29-1408-IMG_9638.jpg
   ff680170b0451868a1bda027c801b78f55067366  ./2010-12-24-1010-IMG_9235.jpg
   ff918f6f8230deb3cd2208602dadb5c6f88039dc  ./2010-03-14-2025-IPhone_8146.jpg
   

   We are almost done, but how to only see hash values that are duplicates?

5. Get only the hash values that are duplicates

   cat checksumAndFilename.tmp | awk '{print $1}' | uniq -D | uniq > checksum.tmp

checksum.tmp looks like this. This are only the hash values that are duplicated.

0526e5586cc1e4d2d97e5cc813c8d9b698bc3df2
075a137c8857c8b38555cf632d906ed0581b9224

6. We have only the duplicated hash values. Let's match the hashes back with their filenames

   grep -f checksum.tmp checksumAndFilename.tmp

We can see the first two are duplicates, and the next two are as well.

  
0526e5586cc1e4d2d97e5cc813c8d9b698bc3df2  ./2010-11-28-0926-IMG_0300.jpg
0526e5586cc1e4d2d97e5cc813c8d9b698bc3df2  ./IMG_0300.jpg
075a137c8857c8b38555cf632d906ed0581b9224  ./2010-06-08-photoshoot012.jpg
075a137c8857c8b38555cf632d906ed0581b9224  ./2010-06-08-photoshoot_012.jpg

7. Write to the output file and the screen

   tee duplicates.tmp

8. Let's remind ourselves where the output lives

   echo "output in \"duplicates.tmp\""

9. Clean up our mess

   rm checksumAndFilename.tmp checksum.tmp

My gut tells me there's some ways to clean this script up. Please add a comment if you can improve the script.

How to Find IPhone's Unread Messages

 My IPhone has been declaring I have 1 unread message, but I can't find it.

The solution was actually easy.

 "Hey Siri, read me my unread messages." 

Siri read my one message and closed it.

Is Silver or the S&P 500 a Better Investment?

 Back in 1979 some friends of mine in Dallas were really into buying silver, as in pre-1965 silver quarters. They firmly believed the US financial system was on the verge of collapse due to congressional overspending. The US dollar would be worthless due to runaway inflation and the silver coins would be worth a fortune and be the de facto currency.

As a poor college student I didn't have much money to sock away in silver, but I bought 6 silver quarters which equals a little more than 1 troy oz of pure silver.

Was that a good investment?  Let's see. In 1979, silver was about $11. per oz.

This year, 2022, my ounce of silver is worth $24.

What if I'd invested that $24 in the S&P 500 in 1979? The index has risen 12% on average since 1979, so my stocks in 2022 would have a value of $3,120.

So, $24 from silver or $3,120 from the stock market? You decide.

What does Google know about me?

I just updated my advertising profile at Google. It's easy.

Visit  https://adssettings.google.com/ and you'll see something like this:

You can click on subjects and remove them from your ad lineup. I removed "cats", but kept "dogs".

Free Online HTML Validator for an Entire Site - Datayze.com

I recently retired from 42 years of software development and have a little more time to work on my personal website, https://www.fincher.org. 

I've been working on it for almost 30 years and some parts are a little, ... , crusty shall we say?

I found a wonderful online free website analyzer from the good folks at Datayze.com that will gently scan an entire website and show areas that need fixin'.

Thanks Datayze.com!