Hands-On Tech 255 Transcript
Please be advised that this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word-for-word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.
Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.
Mikah Sargent [00:00:00]:
Coming up on Hands-On Tech, let's take a look at setting up a way to bulk import recipes. Yes, an interesting question with, I hope, an interesting solution. Stay tuned. Hello and welcome to Hands-On Tech. If you haven't tuned in before, this is the show where I, Mikah Sargent, I take your tech questions and I do my best to answer them. And I think I do a pretty good job. So, you know, stay tuned.
Mikah Sargent [00:00:36]:
This is the time where I remind you all, you can send in your questions, hot@twit.tv to get in touch with me. Yes, it does rhyme. And I can't wait to hear what questions you have and I can't wait to tackle them. This week's question comes in from Bob. Bob writes the following, hey Mikah, I think I have a good one for you and any help and insight you can provide would be greatly appreciated. I used to subscribe to Blue Apron and have a large stack of their recipe cards on my kitchen counter. I'd love to scan these in and import them to my recipe manager of choice, Mela. I've cobbled together a series of steps I can take to get close to a solution, but it requires a lot of work on my end.
Mikah Sargent [00:01:20]:
Here is what I came up with. I'd love your ideas. So here is Bob's solution. Bob says, I scan the card a stack at a time using my office's large multifunction printer, which sends me a separate 2-page PDF file for each recipe card scanned front and back. It also OCRs the files. I upload the files one at a time into Copilot and give it a prompt explaining how to format the JSON code that Mela specifies. Copilot gives me the code and I copy and paste it into a text file and save it as a Mela recipe file. I upload it to Mela using the iOS app.
Mikah Sargent [00:01:56]:
I would love to reduce the manual steps after I scan the cards. I want to upload the entire set of PDF files and let the machines work for me with either the recipe automatically imported into Mela or at least a bunch of ready-to-import Mela recipe files. Thank you for your help, Bob. All right, Bob, I love this question because while I have not had this exact issue, right, this is not something very specific that I've dealt with. It is— it can be broad enough that many people will be able to, uh, sort of use the, the ideas that we're going to come up with here as a means of working on their own projects. And I use that word projects very clearly because I have set up a number of projects using Claude that have been very helpful for me. So before I talk about yours, this is my show, so I'm gonna talk about mine. With Claude, I specifically set up a project, and I'll talk about projects in a moment.
Mikah Sargent [00:03:02]:
Actually, let me explain projects first. With Claude and with other tools, so you can do something very similar with OpenAI's tools, you can do something similar with Google's Gemini. I believe with Gemini they're called Gems. Creating a sort of customized version of the LLM that directly— that is influenced directly by a set of instructions that you give it. The idea is that you have an ongoing project or a specific solution that you're looking for and you want it to be repeatable. And that saves so much time. So here's where I have made use of this. I have— I mean, you know, I have Mikah's Crafting Corner.
Mikah Sargent [00:03:45]:
You— so you're probably familiar with the fact that I do yarn crafts, and that means regularly looking at and parsing patterns. Okay, so when I'm looking to create something new, I will research to find a pattern that someone has published and I will buy that pattern. And the thing is, everybody fancies— everybody who does anything creative fancies themselves a graphic designer, right? So everybody's got their own custom take on how to create a pattern. Some people put horrible backgrounds behind their patterns. And some people have loads of images all over the page. And they do custom formatting for the text. And it's messy. It's bad.
Mikah Sargent [00:04:33]:
And it is frustrating as someone who wants to have a specific way of doing things, or who has a specific way of doing things. And so, What I used to do is I'd buy a pattern and then I would open up that pattern in a PDF and I'd have a Pages document right next to it. And I would, oh, and a TextEdit document open because I needed TextEdit to clear the formatting of the text. And so I would copy the PDF and paste it into a TextEdit document to strip out all of the formatting. And then I would meticulously go in cursor in hand and keyboard at the ready and sort of hit enter, return. Adjust, add colons, add what I like, which are these little checkboxes that I use whenever I'm done marking around. And it would take a very long time, but I would always do that before starting a project because it was— it made it much easier for me to keep track of things. So I said, I'm tired of having to do this.
Mikah Sargent [00:05:38]:
Can I use a tool online to help me do this? And Claude's Projects it was the best at it. I test because I've tried all of the AI systems and in fact have subscriptions to all three as a means of keeping track of where things are in each of them. And by all three, I mean the main three, which is OpenAI's system, Google's system, and then Anthropic's Claude. And what I did was I went into the Claude project and I said, Here is how I like things to be formatted. You are aware of the way that the typical US crochet pattern works because it is, because it's, you know, eaten up enough data to know that. And this is what I want you to do every time I upload a PDF of a crochet pattern and spit that out for me. And Claude was able to do that better than the other systems. And now all I have to do is upload.
Mikah Sargent [00:06:42]:
I don't have to. I don't have to keep adding text. I don't have to add anything else. I just upload the PDF. So this is what I'm suggesting that you do. Create a dedicated project that you can call recipe conversion. I really think you should try Claude to see, but again, you can use OpenAI, OpenAI's tools to create custom projects as well. And what you'll do is you will start by giving the project the information that it needs, which is of course the JSON format spec so that it is able to understand what is specific to, uh, Mela.
Mikah Sargent [00:07:23]:
So you linked me to that, the mela.recipes/file-format/index.html. I would suggest exporting that page and then uploading that to this specific format. And then you can upload your PDFs in batches because most of these AI systems are going to be able to process multiple files in a single conversation. Okay, so you don't necessarily need to do it one by one. And then in the project's instructions or the Gem's instructions or OpenAI's, you know, instructions, I'm sorry, I can't remember right now what OpenAI calls its individual projects. But you would type in something like, when I upload recipe PDFs, extract all recipe information and output valid JSON following the MELA recipe format, output each recipe as a separate code block that I can save as a Mela recipe file. So that way you're not re-explaining the format every single time. You don't have to go in and say, hey, go to this page and learn this.
Mikah Sargent [00:08:25]:
No, it holds onto that. And then afterward, you are going to have that properly formatted JSON for each individual one. So this doesn't handle the parts after that, but it can make things a little bit faster for you in terms of kind of locking things into a project. But you can get a little more automated. And this is the beauty of using something like a Mac with shortcuts or creating a Python script using AI to help you write a Python script if you don't know Python. And this is what you would do. This episode of Hands-On Tech is brought to you by Shopify. If you've shopped online, well, chances are you've bought from a a business powered by Shopify.
Mikah Sargent [00:09:11]:
You know that purple Shop Pay button you see at checkout? The one that makes buying so incredibly easy? Yeah, that's Shopify, and there's a reason so many businesses sell with it. Partially because people like me who buy from businesses who sell with Shopify are very excited to see that Shopify button. It means that I have access to many different payment methods, to be able to track my packages every step of the way. It's wonderful. Because Shopify doesn't just make amazing buying experiences for customers, they're also the experts in helping small businesses Grow big. Shopify's point of sale system is a unified command center for your retail business. It brings together in-store and online operations across up to 1,000 locations. So imagine being able to guarantee that shopping is always convenient.
Mikah Sargent [00:09:57]:
Endless aisle, ship to customer, buy online, pick up in store, all made simpler so customers can shop how they want and staff have those tools to close the sale every time. With Shopify POS, you can keep shoppers coming back with personalized experiences, and first-party data that give marketing teams a competitive edge. Stop seeing carts going abandoned and turn those sales into— Sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com/hot. Go to shopify.com/hot. shopify.com/hot. I personally love a tool called Hazel. Hazel is a, I like to call it an awareness tool. And by that, I mean, it is aware of your file system on your Mac and you set up special rules and actions that the tool does based on its awareness of your file system.
Mikah Sargent [00:10:56]:
So what does that mean exactly? Well, I'll give you an example. Every week on Wednesday, I record a show called Clockwise. And so that means that every week on Wednesday, I have audio files that are saved locally to a specific place on my Mac. That happens almost every week of the year. And so those files start to add up. What I have done is I have told Hazel, this tool, look in this special, this specific folder. And when a file in this folder is X days old, which for me, it's like 3 weeks old. Take that file and move it from the folder that's locally on my Mac and pop it into a special folder on my network attached storage.
Mikah Sargent [00:11:46]:
So it automatically archives audio files for me. Hazel can do that with so much. It can say when a file is added to this directory, when a specific kind of file is added to this directory, when a file is added to this directory and it's older than this amount of time, when a file is added to this directory and it's been opened before. All sorts of filtering and then all sorts of rules to enact on top of what it finds. So what you would do is you would tell Hazel to watch for new PDFs in a specific folder. Okay? So when you scan these in, wherever you're having them scanned to, that's where you would have Hazel look. And then this is where the magic happens. You'd have it run a script to access the Claude API or OpenAI's API, which would automatically send those PDFs from that folder to the API.
Mikah Sargent [00:12:42]:
And then it would automatically, because you're using the, the project system, it would know what to do with those files and then it would automatically output those files as.mailorecipe files into a specific directory that you want. So all you would have to do then is take those files from that spot and then bring them into Mela. What you can go further with is if you're using macOS, save them to your— have that folder where the Mela recipe files are stored either on your desktop or in your documents in a special Mela recipes, you know, folder. And then that's going to sync via iCloud to your iPhone, which would then let you import it into Maila directly on your iPhone. Now, of course, this requires some upfront setup, but the fact is that once it's running, all you have to do is, you know, pop that stack of, of, of recipes into your scanner, run it, and then just wait until those Maila recipe files are there ready for you on the other end of things. This could be very easy, very magical with no problem. Now, if you're not an automator or a coder and you're struggling to get it to work, things aren't working for you. Well, first and foremost, reach out, hot@twit.tv.
Mikah Sargent [00:14:12]:
But if you're feeling like, oh, it's just a lot to have to handle, there is another option. There are actually apps that are specifically designed to do this. Um, they aren't necessarily going to give you an export directly into Mela, but they could get you much of the way there. There's an app called Cookbook that specifically does scan recipe cards and does OCR. Paprika, we've talked on, on my show iOS Today before about, it can also import and scan. And then there's also Recipe Keeper, which will do card scanning. Now, Of course, you're going to want to see if any of them can export in a format that Mela accepts, or if you would end up needing to do a conversion in the middle, in which case this isn't going to be your best solution, but could save you a little bit of time possibly. I think that option 1 is probably your best bet, whether you're using Claude or you are using, um, OpenAI.
Mikah Sargent [00:15:14]:
Just that little bit of a speed boost of not having to type in that information each time and being able to upload multiple PDFs and trust that it can export them kind of independently will make it easier. But here's the thing, if you do find yourself doing this regularly, then why not invest a little bit of time in option 2, right? Because in the end, you're going to end up saving a lot of time. By going with that more complicated option. One more quick tip, because your office scanner is already doing OCR on the PDFs, this should actually make it easier for the AI system that you use to extract the text, right? It is not just a photo that the, that the, the AI has to process, but instead can look for that text that's built in, but Check everything for errors. If you do see errors, head back to the settings for your scanner and make sure that you are scanning at a high resolution. And of course, most importantly, make sure you've got everything placed correctly on the glass so that the OCR is able to do its best job, right? To be able to track the text and, and have that text embedded in the PDF, because otherwise your AI system is also trying to do OCR and handle that as well. So that could add some errors into the pipeline. Bob, I, again, I love this question because there are people who have a repeatable thing that they do, right? And they're struggling to figure out a way to make this process a little bit easier.
Mikah Sargent [00:17:00]:
And Goodness gracious, has it not become much more possible to come up with solutions that will actually work? And that's what I love. That's what I love about this stuff. So thank you, Bob, for that. All righty. Let me take a quick break to remind you all about Club Twit. twit.tv/clubtwit is where you go to sign up. And when you sign up, $10 a month, $120 a year, you will gain access to some pretty awesome benefits. First and foremost, every single one of our shows ad free.
Mikah Sargent [00:17:34]:
It's just the content, none of the ads. You also gain access to our special feeds that include behind the scenes, before the show, after the show, special club tweet events that will get published there. Uh, you will also gain access to our live commentary of special tweet or of tech news events that are our specials where we do live commentary and access to a feed that has my show, Crafting Corner, Stacy's Book Club, so much more. If that's not enough, don't forget you can also join the Discord that way. Uh, when you join the Discord, you'll be joining many of us here at TWiT as well as, you know, your fellow Club TWiT listeners. And it's a fun place to hang out. We've always got new people joining and it's always a pleasure, uh, as I've said before, to hop in and say hello to, let's see, we've got JB, we've got Bazooka Tooth. That is a fantastic name.
Mikah Sargent [00:18:31]:
We've got Asgard. Be Techie, Vexed. Welcome to all of you. Uh, thank you for joining the club and I look forward to seeing your thoughts in the chat. Uh, so twit.tv/clubtwit, that's where you go to sign up. Alrighty folks, we have reached the end of this episode of Hands-On Tech. If you have tech questions for me, reach out, hot@twit.tv. That's how you get in touch.
Mikah Sargent [00:18:58]:
I'd love to hear from you. Love to answer your questions as well. As well. I'll be back again next week with another episode of Hands-On Tech, but until then, I hope you have a great week, weekend, whatever it happens to be for you. Bye-bye!
