McGarrah Technical Blog

Start the Windows screensaver with a Shortcut

1 min read

After my Windows 11 upgrade, I have a need for a quick way to start my screensaver but not lock my computer. So the Windows-L (lock) is not a desired options for this use-case. I want to quickly get back to my screen without logging back in.

I remember an old Windows NT tool and built-in MacOS feature called “Hot Corners” that let me do this by shoving my cursor to a corner of the screen. But I don’t want to load another tool for this. I’m using Power Toys “Mouse without Border” to link up a couple machines with virtual KVMs so the hot corners isn’t an option because of that.

So how do I solve this?

Windows 11 Upgrade Challenges on ThinkPad T480

3 min read

Upgrading to Windows 11 on my ThinkPad T480 laptops turned into a performance nightmare with some unexpected solutions.

New Features: Copy Buttons, Comments, Tags, and More!

2 min read

I’m happy to announce a batch of new features that enhance the functionality and user experience of this blog. These improvements make the content more interactive, organized, and user-friendly. Hopefully, you like the changes.

ASR with PyTorch

17 min read

ASR with PyTorch: Exploring Phoneme Representations

I have a fascination with the sounds of languages (phonemes) and how they are processed. This came about from a project I did a few years ago in grad school. How ASR (automatic speech recognition) used to work did not include breaking down the sounds of the language and present them as pieces of the solution. You typically just got a final text representation.

I’m interested in seeing if the phonetic or phoneme representations can be pulled from the modern machine learning ASR pipelines. This is just an interest of mine with no defined goals beyond learning.

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