Charles Loder
LightNews LightNews
charlesloder.bsky.social
Charles Loder
@charlesloder.bsky.social
48 followers 59 following 240 posts
Software engineer | Bridging technology & humanities | Making the internet a more Hebrew friendly place hebrewtransliteration.app
Posts Replies Media Videos
Pinned
charlesloder.bsky.social
Charles Loder @charlesloder.bsky.social · May 30
Today is my final day at Northwestern University.

After 6 short months, I have been laid off due to the termination of the IMLS grant that funded my position.
I worked with an amazing team that led that charge in integrating Ai powered tools wisely into museum & library science.
charlesloder.bsky.social
This idea has been rattling in my head.

Instead of focusing on how "intelligent" a model is, the real power of LLMs shines when their intelligence is constrained by limiting what data the model can draw on.

Not sure if I'm missing anything in this graph
A graph with the title "Constraining LLM Intelligence" with the Y-axis labeled "Powerful" and the X-axis labeled "Portable". Four techniques are displayed in a downward slope with starting with "Fine tuning" then "RAG" then "Tool Calling" then "Prompting."
November 11, 2025 at 5:17 PM
charlesloder.bsky.social
Had to make an account just to try out a sandboxed version of an API, and on top of that you HAVE to subscribe to the newsletter
November 11, 2025 at 2:42 PM
charlesloder.bsky.social
One of the best parts of being unemployed is that I now get how people develop anxiety from constantly checking their email
November 8, 2025 at 1:02 AM
charlesloder.bsky.social
In true dev fashion, I may be over engineering the job search
Google Sheets query: =CONCATENATE("site:", TRIM(site_query!B2), " ", TEXTJOIN(" AND ", TRUE, ARRAYFORMULA("(" & content_query!$B$2:B & ")")))
November 4, 2025 at 6:57 PM
charlesloder.bsky.social
The job hunt continues…

If anyone knows of any open developer roles, preferably in ed tech or ed tech adjacent, I'd appreciate the lead!

If you don't, please repost!
November 3, 2025 at 3:52 PM
charlesloder.bsky.social
People are sleeping on GoogleAi's #Gemma 3n models.

They run entirely on-device, they're fast, and they're surprisingly capable.

Here it is transcribing a letter — no API calls, just local inference on a Mac M2.
Watch that GPU usage!
October 28, 2025 at 2:38 PM
charlesloder.bsky.social
My app made it into the Baker Acacemic/Brazo's Style Manual! Is this the editorial mountain top?!
Hebrew and Greek transliteration should follow the patterns presented in SBLHS (5.1.1; 5.3), which also provides detailed guidance on applying these transliteration schemes to specific cases. Charles Loder’s transliteration app (https://hebrewtransliteration.app/#) can be used to confirm the correct form of Hebrew transliteration when you are uncertain.
October 22, 2025 at 2:50 PM
charlesloder.bsky.social
> Online trends tend to start from chaos and gain momentum without explanation: For example, “404 Not Found” went from a nonsense phrase found on a dead-end page of the web

Ummm…404 is an HTTP status code, not a nonsense phrase. Even AI knows this

www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-featur...
The Meaning of the “6, 7” Meme Scene on the Season 28 ‘South Park’ Premiere
The kids of South Park Elementary are not starting a dangerous cult with the phrase; they are merely embracing the existential meaninglessness of it all.
www.hollywoodreporter.com
October 17, 2025 at 7:55 PM
charlesloder.bsky.social
Associate Marketing Manager position at Hendrickson

www.linkedin.com/posts/tyndal...
#tyndalehouse #hiring #marketingjobs #publishingcareers #christianpublishing #hendricksonpublishers | Tyndale House Publishers
📣 We’re hiring! Join the Hendrickson Publishers team at Tyndale House as our next Associate Marketing Manager in Peabody, MA. We’re looking for someone with 3–5 years of marketing experience (publish...
www.linkedin.com
October 14, 2025 at 12:52 AM
charlesloder.bsky.social
So do I hate Python? Or do I really hate C++?
October 13, 2025 at 5:24 PM
charlesloder.bsky.social
Multimodal chat with visions models in the browser is surprisingly difficult. I've tried Transformers.js, web-llm, and MediaPipe, and they all seem to have some critical shortcoming.

Am I doing this wrong? Or anyone have recommendations?
October 6, 2025 at 6:01 PM
charlesloder.bsky.social
I was so tempted to click on this ad
October 6, 2025 at 12:47 PM
charlesloder.bsky.social
I’m curious if anyone has used these models with multi spectral images of manuscripts

developers.googleblog.com/en/unlocking...
Unlocking Multi-Spectral Data with Gemini- Google Developers Blog
Multi-spectral imagery, which captures wavelengths beyond human vision, offers a "superhuman" way to understand the world, and Google's Gemini models make this accessible without specialized training.
developers.googleblog.com
October 4, 2025 at 12:57 AM
charlesloder.bsky.social
Experimenting with a custom Gemini command for adding alt text.

Gemini CLI can:
- fetch the accessibility guide for context
- fetch the images and understand them

This allows for good alt text.

Not just a description of the image, but text that is related to the context
A code snippet of a Gemini custom slash command for generating alt text. The code says: ```toml description = "Asks the model to check for image tags without any alt text, and add text based on surrounding context." prompt = """ Find all image image alt text that is empty and add descriptive alt text based on the surrounding context. When writing alt text, consider the context of where and how the image is being used. The surrounding text of the document, website, or email may affect which parts of the image are most important to describe. Follow this guide: https://accessibility.huit.harvard.edu/describe-content-images """ ```
September 30, 2025 at 7:11 PM
charlesloder.bsky.social
Would it be wrong to say for the 2nd syllable that "the nucleus is a hiriq-yod"

I feel like it's conflating different types of terminology
The hebrew word יַשְׁמִ֞יד with a hiriq-yod in the second syllable
September 25, 2025 at 4:52 PM
charlesloder.bsky.social
Richard Scheines, dean of CMU’s College of Humanities and Social Sciences, said. “…there’s interesting tools that we can apply to some of the questions humanists are asking, but get much more robust answers from the data than we’ve had before.”
www.insidehighered.com/news/tech-in...
How One University Is Reimagining a Humanities Ph.D. Program
Carnegie Mellon is turning its literary and cultural studies Ph.D. program into one focused on computational cultural studies. The reframe comes as many humanities graduate programs face an uncertain ...
www.insidehighered.com
September 25, 2025 at 2:54 PM
Reposted by Charles Loder
digitalscriptorium.bsky.social
DS seeks to appoint an early career library professional or postdoctoral researcher with a background in premodern manuscript studies for a full-time, NEH-funded, 22-month Manuscript Data Curation Fellowship. To apply, please follow this link: wd1.myworkdaysite.com/recruiting/u...
Manuscript Data Curation Fellow
University Overview The University of Pennsylvania, the largest private employer in Philadelphia, is a world-renowned leader in education, research, and innovation. This historic, Ivy League school co...
wd1.myworkdaysite.com
September 24, 2025 at 4:29 PM
charlesloder.bsky.social
Big news on the LinkedIn, Baker acquires Lexham Press:
Baker Publishing Group, a leading independent Christian publishing house, is pleased to announce the acquisition of Lexham Press, the in-house publishing division of Logos. This strategic acquisition deepens the longstanding partnership between the two companies and expands Baker's portfolio of academic and Christian living content. "I'm pleased to bring Lexham Press into Baker Publishing House," said Jesse Myers, president and CEO of Baker Publishing Group. "I know firsthand the depth, rigor, and value of titles published by Lexham Press, and I'm excited to broaden the reach of Lexham's work under the Baker umbrella." This acquisition represents a win-win scenario: Baker gains access to Lexham's proven publishing expertise and content catalog, while Logos can dedicate full attention to enhancing its industry-leading digital Bible study platform. Under the transaction terms, Logos retains the rights to Lexham Press content within Logos, ensuring that these valuable titles will continue to anchor Logos's comprehensive library bundles. "Baker Publishing Group is an excellent forever home for Lexham Press because of their shared commitment to delivering best-in-class content and deep expertise in Christian publishing," said Matthew Bennett, vice president of content products at Logos. "I'm excited to see how Lexham thrives under the Baker brand and reaches even more students of Scripture for generations to come."
September 23, 2025 at 6:19 PM
charlesloder.bsky.social
Harvard recently launched an MVP of a semantic search and AI-driven collections discovery system called Collections Explorer. collex.lib.harvard.edu
Collections Explorer
Explore Harvard Library's special collection materials using semantic search
collex.lib.harvard.edu
September 22, 2025 at 5:46 PM
charlesloder.bsky.social
LinkedIn really really really wants me to buy Premium
September 19, 2025 at 6:36 PM
charlesloder.bsky.social
v0.4.0 of clover-ai adds two new exciting features:
• Canvas context
• Tool calling

The first user message in the video demonstrates both of these.
September 9, 2025 at 4:41 PM
charlesloder.bsky.social
Anyone have any cool examples of IIIF Annotations?
September 8, 2025 at 5:14 PM
Reposted by Charles Loder
rickbrannan.com
I posted earlier today about a whole bunch of ePubs and diglots of early Christian writings that are available from github.com/AppianWayPress. Now that it is in semblance of order, I can use it to fuel a simple RAG system to answer questions based on early Christian writings. Like this:
Screen capture from text editor with following paragraphs: Query: Where did Cain and Abel get their wives from? Reformulated Query: What sources do early Christian writers cite regarding the origins of Cain and Abel's wives? Answer: Early Christian writers cite the book of Jubilees, also known as the Lesser Genesis, as a source regarding the origins of Cain and Abel's wives. According to this text, Abel was younger than Cain and died before he was married. Therefore, Cain had wives before Abel did. The names of these wives are not specified in the Jubilees, but it is mentioned that they were chosen by the Mother of all to make the seed of humans pure. The Jubilees also states that both Cain and Abel were in love with their own sister, which led to Cain killing Abel.
September 8, 2025 at 3:47 AM
charlesloder.bsky.social
I'm happy to live in a place where we have social safety nets, and I am extremely grateful for them.

The bureaucracy of the programs, however, forms a system where receiving help from others creates burdens on the system and those seeking help

It all feels so counterintuitive…
September 5, 2025 at 3:37 PM
charlesloder.bsky.social
Ran into an "Excessive complexity" error with these:
A IIIF Image URL in Typescript types
September 5, 2025 at 12:43 AM