craig_vg
Joined 2 years ago
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Aug 4
Making DrillerDB - Water Well Drilling Software
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Comment · 2 months ago
Over the past year, we've been running OCR on over 13 million handwritten and typed well logs across North America.
After that we standardized the unique terms used by drillers across America into one format, which we've based on the USGS's lithologic standards.
Before this project, underground data was fragmented by state or county jurisdictions and had different standards for reporting and terminology. This is the first nationwide lithological grid ever made at this scale.
Most regions have pretty good coverage. However, be aware some areas like the southeast of the US especially has some pretty significant gaps due to the reporting standards in those regions.
We also have a research program! https://drillerdb.com/research
Comment · 5 months ago
Serious Angel, thank you for the feedback on the project. The scholarly parameter should be working again now.
Overall, I completely agree with your criticisms about the LLM nature of this. Yes, the project is completely coded by Claude. It's a side project that I threw together based on my love of history. I'm not an academic nor a researcher, but I do want to provide value for those who have a hobbyist-level interest in Roman history. If the project can reach the quality level required for real scholarship, I'd like to achieve that. If not, I want to be clear that it's not at that level.
On that note, I have tried to include original sources wherever possible. Wherever an LLM does translation, it is noted in the user interface, as you also quoted from my methodology.
Thanks again, and if you have any direct feedback or changes you'd like to see, I would love to hear it.
Comment · 5 months ago
Thanks for the feedback on this. I'll note that I am not an academic nor a researcher. I'm a hobbyist who wanted to bring together data from different letters and read them for myself. I don't aspire to be a researcher nor publish academic work.
The primary goal is to provide access to these letters to non-academics who would like to read what Romans were writing in language they can understand.
I take all the points about research outcomes and the quality of the data itself. That is going to be an ongoing process to continue to improve it alongside LLMs. I have a day job, and this is just a side project, but where it can provide value, I want to lean into that side of things.
Comment · 5 months ago
Thank you so much for the feedback on this. I just implemented some updates that should better track our iterations and changes to the project. Obviously, GitHub does some tracking, but I've added some more formal updates.
Additionally, I completely agree on the OCR issues. Long-term, the goal is to use higher quality OCR and a broader set of data to make this even more accessible to people.
I'll note that the primary goal is as much scholarship as it is giving access to hobbyists or people interested in the data itself. If the data could get to the point where it is scholarly useful, of course that would be something I'd like to achieve.
Comment · 1 year ago
Can you do that without access to your developer account? I will try if so.