miker.org

Cheddar Bacon Ranch Wreath

Tue, 23 Dec 2025 19:18:50 -0500

I have invented the greatest thing ever: the bacon-cheddar-ranch cheese-wreath. It’s like a cheese-ball, but with more surface area for bacony goodness.

Covid Movie Reviews Part 2

Mon, 04 Sep 2023 16:32:00 -0400

What do you do when your family has Covid and you're are stuck in the basement so you don't get it? Watch more movies obviously.

Watercoolers are an anti-pattern

Tue, 16 Aug 2022 16:27:21 -0400

In the “post”-Covid world, a lot of companies are forcing employees back to the office with the justification that remote work is missing the “important” hallway and watercooler meetings.

Covid Movie Reviews

Wed, 03 Aug 2022 14:22:35 -0400

What do you do when you have Covid and are stuck in the basement for three weeks? Take Paxlovid and watch movies obviously.

Premiere Movie Script Library

Thu, 11 Mar 2021 13:28:49 -0500

While I was looking for a nice reading copy of Raiders of the Lost Ark I discovered an old series of screenplays called the Premiere Movie Script Library. The defunct Premiere magazine published this series of screenplays of popular and classic movies. I was disappointed to find no information about the series on the web, so I thought I’d put together what I found.

There were nineteen scripts published between 1994 and 1995. Below they are listed in the order they appear in the editions published later.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Credits - All Seasons Synced

Fri, 05 Mar 2021 16:03:27 -0500

YouTube commenters have asked, so here are the combined credits for Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Like with TNG the credits are synced around the logo.

Deep Space Nine famously changed its theme song between seasons three and four. I’ve represented this by putting the early season theme in the left channel and the later seasons’ theme in the right. They don’t sound too bad mixed together but this gives the option of only listening to one or the other.

Star Trek: The Next Generation Credits - All Seasons Synced

Fri, 26 Feb 2021 11:44:55 -0500

A while back I was watching a lot of episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation. As the cast changes over the show’s seven seasons, the opening credits also change and I wondered if I could sync the credits together to visualize how the changes worked.

Finding a point to sync the videos was difficult. After trying a few different places I ended up using the moment the Enterprise first appears. She is after all the star of the show. The Enterprise’s appearance is also a sort of midpoint in the credit’s story: first we have the solar system, then the Enterprise and then the cast. Since the Enterprise is consistent season-to-season it makes comparing the variable parts easier.

New Year, New Blog

Wed, 22 Jan 2020 14:04:27 -0500

After seven years of Wordpress, it’s time for a change. Welcome to my new Hugo-based blog. It’s static. It’s cool. I probably will continue to not update it.

Building a better keyboard

Mon, 18 Feb 2019 23:07:37 +0000

I want a better keyboard but my plea to the industry had no effect. Since no one would make one for me I built the keyboard myself. My main goals were:

Standard split-QWERTY layout mirroring the Microsoft Natural Keyboards
No number pad
High quality mechanical switches
Bluetooth and USB-C connections
Plug and play (no-solder) microcontroller replacement

Layout

Building a keyboard naturally starts with designing the key layout. I used the wonderful Keyboard Layout Editor to build a tweaked version of the classic Microsoft Natural Keyboard layout.

This Old Smart House

Sun, 11 Dec 2016 04:35:42 +0000

Our house is old. City records show it was built in 1910, but that’s just the age the city assigned to all the houses older then that. Our neighbors, who have a house that started life as a mirror image of ours, have found old newspapers in their attic from the 1870s making that our best guess for the age.

In some cases having an old house is great: structurally the house is solid. Big chunks of our house were built with old-school dimensional lumber from the era when a 2x4 was actually 2 inches by 4 inches. We have walls with 8x10 angled beams in them. Our basement has 2 foot thick field stone walls. In the 19th century folks built things to last.

I Want A Better Keyboard

Wed, 28 Aug 2013 15:25:13 +0000

Over on Hacker News, there is a discussion about Atwood’s new keyboard. It looks nice, but it’s not my ultimate keyboard. So bored rich people out there, build me a better keyboard.

First, it needs to be ergonomic. Microsoft has pretty much perfected this, so let’s start by copying their natural keyboard design. The basic wave shape and key layout of the current natural keyboards is great, especially since they fixed the layout of the navigation (insert/delete) cluster. We’ll drop the stupid silver buttons across the top: they’re way too far to reach from the home row. We’ll also need to nuke the zoom thing in the center. We’re going to need that space for something else later.

Adventures in 3D Printing

Thu, 16 May 2013 18:59:17 +0000

First print on the Replicator 2X

After a long wait, my MakerBot Replicator 2X was finally shipped and came in. I’ve wanted a 3D printer for a long time (going back to the Cupcake days) and only this year was able to convince my wife that we “needed” one.

ST7565 Success

Tue, 26 Feb 2013 02:25:42 +0000

After much screwing around, I finally got the ST7565 working with the Arduino Due. The wonderful u8glib recently added support for the Due and had preexisting support for the ST7565.

ST7565 and the Arduino Due

Tue, 22 Jan 2013 01:39:17 +0000

I’ve spent the last several days unsuccessfully trying to get the ST7565 to work with the Arduino Due. I’ve been trying to port ladyada’s ST7565 library to the SAM core without much luck.

Using the ST7565 with Uno and the library works with no issues, as would be expected, so I didn’t fuck up soldering or anything easy to diagnose like that.

Struggles With the Arduino Due

Wed, 16 Jan 2013 03:48:24 +0000

One of the things I knew going into this project was that I wanted the alarm clock to be compatible with Arduino. Ideally I’m going to expose as many of the Arduino’s pins on the final product in an accessible way so people can slap on shields and extend the clock to make it better.

This then begs the question: which Arduino? I have both a Uno and a Due. While I like the simplicity, support and cost of the Uno, the Due seems more future proof. My ST7575 already takes up over half the available pins on an Uno, and I haven’t even added any clocks, GPS, wakeup lights or the million or so other things this clock is going to do to it. Plus I’m sure the extra speed on the Due will come in handy. So Due it is.

Learning to Solder

Sat, 12 Jan 2013 23:02:43 +0000

One of this things I knew I need to learn to build the world’s best alarm clock was how to solder. And I was right: one of the first things I needed to do was solder wires to the ST7565 display I got from adafruit so I could hook it up to the Arduino at the heart of the clock.

Problem 1: I don’t have a soldering iron. Some quick Googling show that there are a lot of cheap soldering irons out there, and that you can probably get away with using them if you’re not doing a ton of work. But everyone seems to agree that the Hakko FX-888 is the best there is.

Alarm Clocks Suck

Sun, 06 Jan 2013 18:31:17 +0000

Crappy Sony Alarm Clock

All current alarm clocks suck. Go look at Amazon and see what I mean. The best appear to be the Sony designs, which look unchanged from mid-90s. Piles of buttons, no auto-setting of time, no modern technology. If you want something built this decade, the best bet is the iHome crap. I’m sure you’ve seen these: the look like they’re designed by a blind man, they only support iPhones and iPods, and still aren’t all that high-tech.