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This is the Pain (Relief?)

MRI Scan Slice

MRI Scan Slice

See the previous post… Done? Okay!

The past three weeks (not two) have been crap. Pain every day, every night. I’ve been taking Gabapentin, Ibuprofen, Tylenol, and using a heating pad quite a bit. On a good day I’d have 6 to 8 hours of pain and on a bad day 12+ hours.

But the day has come! My procedure was a few days ago. Since I was sedated I really don’t remember much about it. They inserted two needles into my back and injected steroids into my spine. (Fun!) The next day I felt good. Really good. But they do warn it can take days or a week or more to start being pain-free.

Two days after the injections I had quite a bit of pain in the morning, which is normal, but it wasn’t at the same level as it was earlier in the week before the injections. It faded later in the day, so that was good.

So if you’re keeping track I’ve been in pain (in various ways) since November. It’s shifted, changed, and mutated since then. From the back to the butt to the hip to the leg and ankle.

I cannot wait to get back to my old life of working full-time, going on bike rides, not lying on a heating pad in pain, etc. I hope, hope, hope we’re nearly there.

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Halftone Printing Plate

Print of Rock on Paper

Print of Rock on Paper

My daughter asked if I could make a printing plate and sent me this photo of a rock. (She’s a rock climber.) I’ve made lots of plates using 3D printing so I figured I would try to halftone the photo.

Above you can see two prints I made on paper using black relief printing ink.

Rock image photo

Here’s the original photo, in grayscale. Rocks have texture and some gradient and tone… Fun!

Rock image halftone

Here is the image after halftoning it. My first attempt used dots that were way too small. The file was 720MB and took a long time to load, and I got a warning in my slicer. Getting the halftoning right is tricky, and it’ll take some experimentation in the future.

Render of 3D Printed Printing Plate

I converted the raster image into an SVG using Inkscape and then loaded it into OpenSCAD to extrude it and put a plate underneath it so I could export it as an STL file.

3D Printed Printing Plate

Here’s the plate, after printing it and cleaning it. I lost a few dots on the top where they were a little too small. Again, I’ll try to fix those issues next time.

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Aldi Cast Iron Dutch Oven

Aldi Dutch Oven

Aldi Dutch Oven

I picked up this little 2 quart cast iron Dutch oven from Aldi. I think I saw this blog post and knowing how expensive high quality cast iron Dutch ovens are, I figured for $20 USD I’d give it a try. I made this Small Batch Crusty Bread because it was the smallest loaf I could find. (And I was too lazy to do baker’s math for other loafs.)

Bread in Dutch oven

I’m not big on many of the meat recipes you find for a Dutch oven, but I have been making a lot of bread lately, so I thought I would give that a try.

(Note: I did bake in on/in parchment paper, though I pulled it out for the photo.)

Bread

Tiny loaf! This only used 120 grams (1 cup) of flour. I let it rise overnight, about 12 hours, and it’s one of those “no knead” recipes. It turned out pretty good! I may try to double the size for the second attempt.

Bread

I was pleased with the crumb on this loaf. I ended up eating the whole thing in one day, not surprising I guess. I toasted up two pieces for a sandwich at lunch and damn, it was good! I look forward to making more bread and possibly exploring other recipes with this thing.

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Giving Back (to the Internet)

Art

Art

Some thoughts from The Noble Path.

“Have you thought about monetizing this?” I have, and I said “Absolutely fucking not!”

It’s funny because I remember back in the late 1990s when I learned so much about computers, scripting, programming, etc. and I learned it all online from others willing to share freely… and that’s why I started a blog and shared experiences, knowledge, and code… because I wanted to GIVE BACK to the world that gave me so much.

And honestly, that’s why I still do it, to give back. There are so many amazing open source projects that make my life better, so if I can do any little thing that helps or inspires others, I want to do that.

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Apple Shortcut – Talking Reminder

Apple Shortcuts screen shot

I previously mentioned Apple Shortcuts (with a silly example) so here’s another one using the “Automation” feature.

Apple Shortcuts screen shot

You can set an Automation to run at a specific time of day, so I have one at noon to remind me to take my medication and another at 5pm to remind me to leave work.

Apple Shortcuts screen shot

You can also set an Automation to Speak Text. Yeah, just like the say command on macOS. I used to set up cron jobs to run scripts with the say command to remind me of things.

Apple Shortcuts screen shot

But wait! Remember all those awesome voices like Organ and Zarvox? They’re all here to hear!

Apple Shortcuts screen shot

Funny story, the first time I set these up I was home alone and heard someone talking from another room in the house and I freaked out! I thought someone else was in my house. Nope, just my phone talking to me.

So yeah, there could be some good prank potential with this feature if you can access someone’s phone for a few minutes.

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