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Halftone Printing Plate

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.

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

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.

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.

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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Tags 3dprinting, art, printmaking

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Aldi Cast Iron Dutch Oven

Post author By Pete Prodoehl
Post date 2026-04-03
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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.)

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.)

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.

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.

Tags bread, food, tools

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Giving Back (to the Internet)

Post author By Pete Prodoehl
Post date 2026-03-28
2 Comments on Giving Back (to the Internet)

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.

Tags internet

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Apple Shortcut – Talking Reminder

Post author By Pete Prodoehl
Post date 2026-03-23
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I previously mentioned Apple Shortcuts (with a silly example) so here’s another one using the “Automation” feature.

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.

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.

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

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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Tags ios, shortcuts

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Pretzel Buns

One of the ways I’ve been dealing with the pain is by spending time in the kitchen baking when I am able to. It often helps me focus on something besides the pain my body is in. And it keeps me vertical and moving around instead of just lying down.

I’ve made soft pretzels in the past but always skipped the boiling part, and wow, it makes quite the difference. I’m comfortable now with it, though I still make quite a mess, but that’s sort of my style.

The recipe for these is Pretzel Buns from King Arthur. I’ve become a fan of many of their recipes, party due to the fact it’s not some recipe web site with a very long story and dozens of advertisements.

Seriously though, I absolutely love these buns! I’ve had them toasted with just a bunch of cheese, with an egg, with some cheese and leftover taco meat (surprisingly good!) and even with cream cheese. I plan to make more of these. They also freeze pretty well.

I know what you’re saying, what about the beloved Pretzilla from Miller Baking in Milwaukee? Well, those are/were my go-to for many years, and I do like to support Milwaukee companies. My niece even used to work there, but in 2020 they sold out to a private equity firm, and of course any store-bought bread-based product is going to have additives and preservatives.

One of the reasons I am trying to make/bake more at home is because I want control of what goes into things. Flour, water, yeast, and salt (and sometimes olive oil or butter) is pretty much all you need for most dough. Be it pizza, bread, pretzels, or bagels. No additional ingredients are needed if it’s not going to sit on a store shelf. (Though honestly Pretzilla is probably better than most others, and is Non-GMO, Vegan, and Kosher.)

(Apologies for the vastly different color temperatures of the photos in this post. Our kitchen lighting is weird.)

Tags food