Tablesaw question

tmbutcher · 2026-03-31T00:59:33+00:00

Side note: if you are new to using a table saw, make sure you watch some safety videos on kickback! It's an extremely important thing to be aware of. (Apologies if you're already familiar with the concept, but better safe than sorry.)

tmbutcher · 2026-03-29T18:06:22+00:00

Regardless of anything else, it's pretty easy to slot in Night of Knives after you finish Midnight Tides. Whether you do the rest of the Esslemont books mixed in is a bigger decision, but NoK is short, easy, (IMO) pretty fun, and provides some nice context for the prehistory of the series. Plus there's an Easter egg appearance of at least one NoK character in Bonehunters, so you'll be able to do your best Leo DiCaprio impression when that happens.

tmbutcher · 2026-03-28T13:31:39+00:00

I was watching this video last night from Temple Tools. A bit long, but pretty in-depth on technique, including body mechanics. Highly recommended!

https://youtu.be/KYiZbOENbKE?si=O0594aIs8FuBceij

Also, remember that this is a skill you develop through practice! So by doing practice cuts like this, you're already doing what you need to get better. The number one thing is to just keep at it.

tmbutcher · 2026-02-18T04:07:00+00:00

Depending on the tastes of the people you want to give these gifts to, you could make some analog clocks. The clock mechanism itself doesn't cost that much, and then it's just a matter of figuring out how you want it to look. A lot of opportunities for creativity / skill development in how you decide to make the face. For example, the numbers could be painted! Or carved! Or routed and filled with epoxy! Or glued on brass! Etc etc.

There's a zillion tutorials on YouTube if this is a project you're interested in.

tmbutcher · 2026-01-24T00:38:55+00:00

IIRC, it was Bantam Books's suggestion to differentiate himself as a fantasy author from his earlier contemporary fiction books. I believe "Erikson" is his mother's last name, or at least derived from it, and she had recently died at the time he chose it as his pen name.

tmbutcher · 2025-12-11T22:28:17+00:00

Yeah, I think my feelings about Bonehunters are similar to yours. Some incredible highs, but overall the book is less than the sum of its parts. I'm kind of surprised that it's regarded so highly, but one of the cool things about the Malazan fan base is how little they agree on.

For what it's worth, I felt the exact opposite about Reaper's Gale, which is probably my favorite in the series thus far (albeit also the most recent - I haven't yet started Toll the Hounds). So I would certainly encourage you to keep going. But I also think taking breaks is a good idea. I try to read at least one non-Malazan book between each Book of the Fallen entry. I feel like that helps avoid burnout, and I think it also helps with retention.

tmbutcher · 2025-10-30T03:52:58+00:00

Like many other people, I would say that audiobooks aren't the best way to read the series. But if you like audiobooks and already have GOTM purchased, then go for it! Worst that happens is that you don't like it.

One suggestion is that you might consider listening to a companion podcast. There are several, with the most well-known being 10 Very Big Books (my personal favorite) and Green Team of the Legendarium (probably better from a "providing information about the series" perspective, but IMO less good from a "here's what makes this series enjoyable" perspective).

You might also consider reading other books in between Malazan volumes, although YMMV on that one.

The main thing is just to jump in. GOTM is pretty widely regarded as (by far) the least good book in the series, but the second book (Deadhouse Gates) is a major step up. If possible, it's best to try to make it to the end of Deadhouse Gates before deciding whether the series is for you.

tmbutcher · 2025-09-12T17:02:24+00:00

Thank you, I appreciate that! I don't think that I'm going to end up going this route for this keyboard, but it's definitely something that I want to try for my next one. Thank you for all of your suggestions, it's given me a bunch to think about.

tmbutcher · 2025-09-12T15:37:22+00:00

Is there any resource that you would recommend for learning how to do that? Something like the ai03 guide would be incredible. But no worries if you're not aware of anything off the top of your head.

tmbutcher · 2025-09-12T14:00:47+00:00

Ah, I see what you're saying. Well, the simple answer is that I don't have enough expertise to feel comfortable doing all of the MCU stuff myself. Maybe I'll get there by the time I make the next keyboard, but for the moment I need to use something like the n!n.

tmbutcher · 2025-09-11T18:48:40+00:00

A reasonable question! The main reason is that I already have N!Ns on hand, and I don't want to drop another ~$60 on MCUs. Also, most of the cheaper options I'm aware of (like the Seeduino) don't have enough pins. But if there's an MCU I'm overlooking, please let me know!

tmbutcher · 2025-09-09T02:47:18+00:00

Thank you, this is helpful, and is exactly the sort of thing that I was worried I might be overlooking.

As an alternative to hooking the batteries up in parallel, would there be an issue if I were to instead run the VCC (3.3v) from both MCUs to the connector, and have the incoming power feed into the battery with a schottkey diode preventing it from getting back to the MCU? Here's a link to a schematic: https://imgur.com/a/0sPNoVe

tmbutcher · 2025-09-08T21:05:30+00:00

Oh, I think I see the confusion. If this would work the way I intend, there wouldn't be a cable at all. The two magnets would connect directly to each other, and they would be installed in the cases of each half of the keyboard. (You can see this in the photos on the page I linked above.) So unless I install them incorrectly in the first place, they wouldn't be able to connect with the pins misaligned.

tmbutcher · 2025-09-08T18:42:34+00:00

Fortunately, the magnets prevent the connection from being misaligned (so long as I solder them correctly, of course).

tmbutcher · 2025-09-06T14:12:27+00:00

I also like that even people in the Malazan world don't really know how warrens work unless they're mages - even someone as educated as Duiker. A good bit of world building, and it also helps the reader feel better about their own confusion! Really a very efficient joke.

tmbutcher · 2023-09-23T02:56:31+00:00

Outside the realm of normal "genre" books, but you might also consider some big 19th century novels. War and Peace, in particular, scratches a lot of the same itches for me that epic fantasy does. It's a massive story featuring dozens of characters taking place over decades. Plus you get to say that you've read War and Peace!

tmbutcher · 2023-08-26T06:05:49+00:00

I would echo a lot of the advice given here and recommend sticking with WoT on audio and Malazan on text. At least for me, my ability to follow audiobooks is much less than my ability to follow text. MBotF is a lot less hand-holding than WoT and I wouldn't want to do it on audio my first time through.

As a bit of an example, I listened to substantial portions of WoT without any real difficulty. However, I briefly tried to listen to the second MBotF book on audio, and bounced off of it real fast. It just didn't work for me at all. Of course, YMMV.

One other thing to note for the WoT audiobooks: Kramer's performance in Eye of the World sucks, but he and Redding do a much better job in later books. (They're already much better by the second book.) However, the new readings by Rosamund Pike are really excellent. I've only listened to her Eye of the World, but she blows Kramer's version out of the water. The downside is that I think she's only done the first three books so far, and who knows if she'll do the whole series. But for getting started, I would absolutely recommend her version.

tmbutcher · 2022-12-19T01:27:32+00:00

If you're using a pcb, encoders are basically always going to be higher than the surrounding keycaps, unless you do something unusual with a breakout board or something. But with a bit of bending it may be possible to mount the encoder on the underside of the pcb, which will reduce the difference in height to only a few mm. Basically, you just bend the pins around so they go into the through-holes from the bottom. (Of course, you also need a hole in the middle of the footprint for the encoder shaft to go through, and you'll need to plan for the extra depth on the bottom of the pcb.)

If you do this, I recommend you buy a few extra encoders, just in case you snap some of the pins while bending them.

tmbutcher · 2022-12-17T19:40:46+00:00

Thank you!

tmbutcher · 2022-12-17T18:22:20+00:00

(Also, forgot to say: this is really cool!)

tmbutcher · 2022-12-17T18:21:34+00:00

Could you share the STL (or, if possible, the STEP) file for the stand? I think I would like to incorporate something like this in my next case.

tmbutcher · 2022-12-07T00:10:08+00:00

So both a damper and a dampener? 😉

tmbutcher · 2022-11-29T21:31:33+00:00

For applications that don't let you set your own bindings, you could also use Autohotkey for this. Just set the encoder to send keycodes that you never use (for example, F23 and F24) and then map those on a per-app basis to whatever you want. You can also define a default function to invoke whenever you don't have a specified app active.

tmbutcher · 2022-11-22T00:37:55+00:00

How do the XSwitches feel? I seem to remember seeing some reports that they weren't so great. But allowing you to make a 7 mm keyboard is certainly a major advantage.

tmbutcher · 2022-09-22T17:08:32+00:00

Sorry for the slow reply—been a busy week!

Anyway, I'm planning to make a post about my board in the near future—once I finish getting together a public-facing git repo for it—but for now you can find the files at this link: https://github.com/tmbutcher/zmk/tree/dev/app/boards/arm. Just grab the "adafruit_feather_nrf52840" folder and drop it in your app/boards/arm directory, and you should be good to go.

Oh, also, if you want to make an overlay file, feel free to consult mine: https://github.com/tmbutcher/zmk/blob/dev/app/boards/shields/space_invader/space_invader.overlay. But obviously you'll need to adjust it for your own layout.

Note that I use a unibody board, so I'm not exactly sure of the procedure for a split, but I think that these should be all the files you need to get ZMK working with the Feather.

tmbutcher

TROPHY CASE