Over the holidays, Keya gifted me a nifty little Larson Scanner kit to solder together. It's a kit that lets you make the cool LED effect from Knight Rider and Battlestar Galactica. Glen Larson produced both which is probably why they have such similar cool effects. The kid itself is pretty straightforward to put together … Continue reading Larson scanner
PirateBox
When I was looking into nifty Raspberry Pi projects, I stumbled across the PirateBox project. The website describes it well: PirateBox is a DIY anonymous offline file-sharing and communications system built with free software and inexpensive off-the-shelf hardware. In other words, it's a bit of preconfigured software you can run on a Raspberry Pi that lets folks chat, … Continue reading PirateBox
Pondering acronyms
I work for a tech company. I have worked for the government. In both places acronym usage is abundant. In both places, acronyms rarely help achieve clarity. I noticed some acronym patterns and, like everyone else on the planet, I have opinions on how their formatting could be improved. tl;dr (too long; didn't read): Acronyms … Continue reading Pondering acronyms
Raspberry machines
I'm writing this on a Raspberry Pi. It has a 2.5 inch screen and my keyboard is some kind of cheap tiny wireless thing with a track pad that more closely resembles a game controller than a keyboard. Please forgive my brevity or typos. In addition to composing on a small screen, Chromium has a … Continue reading Raspberry machines
Improving the WordPress experience
This is a copy of a post I initially wrote for a8c design. The experience of creating a WordPress site can vary wildly. Occasionally, I hear how someone set it up without any major roadblocks. I more often witness nightmare-level setup experiences. Together, with help from the community and hosts, we're working to improve the … Continue reading Improving the WordPress experience
Organize your CSS properties however you dang like
Over the last several years, I have read several lengthy articles on how everyone should organize your CSS and why one method is better than another. In fact, I have even bought into several of these ideas in the past, but let's take a look at what these systems are trying to solve and why they are largely unnecessary … Continue reading Organize your CSS properties however you dang like
Design.blog
A fellow designer and coworker of mine at Automattic, John Maeda, has been curating articles on the fairly new design.blog since August last year. After WordCamp US, he invited Mel Choyce and me to write an article for it each. He also asked me to design the cover. Designing the cover felt similar to coding for CSS Zen Garden, … Continue reading Design.blog
Safari, I want to love you, but I just can’t
I have been using Safari as my default browser for the last few months. I really wanted to see what Apple has been up to with their browser and wondered if I could use it effectively for designing and building websites. The gist is that the browser is pretty dang nice for the most part. I … Continue reading Safari, I want to love you, but I just can’t
When 2016 zigs, you get a Zag
Nine days ago, I walked out of an animal shelter with a new best friend and I couldn't be happier about it. I first saw Zag sleeping in the back of a kennel away from the other dog, Domino. There was no information about him, but he seemed interesting enough to meet. I asked about him … Continue reading When 2016 zigs, you get a Zag
blog. to .blog
I'm super excited to finally ditch my old blog.michaelarestad.com blog address for something a bit nicer. Thanks to my generous employer, I now am the super proud owner of michael.blog. I went through the process of setting up the domain on get.blog and I have to say, it was pretty dang slick. I moved all … Continue reading blog. to .blog