iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Mike O’Connor @mikeoconnor.bsky.social · 09/05/2026

It's annoying when you step away from a hobby for juuuust long enough that all the software has changed and you don't remember the workflow that was working before.

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Mike O’Connor @mikeoconnor.bsky.social · 29/03/2026

A whole generation of people spent their childhood playing the Sims, and now that they have a little bit of disposable income all they can think about is burning a hole in their pocket recreating the Sims on Mac minis with their anthropic and OpenAI API keys

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Mike O’Connor @mikeoconnor.bsky.social · 16/03/2026

I made a website. It's pretty sparse. But I made it. It's got some thoughts in it. You should look at it. thoughtsofmike.com

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Mike O’Connor @mikeoconnor.bsky.social · 20/02/2026

I wanna see The Big Lebowski reimagined as a movie about some dudes in a curling league.

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Mike O’Connor @mikeoconnor.bsky.social · 18/02/2026

It occurred to me that the pin spacing on 3mm LEDs is almost exactly 1.6mm which makes it super easy to edge-mount them on a PCB. Way less wiring, way easier multiplexing across multiple boards, and way more modular.

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Mike O’Connor @mikeoconnor.bsky.social · 18/02/2026

Shoutout to @adafruit.com for the open source schematics and inspiration. Finally mustered up the courage to design something of my own and it’s shaping up to be pretty awesome. As it turns out, KiCad isn’t so scary after all.

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Mike O’Connor @mikeoconnor.bsky.social · 04/02/2026

New project in the works, and I think I might be in too deep already

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Mike O’Connor @mikeoconnor.bsky.social · 01/02/2026

The big gunfight in Heat might be the high-water mark for action thriller scenes of the 90s.

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Mike O’Connor @mikeoconnor.bsky.social · 15/01/2026

Spacetime curves differently when you have a baby.

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Mike O’Connor @mikeoconnor.bsky.social · 12/01/2026

symmetrical multi-gig fiber is everything

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Mike O’Connor @mikeoconnor.bsky.social · 02/01/2026

All the developmental guides I’m reading about my kid are like “…by nine months, your baby may begin pulling up to stand…” and I’m here looking at mine wondering if I should be worried.

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Mike O’Connor @mikeoconnor.bsky.social · 09/12/2025

When it comes to practical jokes, there aren't many tools that can compete with a big bag of heavy duty zip-ties.

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Mike O’Connor @mikeoconnor.bsky.social · 06/12/2025

I really do love recursion but I'm pretty sure the last time I used it was this time last year, during #AdventOfCode

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Mike O’Connor @mikeoconnor.bsky.social · 05/12/2025

#AdventOfCode is my annual opportunity to bust out my finest recursive functions.

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Mike O’Connor @mikeoconnor.bsky.social · 30/11/2025

I love it when Indian takeaway restaurants actually trust me when I say that I want my curry spicy.

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Mike O’Connor @mikeoconnor.bsky.social · 30/11/2025

Alright, I'll bite - Let's see what you've got for me @profanity.accountant

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Mike O’Connor @mikeoconnor.bsky.social · 26/11/2025

Shoutout to the nice Dutch orthopedic surgeon who kindly reminded me that "this might hurt a little" before jamming the gigantic needle directly into my knee.

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Mike O’Connor @mikeoconnor.bsky.social · 22/11/2025

Welcome to the world little one!

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Mike O’Connor @mikeoconnor.bsky.social · 14/11/2025

Hey @adafruit.com! I'm thinking about building a project that would benefit from something like a neopixel grid, but I need to be able to see through it from the un-lit side of the matrix between the modules. Do you know of anything like that? Ideally something flexible...

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Mike O’Connor @mikeoconnor.bsky.social · 12/11/2025

"We're gonna put you in an enormous magnet filled with supercooled helium gas and zap you with magnetic waves that you can't feel or see, all so we can build a 3-dimensional model of your innards." 🤯

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Mike O’Connor @mikeoconnor.bsky.social · 12/11/2025

Went in for an MRI today and couldn't help but think about how Sci-Fi modern medicine really is. If you teleported someone out of the 1920s to the modern day and showed them this tech, their mind would boggle.

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Mike O’Connor @mikeoconnor.bsky.social · 12/11/2025

I think the station in Haarlem might be my favorite in this whole country.

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Mike O’Connor @mikeoconnor.bsky.social · 09/11/2025

If you’re looking for a candidate for best version, Kenji Lopez-Alt has an amazing method for crispy oven roasted potatoes. I make them at family gatherings and there are never any leftovers. www.seriouseats.com/the-best-roa...

seriouseats.com

The Best Crispy Roast Potatoes Ever

These are the most flavorful crispy roast potatoes you'll ever make. And they just happen to be gluten-free and vegan (if you use oil) to boot.

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Mike O’Connor @mikeoconnor.bsky.social · 04/11/2025

Damn that’s no I joke. Why on earth do you have that??

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Mike O’Connor @mikeoconnor.bsky.social · 26/10/2025

Got a babysitter tonight for the first time since the hellbeast was born. Holy shit y'all.

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Mike O’Connor @mikeoconnor.bsky.social · 20/10/2025

Right now, somewhere out there, a company is fine-tuning an LLM on old company documents before deleting them in the name of "efficiency" and I can't wait to read about it in WIRED.

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Mike O’Connor @mikeoconnor.bsky.social · 18/10/2025

London with a baby is a different experience altogether.

A baby sitting in a pram at a crosswalk, as viewed from above and behind. The top of his head, and his little feet are visible. The crosswalk is in the UK, and has “<- look left” written on the street so that pedestrians know where the traffic comes from.

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Mike O’Connor @mikeoconnor.bsky.social · 17/10/2025

Really hard to overstate how amazing it is to be able to flash totally new firmware to my ESPHome devices wirelessly.

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Mike O’Connor @mikeoconnor.bsky.social · 17/10/2025

Installed the unit in my utility closet this week. Two temperature probes for each loop - one for hot and one for cold. The flow gauges tell me how much water is circulating, so I can estimate the watts of thermal energy sinking into the floors in real time. Kind of amazed that it works so well.

Photo of the distribution block for my floor heating system which sends hot water to different parts of the house. The hot side is above, with labels corresponding to each of the rooms served by this circuit. There are thermistor probes zip-tied to the hoses. I later insulated them so that they more accurately measure the inlet and outlet temperature of each loop. The flow gauges on top of the hot water manifold indicate the volume per minute of water moving through the system. Water is precisely 1kg per liter, which makes it very easy to estimate the mass flow rate of the system. All I need to compute the heat dissipation is the specific heat of water, which is easy to obtain.

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Mike O’Connor @mikeoconnor.bsky.social · 15/10/2025

This is all amazing, thank you! I think it'll all be useful to me at the end of the day. I find maps fascinating for how densely you can pack information into them. So I guess there's only a tiny leap between a scholarly application and one where I'm hanging geospatial infographics on the wall.

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Mike O’Connor @mikeoconnor.bsky.social · 15/10/2025

Maybe a long shot, but have you published any guides like this for people who want to make maps purely as art? I've been toying with QGIS to generate vector graphics that I can draw on my pen plotter, but the software is a bit overwhelming and I wish I knew where to begin. bsky.app/profile/mike...

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Mike O’Connor @mikeoconnor.bsky.social · 15/10/2025

Went with through-hole components because it's what I had on hand, but I think my next foray into this world will be entirely SMD. So much smaller and cleaner that way.

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Mike O’Connor @mikeoconnor.bsky.social · 15/10/2025

Finally mustered up the courage to design a custom PCB in @kicad.org and send it off for manufacture. Only one bodge wire required, to deal with an island in my 3.3v plane. Very pleased with myself. This is a 16 channel temperature probe that I'll be using to monitor each loop in my floor heating.

Bare black PCB in my hand, with component footprints visible in the silkscreen. The board is titled "Raspberry Pi Pico W Thermocouple Multiplexer"

The PCB with a handful of components placed on top of it, including the pico board and the two ADC chips with their corresponding screw terminals.

View of the board in its enclosure from an off-axis, where the holes in the side of the enclosure are visible. The USB port on the long side of the enclosure allows the Pico to be plugged into power.

Top down angle of the assembled board placed inside of a 3D printed enclosure. There are NTC thermistor leads strung through the side of the enclosure and connected to each of the 16 terminal blocks.

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Mike O’Connor @mikeoconnor.bsky.social · 09/10/2025

I don't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing. But I can't wait to find out.

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Mike O’Connor @mikeoconnor.bsky.social · 09/10/2025

That makes sense. I guess somewhat similar to why diesel tends to be cheaper than gasoline in Europe, but the opposite tends to be true in the states.

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Mike O’Connor @mikeoconnor.bsky.social · 09/10/2025

Makes me wonder how much of this is the result of kerf wastage.

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Mike O’Connor @mikeoconnor.bsky.social · 08/10/2025

Travel websites should let you filter out properties with squeaky floors and door hinges.

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Mike O’Connor @mikeoconnor.bsky.social · 14/09/2025

People look at you differently when the only thing you’ve got in your basket is 4 packs of diapers, 2 beers, and a huge block of cheese.

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Mike O’Connor @mikeoconnor.bsky.social · 02/09/2025

I used it as an excuse to have a cookout and invite the neighborhood. I might need to make this a regular thing.

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Mike O’Connor @mikeoconnor.bsky.social · 01/09/2025

the lack of sleep was comfortably offset by the knowledge that there were no leftovers at the end of the party.

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Mike O’Connor @mikeoconnor.bsky.social · 31/08/2025

5 hours into a brisket cook. Ask me anything.

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Mike O’Connor @mikeoconnor.bsky.social · 15/08/2025

Comments are part of the code, as far as I'm concerned. And any healthy code review process should involve them too.

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