Crafty Maniac

11/03/2026

A receipt printer for the kitchen

I hate printers with a passion. Inkjet ink costs about as much as snake anti-venom, and the toners for my colour laser are $90+ each. So, naturally, I bought another printer.

This one is a thermal receipt printer, the same kind every store uses. I paid $99.99 CAD for it. No ink, no toner, just cheap rolls of paper. I plugged it into a 2017 Raspberry Pi I already had and parked it in the kitchen.

It started as a Telegram bot and turned into a little app with a tile for each thing it prints: the shopping list (sorted in the order I walk the grocery store, after it filed ginger ale under Produce), to-do tickets for a paper Kanban board, take-out orders where everyone adds their own food, and Battleship cards for the table. The surprise was speech to text. Once the commands were hidden behind tiles, I could just say "eggs and milk" into my phone and they land on the list. The article also covers how the family prints from anywhere without opening a single port at home.

The best part so far is when a random slip comes out and everyone rushes over to see what it is and who sent it.

Next up is recipes from whatever's in the fridge, run on my own hardware. And my robot, Servo, gets to print notes. Probably veiled threats.

https://craftymaniac.com/2026/11/kitchen-receipt-printer/

A sub-$100 thermal receipt printer, a 2017 Raspberry Pi and a Telegram bot with its own little app, turned into a kitchen printer the whole family uses for shopping lists, to-do tickets, take-out orders and games.

10/03/2026

For a week, my robot has been living as an expensive paperweight, plugged into a power adapter like it's on a hospital drip. Every test drive came with a cord trailing behind it, which is a real mood-killer for a "presence robot" that is supposed to be present somewhere other than next to an outlet.

This week that changed. Three 18650 cells went into the rover's own battery board; I unplugged it, held my breath, and watched it drive across the living room rug on its own. Freedom. (The cells are genuine Samsung, from a Canadian supplier, which I'm contractually obligated to mention.)

The better story is the controls. I replaced my bash-script-that-curls-JSON driving method with a browser joystick, and the first version had two bugs worth stealing from. Clicking the pad teleported the k**b under my cursor, and the motors don't move below about 30% power, so my fix for that made the rover lurch to a third of full speed the second I touched the stick. The cure was ramping into the dead zone instead of snapping to it. A light switch versus a dimmer. I also gave it an amber phosphor mission-control look, because I was already elbow-deep and regret nothing.

Still no brain in this loop, just a human steering hardware. Next up is the Raspberry Pi 5 and AI camera, which is when this stops being a very good remote-control car.

https://craftymaniac.com/2026/09/ai-rover-off-the-leash/

09/05/2026

I enjoy making books. Working out how many blank pages I need so the whole thing folds and flows properly is easily the most painful part of the process. And I'm too cheap to buy imposition software.

My bookbinding spreadsheet only takes me so far, so I made Folio Maniac. It plans signatures, estimates the book block's thickness, and arranges the PDF pages for printing and folding. It's free, runs in your browser, and your PDF stays on your machine. No upload, no account.

It's also very much a beta. I'm still testing it with my own projects, and the print layout needs more real-world testing. Check your paper measurements and print a single test sheet before committing a whole ream. Printers already have enough ways to ruin your afternoon. Running amok tops the list.

The article includes screenshots and a link. If you bind books, I'd love to hear what it helps with and what it gets in your way.

One last note: this isn't commercial software, and it doesn't track anything.

https://craftymaniac.com/2026/09/folio-maniac-beta/

08/04/2026

Building my own Novel Writing Software

I've tried enough writing software to know what I don't want: another clever app that asks me to hand over my manuscript, adopt its filing system, and hope I can still get at my work when the clever app stops being clever.

So I'm building ObsidianWriter, a private novel studio built around the way I actually write the Thorncroft Mysteries. It organizes, reviews, and safely updates the work, but the novels and their reference material stay ordinary Markdown files in my Obsidian vault, editable there whether or not the app is running.

It also brings in editorial AI passes (Victorian Audit, Continuity Check, Developmental Review, Line Edit, Humanize), file history, verified backups, and a Change Inbox that tracks edits made outside the app. Suggestions get reviewed, not auto-applied, and the tools keep working even when every AI provider is offline.

This is a progress report from the workbench, not a launch. Read the full post:

https://craftymaniac.com/2026/08/building-thorncroft-writer/

I’m building a private, Obsidian-first novel studio that adds structure, editorial AI, safe revision and recovery tools without taking ownership of the manuscript.

07/26/2026

Ibson the Grey's Dungeon Archive relaunch

Ibson the Grey's Dungeon Archive has a new permanent home.

This old-school Mage Knight Dungeons fan site began life in the Microsoft FrontPage era. I’ve rebuilt it as a modern, accessible archive while preserving the material that made the original worth saving: full-resolution MKD01 and MKD02 maps, heroic-team articles and statistics, printable play aids, and terrain, custom-dial tools and fonts, variant rules, MK Joust playmats, and the surviving MageQuest campaign resources.

The original address now redirects permanently, so old bookmarks will still bring you to the archive.

Explore the relaunched site:
https://ibsonsdungeon.craftymaniac.com/

A preserved archive of maps, teams, rules, and tools for Mage Knight Dungeons.

07/22/2026

Someone showed me a picture of a welcome sign with a hanging plant holder. I made the classic mistake of saying, “I could build that.”

So I did. No plans, no dimensions, just construction lumber, pocket holes and the sort of confidence normally found immediately before a trip back to the hardware store.

The full build is now on CraftyManiac, including the approximate cut list, assembly and finishing notes, the SketchUp dimensions, and the actual Welcome SVG for anyone using a Cricut. Telling you to cut the lettering without giving you the file would just be rude.

https://craftymaniac.com/2026/07/building-a-welcome-sign-plant-holder/