DavidCraddock.net

Another mobile workbench. I have been completely ‘blown away’ by the excellent ‘Zed’ text editor . With Zed combined with the current ‘best value’ Chinese model, which for me is Deepseek v4 Pro , it is an amazing ‘power tool’ to make some much needed refactoring and further development to the open source projects I’ve been working on for literally.. decades. It is the closest replacement for VIM9 as my daily driver that I’ve EVER encountered.. and I have been using Vim for at least 20 years. ...

Dolby Codecs. Vibe-coded this script today (amongst other things). I am using it to go automate the process of going through my collection and create additional audio streams for files which have EAC 5.1 surround sound streams. Why? Because EAC3 audio is a Dolby propitiatory format and it doesn’t play on the Windows 11 Plex player. This means if EAC3 is the only English audio stream format available on the file I’ve downloaded, I won’t be able to play the file on Windows 11 in English. ...

The hypocrisy of the UK today.

An impressive-looking ant. I think where I’m going wrong is that I’m presuming that - as I increase my technical skills - I will become more employable as a tech worker. Unfortunately this is the opposite of what is actually happening. People hire for ’team fit’ - and usually they do NOT want someone who is particularly technically skilled. ...

AI has blown my mind. It’s true. 2 years ago I was a Luddite, lost and alone. Today, however, I embrace vibe-coding like nothing ever before. And I WILL call it ‘vibe-coding’ and I know it sounds derogatory, but you have to consider the fact that I learned how to program when the internet was not even ‘a thing’ - so I have honed my skills for decades. And I’m working on my fourth STEM degree. ...

Now that the University of London, Royal Holloway Cyber Security MSc is out of the way (for now).. the real challenge begins.. the Imperial College Machine Learning/AI certificate . Imperial College is basically the UK’s ‘MIT ’ and BOY - do they like their maths! I am unfortunately not that great at maths, so I have a lot of work to do to complete this certificate! I have booked out the next few months so I can concentrate on learning the fundamental maths in order for me to learn the more advanced maths, which will let me complete this course. ...

It has been interesting learning about FHE - Fully Homomorphic Encryption and MPC - Secure Multi-Party Computation in my recent studies with Royal Holloway, University of London . Honestly, I think these advances are very exciting. Some people think that cryptography is too academic or inscrutable, but the reality is that it has had the biggest affect on our digital lives. Without cryptography, Bitcoin, HTTPS, secure messaging, VPNs, online banking, online payments in general, WIFI, mobile phones.. simply would not be able to exist because they would be too insecure to implement. ...

Have just finished the most recent module exams for my MSc Cyber Security degree at University of London, Royal Holloway. This means that I have now attempted (and I hope - passed) around 50% of the degree content, not including the final project, since I started the degree in April 2025. Previously I was averaging a distinction result, I am not convinced those two last exams will result in me maintaining the distinction average, but we will see! ...

It is very annoying how low peoples expectations and initial perceptions of me are. I apparently come across as some kind of ‘invalid’, possibly because of my neurodiverse social difficulties. When people get to know just how different I am from their initial expectations, they seem to get genuinely shocked and annoyed! As if I have no right to be as intelligent/capable/successful/kind/generous as I actually am. I really HATE this reaction. People don’t understand that it’s THEIR perceptions and prejudices are at fault, and the gap they have discovered between them and reality is actually A REALLY GOOD THING!

We are experiencing our second heatwave of the summer here in the UK and to be honest, I’m sick of it. Our new home, despite being a recent new build house, seems to get much hotter than the external-wall-insulated house we used to have in Manchester. We have had to install fans in most rooms, and 2 (!) portable aircon units in the south facing upper rooms to attempt to deal with the heat. ...