DavidCraddock.net

Backups should be future-proof. Very happy to report that my ‘backup box’ has successfully transferred the whole 2.4TB borg backup archive of the crucial files on my homelab server and entire home network, after it was deduped and encrypted, over rsync over the electric circuit in my rented house via powerline adaptors. ...

I have spent some time working on changes to improve the blogging theme and associated infrastructure that I use to maintain my blogs. With Deepseek + the Pi coding harness, it is easy to get things working exactly how I want them to, with minimal effort. I have made a number of changes, including separating each blog into 1) the Hugo content 2) the standard PaperMod-dpc theme and 3) PaperMod-dpc-buildscripts which are the common infrastructure and pipeline used to build and setup the blog as well as run check and scans and create new posts easily etc. ...

The problem with LLMs. Plausible answers to a question everyone knows is impossible to answer with one correct answer.. and so AI just makes up plausible answers without knowing the answer.. that is what it does in general, actually.. the problem is that the content of those plausible answers differ per session, not just per model.. ...

The Problem with Solely Focusing on Money. I think that where most old-school developers like me are making a mistake is that we presume that companies ACTUALLY WANT to build good, well-engineered, ethical software that is enjoyable and easy for the user to use, and doesn’t add frustration to their daily lives. Companies don’t care about any of that! ...

It was quite the challenge! I completed the ‘ride 200 miles in the month of October’ challenge for the UK National Autistic society. I raised £300 including gift-aid. It turned out to be eventful and a real challenge! If you want to read about what I did, and the challenges I faced, you can read the updates at the justgiving site: ...

The bike. This year, like last year, I am doing a cycle challenge for the month of October. Last year I undertook the challenge in the name of Cancer Research UK, and was successful in raising quite a bit of money for the cause. ...

Vibe-Coding is a mood. Things change FAST in the vibe-coding world. Last time I posted here on the subject, I was using the ‘Zed’ vibe coding editor . This was only a month or so ago! Agent Harness Today, my current setup is using the ‘Pi’ commandline agentic harness with Deepseek-Flash-v4. ...

The really bad thing. In around July 2026, a REALLY bad thing happened. My home network got hacked. I had to take extensive recovery steps, including securing and changing all passwords, COMPLETELY rebuilding the home server and network, and restoring 18TB of backup archives from Amazon AWS Deep Glacier (which cost me approx £2000). ...

Put yourself in his position. Let’s not split straws here, you can’t have honestly have got to adulthood without realising the world is - quite simply - NOT a good place, and it is getting worse by the moment. So it is natural therefore that people are increasingly not wanting to interact with it, especially young people, as they do not see the point. ...

The road ahead. After a lot of thought, I have decided on a career strategy. I still think my main strength is, and always will be, my technical skills. I am going to keep improving those, on the job and off the job. I DO need to learn additional ‘soft skills’ - the main one being presentation skills - I need to get comfortable presenting my technical development/research in front of an audience. This is a skill that will be needed even in the most hardcore of technical fields, such as research labs - you still need to present your findings. ...