DavidCraddock.net

The UOLWW Team made it to the Regional Qualifiers!

Fri, 03 Apr 2026 19:02:13 +0000

The University of London Cyber Security Society team I was a part of made it to the regional qualifiers of the Cybersecurity Leaders Challenge!

This was a competitive achievement, and we received good feedback including a lot of positive feedback, for our presentation, that we will look to take on board when we enter the competition next year!

Study Break Going Well

Fri, 13 Mar 2026 09:31:13 +0000

We have been incredibly busy with the house move, and I did not get as much time as I wanted to, to put into studying for my latest Royal Holloway Cyber Security module, “Applied Crytopgrahy”.

So, when the results came out, I was expecting to have to resit it.

Imagine my surprise when I found out that I had passed, not only just barely, but with 71%, which is a distinction!!

Being Alternative In the Countryside

Sat, 21 Feb 2026 21:10:13 +0000

We absolutely LOVE where we have moved to, very near Chorley, in the Lancashire countryside.

The problem is, we are not like our neighbours. I regularly wear light-adaptive designer glasses, and a huge elaborate leather ‘cyberpunk style’ jacket. My wife regularly wears K-pop hoodies, wears sunglasses when she goes out as she has light sensitivity, is German, and has a lot of piercings. We are in our 40s.

Maintaining Internet Sanity in the Modern Age

Thu, 29 Jan 2026 01:00:13 +0000

I have a lot of problems personally with ‘doomscrolling ’ habits, and getting suckered into arguing on social media sites.
I honestly believe that the internet is actively BAD for our wellbeing, UNLESS we use it properly.
Most people do not know how to use it properly.

Remove Advertising

As much as possible, I remove advertising from my internet view.
I do this mainly through using NextDNS.io and UBlock Origin on my browser configuration.

My Career Strategy Going Forward

Fri, 16 Jan 2026 23:08:13 +0000

I’m keeping going with my AI/ML cert from Imperial College London, I’m not taking any UOLWW Cyber Security masters modules this presentation (next 3 months).. instead I’m focusing on the AI/ML cert and other commitments.
Instead of focusing on researcher roles, which was my former idea, I hope to position myself as a devops expert with knowledge and qualifications in security (DevSecOps) and ML (MLOps).
This positioning will build on my existing experience to allow the shortest path to get to where I want to be.
For this, I am targetting finishing this masters course (eventually), the Imperial College ML cert, AWS Associate Architect cert, and a Kubernates Cert.
This will tie in with my career experience thus far (20 years of mostly software and devops) the hobby homelab stuff I’ve been doing (lots of docker, docker compose, Linux, Mikrotik, networking), and the qualifications I’m studying.

What have I been up to?

Tue, 13 Jan 2026 02:48:13 +0000

So, what have I been doing lately?

I have been studying my Imperial College Machine Learning Profesisonal Certificate, and that has been totally kicking my arse, as it is hardcore maths, and I am but a simple man.
I have been studying the Applied Crytography module for my Masters degree at Royal Holloway, University of London. I have submitted the exam, but I don’t feel confident that I’m not going to have to resit it. “So it goes”.
I have been building up the new setup, both the WFH/study from home workstation and the homelab/home network at the new place that we moved into on the 1st December. It is NEARLY there, and when it is “finished” I will share photos so you can see the work I’ve done. It honestly has been a huge amount of work, but it should result in a setup that pays off over the years I hope to be in this home.
We have been building IKEA furniture and getting things sorted in the new place, while ferrying equipment and books and so on from the storage unit to the new place.
I have been reading more, as I have a nice reading setup at the new place with a proper armchair, footrest and reading light. You can see the reviews I’ve put up on davidcraddockreads.com
We had a low-key xmas and new years eve, just my wife and I and our cat. It was still good.
I have been leading the Cyber Security Leaders Challenge University of London Worldwide team, and we have got through to the first qualifiers, which is good news. I will be having regular meetings around that while we work up to the competition qualifier.
I have been out on my bike quite a bit, you can follow my progress recorded onto Strava by my bike computer on the ‘my bike’ page

End of 2025 Retrospective

Thu, 25 Dec 2025 05:48:13 +0000

The last retrospective I wrote was in August of this year . At that time, we were still in the old house in Withington desperately waiting for it to sell, and all our possessions were in storage crates. Everything was very chaotic.

Fast-forward a few months, and I’m pleased to report that things have settled down.

The house finally sold, we moved out (thanks a lot to my friends I made from the Retro Gaming Meetup, who helped us move!), and we moved all our stuff into a storage unit in Bolton, while we moved with Betty our cat into a pet-friendly AirBnB .
We bounced between 3 AirBnB places, while looking for a long-term rental. For some reason, finding a long-term rental, even on the outskirts of Manchester, even with the ability to put down 6 months rent in advance, was difficult!
The advantage of bouncing between AirBnB places is that we quickly found out that we did not want to move to Bolton after all, which was our initially intended destination. Instead, we found that the Preston and South Ribble areas were MUCH better suited to what we wanted.
At the start of December we finally moved in to a long-term rental in Buckshaw Village, Chorley. We now live in a rented new-build house with 3 bathrooms (!) and a train station 8 minutes walk away that runs half-hourly trains to Manchester.
During this time I have continued to study for my Master’s degree in Cyber Security at Royal Holloway, University of London , via distance learning. I have been taking on additional extracurricular activities for the UOLWW Cyber Security Student Society , where I have been appointed vice-president. I have also been upskilling on GenAI and doing my best to follow the absurdly rapid rate of progress in research around AI and deep learning.
In December, I realised that I needed to have a more formal qualification in AI/ML/GenAI because it is becoming so ‘key’ to modern technology. I signed up for a 7-month professional certificate in AI/ML at Imperial College London , again distance learning, that I will study alongside my masters degree and the other upskilling I am doing.
I have registered my new business at Companies House, “Straylight Research Ltd” . At the moment I have not done any work to progress it, but it will eventually be an ‘umbrella’ for self-employed business activities I end up doing. I have done quite a bit of contract work in the past but not had a formal company to place it under, which has caused problems. I also intend to build a SaaS product around Cyber Security and GenAI to try and build up some passive income.
Additionally, we have now moved in fully to the new place, and we have a whole new set of IKEA furniture installed thanks to Conny’s flat-pack skills, and a full network cabinet, and a gigabit broadband connection, and all the things you miss while technically ‘homeless’ and bouncing around AirBnBs.
I have upgraded and repaired my e-bike setup , so now it is much more of what I envisaged as a ‘car replacement’ and I use it heavily for exercise and just general errands.

My studies and work in AI/ML

Tue, 18 Nov 2025 04:32:00 +0000

(AI/ML Jupyter Workbook)

I hold a joint honours degree in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence from the University of Sussex, although I graduated over 20 years ago, so the AI knowledge I was taught is no longer very uptodate!

I have therefore signed up for a 7 month certificate at Imperial College London where I will be updating my knowledge on AI and ML, including learning about LLMs.

Studying AI/ML at Imperial

Tue, 18 Nov 2025 04:17:00 +0000

I have signed up for a 7 month professional certificate in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning at Imperial College London!

I never thought I’d get the opportunity to study at the University of London in any capacity, but now I’m studying at two UOL colleges at the same time! (even though Imperial is technically independent from the UOL college network nowadays).

So I will be balancing my Cyber Security MSc taught by Royal Holloway, which I’m undertaking in part-time mode, with this part-time course in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning at Imperial College London.

Straylight Research Ltd

Thu, 13 Nov 2025 05:06:00 +0000

I have founded my first company!

As of a few days ago, Straylight Research Ltd is registered at the UK companies house.

While I will be using this business as a catch-all holding for anything I do that is self-employed, the main focus though will be on building a software product that bridges the worlds of GenAI and Cyber Security.

I am currently reading a lot of business books and self-employment sites to figure out just how to go about this, and how to market this product effectively.

The Dust has settled on our Move.

Sun, 02 Nov 2025 20:30:13 +0000

The dust has settled on our move to Preston.

After months and months being out of action, a serious upgrade, and two bike services, my Tern e-cargo bike is back in action!

I am so happy to have it back in good working order! I had an excellent experience with Leisure Lakes Bikes in Preston, who I highly recommend and will be taking my bike to for any and all future services.

Moved to Preston

Mon, 20 Oct 2025 00:00:01 +0900

We’ve decided to rent a place in Preston, instead of Bolton.

Preston still has reasonable train links into central Manchester, and offers a much cheaper rental market, and housing market. It also has great food and great cycling routes nearby.

The neighbourhood we’re looking at is in South Ribble, so not technically in Preston, but it might as well be considered so.

It is a very, very nice area with very large, very cheap, very peaceful homes.

We've Moved Out!

Fri, 17 Oct 2025 20:48:13 +0000

We finally did it!! After 3+ years of attempting to sell our house, it has finally completed and we’ve moved out! I’m so happy!

We are currently based around the Bolton/Preston area, looking to move into a rented place somewhere near Bolton transport links.

We will be staying in this location until I’ve finished my ’learning sabbatical’ which involves studying for my distance learning MSc in Cyber Security at Royal Holloway, University of London, getting my OSCP+ cert (Offensive Security Certified Pentester), and some other certs and learning goals which I haven’t fully defined yet.

Increasing my confidence with Hugo Theming

Sat, 13 Sep 2025 02:50:13 +0000

I have been recently spending quite a lot of time working on the Hugo blog framework that I use to build all my web content and serve it up in static format.
I think I will be moving over to using Github pages to serve my Hugo content for all blogs, because I don’t see any advantage to hosting it locally - I have already learned how to do that now, and the very real advantage to hosting on Github.io is that when my home server is down, my blogs are still up and readable.
To that end, I have been working on Github actions to automate Hugo building and deployment to Github pages. I now have a good, working, pipeline that I can re-use on all 6 of my Hugo blog domains.
I have also been adding some scripts locally for easier post authoring, which means it’s much easier for me to write content in a standard way and get started with a post without too much faffing about.
I have finally fixed a problem that had been annoying me for ages - when I post my blog posts to social media, they used to look rubbish - just a static generic blog image showing my face, and no explanation of the content or a post-specific thumbnail. - In order to fix this, I have developed my own ‘spinoff’ of the Hugo PaperMod theme, called PaperMod-dpc .
In this customised theme, I have made some improvements and adjustments for my own needs, including an ‘intelligent’ way of handling the social media opengraph data, where it will display much better and interesting preview content on social media.

Moving

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 22:43:07 +0100

Moving House

We have been spending literally ALL our time packing heavy duty packing crates as part of our planned house sale and move to Bolton.

We’re both under so much stress right now! I hope it’s over soon.

House Server Down

Thu, 28 Aug 2025 16:12:55 +0100

The house is in the final stages of being sold, and so I have taken down the house server down while we move.

This is the server that self-hosts all my domains, including this website.

In the meantime while it’s down, I have created a mirror of the hugo site automatically deploying on commit to wordswords.github.io - my static github pages site.

This should work for this domain only, but not other domains, such as davidcraddock.games because this is all I’ve had time to do.

Thor AV APT Scanner

Thu, 21 Aug 2025 02:29:16 +0100

I have setup the excellent and free Thor Lite AV APT (Advanced Persistent Threat) malware scanner running on my server.

It’s a paid product, but the free version is still much better than any other Linux anti-virus I’ve seen.

I use it to find problematic files in the many files I download from torrents/unsavoury sources etc.

It does a great job of identifying potentially suspicious files. The full version then goes on to move these files to a proprietry quarantine service.

Mid 2025 Retrospective

Fri, 15 Aug 2025 02:19:58 +0100

Moving House

This year has been difficult so far, although arguably not as difficult as last year, as last year saw deaths in the family and still not knowing if I’d been cured from cancer.

Almost all of the year we have been trying to sell the house and waiting until the house sale goes through.

It is nearly there, but then.. it’s been nearly there for several months now. We just have to be patient.

Cron Jobs Finally Running Reliably

Thu, 24 Jul 2025 17:02:53 +0100

FINALLY, with the help of fcron , judicious use of Bash debugging, and a lot of freaking around, I have managed to get scheduled cron jobs running the way I want to.

For a supposedly lightweight process, there are actually a ton of ‘gotchas’ which will likely trip you up. Here are some tips:

Ensure the right permissions for the cron job - cron will ignore scripts that have certain non-standard permissions, for security.
Ensure the right filename for the cron job script - it will ignore certain extensions or variations on the end of the script file name!
Ensure ALL symbolic links in your cron job scripts are resolved to actual paths - for some reason cron doesn’t like this, probably a security measure again.
Use fcron with anacron syntax to ensure ‘intelligent’ scheduling - e.g. if the computer is turned off most of the week, when it is turned back on, it will still run the weekly job, instead of waiting a further 7 days!
Make sure you ‘cd’ into the working directory AS PART of the cron job before you attempt to use any relative (non absolute) paths. And you should do this instead of specifying absolute paths for large scripts, because of the potential to make mistakes, which will take longer to test!
Use nohup and a Bash ’trap’ error logger to log complete runs. Log the WHOLE output of the Bash cron’d script, using STDERR and STDOUT concatenation.
Use screen to run jobs so you can inspect running jobs when you need to.
Use ionice and nice liberally so that you can avoid system lockups due to multiple processing scheduled jobs hogging the system resources!
Turn off ‘fcron’s ‘serial’ parameter so that multiple jobs can run at the same time - this is essential if one running job happens to overlap another. Fcron with anaocron syntax will usually figure out the rest.

No wonder Jenkins is so popular!

Hiring for Obedience and Inexperience

Tue, 22 Jul 2025 22:32:41 +0100

It is true that employers these days are hiring for obedience and inexperience, as this ebook excerpt explains:

–

“We regret to inform you that we will not be moving forward with your application due to concerns that your qualifications exceed those required for the role.

We feel it would not be a good fit. Thank you for applying.”

Ouch, that’s part of a rejection email a very experienced job candidate sent me.

Mylar3 and PlayNite Extension

Sun, 20 Jul 2025 07:15:02 +0100

I have added ‘Mylar3 ’ the electronic comic book downloader and metadata organiser, to my self-hosted docker containers.

It should do a better job than Calibre of going through my PDFs and CBR/CBZ files, as a lot of them are e-comic books.

LazyLibrarian did a good job of dealing with the metadata of my epub collection, I hope that Mylar3 can do an equally good job, although the task is far harder as there is less metadata existing in a lot of my e-comic book PDF files.

Computer Space Reallocations for House Move

Wed, 16 Jul 2025 18:39:42 +0100

We will, in a few months (fingers crossed) be moving home. We currently live in quite a large house, and it’s just the two of us. We should end up in a new build flat, with a lot smaller living space than I’m used to.

To deal with that, I need to downsize my technical setup.

I currently have a seperate ‘work from home’ desk and a seperate ‘gaming and media’ desk - there will be only one desk possible.

More Server Updates

Wed, 16 Jul 2025 18:27:58 +0100

I’ve made a bunch of new updates to the server.

The first was replacing the Readarr metadata and book downloader service, as it has stopped being supported. I have switched to LazyLibrarian, which I confess I don’t exactly understand very well yet, but has done an awesome job so far in updating the metadata of my 20,000 epub library.

I hope to implement something similar for my PDF books/comics library, possibly with another instance of LazyLibrarian for it, working in tandem with a comic book metadata ‘fixer’.

An end to the LinkedIn Saga

Wed, 09 Jul 2025 09:37:51 +0100

Last year I was ‘banned’ from LinkedIn for calling three people ‘idiots’. I thought it a little unfair at the time, particularly because they WERE being idiots, but there didn’t seem to be any way to contest it, or even any way to get in contact with LinkedIn.

I had over 10k followers and I put a lot of care and effort into my posts on the site, and they were often very popular with people. Mostly I tried to help people, giving mentoring advice and commenting about diversity in the software industry, which was well-received.

Server Stability

Tue, 08 Jul 2025 14:11:05 +0100

There has been numerous problems with the server that hosts all my domains, which resulted often in my websites becoming unavailable.

I traced the problem down to the scheduled tasks that I was regularly running which were blocking on I/O on my old enterprise storage drives, and causing problems.

With judicious use of ‘ionice’ I was able to address the problem, and now it seems things are running much better.

Career Progression in Cyber Security

Sat, 10 May 2025 13:45:27 +0100

I first started programming in 1998. I have over 20 years commercial experience in industry. To be honest, I’ve been out of full-time work for the majority of the past 4 years, with the exception of last year where I worked for the majority of it as a top-tier Principal Consulting Engineer.

A lot of time in the past 4 years has been taken up with treatment for health problems, from which I am now fully recovered from. During this time I worked extensively on my own personal projects and upskilled myself in my spare time simply because I found it fun.

My Plex Music Import/Music Library Tidying Process

Thu, 10 Apr 2025 13:24:54 +0100

Introduction

I have been working on perfecting a data-cleansing and import process for my Plex Server’s Music library for several years now, on and off.

What started as a process to acquire, sanitise and prepare music for DJing, has grown primarily into a process to acquire, clean and prepare music for streaming via PlexAmp from all my devices, including outside my home network, from my Plex server.

Calendar Syncing With Google Home Assistant and Morgen

Tue, 08 Apr 2025 13:45:27 +0100

One trick I used to great affect with my previous Amazon Alexa setup, was a central Google personal calendar that was linked to wake up routines - it would, reliably, read out all the events on my calendar on that day. I found that hugely helpful.
Since moving to Morgen, the best calendar app I’ve ever used , and Google Home assistant instead of Alexa, I’ve lost that calendar sync function.
Thankfully, the paid edition of Morgen has a new feature that allows you to create ‘workflows’ where you can automatically schedule tasks to keep any number of Google Calendars in sync.

hq.local Server Updates

Tue, 08 Apr 2025 10:31:10 +0100

I have made numerous fixes to the hq.local server after realising that some of the services were not running as well as they should have been, following the server rebuild a few months ago, and also to improve things generally.

I have made some security permission upgrades, making sure each major running docker service has its own username, and is restricted to dealing with files chowned to its own user name, and runs as its own user, and everything is running on a separate hq.local virtual docker network which communicates with other networks only via pre-defined ports to make things more secure.

Frugal tips for living in the UK

Sun, 06 Apr 2025 15:10:32 +0000

I’m currently studying a post-graduate degree full-time while holding down a mortgage in Manchester. This is quite a feat in itself, and with my wife I have accumalated a lot of ‘frugal’ tips you can use in the UK to make your money last longer, especially if you are in a similar situation to us:

If you’re anything like us, you are more intelligent than most poeple, and you have a lot more free time than people who are working highly paid but stupidly stressful jobs. Remember that this is a trade-off, and maximise the use of ‘smart thinking’ and of some of that extra time to avoid having to spend on unnecessary things. They called this ‘shoe leather costs’ when I was studying Economics at high school.
We both use food reuse places to get stuff just going out of date and eat it on the day.
My wife does both of our hair including dying. She’s done that since the pandemic - she’s become very good at it.
We don’t own a car, either walk everywhere, get public transport or use our bikes.
I am in the process of applying for all benefits and reductions possible based on our income and situation, including uni hardship funds etc.
I am selling a lot of my more expensive posessions that I don’t need anymore, mostly electronics, on ebay, although you can sell most stuff on ebay and it will sell, although not at a very high price. I use royal mail to pickup packages from my door so I don’t have to take them to the post office, it works out the best way.
I don’t go out that much at all, prefering to buy alcohol cheaply and drink it inside when I do drink. When I go clubbing or to gigs I usually buy cokes all night.
We shop at ALDI, LIDL and budget supermarkets, and make use of special offers a lot.
We buy clothes at ASDA, or buy really expensive clothes from German manufacturers who have much better clothing manufacture standards, and last years and years before wearing out.
Spend time on frugal Youtube channels and DIY youtube channels and instagram, tiktok etc - there is a huge ‘frugal influencer’ scence and you can pick up a lot of tips that way.
Try and make it a game how much money you can save in any particular week, all the while noting how LESS stressed you are than the ‘suits’ who are working 50 hour weeks and getting drunk to contain their misery.
Buy a lot of things online where you can read reviews and get the best deal. Don’t shop in person at all where you can help it.
See how many days you can go without spending any money whatsoever, given that shopping is pre-paid for etc.
Get into DIY - especially if you own your own home. Have a reusable tool set for every occasion - you save tons on things you would otherwise pay builders to do.
Choose leisure activities which are free, especially easy when the weather is good like now. Pack a packed lunch and go for a walk to the park - it’s completely free, you get exercise, sunshine and it’s just a really nice way to spend the afternoon.
No-one seems to do packed lunches anymore! This is a huge hack - get a flask that keeps your drink cool, and a packed lunch and you save on the ridiculous cost of sandwiches etc.
If you are technical like me, setup a Plex server and an ‘*arr’ hosting network and never have to pay for video or audio media ever again.
Read books. Second-hand paperback books are a great value to cost ratio in terms of the number of hours they provide entertainment and the quality of the information in a lot of books is very good and you will learn a lot more than from an internet search. Even better, download ebooks illegally and read them on an e-reader for free.
Personally I find that spending a lot of time getting good at ’looter-shooter’ computer games like Borderlands 2 or Diablo scratch the same itch that I get from real life shopping - it is difficult to feel poor with tons of expensive items in a virtual world.
Use moneysavingexpert.com forums, although I wouldn’t post your budget because people will just attack it based on their lifestyle descisions - just use it to get information on cheap deals and free good quality financial advice, the newsletter is good for that too.
Make friends with people that are in the same financial situation as you, and have advice or tips and whose idea of a ‘good time’ isn’t spending £50 in a restaurant every week.
When you get ill, buy the ‘cheap persons lemsip’ a combination of - unbranded caffiene pills, ibruprofen, paracetomol, and high strength vitamin C pills - you can get a years supply of each at a much reduced cost than lemsip will cost you for a year, and it’s the same, if not better, and you can also use each component seperately when you need to.

Just be happy for the little things in life and don’t spend where necessary. Don’t try and live the ‘rich influencer’ lifestyle because those people are unhappy idiots anyway and will be bankrupt and dead by 40.

Cured from Cancer

Sat, 05 Apr 2025 18:10:32 +0000

I have been officially classed as ‘cured’ from my Relapsed Hodgkins Lymphoma cancer, which I was first diagnosed with at Stage 4 in 2021 and came back at Stage 3 in the same year.

The past 4 years have been very, very difficult, not just on me but everyone close to me. But I’m glad to say I can ‘close the cancer chapter’ and move on to the next stage of my life.

Starting Masters Degree

Fri, 28 Mar 2025 04:32:52 +0000

After many many years of consideration, deliberation, hesitation, and procrastination, I have started a Masters degree at Royal Holloway, University of London. It is a distance-learning degree, and it is delivered in a part-time format, so it means I can fit it around (some) work.
Fun party fact: University of London, Royal Holloway was mentioned in Dan Brown’s book ‘The Da Vinci Code’ as the university the Cryptographer heroine studied cryptography at Royal Holloway, in which would have been the ISG department , where I am to be studying!) It’s a shame the rest of the book is so terrible.

My Calibre Libraries

Wed, 05 Mar 2025 01:12:39 +0000

On hq.local, I have two Calibre libraries, one for EPUBs, and one for PDFs/comics.

Size

There are approximately 80,000 books across both libraries.

But.. WHY?!

I use both libraries both for recreational reading, (mostly comics and some written fiction) and research for work, as a tech worker, and as an aspiring ‘renaissance man ’.

Hosting

They are managed by Server.io’s Calibre docker containerised services . They are both running Calibre content server to serve directly to my e-readers. I also use Calibre Web Automated docker containerised services for both libraries.
So in total, there are three services hosted, and three ways of accessing each Calibre library, per library - 1) the Calibre application running via a web-based remote desktop client, which I use for serious administration, but only sparingly as it takes up a lot of server resources when connected 2) The Calibre content server accessible on my e-readers and 3) The Calibre Web interface which I use to browse and read the books on computers.

Sources

I have built them up primarily from HumbleBundle.com book purchases, where the majority of the money goes to charity, and I still get a good set of e-books.
I also ‘inherited’ a large collection of already DRM-stripped fiction books from a friend.
Occasionally I use resources such as Anna’s Archive to download DRM-stripped books.

Access

Both libraries are accessible via my ZeroTier VPN . I use the Moon Reader application on Android devices to access the Calibre content server port, and I use the Calibre content server web interface on my Kobo H20 E-Reader .

Server Config Tidy Up

Mon, 03 Mar 2025 21:10:32 +0000

I have spent a lot of time tidying up my hq.local server config, the IOC code that hosts all my services, including my Plex server, my full set of arr services,my calibre libraries, my SWAG Hugo blog sites, and various indexing, conversion and backup scripts.

It should all be a lot easier to maintain going forward, and just ‘work’. That’s the intention anyway. For me to spend more time actually consuming the media on my digital media collection than collecting, indexing and maintaining the collection.

Portswigger Academy

Sun, 26 Jan 2025 16:10:34 +0000

Portswigger Academy

I have signed up to, and have been learning a lot from, the Portswigger Academy using the Burp Suite Community Edition.

I have gone through all the ‘Apprentice’ labs, all 62 of them.

I honestly think web application pentesting is something that could suit me incredibly well, given my background in web developer and SDET work.

It’s so much more interesting than the stuff I was doing before!

As soon as I can, I would love to purchase a license for the full version of Burp Suite, and start working on the other labs, with a view to take the certification they offer.

Server upgrades

Thu, 23 Jan 2025 01:52:59 +0000

So today I finally ordered an 8TB moving platter disk drive so that I can expand the home server - hq.local.

hq.local currently has about 19TB in disk space, almost all of which is fully utilised currently.

The extra space will mean that I can rip more Blu-rays to put on the Plex server, and download more things through the *arr services.

It has been frustrating being limited by hard disk space for at least 6 months, but before I simply could not afford a meaningful upgrade.

A Life Well Lived?

Sun, 05 Jan 2025 18:52:59 +0000

Someone made a comment the other day on a post I made on forum, that made me think.

My post was asking ‘how to avoid becoming bitter and cynical as you age’. A pretty standard topic that I’ve seen affect many people as they get older.

I outlined my life story so far, how some of it has been great, and how some of it has not been so great, and what I’ve achieved.

Updated my CV Generator

Sat, 04 Jan 2025 22:10:59 +0000

I’ve updated the repository that generates my CVs in PDF and HTML form, from a markdown file.

The repository is https://github.com/wordswords/dpc-resume.git and it contains my patched version of a 8 years old markdown to HTML generator I found on the web, see here: https://github.com/wordswords/markdown-resume-2024 .

I used the modified HTML CV generator to do most of the work, but then, instead of using the old inbuilt feature that doesn’t work very well anymore, to convert it to PDF, I use another repository that I found, https://github.com/UKHomeOffice/html-pdf-converter to convert the HTML into PDF using Chrome.

New WFH Linux Workstation

Sat, 04 Jan 2025 16:30:59 +0000

I recently converted my old server case, motherboard RAM and CPU into a Linux workstation, that I’ve installed Kali Linux on, and will help me up-skill in computer security.

I put in a new Nvidia 710 graphics card with 2GB ram. It is entirely passively cooled and has low power usage. It is enough to do work-related stuff on my 1440p monitor. It required installed the legacy 470 graphics drivers to stop it crashing regularly, but it seems to be working fine now.

Retrospective for 2024

Sun, 22 Dec 2024 19:30:59 +0000

The year of 2024 comes to an end, and what a year it has been!

As I usually do, I post (at least) yearly retrospectives, covering my life in the past year. This is one I posted mid-year 2024 , and this is 2023s .

It is meant to inform people outside my inner social circle how my life has been going - to give an overview that people who talk to me every day may not have, for example.

Remember to use UUIDs

Sun, 22 Dec 2024 17:30:59 +0000

I had a problem recently with the server where the server was constantly having to boot into ‘rescue mode’ due to a problem with the fstab.

I didn’t understand at first why this kept happening. Then I realised that somehow, the sata disk order was occasionally being rearranged.

This meant that the correct sata disk order was not being maintained, which meant that Kali Linux was kicking the server into rescue mode, as it was not finding the files it expected to at the correct mount points. /sda1 was becoming /sdc1, for example.

Server Outage Dec 2024

Sun, 22 Dec 2024 16:30:59 +0000

I got into a bit of a situation where I broke the main server.

Instead of replacing it, I decided to wait a few weeks until I had access to a new case, mobo, CPU and PSU so that I could move it into that case, and take advantage of my Nvidea 970 graphics card.

Previously the card WAS in the server, but there was one main problem, the graphics card wouldn’t fit in the case, see here:

Life Maintenance

Tue, 29 Oct 2024 00:03:36 +0000

I have been taking some extended time off work for the past month, to deal with my mum’s illness and unfortunate passing away, and because my work situation is so bad it’s borderline horrific.

One thing that has cheered me up a bit is what my wife C. and I have been able to do to the house and to work towards our personal goals in this time.

vWorkbench

Thu, 26 Sep 2024 17:08:52 +0000

“vWorkbench” is my own personal Vim9-based development environment and writing environment that I’m trying to ‘spin out’ into an open source project that is stable enough, reusable enough and well-documented enough to be used by others.

https://github.com/wordswords/vWorkbench.git - this is the current version of my development environment that I use as much as possible, both in personal and work situations.

https://github.com/wordswords/vWorkbench/blob/master/README.md - this is the documentation on my development environment, which I absolutely try and keep up to date.

My Definition of Testing

Tue, 24 Sep 2024 00:23:00 +0000

I think that there is a very real problem around the definition of the purpose of a ‘QA’ or ‘Quality Engineering’ department and what it is expected to do in an organisation.
I have been hired for many ‘QA/QE’ roles which had vastly different ideas about what the purpose of that role was, what my responsibilities were, how I should communicate with other people, and what I should do day-to-day.

Security Research

Sat, 24 Aug 2024 03:42:48 +0000

To send a secure message to me: Use my Signal username: granddesigns.79

I am currently familiarising myself with tools to implement cyber security solutions.
This is in preparation for my research project as part of the MSc Cyber Security masters I’m taking from the University of London via distance learning.
This research is strictly for informational purposes and I don’t do anything criminal with it.
I realise some of this information may be seen as ‘over-sharing’ and is a security risk in itself, but I believe that the benefits of sharing this information outweigh the risks, and that there is no ‘security via obscurity’.

Mid 2024 Retrospective Update

Fri, 02 Aug 2024 23:15:41 +0100

Every year I’ve been doing these ‘retrospectives’, usually once per year but sometimes a couple of times per year.

Things have changed quite significantly since the last retrospective , and I was in a pensive mood, so I thought I would write a retrospective for half the year.

I finally found a job, with CGI, early in the year, and started in March 2023. Unfortunately, for reasons I’m contractually obliged not to get into, it wasn’t long before I was looking for work again. I resigned from CGI at the end of June.

Moved From Wp to Hugo

Fri, 26 Jul 2024 04:28:43 +0100

I have moved over from wordpress.com that I was using before on DavidCraddock.net to self-hosting using Python’s Hugo.

I hope this will be a good move!

A bit of content didn’t make it, but most of it, thankfully, did.

I will continue to tidy up bits and pieces as I go along.

My Electric Cargo Bike

Sun, 09 Jun 2024 22:34:52 +0000

(Cargo bike and trailer)

I use this as a bike as a general-purpose car replacement, as well as volunteering and long-distance cycle challenges and trips. It has a maximum average power-assisted range of 60 miles on a single charge, assuming the lowest power-assist setting, up to 20 miles per charge for the highest power-assist setting.

I have configured it so that I can move large objects and cargo similar to a small car, and cycle and navigate safely and comfortably in all weathers, as well as use it as an exercise machine to keep fit and lose weight.

Video Routing for Dave Cave Studio

Thu, 25 Apr 2024 04:55:52 +0000

Here is a quick diagram I mocked up to detail exactly how video routing works in the studio.

Advice to young people in the UK wanting a career in Tech

Tue, 23 Apr 2024 22:54:59 +0000

If you’re currently in high school in the UK and want to be a GOOD and EMPLOYED software engineer.. this is my advice.

Start programming on personal projects right away, and keep it up during your entire working career. Always have something going on in the background.
Get into a RUSSELL GROUP university in the UK and take a technical, demanding degree in a computing-related discipline, for example, Physics, Electronic Engineering, Maths, Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence. If you can’t get into a university and course that isn’t in the top 25% of courses for your subject in the UK, and someone isn’t paying all your bills (e.g rich parents), don’t bother going to university, It’s not worth the loan. Find another way. Look into apprenticeships.
Try to not be a total ’tech head’ and develop some creative and artistic side to you, taking up writing is a really good idea as it improves your thinking and communication skills. Ideally learn to write humanities essays to the standard of the first year humanities majors at your university.
Try and get onto as many technical internships and technical work experience as possible throughout your degree.
Once you have graduated, and found that the Junior tech worker job market is depressingly non-existant, move back in with your parents and start your informal and free ‘post-graduate’ learning. Take AT LEAST this free course but also certifications such as AWS certs, and anything that you have researched on Reddit etc that you can do cheaply and is sought after by your chosen target job (as evidenced by being mentioned on job descriptions of jobs you’d like to apply for). Increase your work on your personal projects and move to open source them and build up a following from them, and possibly a side-income. Keep in contact with your old uni friends, especially the ones that have got jobs.
Read ‘So Good They Can’t Ignore You’ by Cal Newport , learn to market yourself, build your LinkedIn presence, network like crazy, and hopefully you will get your foot in the door with that ‘all important’ first job that you can launch a career off of. You’ll certainly deserve it.

My Mobile Laptop Setup

Sun, 04 Feb 2024 02:48:13 +0000

I use this setup plus my e-bike to work from university libraries, public libraries, and in the summer, from a portable camping table in parks, nature reserves etc.

Hercules DG400BB Laptop Stand w/ Bag - this portable laptop stand is very sturdy and is designed for mobile DJ use. I find it is excellent in all situations, not just DJ use.
Lenovo Legion 5i - Intel i7 12th gen CPU, 64GB DDR5 RAM, 4TB in 2x 4th gen NVME SSD drives, 3070Ti graphics card, 15" 1440p IPS Dolby Vision HDR screen - This is my laptop that I’ve put a lot of money into upgrading.
Logitech MK295 Silent Wireless Mouse & Keyboard Combo - This is a good mobile keyboard and mouse setup, which I got because I was making too much noise typing at ~100wpm in libraries.
Portable Battery charger - A good quality external battery charger which will charge and release charge via USB A and USB C ports
Lenovo Legion 17" Armored Backpack II - This is an excellent quality padded laptop bag - by far the best laptop carrying case I’ve owned. It distributes the weight of my setup properly over my back so I can walk long distances
Google Pixel 7 Pro running GrapheneOS - This is a top of the line phone which runs GrapheneOS for extra security.
Sony MX1000 Mk3 wireless headphones - This is a top of the line HDAC/Apt-X HD wireless noise cancelling headphones. They work well with my laptop and my phone.
750ml vacuum thermos flask - This fits in a pocket on the side of my laptop bag, and is usually enough unless it’s a very hot day.
Pro-plus caffiene pills - My lifestyle means I am tired sometimes, and I don’t drink tea or coffee, so I always keep some of these in my wallet if I need to walk home, for example.
SanDisk 1TB Extreme Portable SSD, USB-C USB 3.2 Gen 2, External NVMe Solid State Drive - This is very useful for transferring large file collections to and from other peoples computers, and is very small for carrying.
Fasgear Cat 6 Ethernet Cable, Retractable Network Cable 10Gbps - If I ever need to connect to a wired network, I can use this network cable - it takes up very little space.
Octopus style USB cable adaptor - Can be used for any connection between standard USB A, USB C, micro USB and lightening. It’s very useful for connecting to other peoples devices.
USB C privacy guards - Allows me to plug into a USB C port and block data transfer, so I can charge my phone from other peoples computers without worrying about data transfer.

Music Acquisition Process for DJ Music

Thu, 11 Jan 2024 23:41:50 +0000

My music acquisition process for DJ music:

ARM (Automatic Ripping Machine) rips CDs I buy into FLAC form without any interactivity. You just insert a CD into the Linux server, and then it ejects it when it’s done.
Lidarr downloads FLACs of any tracks of artists I have in my collection, but I don’t have their full discography. It does this automatically and silently in the background.
Once a day, a cron job imports ARM and Lidarr downloads into my Beets.io music library, and deals with file integrity checks, tagging, metadata, library file structure and embedded images of the artist.
Whenever I’m ready to have a fresh library copy, I run my batch script on my W11 DJ laptop and it robocopy mirrors the entire library from my Linux samba share onto my computer.
I then send it through MixedInKey 10 to analyse the BPM and the music key of each track, and to check again the integrity of each file.
Once that is done, and any corrupt files removed, I import the file library into Serato DJ Pro, and analyse the entire collection. This again removes any dud files from the collection.
Now I have a complete music library, I run a batch file to reverse mirror the music from the DJ library back onto the server, so my collection doesn’t accumalate corrupt files.
Now I have a full DJ music library of FLACs on my DJ laptop, over 22,000 files, great for requests!

My Homelab

Sun, 17 Dec 2023 02:13:39 +0000

(Network cabinet)

I have built a 10Gb/second network in my home in a network cabinet.

Hardware:

I use a Mikrotik router and Mikrotik switch to route at 10Gb/sec speeds, and 2x Ubiquiti wifi 7 APs in mesh mode.
I have a Protecli custom network interface fanless PC that runs Opnsense with Suricata IDS that monitors all traffic to and from the internet on my network.
I have a ZigBee to IP adaptor which allows me to interface the HomeAssistant setup with low cost ZigBee buttons etc.
A 6 bay 48TB NAS Linux server that runs Debian, and hosts around 20 services, mostly using docker compose.
A couple of Windows 11 PCs which I use day-to-day.
E-readers and tablets linked to my calibre libraries.
Reolink security cameras linked to HomeAssistant with zero traffic being sent external to the network.
Gaming PC with >10TB of retro games stored remotely on the Linux server, and accessible on the gaming PC.
Mobile phone running GrapheneOS.
Many IoT and smart home devices.
4K HDR 43" Sony TV with 5.1 Dolby Surround Sound system, able to stream films/TV from the Plex server.

Security goals:

No static IP.
No unpatched devices allowed on network, enforced by automated patching.
No out of security updates period devices allowed on the network, enforced by VLAN segregation, guest network, and MAC filtering.
Zero ports open to the internet.
Software-defined VPN remote access to the network only.
Suricata IDS collecting data continually with a large ruleset to flag any suspicious traffic.
Wazuh SIEM monitoring with agents on all possible network connected clients.
Two internal DNS servers on the LAN forwarding any requests to NextDNS servers via DNS over TLS.. so that the ISP hardware never notices any unencrypted DNS requests which it could snoop on.
Anonymising VPN connections to exit nodes in other countries for private traffic.
Automated weekly security updates using bash scripting to upgrade all Mikrotik devices, Opnsense, Debian server and all Windows 11 PCs (via remote SSH access and Powershell scripts).
Automated weekly backups of all crucial files (both system and data) on all devices, including Mikrotik, Windows PC, Debian server, Opnsense box.
Advertising, analytics, malware and tracker blocking on the DNS level for all the network.
Hardened Mikrotik, PC, mobile devices, and Linux server configurations, with minimal ports listening, and firewalls correctly enabled, in a ‘zero trust’ assumptional design.
SIEM real-time alerting for threat and vulnerability discovery, with regularly updated CVE scanning on agents.

(Gaming PC wifi 7 speed)

Retrospective for 2023

Sat, 25 Nov 2023 20:07:59 +0000

Every year towards the end of the year, I put together a retrospective of events that have happened over the year - the good, bad and the ugly.

The Bad

Most of the year was taken up with treatment for relapsed Hodgkins Lymphoma cancer. After the clinical immunotherapy drug trial finished in Feb 2023, cancer was unfortunately still detected, so it did not completely cure it. I had a further (awful) spell in hospital around March/April where my Hickman line became infected and I had a severe mental health episode, probably caused by the strong antibiotics being pumped through my system. Finally I was accepted for a stem cell transplant, and had my transplant on 4th July.
We have had to deal with complications of cancer elsewhere in the family, not just my mum’s own cancer treatment being ongoing, but the financial impact of the family having to support both of us, is quite a significant burden.

The Good

Thankfully, I’m finally in remission for cancer! I have been in remission for 6 months, and if I make it to 2 years, then I am effectively cured. I have a 75% chance of it not coming back within that time, approximately.
We got an absolute ton of stuff done on the house, and I have an awesome gaming setup, an awesome DJing setup, an awesome music production setup, an awesome high speed network and server setup, and an awesome WFH setup. All of the goals I set myself of things I wanted to achieve during my downtime having cancer treatment nearly 2 years ago, are more or less finished now.
We have decided that we’re moving out of Manchester. We are going to move to Chester, which promises a much, much nicer, quieter, and actually, cheaper place to live now that I am committed to a 100% WFH work life. Things are progressing well with the house sale, and we’ve got a lot of interest so far.
I have got fitter and healthier and my posture has got better over the year. I have also managed to reduce the medication I am on, which has helped my health.

The Ugly

There has been a worldwide downturn for software jobs, just as I had to take some time off my career due to work reasons. This downturn is probably comparable to the 2008/9 downturn in software jobs around the financial crisis. This is definitely bad news for everyone in software.

Latest Remote Guitar Lesson Setup

Fri, 22 Sep 2023 16:56:26 +0000

I’ve been having online guitar lessons with my friend Jon.

After a while we have got things down to a setup that seems to work remotely.

I have an Epiphone Les Paul Vintage Edition electric guitar, and a Marshall MG15G Practice Amp.
I use a headphone splitter cable to plug into the Marshall’s headphone out socket, which splits the audio into left and right channels, and a 3.5mm to phono mono cable plugged into the headphone splitter that runs to my audio interface.
I use Logitech C270 and a Logitech 920 cameras, the C270 for the front on face cam, and the 920 suspended on a lighting boom above my head, pointed down so that Jon can see the guitar fret fingering I am attempting.
I also use a t.bone MB88U directional microphone on a desk microphone stand to talk into.
The sound interface I use is my studio one, which is a Behringer UMC1820 audio interface, but really, you can use any audio interface with two mono input channels and a headphone monitor.
I have a KORG CA-2 portable tuner which helps me get the guitar in tune before each session.
I use a WINGO Guitar Capo and plectrums as well.
We use Zoom to do the lessons over, Jon has a subscription, and Skype to store notes between sessions.
I use my phone to take pictures of my fret fingering to practice.
I have a portable flask that I keep with me if I need to take a drink during the session, as to not disrupt things.
I always tune the guitar before the session as to not waste time.
I always switch my audio speakers off, and use headphones on the audio interface, to minimise disturbance to others, and to stop feedback.
I have a pen and paper to make any notes needed on the session. This saves time compared to typing them into the computer.
The sessions are 45mins -> 1 hour max, weekly.

Zoom Setup

This is the Zoom configuration options that I use. Currently I do not turn on the ‘original audio for musicians’ toggle when on the call:

Optical Drive Cleaners and Home Entertainment Test Tools

Thu, 23 Feb 2023 09:57:30 +0000

If you are still using optical discs, e.g. CDs or Blu-rays, in music, video or games, then you are in the minority these days. Downloads and streaming have become the norm, which means 1) A lot less discs are being produced 2) A lot less optical drives are being produced.

Because a lot less optical drives are being produced, we can imagine a time in the future when the only optical drives you can buy, are second-hand. Regardless if you can buy new optical drives currently or not, often the best value/quality ratio can be found in second-hand optical drives.

Books that have changed the way I see the practice of Software Engineering

Thu, 19 Jan 2023 09:12:32 +0000

The Mythical Man Month and other Essays - Fred Brooks - Read it as part of my university degree. A lot of good sense. I can’t believe there are people out there in charge of software projects that haven’t read this book, or think it somehow doesn’t apply anymore, but unfortunately, it seems quite common. -

[Read reviews on Good Reads] The Cathedral and the Bazaar - Eric S Raymound - One of the first books I read on software development process. Really blew my mind. -

My Personal Retrospective on 2022

Fri, 23 Dec 2022 23:26:12 +0000

Every year (when I remember) I do an end-of-year summary to outline what has been going on in my life. I’ve been doing this for a few years now, and it’s a great way to look back on the year and see has happened.

The Bad:

The main bad news of the year is that, contrary to expectations, my Hodgkins Lymphoma cancer was detected again around April after the initial chemotherapy. So it had come back.
The rest of the year has mostly revolved around subsequent treatments to try and reach a long term remission, e.g. cure. I’m not there yet, but there are a lot of treatments still available, and I have hope that my current immunotherapy treatment might be the one that works.
It wasn’t just me that was affected, my wife suffered quite a bit on hearing the news, and has only just really taken it all in and come to terms with it.
I’m pretty sure that I will be cured eventually, at least for a good 10-20 years or so, it just is a pain having to take time off work and go through sometimes intensive treatment sessions.
The economy has not had the greatest of years either, and the cost of living crisis affecting the UK has had an effect on us, and my parents who are the main financial support we have while I am unable to work.

The Good:

I have found a renewed interest in my career, in software development, and I have spent a lot of my spare time, and part of my downtime for treatment, learning new technical things and just generally finding the enjoyment in technology that I thought I’d permanently lost for so many years.
The career opportunities around working from home have been very good considering my illness. There is still, despite a downturn, more than enough work around, and a lot of it is 100% work from home work. I’m no longer worried about being unemployed for any great length of time, presuming I am healthy enough to work from home.
I’ve been developing my writing and social media skills, which have been a welcome distraction from the bad stuff going on. I’ve always enjoyed writing, but I would say my writing has particularly improved over the past year.

Work on the house

We have spent a lot of time, effort and money on working on the house this year. Conny has put in a great deal of amazing work, in particular.

My Work Computer

Fri, 16 Dec 2022 23:06:40 +0000

(Full Room View)

(Desk worktop)

(Below the desk)

(Left of the desk)

(The gaming/morale shelves)

This is my work from home setup. I work from home every work day. I use the following equipment:

‘Studio.local’ - my main PC for WFH and gaming

I run Windows 11 on this, and use Ubuntu Linux WSL2 with a Kali Linux virtual machine also.

Tips for Working from Home

Tue, 18 Oct 2022 17:29:44 +0000

I have been working from home, the majority of the time, for over 5 years. It took a lot of adjustment, and I’m still not 100% adjusted, but if you want to undertake this, then these are my tips.

Note that a big part of the benefit from working from home is the total flexibility in work environment, so these are only tips that work for me - they might not work for you! However, I think there is probably quite a bit of commonality.

PSP Preset for Handbrake for transcoding video files into a PSP compatible format

Sun, 16 Oct 2022 16:00:48 +0000

This is based off of the 2021 Reddit post here: https://www.reddit.com/r/PSP/comments/kcx4ei/tutorial_convert_most_video_formats_to/

I am using it with Handbrake 1.5.1. You can import it into your Handbrake via “Preset -> File Import”.

Download PSP Handbrake Preset .

The Current State of UK Politics

Thu, 29 Sep 2022 04:07:41 +0000

For years, UK politics has become more right-wing, popularist, and presidential.

Right-wing, because the Conservatives have been in power for over 10 years, and have had the opportunity to implement most of their ideological policies, which we see at the moment highlighted to an extreme with Liz Truss gearing up to emulate Thatcher on almost every level.

Popularist, because the Conservatives have implemented policies designed to appease the populations feelings, rather than those based on factual positive outcomes.

Tips for new Ubuntu Users

Thu, 29 Sep 2022 00:00:36 +0000

Here are some extra tips if you’re just getting started out on Ubuntu.

You don’t have to go through the UI to shut down or reboot your computer. You can do it from the command line. The commands are:
```
sudo reboot # to reboot
sudo poweroff # to shut down and power off the computer
```
You can get a lot more information on your computers startup and shutdown sequences by removing the default Ubuntu splash screen that obscures this. You should definitely do this if you want to learn more about what your system is actually doing under the hood, especially if you need to troubleshoot what it’s doing. To do this:

Current Twitch DJ Setup

Tue, 27 Sep 2022 02:56:21 +0000

Click to view full diagram

Hardware

2 x Reloop 8000mk2 turntables
Roland 707m Mixer and DJ Controller
2015 Macbook Pro (DJ Laptop)
SoundSwitch USB -> DMX interface, attached to broadcast PC
Beatstep MIDI Controller mapped for controlling SoundSwitch, attached to broadcast PC
Vestax VCM-600 MIDI Controller used for controlling Resolume, attached to broadcast PC
AKAI LPD8 MIDI Controller used for controlling Serato’s FX, attached to DJ laptop
Rode Soundcaster Pro microphone used as a DJ mic
4 x Phillips Hue Colour Bulbs in lamps
Phillips Hue Lightstrip
Behringer UMC1820 Sound Interface connected to broadcast PC, attached to broadcast PC
2 x Logitech C920 Cameras used for capturing video for streaming, attached to broadcast PC

Software

SoundSwitch lighting software running on broadcast PC
Resolume Avenue running on broadcast PC
Streamlabs OBS running on broadcast PC
Serato DJ Pro software running on DJ laptop

Google Drive Backup using Rclone

Sat, 24 Sep 2022 17:39:06 +0000

For 8 TB of data storage on Google Drive, plus my own Google organization, I am paying £30/month, which is a pretty good deal.

I wanted to use this space for backing up my NAS, but it was proving difficult. The program I was recommended for Linux backup, Duplicati, was not the best for this purpose. My backup runs would not complete, they would be slow, and full of syncing errors.

Home Network September 2022

Thu, 08 Sep 2022 09:43:35 +0000

I had planned a different network toplogy for sure, but this is my current setup and it seems to work well:

I was not able to implement connection load balancing using the Miktrotik router. It was just too complicated and didn’t work reliably enough.
My current network is a gigabit network across all areas, so every PC has gigabit cables, switch and so on.
I either have plugged in my Virgin Media 1000mb/50mbs internet connection or my BRSK fibre 900mb/900mb connection. I simply plug in the WAN cable from the main Linksys router into one of the hubs at one time. If one connection goes down, I manually switch over.
I have a 10GB/sec SFP link between my server upstairs in the study and my main studio PC downstairs. This allows me to transfer files at 10Gb/sec rate between the two.
I need two wireless repeaters, even though I have a small house, because the house walls are made of a concrete mix. This means the wireless signal needs boosting a lot.
In the future, I may try load balancing again, or wait until one of my service providers offers >1000mb/sec speeds. When this happens it would make sense to expand the 10Gbs/sec links as there would be more point.

My Job Requirements

Thu, 01 Sep 2022 21:27:22 +0000

I have nearly 20 years experience, so my skill-set is in high demand from all sorts of different organisations. If I were looking for a job, then these would be my priorities:

Understanding of medical appointments - My situation is that I currently have cancer. Although it’s recommended I work, some of my time will be spent in medical appointments at the hospital that is 15 mins walk away from me. Currently this is expected to take up 1 weekday every fortnight.
100% working from home - This means that, several years down the line, the company policy will NOT change to ’everyone in the office’. Almost all meetings should be remote-first, meaning that everyone is an equal participant in them if they are working remotely. Some people can of course dial in from an office location but they should be at no communication advantage compared to remote workers. Also, the main communication for the team and organisation should be done online, remote workers should not be ‘second class citizens’ to water-cooler gossip.
No Java technology stack - This means that Java and IntelliJ are not used as the mainstay of the application stack. I do not like working with Java and find it convoluted.
No unethical industries - This means no gambling, no defence, no industries which disadvantage society in a big way in general.
Good Pension - An above-average pension contribution. I would expect to be seeing at least 6% max employer contribution which is double the NEST minimum.
Good Pay - This is negotiable but I need to pay my bills, and that includes the 10% inflationary cost of living crisis we’re in.
Ability to use my own development environment - My customised development environment will run without issue on Linux machines, OSX machines, and on Windows 11 with WSL2. I am SO much more productive and happy using it.
Learning and dev time or budget allocated (nice to have) - This is a ’nice to have’ but really if you aren’t able and willing to expense costs such as monthly technical books (£50/month) maybe you should be asking yourself why not, as an organisation.

Sleep Tracking

Thu, 18 Aug 2022 19:58:57 +0000

I really like my Withings Mattress-Based Sleep Tracker .

I keep unusual sleeping hours a lot of the time, as I’m undergoing treatment, and a lot of the medication I’m taking effect my sleep. Even when I’m relatively healthy, some of the medication I’m on for a long-term condition also affects my sleep.

What’s more, I enjoy a non-standard sleeping schedule. I find I get more work done in the early morning or late at night. As I work from home 100% this is not as problematic as it used to be.

Digital Game Collecting

Tue, 09 Aug 2022 02:53:48 +0000

I have a relatively obscure hobby - I collect digital video games. Quite a few people collect physical games, but I like the advantages of having a large library of gaming options which are just a download away.

Like a lot of collectors, I have more games than I have actually played, or probably will do in my lifetime. I mostly get them via discounted bundles such as HumbleBundle.com , so I rarely play full price for them.

Home Network Design 28/7/22

Thu, 28 Jul 2022 00:57:42 +0000

Now that I actually have the internet connectivity being installed to make use of it, I am getting my home network design a bit more finished.

Components:

Virgin Hub providing a 1100/50mbps connection
BetterInternet Fibre Hub providing a 900/900mbps connection
Raspberry Pi 3 running Pi-Hole DNS
MikroTik CRS309-1G-8S+IN Cloud Router Switch
4 x SFP+10Gb SFP+ RJ45 Copper Modules
CAT8 30M Outdoor Cable to connect the studio to the study
Short run CAT7 Patch Cables
Windows 11 Studio PC with 10GB/sec SFP+ Port
ThinkStation Server with twin 10GB/sec SFP+ Ports and separate gigabit NIC
3x LinkSys 3200WRT Routers in wireless repeater mode, creating a 2.4hz wireless network with speeds around 500mbps on average to each wireless device.
TP-Link Gigabit switch

Load-balancing internet connections:

MIDI Routing for Home Studio

Sun, 19 Jun 2022 03:04:47 +0000

I have had this knowledge in my head for a long time now and thought it would be better to write a diagram to explain the current setup for my MIDI routing.

I use MIDI routing one way - MIDI OUT - from my UMC1820 sound interface.

I have two keyboard controllers, one next to my computer, and one next to my Eurorack, that are attached via USB to my computer which I route the notes via Ableton to the MIDI out of the UMC1820 interface.

Home Network Design

Sat, 14 May 2022 23:15:20 +0000

Did some network design for my home network. This will ensure that my new Virgin Media 1100mbps/50mps speed is fully utilised without any bottlenecks and will futureproof things up to at least 2.5Gbs/speed connections.

I should be able to load balance both internet connections to utilise them both simultaniously in the future, but for now I want to be able to get greater than 1000mbit/s speed on a single device otherwise there is not much point in speed increases past 1000mbits. Also there is a 200-300mbits speed increase possible from my existing VM hardware that is not utilised in the current network.

DJ Setup 2/5/22

Mon, 02 May 2022 22:11:13 +0000

This is my current DJ setup that I use for Twitch streaming mainly.

2x Reloop RL-8000mk2 turntables.
2x Serato ‘Butter Rug’ Slipmats.
2x Concorde Mk2 Digital carts.
Numark NDX500 CDJ which I use for playing CDs, and as a Serato Controller as it has Serato Integration.
Roland DJ-707m controller.
Sennheiser HD-25 headphones.
Rode Procaster mic with mic boom, pop shield and cage.
t.bone MB 88U mic with table stand that I use as a guest microphone.
AKAI LPD8 Midi controller which I use to trigger Serato Sampler samples.
Macbook Pro Early 2015 Retina running Serato DJ Pro.
Behringer TD-3 acid groovebox for adding acid patterns over the top of the Roland drum machine.

The audio signal flow is below:

Video Tools I use for my Media Collection

Wed, 16 Mar 2022 17:58:33 +0000

I use and recommend the following software for Windows. They’re all quite easy to use. The paid software all have lifetime subscriptions, which are worth it because you need the latest updates in this area.

Aiseesoft Blu-ray Player: (for playing Blu-Rays) (paid) https://www.aiseesoft.com/blu-ray-player/

Easyfab Lossless Copy: (for ripping Blu-Rays, also works for DVDs) (paid) https://www.easefab.com/losslesscopy/

VLC: (for playing ripped copies) (free) https://www.videolan.org/

Handbrake: (for converting between different video formats and compressing video) (free) https://handbrake.fr/

Using VIM as a Word Processor

Tue, 08 Mar 2022 19:43:00 +0000

It may surprise some people to learn that I don’t use a word processor to write pure text any more, and haven’t for several months. I still have a subscription to Microsoft Office 365, and probably will as long as recruiters and offices around the world still pay the MS tax.

I have created my own custom writing environment in my favourite text editor, VIM. This may sound like an absolutely foolish thing to do to anyone who knows VIM. By default, it is not setup at all to be an effective word processor. It is a programmers text editor, and a very complex and difficult to learn one at that.

DJ Setup 03/03/2022

Thu, 03 Mar 2022 01:19:28 +0000

This is my current DJ setup with the following components:

Decks 1 and 2 - 2x Reloop 8000mk2 Vinyl Turntables with Serato intergration
Deck 3 - Numark NDX500 CDJ with Serato Integration
Deck 4 - Roland 707m Serato Controller and Mixer using its internal drum machine as a deck
Behringer TB-303 Clone fed into the Aux input of the Roland 707m Controller
Pioneer EFX-1000 DJ FX Unit placed between the master out of the 707m controller and the input of the sound interface on the broadcasting PC
Reloop Neon Serato Controller used to control the Serato DJ Pro sampler
Rode Procaster Microphone (not shown in diagram) fed to the Mic 1 channel on the 707m Controller as the main microphone for me while DJing
t.bone MB 88U Dual Microphone (not shown in diagram) fed to the Mic 2 channel on the 707m Controller as the guest microphone for use when I have guests in the studio

I have simplified things massively over the last year over my previous setups with the purchase of the Roland 707m. It it an amazingly clever piece of equipment and does so much. I think it is definitely one of the most advanced and most powerful controllers on the market today. This is what I can do with the new setup:

Working with Jenkinsfiles in VIM

Sat, 19 Feb 2022 05:51:56 +0000

Using Jenkinsfiles in repositories for declarative pipelines, which is an example as infrastructure as code, is absolutely the right thing to do, in my opinion.

However the tooling for debugging and error checking Jenkinsfiles is currently quite difficult.

Setup Jenkinsfile linter

First of all you need to make sure to be able to access the Jenkinsfile linter. This linter is processed on the Jenkins server itself, unusually. There is a configuration option that requires adminstrator access to the Jenkins server.

My Story in Tech

Sun, 13 Feb 2022 08:59:05 +0000

I thought I’d write here a bit about how I got into technology and how my career has progressed for those people wanting to get into technology.

I was lucky enough to be born in a supportive home to good parents. My father was an early entrant into the world of computing, and my birth certificate records his profession as a ‘Computer Science Lecturer’, which was very rare at the time. In actuality, I’m fairly sure he taught only at local higher education colleges, but technically that still made him a lecturer. At any rate, he definitely worked in computing at a time when few others did (1982).

Privacy and Security methods I use

Fri, 14 Jan 2022 06:01:21 +0000

Ever since I worked at an internet marketing company on an advertising analytics platform, I have realised that I don’t want my personal internet browsing tracked, monetised, influenced, and sold to the highest bidder. These are the steps that I have taken to reduce (you can never totally eliminate) this process.

Pi-Hole DNS

This is a DNS server installed on a Raspberry Pi on my local home network. I have all the internet traffic going through my Virgin Media router filtered through this DNS server. It has many privacy-boosting features, but its main claim to fame is that it blocks the vast majority of internet advertising and analytics traffic on the DNS level. It currently blocks 20% of the requests made, which results in approximately 20% faster internet for me, and a lot more privacy/less tracking/less adverts.

The Persuit of Happiness and the Hill-Climbing Problem

Fri, 07 Jan 2022 05:50:39 +0000

It seems that for a lot of people, perhaps the vast majority, they cannot expect to be 100% happy all the time. Even those incredibly successful celebrities and incredibly rich CEOs and politicians are not happy 100% of the time.

So is it a good idea to seek 100% happiness right away? Or should we always try and select the ’least worst’ situation? If we keep making progress and optimse our happiness levels through constantly selecting the ’least worst’ situation whenever we have a descision then it seems to me we will maximise our happiness potential in the long run.

Retrospective on 2021

Sat, 01 Jan 2022 15:58:05 +0000

Well, 2021 has been a bit of a downer in a number of ways. There has been some upsides though.

I spent the first part of 2021 burned out, as in - totally burned out - of my career and really needing a break. This affected my work. It turns out that unknown to me at the time, I had cancer, Hodgkins Lymophoma, and a lot of my lack of energy and generally feeling awful was down to a large tumor that had been growing my chest for some time and was pressing down on my heart and lungs. In June I was admitted to hospital and they diagnosed the cancer. In July I started chemotherapy. Now the good news is that Hodgkins Lymphoma is one of the best cancers to get if you were able to choose, as it has a very high cure rate and very low fatality rate. The chemo as of November’s scan seems to be working even better than expected and they were expecting a good outcome. So that is positive. I should hopefully be done with chemo by March 2022.
One of the good things about 2021 has been the job that I found in the music industry. It is still doing software engineering, what my career has been based around, but they seem like a very nice bunch of people, and were prepared to support me and keep me on around chemotherapy. I am still employed part-time and that has been a HUGE help financially as you really don’t get a lot of money in benefits from the government, even when you have cancer it seems, and my family have had to help me out quite a bit. I have also had some success in the work that I’ve been doing - it seems very appreciated which is something I’m not really used to!
I have continued DJing on Twitch which has been great. I still do my regular Sunday show for 4 hours most Sundays, and it is a lot of fun and I have a bunch of regulars who pop in. I enjoy it a lot. I reached 500 followers and raised a LOT of money via charity streams with other DJs, both as a DJ and also helping as an organiser.
In December Conny and I caught the omicron varient of COVID-19 and that was a huge worry at the time because of my low immune system due to chemo and cancer. However we both have beaten it now, I had a short stay in hospital but it wasn’t that bad. NHS staff were very helpful and I think it really helped that I had 3 vaccinations in my system at the time of catching it.
In Jan 2021 I took the third of the 10 week university level courses at Point Blank Music School as part of my study of Electronic Music Production. This course was on mixing and mastering. I have learned a lot from it already, although I still haven’t finished it as I was quite busy most of the year.
I single-handedly raised £270 from friends and family for a cancer charity for my mother (who also has cancer) during a 12 hour DJ stream on my birthday in 2021. Ironically I had no idea I had cancer myself at the time.
I ripped all of CDs to FLAC. Hundreds of CDs. Ripped hundreds of DVDs, PS2 and PS1 games too. Hosted them all on a Plex media server and gave the majority of discs away to charity.
I sorted all my physical books, split into different subject bookshelves, alphabeticalised and catalogued in GoodReads.com.
I have read more books this year than several previous years. I still have a huge backlog to go through though.
I played quite a few more computer games than I have for a while, including beating Cyberpunk 2077 in a no-sleep 28 hour marathon after it was released. (Although that was technically in December 2020 I am going to include it anyway). It was such a great game in my view, amazing storyline and setting.

Here’s to 2022!

Setting up Enlightenment window manager on Ubuntu 21.10

Thu, 18 Nov 2021 08:54:42 +0000

Enlightenment is a very underrated window manager choice, in my opinion. It still looks very pretty and is very configurable. There is a packaging bug with the latest version of Enlightement in the 21.10 repo which means it doesn’t work correctly. The fix is to set the suid bit on the ’enlightenment_system’ binary. So:

sudo apt install enlightenment
sudo find /usr/lib -type f -name enlightenment_system -exec sudo chmod 4755 {} \;
Log out of Ubuntu
Click the settings cog in the bottom right to change your Window manager to enlightenment
Log on and the settings wizard will help you configure Enlightenment

My Simple Commandline Git Workflow

Thu, 21 Oct 2021 16:44:09 +0000

This is a simple description of how I work 99% of the time, as I am a simpleton. Origin/main is the new origin/master for future repositories, I just note both here for completeness because I use origin master for a lot of current repos.

I first make sure I am uptodate on origin/master or origin/main by git pulling.
git checkout origin master
git pull origin master
I start making changes to the local copy on my local machine.
When it gets to a point where I want to save my changes, I:
git stash push
git checkout -b <branch name which will be made into a PR>
git stash pop
I then commit the changes to the new branch.
git commit
When I am ready to create the PR, I create and push to the remote branch:
git push origin <branch name which will be made into a PR>
Github will tell me if master/main has diverged past a state where my commits can be merged in without conflict. If there is a possible conflict, I will merge in origin master/main to my local copy and then push to the PR branch again:
git checkout <branch name which will be made into a PR>
git pull origin master (or origin main)
I resolve locally conflicts through git mergetool which, for me, is vim’s three way diff tool.
I commit the updated conflicts and push to the remote branch - git add && git commit && git push origin <branch name which will be made into a PR>
Often at this point I find I have to add new commits to fix things I have broken or have been flagged up in PR review.
git commit
git push origin <branch name which will be made into a PR>
Reviewers now have some of their comments made on stale commits in Github. This is better than squashing the commits I find because sometimes the commits are not stale and their comments are still valid, and it becomes easier to keep track of. They can view the ‘files changed’ tab to add review comments until they are happy. I loop back to check whether master/main has diverged, and if it hasn’t just keep adding commits to address their concerns.
The PR gets approved (hopefully)
I merge the PR into master or main
I delete the old branch

How to fix Plex Media Servers 'Various Artists' problem using Beets.io and other tools

Tue, 21 Sep 2021 22:22:47 +0000

The Problem

As of the day of posting, Plex Media Server has a suboptimal handling of Various Artists compilations. Unless you follow BOTH of these rules, described clearly on the Plex support here under ‘Various Artists’, then they won’t appear collected under a particular album, they will be spread out filed under the different artists that created them. I think it should only require one of these rules, but it is not up to me. The problem is that release metadata available from the online metadata databases, often doesn’t follow these rules - lots of DJ mix compilations for example, do not set albumartist tag to Various Artists from the online metadata databases.

My PSP Entertainment System for 2021!

Sat, 07 Aug 2021 19:57:27 +0000

I have recently been in hospital and been diagnosed with a condition that might mean I need to return quite a bit, at least in the short term. When I was in hospital I was struck by the fact that there were very long periods of waiting and it was easy to get very bored and quite dejected just sitting in a hospital bed.

Also there is not a lot of room for laptops, tablets and other things – you really don’t get a lot of space by your bed usually to store large items and they are not practical most of the time. Therefore I thought I would hack together some kind of portable entertainment system that I could use to pass the time and to block out some of the hospital negativity if I need to be in hospital again. My DJ headphones Seinhausser HD 2-IIs are actually very useful in a hospital because they are very good at sound isolation and you can remove one of the ear cups so you can lie on your side in a hospital bed and just listen to one earcup without it being uncomfortable, so they were very good to use with the PSP.

Making Twitch DJ Promo Mix Videos

Sun, 13 Jun 2021 20:54:40 +0000

Sometimes as a DJ you may want to reconstruct the Twitch stream you have streamed into a video format to send to other people, for promotional purposes, or just to have a record of what you’ve done. Twitch makes this difficult though, as it mutes copyrighted music in the video it records for your Twitch stream. Also, when you download this video, it does not include the chat log, so any attempts at reconstruction are without the chat, so it looks like the DJ is just talking to him/herself. Not good. However you can get past this. This is how I reconstruct a video set to create a promo DJ video mix for my stream. You will need:

Using Navidrome on a RPI3 to host my music collection for DJing so I can listen between sets

Wed, 09 Jun 2021 14:29:14 +0000

As a DJ it is important to listen to the music in your collection so you get an idea of what would work in particular sets, and you have a memory of how the tracks progress. So I decided to host a Spotify like service in my house so I could listen to my 500GB+ DJ music library. Navidrome (free open source software from https://navidrome.org ) is running on the Raspberry Pi 3 which is under my desk via a wired connection with it’s own http://navidrome.local custom domain name. This is what it looks like:

Proper Care and Operation of Vinyl Turntables for DJs

Mon, 31 May 2021 23:53:14 +0000

Setup your new Turntable

Follow this and only this guide. This is the best vinyl setup video on the internet as of 2021:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WM-aIDwfrhc&w=560&h=315 ]

A lot of DJ turntables are based on Technics OEM clones, and so you will need to set the tonearm height, which is the only thing not covered by the above video:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYScinvkrrM ]

The Basics

Once you’ve setup your turntable:

Should go without saying that I always use a velvet dust brush on my records just before I play them. Only takes a couple of seconds when you’re used to doing it.

Lighting and Camera Setup

Tue, 11 May 2021 03:20:16 +0000

Light Sources:

Phillips Hue Colour Lamp (top right)
Phillips Hue Colour Lamp (Middle)
Phillips Hue Colour Lamp (Bottom)
Phillips Hue Lightstrip
“DJ David Craddock” white illuminated sign
“Live on Air” blue sign
Laser (green or red laser wash)
Revolving disco balls

Dark Music Lighting Settings

For Phillips Hue sources I use Hue Sync on my broadcast PC which syncs the lights in time with the music. I will use different palletes depending on the event. For darkwave/dark music style events I will use this pallette:

Organising Huge Music Libraries for use with Serato DJ Pro

Wed, 05 May 2021 21:06:13 +0000

Updated: 25-11-22

My music library is around 24k files, mostly FLAC and some 320kbps MP3s. I use the following tools to organise my music library:

Acquisition: dbPoweramp CD Ripper - https://www.dbpoweramp.com/cd-ripper.htm Bandcamp Collection Downloader - https://github.com/Ezwen/bandcamp-collection-downloader Soulseek - http://www.slsknet.org Tagging and Metadata: Beets - https://beets.io Mixed In Key - https://mixedinkey.com Lexicon https://www.lexicondj.com/ Backup and sync: Robocopy - comes free with Windows 10. Documentation: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/administration/windows-commands/robocopy Google Drive Rsync

Searching: Everything Search - https://voidtools.com/ Playing: Winamp Serato DJ Pro - https://serato.com/dj/pro Plex Media Server - https://www.plex.tv/ dbPoweramp CD Ripper

Resolume MIDI Control in my Twitch DJing Setup

Mon, 26 Apr 2021 18:26:14 +0000

I have retired the Novation SL Zero Mk1 MIDI controller that was causing me a lot of grief when I was running Resolume and Ableton Live at the same time, as its Automap functionality was locking on to the Ableton Live mixer in session view now and then, and so, sometimes, when I thought I was controlling Resolumes visual FX, I was actually changing the volume faders in my DJ mix. Which was bad.

Hybrid Serato DJ Pro DVS/Ableton Live DJ setup (21/4/21)

Thu, 08 Apr 2021 03:49:31 +0000

I recently found a good price on a Vestax VCM-600 controller. It is a specially made MIDI controller for Ableton Live, with the same build quality as a DJ mixer. It allows for control over 6 channels in the Ableton Live ‘session’ view, which is arranged similarly to a mixing console. It also adds dozens of MIDI mappable DJ controls such as the traditional Hi, Mid and Lo EQs, a crossfader, a filter control, control over a lot of Ableton FX, and more. It has 6 channel faders + 2 send faders for FX. More info in this video:

2020 Retrospective – Wow, what a year!

Thu, 04 Mar 2021 19:02:19 +0000

I think, for obvious reasons, 2020 has been a year that no-one could really have expected. With COVID-19 and lockdown, a lot of things have changed, both in my life, in everyone’s lives, and in the workplace.

My online DJing setup

Things that went well

I changed medication around March 2020 which has resulted in significant weight loss, as expected. The previous medication was making me put on and retain weight even when I was eating very very little. In March 2020 my weight was nearly 136KG and now it has gone down to 125KG in March 2021. I have not been doing more exercise, indeed quite a bit less, as I have been staying indoors most of the time. The weight loss has had a very good effect on my general health and my sleep.
I am much happier than this time last year. Working corporate jobs I found very very stressful and apart from being financially rewarding, I wasn’t getting much else out of it. My mental and physical health was suffering. My relationship with my wife and friends are much better now because I am less miserable all the time.
I have taken up DJing over the internet and have turned this into a part-time income. It is so much fun. I used to DJ in clubs in my 20s regularly and I didn’t realise how much I had missed it. It is great to have a way to connect socially with people in lockdown and people really appreciate my DJ sets, which is great.
Working from home has been a great change for me. Before the pandemic I wanted to work from home 100% anyway, because I was ending up spending at least 2 hours commuting to and from work, it was costing a lot (because I can’t drive) and it was taking up a lot of time and energy.

My work from home setup

26/2/2021 DJ Setup with Diagrams

Fri, 26 Feb 2021 17:26:22 +0000

After the last post I have added Ableton Live and my Eurorack modular to my DJ setup, with a master clock being sent via MIDI cables from my Roland TR8 drum machine that syncs with Ableton. The drum machine also can be used creatively for drum fills etc.

I hope these two diagrams explain my setup adequately - sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words! The ‘actor’ is me - I just couldn’t find a way to change that on http://draw.io :)

DJ Books: Reviewed

Thu, 18 Feb 2021 16:56:59 +0000

The classic!

Yes! Some people actually write and read BOOKS on DJing. As if YouTube wasn’t enough. Well it can be enough.. but YouTube is also a cess pit of rubbish information, and at least a book has a better chance of being properly edited and reviewed. Also reading a book makes you more intellectual. Which is utterly true.

So. I have been reading through these DJing books to see if they could teach me something I didn’t know about DJing after over 10 years doing it. And there were quite a few interesting techniques and tricks that I learned from these.

Twitch Streaming Technical Setup

Sun, 14 Feb 2021 23:57:54 +0000

I thought I’d write a bit here about my Twitch DJing setup and some of the hardware and software I’m using. Twitch streaming has become very popular over the lockdown period, and I think people might be interested in how I have configured my stream. Something that seperates my stream from anyone else I’ve seen on Twitch is that is that I do live vinyl DJing AND live VJing at the same time on my stream. This is how I achieve it.

David’s Guide to The News

Fri, 08 Jan 2021 08:50:03 +0000

Journalism has deteriorated to a huge degree in the online age. A lot of articles and video content are one-sided short ‘clickbait’ – short messages designed to trigger an extreme emotional reaction. ALMOST ALL journalism is like this these days, it doesn’t matter if you have a highly established news network you have been trusting for decades, they have all had to adopt this low-quality strategy due to the ultra-competitive and dire financial situation that all news reporting finds itself in. However a lot of people still take news content at complete face value, and this leads to a huge number of people being misled about the real facts.

Finally my 27U Eurorack is complete!

Fri, 11 Dec 2020 22:03:36 +0000

The three sections
Left 9U section
Right 9U section
Middle 9U section

So.. finally my 27U Eurorack modular synthesiser is complete. I have filled up the third - and surely last, as there is no more room in the studio! - case. I started this Eurorack modular in 2015.. so I am glad it is all complete now. I put in a small amount nearly every month for new modules. I am not some ‘rich kid’ who could afford to buy everything at once - and indeed I think my gradual approach has benefitted the overall modular because it’s made me think about what I actually need, and given me time to learn as I go along.

Ivy Bridge 2011 PCs are still useful today

Tue, 13 Oct 2020 18:06:30 +0000

In our house, seperate to my main PC (see the tab above) we still have two Ivy Bridge-based PCs:

Conny’s PC

i7-3770K
16GB DDR3 RAM
Nvidea Radeon 970 Graphics Card
250 GB SSD
Windows 10

My wife uses this as her main PC, and plays quite a few games with it. For a CPU and motherboard that I put together in 2011 or so, I am quite amazed it still runs adequetely! It runs the games she wants to play, the most graphically intensive being Deadpool, but it will also cope with Borderlands 2, Skyrim Special Edition, Shadow Warrior 2, and others. She is not interested in the top graphics games, but it runs just fine.

Studio Setup in 2020

Thu, 30 Jan 2020 14:55:22 +0000

I have made some considerable modifications to my modular since my last post. I have a 4-voice polyphony setup now with multiple voice Osc, VCA, Envelope and MIDI-CV modules, allowing me to experiment with polyphony voicing.

Elsewhere, I have added an Access Virus C synthesizer to my studio, and now have rack-mounted Behringer Model D and Emu Orbit 9090 synthesizers. I have also upgraded to Ableton 10 and use NI’s Komplete suite including Massive X, plus TAL-NO-UX Juno 106 softsynth, Sylenth1 and others.

A Retrospective for Years 2016-19

Sat, 30 Mar 2019 23:09:23 +0000

I thought I’d update my blog to reflect recent changes in my life, and review what was good and bad about them, as I was doing before.

The “Not Awesome”

My overall health level has got a bit worse over the years. I have had limited success in losing weight. I was going for regular walks nearly every week with a friend of mine, but that has stopped lately. I find it difficult exercising while living in a city, as my favourite activity for excercising is walking, and there are not a huge amount of pleasent walking oppertunities around my area. I have been getting Ubers to parks and walking there. A posssible solution that I am actually considering is moving outside of the city, where there are a lot more pleasent walking oppertunities on my doorstep, and which would hopefully lead to a much more active lifestyle.

The “Awesome”

Home Cinema Setup

Sun, 20 May 2018 11:40:51 +0000

I have been gradually adding parts to my PC so that it functions better for watching movies and gaming. Here are the components that I have used:

Monitor – BenQ EX3501R 35″ Ultra WQHD Curved Monitor

This monitor is great for watching movies and gaming as it is ultra-wide at an aspect radio of 21:9, 3440x1440, a VA panel with high contrast, and the monitor is slightly curved so that you get a cinematic experience.

Finished Eurorack

Fri, 16 Jun 2017 17:57:23 +0000

Finally I have finished my Eurorack synthesiser! And I know many people say that ‘Euroracks are never finished’ but this one absolutely has to be, for financial reasons. I think that I have got to a place where I have every major feature common in most synthesisers, but in a modular instrument format. It is a great place to learn about different synthesis techniques.

[gallery ids=“1945” type=“rectangular”]

Node.js HTTPS server with self-signed certificate creation on openssl 0.9.8zh with node.js 7.10.0

Wed, 10 May 2017 13:59:18 +0000

I couldn’t find a concise guide to setting this up quickly so thought it was worth a post. To quickly get something working and create a https server using the above versions of openssl and node.js, do the following:

Generate self-signed server certificate with no password sudo openssl req -x509 -newkey rsa:2048 -keyout ./csr.pem -out server.crt -days 3001 -nodes Use this node.js code to setup a server quickly const https = require('https'); const fs = require('fs'); const options = { key: fs.readFileSync('csr.pem'), cert: fs.readFileSync('server.crt') }; https.createServer(options, (req, res) => { res.writeHead(200); res.end('hello world\n'); }).listen(8000); Go to https://localhost:8000 and accept the certificate, you should see ‘hello world’

Finished Planning My Eurorack Modular Synthesizer

Sun, 16 Apr 2017 21:37:29 +0000

In January 2015 I put in an order for my first Eurorack case. Little did I know that I would end up filling that case and buying a larger one. Finally, 2 years and 3 months later, I have nearly finished assembling what will be the complete Eurorack. I have been buying a module or two per month, researching what I need and playing a lot with what I have got already to find out its limitations and areas for possible expansion. It’s much like incrementally building and upgrading a gaming PC really, although with very different results.

Goals for 2017

Mon, 27 Feb 2017 14:58:18 +0000

Looking at my past posts, you may notice that I didn’t set myself any goals for 2016. Looking back, this was a mistake, so I’m going to remedy this by setting some for 2017.

Goals:

Lose a significant amount of weight - this is very important for health reasons.
Study maths courses - I intend to sign up for some maths courses at the OU. This will improve my mathematical knowledge, allowing for further study in subjects I’m interested in, plus allow me to work in more mathematically-heavy careers. This equates to 10 hours study per week, so it’s not a light commitment, but one I think I need to make.
Exercise more - this is important as it improves my mindset, stamina, and makes me feel good.

Not too many goals this time, but some important ones, and I think I’m in a good position to commit to these thanks to the support of my partner, and therefore I am in a position to improve my life.

Studio Setup

Sat, 11 Feb 2017 13:25:27 +0000

This is my current studio setup.

I have the following gear:

Eurorack 9U case Eurorack 6U case KORG MS20 Mini Synth Roland TB3 Synth AY3 Chiptune Synth Roland A500-PRO Keyboard Controller Nord Drum Synth Macbook Pro with Ableton Live 9 Suite MIDI.OCD Polyphonic MIDI->CV Converter Samson Patchbay

I am looking to sell my Acces Virus A and concentrate on filling up the remaining Eurorack case holes.

Switching to Wordpress.com

Mon, 30 Jan 2017 07:09:58 +0000

I am currently moving the blog, which was formerly hosted on Dreamhost, to Wordpress.com hosting. Most of the content is moved over already, I have to go through all the posts and tidy up the references, relink the images etc. Hopefully I will get around to this shortly.

Music Workflow 2017

Sat, 03 Dec 2016 20:02:18 +0000

In 2017 I want to build a relatively static hardware-based workflow. This is what I’ve chosen:

The components are:

Roland A-500PRO keyboard controller - https://www.roland.com/global/products/a-500pro/
Arpie MIDI Arpeggiator - https://www.tindie.com/products/hotchk155/arpie-midi-arpeggiator-kit/
CV.OCD Midi -> CV Convertor - https://www.tindie.com/products/hotchk155/cvocd-a-super-flexible-midi-to-cv-box/
KORG MS20 Semi-Modular Mini Synth
Eurorack - https://www.modulargrid.net/e/racks/view/350623
Nord Drum Semi-Modular Drum Module - http://www.nordkeyboards.com/products/nord-drum
Stereo Memory Man with Hazarai (Reverb/Echo Pedal) - http://www.ehx.com/products/stereo-memory-man-with-hazarai
Focusrite Saffire Pro 24 Audio Interface - https://us.focusrite.com/firewire-audio-interfaces/saffire-pro-24
Ableton Push Controller (MK1) - https://www.ableton.com/en/push/

Current Music-Making Setup

Wed, 16 Nov 2016 17:23:09 +0000

With my current setup, I’m trying to make as much music ‘out of the box’ as possible, away from the computer as I find it more fun.

Synths: KORG Minilogue: I use this for a keyboard controller, and I use the 16 step sequencer to run simple sequences. It connects to the PC via USB and has MIDI output. I can also use this as a synthesizer its own right, it’s good for backing chords and pads. KORG MS20 Mini: I’m borrowing this from a friend. I will use it as a bass synth mostly. I’ve got a Harvestman English Tear module which connects it to my Eurorack.

Narrative-Led PC Games

Mon, 05 Sep 2016 17:22:14 +0000

When I first started getting into computer roleplaying games in the 90s/00s I remember playing the Infinity Engine games by Bioware and Black Isle, such as Baldur’s Gate 2, the original Fallout games, and of course Planescape: Torment. It was the quality of writing that drew me in and took me to another world, the graphics were just a background setting to that writing.

Somewhere in the 2000s RPGs became more action orientated and prioritised mechanics and visual appeal and combat over branching stories. Nowadays a lot of popular RPGs are those such as Dark Souls, which seem more about combat and atmosphere than anything else. Blockbuster games such as Dragon Age: Inquisition and The Witcher 3 still show that great writing, characterisation and real player choices can still be popular.

Eurorack 2016

Sat, 16 Apr 2016 20:58:13 +0000

So.. the problem, as so many people have said, with getting into building a Eurorack modular synthesizer is that it becomes addictive, and you inevitably spend more than you can really afford. That said.. I now have a great fully customised synthesiser for what I want to do :) The layout is:

Top shelf:

3 oscilators and noise generator in the top left, 4 VCAs and S&H and Ring Mod sections in the mid center, LFOs in the top right.

OSX Fish Functions to open Chrome from the Shell

Mon, 04 Apr 2016 11:50:31 +0000

These functions are quite handy, and allow you to do things such as copy and paste errors and google for them without having to manually open a browser. You have to enclose arguments to both functions in single quotes, e.g. ‘chrome ‘http://www.google.co.uk ’ and google ‘one two three four’. You should add these to your config file at ~/.config/fish/config.fish and make sure Google Chrome is already installed.

[code language=“bash”] function chrome /usr/bin/open -a ‘/Applications/Google Chrome.app’ $argv[1:] end function google /usr/bin/open -a ‘/Applications/Google Chrome.app’ “https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=$argv [1]” end [/code]

My vIM Configuration

Sat, 26 Mar 2016 04:13:08 +0000

I use a heavily customised setup for vIM, the text editor that annoys me the least in ~30 years of using a computer. You can see my exact setup in my dotfiles repo on github, https://github.com/wordswords/- .

Here are the plugins I use:

ConqueTerm - Opens a shell window inside vIM, allowing you to have a REPL environment within vIM.
NERDTree - A filetree plugin that you can see on the left of the window above. It replicates the Sublime text editor’s filetree.
vim-airline - This is a statusline plugin for vIM that allows for a nicer status view for windows and buffers.
vim-devicons - Allows for UTF-8 icons to make vIM editing slightly more graphical. Used by airline to display more info in less space, and by NERDTree to show filetype information.
vim-fish - Syntax highlighting for fish shell script editing.
vim-rails - Syntax highlighting and more for rails.
vim-ruby - Syntax highlighting for Ruby.

Working with Fish Shell, ffmpeg, MP4Box and sox to generate audio files

Tue, 08 Mar 2016 17:22:37 +0000

More adventures with Fish shell. I have scripted the generation of a bunch of test asset audio files in mp4 format suitable for dash streaming. I have used the audio file commandline tools ffmepg MP4Box and sox in this script, they are pretty powerful and worth installing via homebrew on OSX.

Thoughts: I think that instead of quoting you can just output $variable, which is probably better coding style. I’m still working out good way to return variables from functions, it seems that you need to echo out the output and that gets picked up by the calling function, which is a bit messy. [code lang=“bash”] #!/usr/bin/env fish # move to the asset output directory.. cd ..

Audio Routing for my PC

Sat, 06 Feb 2016 08:40:22 +0000

For my own benefit as much as anyone elses, I thought I’d document my PC audio setup. I have two soundcards and two sets of speakers, one surround soundcard and speaker set for gaming and watching surround sound movies, and one audio interface linked up to my studio monitor speakers for music production. I also have a Digi 002 mixer which I use to mix in the outputs from my synthesisers to my recording interface. When I want to record, I usually record one track at a time from a synthesier to the audio input of the audio interface, via the Digi 002 mixer:

Fish Shell Scripting

Tue, 02 Feb 2016 17:28:39 +0000

A few months ago I switched across from Bash onto the Fish shell , on my main development machine. I can’t get enough of its fast autosuggestions and its sane scripting language. Compared to Bash it is very fun to use.

Today I wrote a script to automate the backup of my development workspace onto a private bitbucket account. Bitbucket is good because it allows unlimited private repositories, but it caps the size of these repos at 2GB max, with some features disabled after 1GB. This means that I want to find out the size of my repo before automatically backing it up. This script does this:

ADAT with Digi 002 Consoles - Don't throw them away just yet!

Mon, 25 Jan 2016 21:10:44 +0000

So I got given a Digi 002 console version, which looks like this:

A fairly old style digital audio interface and mixer, which was all the rage back in 2002 when it first came out, but now is often found sitting in the skip. Why? Because it is a Pro-Tools inteface, and Avid stopped supporting it about 5 years ago, so it won’t actually work under Pro Tools and Windows 10 (believe me, I’ve tried!). It only works as a recording interface through Pro Tools, so you can’t just connect it via firewire to your PC and expect it to work.

A Basic Eurorack Technique

Sun, 24 Jan 2016 05:37:52 +0000

I thought it might be of some interest to describe how I use my Eurorack, at lot of the time, in making tracks. I have a 3 oscilator - 3 VCA - 3 filter Eurorack which I use primarily so that the oscilators initially work in unison mode with some slight detuning. I typically use a single loop, arpeggio or pattern that I repeat over the song. Then, partway through a track, I will transpose the octaves of the oscilators and vary the sustain of the envelopes, along with the filters and pulse-width modulation amount, to make a morphing yet harmonious sound texture progression.

Goals of 2015 Summary

Sun, 17 Jan 2016 20:38:13 +0000

At the start of 2015, I wrote down some goals for 2015 . Around half-way through the year, I revisited these goals with some thoughts on how well I’d done . Now 2015 is over, I want to reflect on what has been achieved and what hasn’t.

I also want to comment on the fact that I am discussing personal things here. A few years ago I was decided that I was going to keep this blog professional and pretty much dry of any thoughts or feelings on my personal life. I have moved away from that though, inspired by blogs such as Iain’s , where personal thoughts and feelings are mixed with technical observations. I would like to think that this isn’t a bad move; after all if potential employers come to look at this 5 years from now, and don’t like what I’ve done here, then I probably don’t want to work for them anyway. There is the argument that blogs should be ’themed’ or targetted towards a particular subject to garner followers, and that too much sharing is possibly a bad thing. However, my current thoughts are that dry techncial info is boring, and I’d rather mix it with other things that are important to me.

Top 5 Recommended Upgrades for your PC

Mon, 21 Dec 2015 08:37:03 +0000

I have made a lot of different upgrades and modifications to my PC, as you can see here . Some of the upgrades have made more of a difference than others though. Here is what I think you should be concentrating on, if you’re looking to upgrade.

Solid State Hardisk (SSD) - Solid State hard drives use flash memory instead of the moving disk platters of traditional hard disks. It is the same type of storage as your USB stick. This type of storage is a lot faster to access compared to magnetic storage. Upgrading will result in a huge performance increase for most systems if you are changing from a traditional hard disk. Get as big a size as you can afford. If you play computer games or do a lot of media production work, then the added space will be useful. They have reduced in price over the years, the first SSD I bought was £120 for 120GB SSD back in 2012, in 2015 I just bought a 250GB SSD for £50. So it’s definitely affordable now.
Large Monitor - If you can get a 27"-32" monitor then do so. It has made so much difference to the day to day usage of my PC. I would recommend 1440p if you can. 1440p is half the resolution of 4K. I wouldn’t recommend a 4K monitor yet in 2015 as I don’t think they have enough software support, and the cost is considerable for a decent screen. If you’re a gamer, then you might want to aim for a higher refresh speed, but I’d say this should be a secondary consideration to the screen space. Look on TFTCentral for reviews and guides to the different screen types available.
Good Soundcard and Surround Sound Speaker System - Headphones are OK, but even a basic surround sound soundcard and speaker system is going to be so much better. I have a Asus Xonar Phoebus Solo which I recommend, it’s a 7.1 surround sound card. I have a cheap £60 set of surround sound speakers, Logitech Z506 Surround Sound Speakers . Surround sound really makes a difference in gaming and movies. I think it’s the seperate subwoofer that has the most effect, so if you are not that convinced by surround sound, you could get a 2.1 (two speakers and a subwoofer) setup for a bit less.
Ergonomic Mouse and good mousemat - Chances are, most of the time you’re at your PC, you will be using the mouse. It is therefore really important you have a good mouse that won’t damange your hand after a few years use and is comfortable to use. Modern mice use laser scanners to track the position of the mouse on a flat surface. A higher resolution laser (measured in DPI - dots per inch) means that you can get more accurate tracking. Therefore look for high DPI mice for gaming or fine detail work as well as an ergonomic fit and lots of buttons. I recommend Logitech mice, after having had several Razer mice that didn’t last very long. I would also pick up a steel mousemat, as they never get tangled up in your mouse like the fibre mousemats do.
Recent Graphics Card - If you are into gaming or 3D modelling work, you would often prioritise this over any other upgrade. A new graphics card means that your existing games will run faster on higher detail settings, and you can play new games on higher settings with better framerate. I don’t think it matters too much whether you go for Nvidea or AMD as long as you can run the games you want to run. If you are not interested in running the latest games, then perhaps you don’t need this, but you may be missing out in the future.

Too much Scrolling! - Tips for Dealing with Mouse-Wheel Finger Repetitive Strain Injury

Sat, 05 Dec 2015 17:32:40 +0000

Recently I had noticed I’d been having quite bad problems with my fingers based on the fact that I had been scrolling the mouse wheel too much when scrolling through web pages. Here are a number of options you can take if you are in a similar situation as me:

Change OS’s scrolling speed to its maximum

This is the easiest change on most modern OSs, and will result in less scroll movements made by your fingers, because each scroll movement will move the screen down by a full screen height, (equivalent to a page down). This can be a bit annoying though as you lose accuracy when you want to just scroll down a small amount, it takes a bit of getting used to. Also you are still using the same muscles, just not as often.

Biggest Disappointment Purchases for PC - Razer Tiamat + Lightpack

Sun, 08 Nov 2015 19:22:50 +0000

As you can see , I buy a lot of bits and pieces for my PC. Occasionally though, I buy something that I feel was a disappointment, or not worth the investment. This post is meant to caution against other people making the same mistake.

Razer Tiamat - 7.1 Surround Sound Gaming Headset, with microphone (http://www.razerzone.com)

This was a big dissapointment in a couple of ways. The first, and most obvious in hindsight now I’m actually working on spatial audio for a living at BBC R&D, is that 7.1 surround sound headsets are a joke. There is no way you can get enough seperation between the different speaker drivers when your ears are so close to the speakers. If you have a soundcard or motherboard that supports surround sound, do yourself a favour and get a surround sound speaker set.

My Favourite OSX Apps for Development

Sat, 07 Nov 2015 12:51:33 +0000

I’ve just recently bought a Macbook Pro for myself, after having used a MBP at work for 4 years. I find it to be a really powerful development environment for the development I do, in languages such as Java, PHP, Ruby, Python and JS. Here is what I use day-to-day:

OSX El Capitan

I haven’t found anything not to like about this upgrade. I don’t use a lot of external devices, for which Bruce has found problems with El Capitan’s new restricted driver management for Arduinos and others. I like the fact I can use split screen functionality to side-by-side two windows easily, a feature that I very much like in Windows 10 too.

Next Big Thing: Voice Control for Home Automation

Thu, 15 Oct 2015 15:28:52 +0000

So, I have totally bought in to the home automation craze that is currently ’the next big thing’ in the technology world in 2015. Apple has released iOS 9 with their HomeKit home automation framework, Google have the Nest series of smart devices, and there are numerous emerging competitors and hundreds of devices out there right now that will network together in your home.

For the uninitiated, a ‘virtual assistant’ is a cloud-connected voice processing system which you can ’talk’ to. This is how a voice assistant essentially works:

IFTTT.com - Program your Life

Thu, 15 Oct 2015 10:17:28 +0000

If you haven’t seen If This Then That.com then I encourage you to check it out. It has a number of ways of automating your life, and can do things like text message you when you get mentioned on Twitter, up to deactivate your smart alarm when you’re nearing your house. This message will (hopefully) be posted on my Facebook page and my Twitter account, all thanks to IFTTT.com.

Scope in JavaScript

Mon, 28 Sep 2015 17:32:15 +0000

I am learning JS for work. This is a pretty good summary of the most common scoping rules in JavaScript:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/500431/what-is-the-scope-of-variables-in-javascript

Introversion, Extroversion and the BBC Software Engineer

Mon, 28 Sep 2015 16:22:52 +0000

Whether you agree with Myers-Briggs personality profiling or not, like fellow BBC’er Ian Forrester I have found them a useful frame of reference from which to discuss my personality, because I see similarities between my perception of me, and the classification.

I took the Myers-Briggs personality profiling, and it has labelled me on several occasions an INTP:

INTPs are marked by a quiet, stoic, modest, and aloof exterior that masks strong creativity and enthusiasm for novel possibilities. Their weaknesses include poor organization, insensitivity to social niceties, and a tendency to get lost in abstractions. Keirsey referred to INTPs as Architects, one of the four types belonging to the temperament he called the Rationals … I – Introversion preferred to extraversion: INTPs tend to be quiet and reserved. They generally prefer interacting with a few close friends rather than a wide circle of acquaintances, and they expend energy in social situations (whereas extraverts gain energy).

Completed Eurorack

Wed, 02 Sep 2015 08:13:17 +0000

I’ve finished my 6U Eurorack case. It took me 9 months to build, buying a couple of modules a month.

Goals

I wanted to make a self-contained dual voice synthesizer that would interface with my 2x Doepfer Dark Energy MK1s and my Microbrute, on a budget. I also wanted to add some random sound generation features.

I chose to make the synthesizer out of Doepfer modules because they are easy to find cheap second-hand, and also because they are well-engineered. (If they’re good enough for Kraftwerk, who am I to complain?)

Things I'd like to Learn More About

Wed, 02 Sep 2015 06:31:10 +0000

Some things I have been meaning to investigate in my own time, but haven’t, because life just gets in the way.

Maths - It might surprise a few people that, as a software developer, I never took maths to A-level. I picked up a bit of maths in my CS degree, but I never really got a firm grounding in it. This has prevented me from understanding and coding advanced stuff in game development, understanding audio to a decent level, and generally doing things in which I consider the more interesting fields of computing.
Music Theory - I have been getting better at playing the piano/keyboard by ear, but I have never fully learned to read music, and I would like to.
Electronics - I would love to be able to build simple DIY synthesiser module kits for my Eurorack setup. I imagine I’d have to start on something small though.

It would be great if I could take courses in these subjects, via the OU or something similar. I just have to find the time.

Goals for the Year 2015 - Midway Update

Tue, 01 Sep 2015 15:33:18 +0000

Now that I am midway through the year, I thought I’d revisit the goals I set myself at the start of the year , to see what has changed.

Career Goals

Settle into my new role at the BBC as Test Manager - I suppose this has not been achieved. I will have more updates soon (hopefully) but a change of direction is likely to happen.
Pushing for a place to be opened up in Platform Test to employ someone from the Extend Scheme - This has been achieved, and someone will be joining Platform Test from the Extend scheme in October, I’m happy to say.

Creative Goals

Get better at music production - This has been achieved. I have been working with my friend I will call ‘G’, which has massively improved my production skills. I have posted music that I see as much better to Soundcloud.

Getting married - Well.. things didn’t work out with that. But I have a new girlfriend who will hopefully be moving to live with me, so things seem to be recovering there.
Making friends with more people that share the same interests - Partly achieved. G is a good example of someone that I have met through looking for friends with the same interest.

Financial Goals

Saving more over the course of the year - Partly achieved. I have bought a house, so now I am in a quite a bit of debt, but the money I will be putting towards my mortgage will be money I am effectively ‘saving’ because it will be put into the value of the house.
Joining a pension scheme - Achieved.

Health Goals

Adopt a regular form of keeping fit - Not achieved. I have a gym even closer to where I live, 5 minutes walk, so hopefully I will use it more soon. It is difficult for me, as the medication I’m on makes me feel tired all the time, but they do say that exercise improves energy levels.

Conclusion

Although I’ve achieved the majority of my goals, I haven’t achieved two of the major goals - around my job and around exercise, which are both things I need to work on. There is still time left this year to make a difference in these areas.

Use Siri, Apple Earphones and Apple Music Together

Sat, 15 Aug 2015 20:46:21 +0000

This requires you to have a subscription to Apple Music and a 3G/4G/wireless data connection, but it is so useful! Using this tip, you can be walking along with your iPhone in your pocket and your Apple earphones in, and then change music just by pressing a button on the earphones remote control and saying ‘Play (your favourite band)’.

1. Activate Siri and subscribe to Apple Music. I used to subscribe to Spotify so I switched to Apple Music when I realised the advantages of the integration on my phone, and the wider selection of music. You will also need to set Siri to stream music over your cellular network, this can be done in the ‘Music’ section of iOS settings.

Modular Progress

Tue, 21 Jul 2015 19:42:04 +0000

My Eurorack modular has been progressing. I’ve added several low-cost modules, a Doepfer A-138b audio mixer module so I can mix the audio outputs of the oscilators, the noise output, and my Doepfer Dark Energy modules. I found this so useful with the Dark Energys that I have ordered another mixer. This I can use to mix audio before sending it to the filter, for example, or mix audio before sending it to a VCA to be amplified. I also added another envelope generator, Doepfer A-140, a sturdy workhorse and also useful for triggering the filter independently of the VCA envelope. Then I added a syncable LFO.. I already have 4 LFOs from the quad-LFO module in the top right, but I wanted a LFO with a reset option that I can use for MIDI syncing. On order is also a A-148 S&H (sample and hold) module which I will use for generating interesting random tones once I have expanded the ‘generative music’ theme of my setup a bit more.

Switching Audio between two Soundcards

Sun, 21 Jun 2015 17:55:50 +0000

If you have two soundcards - maybe a normal soundcard for your speakers and maybe a headset with its own audio interface - you will want some way of switching all audio between the two. This is an great little open-source tool to do just that. It works on Mac, and Windows 7 up to 10:

https://soundswitch.codeplex.com/

Get rid of the 'most visited sites' Grid on Chrome

Sun, 21 Jun 2015 17:49:00 +0000

Not that I particularly look at anything weird, but when I’m showing someone my computer I don’t want to have my ‘most visited sites’ pop up when I fire up Chrome. The following Chrome extension will get rid of the default loading page, and just display a blank page:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/empty-new-tab-page/dpjamkmjmigaoobjbekmfgabipmfilij

Open Source! Device API and Device API-Android on Github

Sun, 21 Jun 2015 17:28:22 +0000

Two Ruby gems that I contributed to from my days in the BBC’s TITAN (Test Tools and Infrastructure) team, have been open-sourced. So finally I can say that I have made proper open-source contributions. The gems are for making automating of Android phones via Android Calabash easier, and are used in a lot of the mobile testing we do at the BBC. Here they are:

https://github.com/bbc/device_api https://github.com/bbc/device_api-android Here is my Github profile , which doesn’t look very active on the surface, but I have been contributing to repositories which remain private at the moment, so my history is not visible.

Instruments That I Use

Sun, 21 Jun 2015 17:05:00 +0000

I have a lot of different instruments, both hardware and software, for making music, but here is what I use the most at the moment:

Piano I have an actual electric piano but I don’t use the onboard sound engine, preferring to use it as a midi controller for a software piano sound. Recently I bought Ableton Live Full Suite, before I was using the ‘Grand Piano’ sound from the default install. Now there is a whole ‘Piano’ Ableton Live pack, and that seems to offer much more realistic piano sounds.

My Writing

Sun, 21 Jun 2015 16:46:15 +0000

I’ve always liked writing and have been doing it for a long time. I write a lot for work, and also have written a lot of creative writing.

Work Essays and Articles

I’m working on a way to format and structure these properly within Hugo. For now though, the following will have to do.Alternatively, you can always view them in markdown in the Github repository at the link here:

Modular Progress

Sun, 21 Jun 2015 16:18:11 +0000

Specs

I have finished filling the top half of my Eurorack case, see above. Here is a list of modules:

Next Moves:

Modular Synthesizers

Fri, 30 Jan 2015 00:15:11 +0000

I am putting together a small modular synthesiser setup. Modular synthesizers are synthesizers composed of small individual modules, which are wired up to create a circuit for producing sound. They were very popular in the 1970s, with big bands such as Emmerson, Lake and Palmer, Kraftwerk and Jean Michael Jarre all owning big modular setups:

Modular synthesisers have had a resurgence in recent years with modern versions becoming available. One producer of modular synthesiser modules is Doepfer , a German company who’s modular synthesizer standard ‘Eurorack’ has become very popular recently. I have decided to build a small Eurorack modular, here it is so far:

Goals for the Year 2015

Sat, 17 Jan 2015 23:36:45 +0000

NOTE: I have an update on my progress as of 9/1/2015 here

Motivated by my good friend CheerUpLove.com ’s reflective style of blogging, and Ian Forrester ’s many interesting posts, I thought it would be interesting to post something a bit more personal and less technical on this blog.

Now that 2015 is upon us, I am going to take some time to publicly outline my goals for the year, so I can hold myself more accountable to them, and so I can look back on them this time next year.

microKORG Original + Novation Impulse 61

Fri, 31 Oct 2014 20:16:56 +0000

I picked up a rather ugly (but very cheap!) customised microKORG, and also the excellent Novation Impulse 61 USB/Midi keyboard controller.

The microKORG I like a lot. It was my first synth, and at first I couldn’t make any sense of it. I do agree with the Reddit /r/synthesizers view that it is not the best synth to learn on. Their view is that the best synth to learn on is one with a one-to-one mapping between controls and sound engine parameters. To put another way, the best beginners synth is one which has lots of knobs and buttons on it that you can tweak and hear actual results in the sound. It makes it more difficult if the sound engine is hidden away behind a large menu system with lots of daunting menus, like the microKORG has.

Pioneer DDJ-SR Serato Controller Review

Wed, 03 Sep 2014 00:17:23 +0000

I decided to buy the DDJ-SR controller because it was cheaper than even the cheapest pair of Pioneer CDJs. I’m no stranger to using a laptop and controller, before the DDJ-SR I used my trusty Faderfox DJ2 controller, which is a basic no-frills ‘play buttons, 3 EQs, crossfader and volume faders’ unit.

I was considering getting the Native Instruments Traktor S4 DJ controller, which is one of the most popular full-size controllers for Traktor. However, after borrowing one from a friend, I compared the build quality of the DDJ-SR versus the S4, and there was no contest! The Pioneer DDJ-SR has the same buttons and jog wheel as the Pioneer CDJ units, which are rock solid and industry standard. For anyone wanting to use CDJs in the club after using the DDJ-SR at home, you will find the feel very familiar.

New Synthesiser Additions: Microbrute, Nord Drum and Access Virus A

Sun, 10 Aug 2014 21:53:19 +0000

I bought some new synths.

Access Virus A

This is the original 1998 Access Virus A . It, it was a staple synth for trance and electronic music in general for the early 00s. I am very happy that I managed to get this secondhand for less than a MicroKORG. It cost over £800 when it came out in 1998. Old digital synths seem to be unpopular at the moment, I’ve heard comments along the lines of ‘if it’s digital then I might as well use a plugin in my DAW’. But I think this is ignoring the tactile control surface that you get, and how it gets your head outside the computer and playing an actual physical instrument. The presets are really inspiring, several sounds that you will recognise if you were into electronic music in the 00s. VNV Nation, one of my favourite bands, produced their entire ‘Empires’ album with just the Access Virus A and a couple of samplers.

A* Algorithm implementation in Python

Thu, 12 Jun 2014 00:24:34 +0000

Lately I’ve had the idea of creating a text-based Roguelike in C++. This lead me on to think about the game AI experiments that I worked during my degree in Computer Science and A.I. . Essential to game AI is the notion of pathfinding, or finding a path from ‘A’ to ‘B’, past any obstacles that get in the way. One way to do this is to use the A* algorithm. I decided to implement an A* pathfinding algorithm for possible use in a Roguelike later, and chose the pseudocode from the Wikipedia example to implement.

Current Music Setup

Mon, 05 May 2014 16:20:33 +0000

I like to dabble in making and playing music. Here is the equipment and setup that I use.

Ableton Live Intro

This is the DAW I use. I have been using Ableton Live for several years now, and I know my way around it. I have tried others but they never really felt as comfortable. Live comes in three flavours , ‘Intro’ is the most basic paid-for version. I was surprised how cheap the ‘Intro’ version was, and how little I find myself needing the features of the more expensive versions. I only have one paid-for VST plugin, and that is the KORG Legacy Cell MS-20, which I use on almost all the music I’ve made.

Setting up Kindlefire HDX for Development under Ubuntu 12.04

Mon, 10 Feb 2014 15:28:45 +0000

I wanted to get a Kindlefire HDX running under Ubuntu 12.04 with adb.

First I needed to setup the udev rules:

1. Edit /etc/udev/rules.d/51-android.rules as root, and add the following line (create this file if it does not exist):

SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTRS{idVendor}=="1949", MODE="0666"

2. Change the permission of this file by executing the following command as root:

chmod a+r /etc/udev/rules.d/51-android.rules

3. Reload the rules by executing the following command as root:

udevadm control --reload-rules

4. Run these commands to restart adb:

My Computer Build

Wed, 29 Jan 2014 00:13:12 +0000

Updated: Reorganised, replaced Tiamat headset for KAVE.

I use my computer a lot, for work (software development), gaming and music production. I wanted to build a high-end computer setup, as I’ve always lagged behind with upgrades before. So I gradually have been accumulating and swapping bits around to make the setup above.

Internals

Visual

Audio

Peripherals

My Aeron Chair

Tue, 24 Dec 2013 14:08:48 +0000

A good ergonomic chair is a wise investment if you’re going to spend a lot of time at your computer. One of the better known ergonomic models is the Herman Miller Aeron Task Chair .

What Other People Say About the Aeron

Jeff Atwood (from Coding Horror) says:

In fact, after browsing chairs for the last few years of my career, I’ve come to one conclusion: you can’t expect to get a decent chair for less than $500. If you are spending less than that on seating – unless you are getting the deal of the century on dot-bomb bankruptcy auctions – you’re probably making a mistake.

2013 Career Retrospective

Sun, 17 Nov 2013 03:40:14 +0000

2015 Update: The “Device Hive” project has now been changed to be called ‘Hive CI’ and it is being maintained by a team of developers at the BBC, which I am no longer a part of. It is in the process of being opensourced, see: http://bbc.github.io/hive-ci/

This year has been quite a busy and eventful one for me.

Connected Red Button At the start of the year, I was working on the Connected Red Button team within the BBC. Connected Red Button is a major ongoing project in the Television and Mobile Platforms department at BBC North. Its aim is to replace the classic Red Button text service (which itself is the successor to Ceefax) with a new updated all-singing all-dancing interactive portal to internet content, available on Smart TVs and modern set top boxes. Currently Connected Red Button is live and accessible by pressing the Red Button on the new Virgin Media TiVo boxes. You can access the latest version of iPlayer, and the BBC News and BBC Sport smart TV apps from within one easy portal.

Android Debug Bridge failing to detect emulators under OSX

Sun, 17 Nov 2013 02:21:34 +0000

I’ve been working on a project at the BBC where we are using the Android command-line tools from the Android Developer Tools , to spin up and terminate series of emulators. I noticed a big problem under OSX where ‘adb devices’ was failing to register emulators occasionally when we started them up, without any error message, even though they were loaded and quite clearly running in a window on OSX. This was a real problem for our project because we needed absolute parity between emulator process being launched and subsequently being detected by adb.

The Haiku Machine

Sat, 27 Jul 2013 02:29:10 +0000

I found this awesome cut-up poetry generator , which takes the text of famous poets and builds structured poetry out of it. The guy that made it even developed the underlying algorithm as a research project. I have put a version of a free Amazon EC2 instance, wrote a little twitter bot in node.js, and wired the poetry generator with the twitter bot, and now I have this: https://twitter.com/haikumachine - a twitter bot that posts a haiku every five minutes, derived from Dylan Thomas’s poetry.

256 Color VIM on Crunchbang Waldorf

Thu, 20 Jun 2013 22:15:52 +0000

To get 256 colors working within terminator in Crunchbang Waldorf, I had to do the following:

Add to ~/.bashrc
```
export TERM=xterm-256color
```
Install a 256 color VIM colorcheme, see desert256 for example .
Add the following to ~/.vimrc:
```
set t_Co=256
set t_AB=^[[48;5;%dm
set t_AF=^[[38;5;%dm
```
’t_Co’ specifies exactly how many colours VIM can use. The other two lines seem to be Debian-specific color code escape sequences.
If you want 256 color VIM for your root user when you sudo edit, then edit /usr/share/vim/vimrc and copy across your settings from your local ~/.vimrc and ~/.vim to this global environment.

Subversion 1.7 on Crunchbang Waldorf

Sun, 16 Jun 2013 03:43:49 +0000

I use the excellent http://www.smartsvn.com/ client from WANdisco. WANdisco have been releasing new open-source versions of SVN to the public with new improved reliability, and the client uses one of these versions, 1.7, to offer better performance.

Unfortunately if you choose to upgrade your entire repository to 1.7, this breaks compatibility with the default commandline SVN client on Waldorf which I like to use as well as Smart SVN, for quick ‘svn up’s and other commandline magic.

iTerm for OSX for a Colourful Terminal Experience

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 16:08:16 +0000

iTerm is much better than the standard OSX terminal client, not least because it has compatiablity with xterm256-color terminal emulation. xterm256-color emulation will give your terminal access to 256 colours instead of the usual 16. Much better, not just for looking pretty, but for distinguishing between different types of data in an editor like VIM or even in Cucumber output (see picture above). It’s also free.

Tailing a log file and Running an Application at the Same Time

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 15:55:04 +0000

A quick tip this, but a useful one. You can tail a log file in the background while running a script in the foreground. So for example, I frequently execute the following commands:

tail -f /var/log/httpd.log &
/etc/init.d/apache restart

2. (The log file will spool onto the terminal as Apache is restarted.)

3. Once you are finished viewing the log file, foreground the log file process and kill it:

fg

Then terminate the foregrounded log tail with a control-c.

Monitoring a Slow Internet Connection in OSX

Fri, 01 Mar 2013 01:28:54 +0000

I am currently on holiday in Tenerife, and although I really like it here, one thing I do not like is the internet connection we have in our resort. Sometimes networked applications will just hang with no warning and there will be minutes where it’s not clear what is going on. Here are some ways you can find a little bit more about what is happening when an application is slow or seems to hang when you have a poor internet connection. Execute the following commands each in a separate terminal window.

TDD Talk

Fri, 01 Mar 2013 00:44:50 +0000

Recently, myself and two colleagues from the BBC, ran a session on Test Driven Development at the Manchester University ‘Ultimate Programming’ society. The society is a gathering where students discuss cool things they have done with programming, and occasionally have guest speakers from industry. I found the society online and thought it would be great to get the BBC more involved in the local university happenings.

It is the first outreach project that I have undertaken, and it required a lot of preparation. Our initial idea was to get students to implement the A* search algorithm in a practical session, using TDD. However after we had all implemented our own copy of the algorithm, and realised it had taken several hours each, we realised we’d not have enough time in the 2 hour slot that we had.

Converting a single M2V frame into JPEG under OSX

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 15:20:23 +0000

I needed to view a single frame of a m2v file that had been encoded by our designers for playing out on TV. The file name was .mpg but in actuality it was a single .m2v frame renamed to be a .mpg. Windows Media Player classic used to display the frame fine when I opened the file normally, under Windows XP. However now I have switched to a Mac, I have found that Quicktime and VLC refused to display the single frame. I couldn’t find a video player that would open the single frame. So I resorted to the command line version of ffmpeg, which I installed via macports, to convert this single frame to a jpg file to view as normal. This line worked a treat:

Java 1.6 on RHEL4

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 01:36:52 +0000

After I wrote a Java application in JDK 1.6, I was stuck for a while when I realised that the target deployment machine was Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4. RHEL4 does not support Java 1.6 in its default configuration.

Luckily I found this article on the CentOS wiki which included instructions on how to install Java 1.6 on CentOS 4. Remembering that RHEL4 and CentOS 4 are almost identical, I tried the method supplied, and it worked. This is the page with the method:

Test Driven Systems Development with Nagios

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 14:42:50 +0000

Nagios can be seen as a automated test tool for systems, just as you would have automated tests for software projects. In test driven development (TDD), you write the tests first, and then use those tests to build up a software project that you can have confidence that it works. We can use this method to build up systems, or networks of systems. Plan out which services and processes should be running on your new systems, and then implement Nagios tests for every one. You can check the progress of your build by checking Nagios. I have been doing this at the BBC. It is a simple idea but one that seems to work.

JSoup Method for Page Scraping

Wed, 07 Sep 2011 18:35:17 +0000

I’m currently in the process of writing a web scraper for the forums on Gaia Online . Previously, I used to use Python to develop web scrapers, with the very handy Python library BeautifulSoup . Java has an equivalent called JSoup.

Here I have written a class which is extended by each class in my project that wants to scrape HTML. This ‘Scraper’ class deals with the fetching of the HTML and converting it into a JSoup tree to be navigated and have the data picked out of. It advertises itself as a ‘web spider’ type of web agent and also adds a 0-7 second random wait before fetching the page to make sure it isn’t used to overload a web server. It also converts the entire page to ASCII, which may not be the best thing to do for multi-language web pages, but certainly has made the scraping of the English language site Gaia Online much easier.

Disabling Control-Enter and Control-B shortcut keys in Outlook 2003

Wed, 13 Jul 2011 16:34:39 +0000

At work, I still have to use Windows XP and Outlook 2003. I don’t particually mind this, except when I draft an email to someone and accidently I press Control-B instead of Control-V. Control-B will go ahead and send your partially composed email, resulting in some embarassment as you have to tell everyone to disregard it.

So I wanted to remove the ‘send email’ shortcut keys in Outlook 2003. There are two ways of doing this, one involves editing your group policy, which is something only my IT administration team can do, and I didn’t want to have to involve them. The other way is by making a change to your registry, which I will describe here.

Directory names not visable under ls? Change your colours.

Wed, 04 May 2011 16:03:55 +0000

There is a problem I frequently encouter on Redhat/Fedora/CentOS systems with the output of the ls command. Under those distributions, the default setup is to display directories in a very dark colour. If you usually use a white foreground and a black background on your terminal client (such as Putty) then you will struggle to read the names of the directories under Redhat-based distributions.

There are two soloutions that I have used:

Scraping Gumtree Property Adverts with Python and BeautifulSoup

Sun, 01 May 2011 14:07:02 +0000

I am moving to Manchester soon, and so I thought I’d get an idea of the housing market there by scraping all the Manchester Gumtree property adverts into a MySQL database. Once in the database, I could do things like find the average monthly price for a 2 bedroom flat in an area, and spot bargains through using standard deviation from the mean on the price through using simple SQL queries via phpMyAdmin .

RESTful Web Services

Wed, 02 Mar 2011 14:21:23 +0000

REST (Representational State Transfer) is a way of delivering web services. When a web service conforms to REST, it is known as RESTful. The largest RESTful web service is the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) which you use every day to send and receive information from web servers while browsing the internet.

To implement RESTful web services, you should implement four methods: GET, PUT, POST and DELETE. Resources on RESTful web services are typically defined as collections of elements. The REST methods can either act on a whole collection, or a specific element in a collection.

'Weather Forecast' Calendar Service in PHP

Thu, 24 Feb 2011 19:31:48 +0000

The BBC provide 3 day weather RSS feeds for most locations in the UK. I thought it would be interesting to create a web service to turn the weather feed into calendar feed format, so I could have a constantly updated forecast of the next 3 days of weather mapped on to my iPhone’s calendar. Here it is on my iPhone:

Overview

The service is separated into five files:

ical.php – this contains the class ical which corresponds to a single calendar feed. A method called ‘addevent’ allows you to add new events to the calendar, and a method called ‘returncal’ redirects the resulting calendar file to the browser so people can subscribe to it using their calendar application.
forecast.php – this file contains the class forecast, which has properties for all aspects that we want to record for each day’s forecast, ie: Wind Speed and Humidity. It also contains the forecast set, which is a collection of forecast objects. The set class is serializable, which means each forecast object can be stored in a text file, including the Wind Speed, Humidity and all other things we want to record for each day.
scrape-weather.php – this file contains code that scrapes the weather feed, populates the forecast set with all the weather information for the next 3 days, and stores the result in a file called forecasts.ser.
forecasts.ser – this is all the data for the three day weather forecast, in serialized format. It is automatically deleted and recreated when the scrape-weather.php script is run.
reader.php – this file converts the forecasts.ser file into an iCal calendar, and outputs the iCal formatted result to the calendar application that accesses reader.php page.

It uses two external libraries:

Find large files by using the OSX commandline

Tue, 22 Feb 2011 00:16:12 +0000

To quickly find large files to delete if you have filled your startup disk, enter this command on the OSX terminal:

sudo find / -size +500000 -print

This will find and print out file paths to files over 500MB. You can then go through them and delete them individually by typing rm “”, although there is no undelete so make sure you know you won’t miss them.

Finding files in Linux modified between two dates

Wed, 16 Feb 2011 12:33:44 +0000

You use the ’touch’ command to create two blank files, with a last modified date that you specify - one with a date of the start of the range you want to specify, and the second with a date at the end of the range you want to specify. Then you reference to those two files in your find command:

touch /tmp/temp -t 200604141130
touch /tmp/ntemp -t 200604261630
find /data/ -cnewer /tmp/temp -and ! -cnewer /tmp/ntemp

Writing simple email alerts in PHP with MagpieRSS

Sat, 12 Feb 2011 20:01:13 +0000

I wrote an email alerter that sends me an email whenever the upcoming temperature may dip below freezing. It uses the Magpie RSS reader to pull down a 3 day weather forecast that is provided for my area in RSS form by the BBC weather site. It then parses this forecast and determines if either today’s or tomorrow’s weather may dip below freezing. If it might, it sends an email to my email address to warn me.

Reverting back to a previous version in CVS - the magic "undo" feature

Fri, 28 Jan 2011 16:27:43 +0000

If you’ve committed some code into to CVS, and made a mistake on that commit, you will want to know how to revert to a previously saved version. Here is the command line command for CLI versions of CVS:

$ cvs update -D '1 week ago'

Run this command in the main directory of your checked out working copy. This will revert your working copy to the version of the code that was checked in ‘1 week ago’ from the present date. You also use commands like “1 day ago” and “5 days ago”.

Netbeans for simple Java GUI Applications

Tue, 07 Dec 2010 17:32:36 +0000

I’ve been writing some simple Java GUI applications using the Netbeans IDE. It allows you to quickly make event-driven GUI applications, and generates a lot of skeleton code that you’ll need, but don’t necessarily want to type out. It reminds me of the IDE designer of Visual Basic 6, which allowed you to mock up simple GUIs with code in almost no time at all, although the VB language itself often proved difficult. With Netbeans you are using Java, and so you can make some powerful software with little effort.

Converting week numbers to dates

Wed, 24 Nov 2010 13:50:44 +0000

Here is some python code I adapted from this stackoverflow post to get the first day of a week specificed by a week number. This method includes leap year and summer time differences.

import time
def weeknum(num,year):
	instr = str(year)+" "+str(num-1)+" 1"
	print time.asctime(time.strptime(instr,'%Y %W %w'))

Here is me exectuting the code in Python’s IDLE shell:

See that the first week of 2009 actually started in 2008, but by the end of that week we are in 2009.

Mac BBC Radio Player

Tue, 16 Nov 2010 18:42:27 +0000

Quite cool little app that allows you to listen to different BBC Radio programmes from within a standalone application, instead of iPlayer:

http://whomwah.github.com/radioaunty/

MediaMonkey allows you to transfer music from any computer onto your guest iPhone

Sun, 14 Nov 2010 16:54:08 +0000

MediaMonkey is a popular free media player for Windows. It has a great feature that allows you to transfer to and from an iPhone that is not registered with your computer. Normally only one iTunes install can be associated with your iPhone, but MediaMonkey allows you another way to transfer music and audio files with a ‘guest’ iPhone. Check it out, it works:

MediaMonkey

Applications I Reccomend

Mon, 19 Jul 2010 00:37:15 +0000

Software I use on my macbook & PC:

DVDRipper Pro for Mac - DVD ripping, can also rip to ISO Handbrake for Mac - Transcoding from DVD rip to iPhone-playable file iMovie for Mac - Video editing BabasChess for Windows - Best chess client for internet play Hypercam 2 - Best screencapture utility Skype for both - For reliable messaging as well as voice and video chat Virtual Clone Drive for Windows - For mounting ISO images iTunes for Mac - Best music player, and keeps media synced with iPhone VLC Player for both - For watching movies DVD Player for Mac - For watching DVDs

Recording Game Videos on Windows 7

Sun, 18 Jul 2010 23:55:33 +0000

This is just a quick note to remind myself how I did this.

Hypercam2 is a good, free, video recorder that can cope with recording game videos. It’s freely available from http://www.hyperionics.com/hc/downloads.asp - just make sure when you install it you don’t tick on the spyware toolbar installation options.
My motherboard has a 5.1 digital soundcard built in. However the only way I can record off the soundcard is to plug in a standard audio cable from the speaker out (green) to the microphone in (orange).

Insights into a modern Indie Music label

Fri, 16 Jul 2010 00:52:05 +0000

I read this remarkable post on a public mailing list I subscribe to. I thought it was such a great insight into running a music label, that I just had to post it here. It discusses issues facing modern music, such as DRM, DMCA, and other ways of making (or losing) money. Fascinating.

Here it is:

I work for a (fairly small) indie label - from witnessing this model in action I feel I have to stick up for the label given that I see the model working (or sometimes not so well) on a daily basis! Where we’ve done deals with artists in the past, they’ve almost always been a 50/50 arrangement - the artist receives 50% of net royalties. Where a label fronts recording costs, these can easily become £6-10,000 for an album session. Even an EP session can be upwards of £1,500 although these figures are a little pessimistic (though not unrealistic). (We actually designed, built and owned studios for ten years until 2001 but the project haemorrhaged money.)

Restoring Ubuntu 10.4's Bootloader, after a Windows 7 Install

Tue, 13 Jul 2010 13:02:51 +0000

I installed Windows 7 after I had installed Ubuntu 10.4. Windows 7 overwrote the Linux bootloader “grub” on my master boot record. Therefore I had to restore it.

I used the Ubuntu 10.4 LiveCD to start up a live version of Ubuntu. While under the LiveCD, I then restored the Grub bootloader by chrooting into my old install, using the linux command line. This is a fairly complex thing to do, and so I recommend you use this approach only if you’re are confident with the linux command line:

Windows 7 Gaming on my Macbook

Thu, 01 Jul 2010 22:50:25 +0000

I have a 2006/2007 Core 2 Duo 2.6ghz white macbook, that I use regularly for internet, music, watching films, itunes and integration with my iPhone.

I wanted to turn my desktop PC into a ‘work only’ Ubuntu Linux machine, so that I don’t get distracted when I’m supposed to be doing something else.

But I still have a lot of PC games that I wanted to play on the Macbook, so I decided to try and setup a windows environment to play games on using Bootcamp 2.0 to create a dual-boot OSX/Windows 7 configuration.

Ripping Movies onto the iPhone

Mon, 17 May 2010 03:15:00 +0000

I’m currently watching Persepolis, the 2008 animated film about a tomboy anarchist growing up in Iran. I’m watching this on my new iPhone 3GS, and the picture and audio quality is very good.

Here’s what I used to convert my newly bought Persepolis DVD, for watching on the iPhone.

1x Macbook (but you can use any intel mac) 1x iTunes 1x RipIt - Commercial Mac DVD Ripper (rips up to 10 DVDs on the free trial, $20 after) 1x Handbrake 32 - Freely available transcoder 1x VLC 32 - Freely available media player 1x DVD

Decent Graphics for Flash Games

Mon, 17 May 2010 02:29:54 +0000

Lately I’ve been thinking about making a Flash game or application. Although I haven’t made one yet, my current understanding is that most projects of this type require a lot of artwork.

I found this article, and was impressed at the quality and the resources mentioned: http://freelanceflashgames.com/news/2009/03/25/the-big-guide-to-hiring-an-artist/

Wordpress HTML edit mode inserts BR tags sometimes when you add a carriage return..

Wed, 28 Apr 2010 20:44:39 +0000

This is something that was quite annoying today, as I was struggling to use Wordpress 2.9.2 to align some pictures in the HTML mode of editing a page, on a client’s website.

It turns out that Wordpress was adding BR tags sometimes when I hit return.. and sometimes not. The annoying thing was, although the BRs were outputted in the resultant Wordpress site, the BRs were not visible in the Wordpress HTML edit mode itself.. meaning they were invisible and undetectable until I viewed the resultant website source and finally figured it out.

Forkbombs and How to Prevent Them

Fri, 02 Apr 2010 03:50:37 +0000

A forkbomb is a program or script that continually creates new copies of itself, that create new copies of themselves. It’s usually a function that calls itself, and each time that function is called, it creates a new process to run the same function.

You end up with thousands of processes, all creating processes themselves, with an exponential growth. Soon it takes up all the resources of your server, and prevents anything else running on it.

How to remove nano, vim and other editors' backup files out of a directory tree

Mon, 22 Mar 2010 20:49:20 +0000

Linux command-line editors such as nano and vim often, by default, create backup files with the prefix of “~~”. I.e, if I created a file called /home/david/myfile, then nano would create a backup in /home/david/myfile~~. Sometimes it doesn’t delete them either, so you’re left with a bunch of backup files all over the place, especially if you’re editing a lot on a directory tree full of source code.

Those stray backup files make directory listings confusing, and also add unnecessary weight to the commits on source control systems such as svn, cvs, git.. etc. If you’re working on a programming team with other people, then it causes further problems and confusion, because person A’s editor can accidentally load person B’s backup file.. etc etc. Nightmare.

Tip for watching the completion of a large file copy

Sat, 20 Mar 2010 22:44:06 +0000

Forget the wonderful windows progress bar, and imagine I’m in the world of command-line Linux, and I want to copy a 484MB file, called VMware-server-2.0.2-203138.i386.tar.gz, from my home directory to a remote server. But I want to figure out how long it’s going to take.

1. First I can run a “du -m” command to get the total MB size of the original file:

du -m /home/david/VMware-server-2.0.2-203138.i386.tar.gz

I.e: david@believe:~$ du -m VMware-server-2.0.2-203138.i386.tar.gz 484 VMware-server-2.0.2-203138.i386.tar.gz

The Linux Root Directory, Explained

Sat, 20 Mar 2010 15:19:46 +0000

It’s helpful to know the basic filesystem on a Linux machine, to better understand where everything is supposed to go, and where you should start looking if you want to find a certain file.

Everything in Linux is stored in the “root directory”. On a windows machine, that would be equivalent to C:. C: is the main folder where everything is stored. On Linux we call this the “root directory”, or simply “/”. To go up to this root directory, type:

Useful OSX commands for Linux users

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 23:03:33 +0000

I wrote this list to remind me, as a newcomer to OSX, how the command line differed from the Linux commandline. I thought I’d expand on it, and share it:

To mount any iso:

hdiutil mount sample.iso

To download a file as you would using wget:

curl http://ftp.heanet.ie/pub/linuxmint.com/stable/8/LinuxMint-8.iso -o linuxmint.iso -C -

the -o specifies the output file (required) the -C - specifies automatically resuming if possible.

To burn a bootable iso to CD, DVD or USB key: use the “diskutil” program as described in: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=598291 Monitor disk io utilisation.. poll once per second

Long Bash History Files are Great.

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 19:55:51 +0000

When I’m installing software, or doing some complicated stuff on the linux command line, which nowadays is pretty much all the time, I will sometimes want to remember exactly what I typed.

Now the normal /home/david/.bash_history file is usually fine for that. Run this command, for example, and you will see the commands you typed in before you logged out of the server last time you used it:

cat ~/.bash_history

You can also find out what you typed in this session, ie: since you logged in, by typing this:

My minimal VIM config

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 19:23:07 +0000

This is the absolute minimum I do when I have to log onto a new server or shell account that I haven’t used before, that I will need to edit text files with.

First I figure out whether VIM is really installed. A lot of installs, especially those based on ubuntu, ship with VI aliased to VIM, but the VIM install is usually not really VIM at all, and behaves exactly like VI but with some minor bugs fixed. This is not what I want.

Using the Linux command 'Watch' to test Cron jobs and more

Sat, 13 Mar 2010 16:02:42 +0000

OK, so you have added a cron job that you want to perform a routine task every day at 6am. How do you test it?

You probably don’t want to spend all night waiting for it to execute, and there’s every chance that when it does execute, you won’t be able to find out whether it is executing properly - the task might take 30 minutes to run, for example. So every time you debug it and want to test it again, you have to wait until 6am the following day.

Changing the default "From:" email address for emails sent via PHP on Linux

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 06:36:26 +0000

I’ve had to solve this problem a couple of times at least, and it’s quite a common task, so I thought I’d document it here.

When you send emails to users of your site through using the PHP mail() function, they will sometimes turn up in the mailbox of customers of your site with the following from address:

From: Root <root@apache.ecommercecompany.com>

This makes absolutely no sense to your customers, and often they will think it is spam and delete it. Often, the decision will be made for them by their web mail host, such as hotmail.com or googlemail.com, and they will never even see the email. You don’t want this to happen.

Shell scripts for converting between Unix and Windows text file formats

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 00:04:40 +0000

I’ve been using these shell scripts I wrote to convert between unix and windows text file formats. They seem to work well without any problems. If you put them in the /usr/sbin/ directory, they will be accessible on the path of the linux admin account root.

/usr/sbin/unix2win `#!/bin/bash

Converts a unix text file to a windows text file.

usage: unix2win

requirements: sed version 4.2 or later, check with sed –version

sed -i -e ’s/$/r/’ $1 `

Site Redesign

Thu, 14 Jan 2010 07:58:03 +0000

I’ve just updated the design of this blog, re-enabled comments and added a contact tab. I’ve installed a strong anti-spam comment filter, but you should now be able to comment on entries. I’ve also changed the layout of things slightly, and made it easier to read.

PHP Sample - HTML Page Fetcher and Parser

Thu, 14 Jan 2010 05:53:47 +0000

Back in 2008, I wrote a PHP class that fetched an arbitary URL, parsed it, and coverted it into an PHP object with different attributes for the different elements of the page. I recently updated it and sent it along to a company that wanted a programming example to show I could code in PHP.

I thought someone may well find a use for it - I’ve used the class in several different web scraping applications, and I found it handy. From the readme:

Passed the W3Schools PHP Certification

Thu, 14 Jan 2010 01:19:57 +0000

As a break from my contract work, I took the W3Schools PHP Certification. I didn’t do any revision, which probably wasn’t wise. It was a bit more difficult than I thought, but I passed still.

Config files for the Windows version of VIM

Sun, 10 Jan 2010 23:06:06 +0000

Today I encountered problems configuring the windows version of the popular text editor VIM , so I thought I’d write up a quick post talk about configuration files under the Windows version, if anyone becomes stuck like I did. I use Linux, OSX and Windows on a day-to-day basis, and VIM as a text editor for a lot of quick edits on all three platforms. Here’s a quick comparison:

Linux

Linux is easy because that’s what most people who use VIM run, and so it is very well tested.

Speed Climbing

Sat, 17 Oct 2009 23:05:11 +0000

I’m going to take a break from the purely technical posts to get more people to see this video. Here the late Dan Osman speed-climbs a cliff without any safety equipment.

http://www.youtube-nocookie.com/v/Fpm0m6bVfrM&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0

Risky? Just a bit. A few years later he lost his life during a similar attempt. But no-one can doubt the guts required, and the level of skill he achieved, in this type of climbing.

Regex in VIM.. simple

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 06:40:02 +0000

There are more than a gazillion ways to use regexs. I am sure they are each very useful for their own subset of problems. The sheer variety can be highly confusing and scary for a lot of people though, and you only need to use a few approaches to accomplish most text-editing tasks.

Here is a simple method for using regex in the powerful text editor VIM that will work well for common use.

Heart rate monitor now available for the XO Laptop

Tue, 07 Apr 2009 17:17:31 +0000

Volunteers on the OLPC project have developed a low-cost heart rate monitor that can be plugged into the XO laptop , making steps towards an affordable monitoring system for hospitals in developing countries.

For more information on the development, see the: OLPC Goldenstate project. People in the US can currently buy the sensor here ; unfortunately there is no international shipping yet in place.

VirutalHosts on CentOS

Mon, 30 Mar 2009 22:45:50 +0000

A common task when setting up an Apache webserver under Linux, is writing a httpd.conf file. The httpd.conf file is the main configuration file for Apache. One of the main reasons to edit the httpd.conf file is to setup virtual hosts In Apache. A Virtual host configuration allows several different domains to be run off a single instance of Apache, on a single IP. Each host is a ‘Virtual host’, and typically has a different web root, log file, and any number of subdomains aliased to it. The virtualhosts are configured in parts of the httpd.conf file that look like this:

MicroKORG + Python = MIDI fun!

Mon, 30 Mar 2009 00:14:10 +0000

So, about a month ago I got a second-hand microKORG from Ebay. Fiddling around with the preset patches, and creating new patches is great fun, even though I only know a few chords. Recently I plugged it in to my PC via my M-Audio Uno USB->MIDI interface , and soon was using Ableton Live to program drums in time with the microKORG’s arp.

I thought I’d experiment the music libraries available in python, and see if I could send notes to the synth via MIDI. Turns out that the M-Audio Uno is supported under Ubuntu, all you have to do is install the midisport-firmware package. With the help of pyrtmidi , a set of python wrappers around the C++ audio library rtmidi I was able to recieve MIDI signals in realtime from the microKORG, and send them in realtime also. With the help of this old midi file reader/writer library that I found posted to a python mailing list, I’ve made some progress in writing a simple MIDI file player that sends notes to the ‘KORG.

Eclipse 3.4.2 + Pydev + Eclim = win

Fri, 27 Mar 2009 23:47:59 +0000

So, after saying all that stuff about how vimplugin and EasyEclipse was great, I actually started to use the setup heavily, and it started to annoy me.

For one, EE is not a recent build of eclipse, nor does it come with a full set of recent plugins. This makes it annoyingly difficult to use when you want to use more than the set of plugins it packages for you. As far as vimplugin goes, it does not provide the vim integration I thought it might from embedded vim. Not really even close.

EasyEclipse + Vimplugin for Python Development

Thu, 26 Mar 2009 18:53:01 +0000

Up until now, I’ve always used the terminal for programming development on my projects. Because I’m so familiar with the advanced text editor vim , I can get a lot done on the command line, and it doesn’t detract away from what is actually going on behind the scenes, as a lot of IDEs seem to do.

However, in reading the book Foundations of Agile Python Development (which I recommend highly), and through working in software houses using IDE s only, I’ve come to realise that I need to gain at least some familiarity with an IDE.

Google Sync for Mobile

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 08:19:15 +0000

If you use Google calendar, and you’ve got an iPhone, or Windows Mobile phone like me, then you’ll be pleased to hear about the new Google Sync for Mobile tool just brought out into beta by Google. There were various ways to sync Google Calender events to Windows Mobile devices before, but nothing officially supported. Google uses an ActiveSync server to push the events to your phone, making things a lot easier. To quote :

Life after PHP

Wed, 04 Mar 2009 12:25:18 +0000

I’ve been hacking in Python a fair bit lately, and the more I continue to use it, the more I appreciate its features. The enforced logical structure, pure object-orientation, namespacing and the python shell, are just some examples of great features that PHP doesn’t have. I spend most of my time programming in PHP looking up the syntax for the 4,000+ functions, and trying to do hammer out a logical OO structure to my projects. It just doesn’t seem natural.

One Laptop Per Child - My XO Laptop

Tue, 09 Dec 2008 01:31:12 +0000

I did something out of the ordinary this Christmas. I bought an “XO” laptop for a child in a third world country. I also bought an XO laptop for myself, so I can develop software designed to be distributed to the 1 million+ XO laptops out there in the third world.

The laptop runs a Linux operating system, with an special interface programmed almost exclusively in Python. Most apps, called ‘activities’, run as python programs. This is ideal for me, as I enjoy hacking around in python, and Linux is - of course - very familiar to me.

The Blog Factory

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 22:11:19 +0000

I’ve started my own blog consulting business, helping people setup their own blogs, either for their company or for personal use. It’s called The Blog Factory , see the site for more information on what we do. In a nutshell, we can:

Setup and customise WordPress blogs.
Design custom WordPress themes.
Develop tailored WordPress plugins.
Host the blogs on our servers.
Use our SEO expertise to improve traffic to the blog.

FREE Cloud Computing testbed for Python Apps

Sat, 22 Nov 2008 05:11:37 +0000

This is so cool.. Google are beta-testing a totally free hosting and cloud-computing resource called Google App Engine. The caveat is that your hosted app must be written in Python. Python is amazing anyway, and if you don’t know it, now is the perfect time to learn. Check this out for more information about Google App Engine:

http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/whatisgoogleappengine.html

They’re giving away a very generous 500MB disk space and enough processing power to serve 5 million pages a month. Awesome!

Bacula Scheduling

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 20:24:31 +0000

Bacula is a great open-source distributed backup program for Linux/UNIX systems. It is separated into three main components:

One ‘Director’ - which sends messages to the other components and co-ordinates the backup
One or more ‘File Demons’ - which ‘pull’ the data from the host they are installed from.
One or more ‘Storage Demons’ - which ‘push’ the data taken from the file demons into a type of archival storage, IE: backup tapes, a backup hard disc, etc

I found it extremely versatile yet very complicated to configure. Before you configure it you have to decide on a backup strategy; what you want to backup, why you want to back it up, how often you want to back it up, and how you are going to off-site/preserve the backups.

Linux under Hyper-V

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 23:30:10 +0000

This is an overview of current Linux support under Hyper-V, the free Windows Server 2008 virtualisation product.

As you probably know, virtual servers allow the emulation of hardware in software. So you have a single physical ‘virtual server’. This virtual server emulates the physical hardware for several ‘virtual machines’ which sit on top of the virtual server. As far as the operating system on the virtual machine is concerned, it doesn’t notice anything different at all - it thinks it is running on a full set of dedicated hardware. However in reality, the virtual server is sharing its real physical resouces amongst the collection of virtual machines, assigning for example - 3GB of its memory to virtual machine A, and 1GB to virtual machine B.

Stanford Engineering for Everyone

Mon, 22 Sep 2008 23:53:54 +0000

The Stanford engineering department, often regarded as the best in the world for computer science education, has made its core CS curriculum free for anyone with an internet connection. There are some catches, ie: you don’t get your assignments marked, you have no contact with the lecturer, but all the same, it is really a great resource. The material is very high-quality, professionally filmed lectures and a full compliment of handouts and course notes. It also does not even assume knowledge of programming - it teaches you right from the basics.

Automated Emails on Commiting to a Subversion Repository Using Python

Mon, 22 Sep 2008 23:22:54 +0000

At work I’ve written a couple of scripts that send out emails to the appropriate project team when someone checks in a commit to the project subversion repository. Here are the details.

Firstly, you will need a subversion hook setup on post-commit. The post-commit hook needs to be located in SVNROOT/YOURPROJECT/hooks where YOURPROJECT is your svn project name, and SVNROOT is the root directory where you are storing the data files for your subversion repository.

Scraping Wikipedia Information for music artists, Part 2

Mon, 22 Sep 2008 23:04:45 +0000

I’ve abandoned the previous Wikipedia scraping approach for Brightonsound.com, as it was unreliable and didn’t pinpoint the right Wikipedia entry - ie: a band called ‘Horses’ would pull up a Wikipedia bio on the animal - which doesn’t look very professional. So instead, I have used the Musicbrainz API to retrieve some information on the artist; the homepage URL, the correct Wikipedia entry, and any genres/terms the artist has been tagged with.

Character encoding fix with PHP, MySQL 5 and ubuntu-server

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 23:34:50 +0000

For some reason, under ubuntu-server, my default MySQL 5 character encoding was latin1. This caused no end of problems with grabbing data from the web, which was not necessarily in latin1 characterset.

If you are ever in this situation, I suggest you handle everything as UTF-8. That means setting the following lines in my.cnf:

[mysqld]
..
default-character-set=utf8
skip-character-set-client-handshake

If you already have tables in your database that you have created, and they have defaulted to the latin1 charset, you’ll be able to tell by looking at the mysqldump SQL:

Scraping artists bios off of Wikipedia

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 17:43:19 +0000

I’ve been hacking away at BrightonSound.com and I’ve been looking for a way of automatically sourcing biographical information from artists, so that visitors are presented with more information on the event.

The Songbird media player plugin ‘mashTape’ draws upon a number of web services to grab artist bio, event listings, youtube vidoes and flickr pictures of the currently playing artist. I was reading through the mashTape code, and then found this posting by its developer, which helpfully provided the exact method I needed.

adExcellence Exam passed

Fri, 21 Mar 2008 07:52:24 +0000

I passed the adExcellence exam first time.. woo! It wasn’t that difficult really.

“David Craddock of iCrossing is accredited as an official Microsoft adExcellence Member. A Microsoft adExcellence Member has completed comprehensive online training on managing Microsoft adCenter search engine marketing campaigns and has demonstrated expert knowledge by passing the Microsoft adExcellence accreditation exam.”

As of 21/3/08, I’m somehow also now #1 on Google.co.uk for the keyword “adExcellence exam”.. if that’s what you googled for, you probably want the adExcellence main site instead. Or use Live Search.

Yahoo! Pipes

Mon, 17 Mar 2008 06:44:04 +0000

I have just seen Yahoo! Pipes , and am convinced this is going to change the web. For real.

Data source sites will become ‘content providers’, data will be aggregated and filtered from multiple content providers, either by the user or by ‘intermediary’ sites. The user will be able to choose his ‘data view’ of the content on the internet, just as Google is currently doing.

This is fascinating stuff if you’re involved in the web industry.

BrightonSound.com

Sat, 15 Mar 2008 21:16:07 +0000

We’ve been working on a Brighton music events Google maps mashup project: www.BrightonSound.com

It’s still developing, but it looks quite good, and we’re ready to start showing it off to people. So check it out!

UPDATE: This project is now defunct after running for several years, and is no longer hosted. But thanks for the interest!

A poor man's VMWare Workstation: VMWare Server under Ubuntu 7.10 + VMWare Player under Windows XP

Thu, 28 Feb 2008 23:56:17 +0000

I finally setup my Dell Lattitude D630 laptop the way I wanted it last night, and thought I’d do a quick writeup about it. Here is the parttition table:

A 40GB Windows XP partition, with VMWare Player installed, which I will be using for Windows applications that don’t play well in virtualised mode (eg media applications). I will also be using it as the main platform for running VMs.
A basic 5GB root + 1.4GB swap 7.10 Ubuntu server partition, with VMWare Server installed (for creating, advanced editing and performing network testing on VMs). I used these VMWare server on Ubuntu 7.10 tutorials .
A 36GB NTFS partition for storing VMs
A 26GB NTFS media partition for media I want to share between VMs and the two operating systems on the disc.

We use VMWare servers at work to host our infrastructure, so this setup will be very useful for me. I can now:

Brighton Barcamp2

Fri, 22 Feb 2008 02:06:33 +0000

I will be attending Brighton Barcamp 2 on the weekend of the 14th March, and presenting on a new web project I’ve been working on.

See: http://barcamp.pbwiki.com/BarCampBrighton2 and http://www.barcampbrighton.org/ for more info.

Update: Brighton Barcamp 2 is now over.

This was really interesting, and I learned a huge amount in a very short amount of time. Thanks to everyone who talked to me. I’ll definitely be attending future Barcamps.

OpenSocial

Sat, 24 Nov 2007 04:25:29 +0000

This is going to be absolutely huge:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RytmNqEHYiE&rel=1 ]

An interesting blog written by a friend of mine

Mon, 12 Nov 2007 20:03:00 +0000

My friend Adam has a blog featuring interesting internet finds. Check it out:

One Idea

A bit of theory..

Sat, 02 Jun 2007 14:14:15 +0000

I’ve been trying to learn a lot about search engines lately, as I’ve been starting at an internet marketing firm. I found this excellent list of online materials for university courses related to search engines:

http://clair.si.umich.edu:8080/wordpress/?p=11

In particular, these seem especially relevant:

The Structure of Information Networks - http://www.cs.cornell.edu/Courses/cs685/2002fa/ (a good introduction)
Search Engine Technology - http://www1.cs.columbia.edu/~radev/SET07.htm (a great course)
Information Retreival and Web Search - http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~mooney/ir-course/ (less math than the columbia course, and thus somewhat easier follow)
Networked Life - http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~mkearns/teaching/NetworkedLife/ - (a course on networked societies for humanities students, relavent to social networks and such)

Craiglist opens a Brighton, UK section

Thu, 17 May 2007 02:14:01 +0000

I just noticed that US bulletinboard giant Craigslist.com has opened a Brighton UK section of their website! There are a few posts already. At the moment, Gumtree’s Brighton Section is massively popular here. I’ve recurited several flatmates using Gumtree, and am basing my local housing search around it.

It will be interesting to see how Gumtree.com fares now that Craigslist.com has competition in the Brighton local area.

My Nabaztag

Tue, 08 May 2007 04:01:16 +0000

Nabaztag (Armenian for “rabbit”) is a Wi-Fi enabled rabbit, manufactured by Violet. The Nabaztag is a “smart object”; it can connect to the Internet (for example to download weather forecasts, read its owner’s email, etc). It is also fully customizable and programmable. - Wikipedia.org

Here is our Nabaztag - Francois Xavier:

Of course, I’ve been messing around with poor old Francois’s programming..

With the help of OpenNab , a proxy server that masquerades as an official Nabaztag server, you can make your Nabaztag do all kinds of tricks. At the moment I’m getting him to read out what’s currently showing on TV when someone presses his button.

NVIDIA GeForce4 MX 420 under Ubuntu Dapper Drake

Mon, 09 Apr 2007 18:26:36 +0000

My GeForce4 MX 420 didn’t work properly with OpenGL under a fresh install of Dapper Drake. Fixing it, however, proved to be really easy:

Install the nvidia package:

$ apt-get install nvidia

Edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf and replace the ‘driver’ where it says ’nv’ with “nvidia”:

Section “Device” Identifier “NVIDIA Corporation NV17 [GeForce4 MX 420]” #Driver “nv” Driver “nvidia” BusID “PCI:1:0:0” EndSection

Kill X with control-alt-backspace
Login again and test if it works by running glxgears and glxinfo on the console

The topic of this blog

Mon, 02 Apr 2007 18:16:45 +0000

This blog will be about my perspective on technology. Anything that catches my interest will be fair game, but mainly it will revolve around internet technology and the development of such.

It will allow me to create an online presence, and to improve my writing skills.

I hope you will find the time to check back on this blog and watch it progress.