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. ...

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. ...

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. ...

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. ...

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. ...

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. ...

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. ...

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: ...

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” 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. ...