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.

(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. ...

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

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.

I use this setup, along with my bike to work from wherever I want. It does kind of turn heads, and I’m aware it may look a little ‘over the top’ - but it’s a very useful setup for me, keeps me healthy, and fits all my requirements. 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 Sony Xperia 1 V Android mobile - This is a top of the line media phone which I’ve had for a while now and am very happy with. I often use it as a mobile hotspot for the laptop. It is waterproof. 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. Rock Cloud Portable Camping Table - This table will hold up to 25KG which is more than enough for my laptop setup. LUXJET Portable Folding Stool - this telescopic stool is rated up to 180KG and is very compact when folded up. 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.

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 home network routes at around 2-4gbit/sec between 10gbit/sec DAC fibre connected hosts, and around 2gbit/sec via CAT8 for Thunderbolt 2.5Ggbit/sec laptop network interfaces. We two Ubiquiti wireless APs in a mesh configuration, with seperate SSIDs for 2Ghz, 5Ghz, guest and IOT networks. The guest and IOT networks are isolated from everything else. I use a Mikrotik router which hosts an iperf3 docker container for network testing We have a Phillips Hue light source setup, with 5 Hue lights in the Music Studio/Games room, which I set to strobe to music when I do my DJ sets, and setup as a Hue Entertainment Area when I play games/watch films. I also have Hue lights in the study and my bedroom, with dimmers etc. We have a robotic vacuum cleaner which helps my wife around the house. We call it ‘Dusterbuster’. Wherever possible, all devices have a wired network connection. Wireless is only used as a last resort, to minimise spectrum interference. We use ZeroTier as a VPN so that everything useful is accessible outside the home. My home server runs about 14 docker containerized services of different types, using docker compose. I self-host my own websites (including this one), and a bunch of other services for my friends and family. See my media library homepage which is a kind of ‘intranet homepage’ for my network. Iperf3 Speed Tests Studio PC -> Server network speed [ ID] Interval Transfer Bitrate Retr Cwnd [ 5] 0.00-1.00 sec 354 MBytes 2.97 Gbits/sec 7 2.30 MBytes [ 5] 1.00-2.00 sec 380 MBytes 3.19 Gbits/sec 0 2.42 MBytes [ 5] 2.00-3.00 sec 386 MBytes 3.24 Gbits/sec 0 2.53 MBytes [ 5] 3.00-4.00 sec 385 MBytes 3.23 Gbits/sec 0 2.64 MBytes [ 5] 4.00-5.00 sec 386 MBytes 3.24 Gbits/sec 0 2.75 MBytes [ 5] 5.00-6.00 sec 380 MBytes 3.19 Gbits/sec 2 2.84 MBytes [ 5] 6.00-7.00 sec 386 MBytes 3.24 Gbits/sec 10 2.93 MBytes [ 5] 7.00-8.00 sec 384 MBytes 3.22 Gbits/sec 0 3.00 MBytes [ 5] 8.00-9.00 sec 386 MBytes 3.24 Gbits/sec 0 3.00 MBytes [ 5] 9.00-10.00 sec 385 MBytes 3.23 Gbits/sec 0 3.00 MBytes - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - [ ID] Interval Transfer Bitrate Retr [ 5] 0.00-10.00 sec 3.72 GBytes 3.20 Gbits/sec 19 sender [ 5] 0.00-10.00 sec 3.72 GBytes 3.20 Gbits/sec receiver iperf Done. Server -> Router network speed [ ID] Interval Transfer Bitrate Retr Cwnd [ 5] 0.00-1.00 sec 456 MBytes 3.83 Gbits/sec 1170 291 KBytes [ 5] 1.00-2.00 sec 407 MBytes 3.41 Gbits/sec 801 512 KBytes [ 5] 2.00-3.00 sec 286 MBytes 2.40 Gbits/sec 0 512 KBytes [ 5] 3.00-4.00 sec 286 MBytes 2.40 Gbits/sec 0 512 KBytes [ 5] 4.00-5.00 sec 456 MBytes 3.82 Gbits/sec 1269 344 KBytes [ 5] 5.00-6.00 sec 476 MBytes 4.00 Gbits/sec 1353 407 KBytes [ 5] 6.00-7.00 sec 485 MBytes 4.07 Gbits/sec 1440 348 KBytes [ 5] 7.00-8.00 sec 491 MBytes 4.12 Gbits/sec 1168 279 KBytes [ 5] 8.00-9.00 sec 489 MBytes 4.10 Gbits/sec 1229 256 KBytes [ 5] 9.00-10.00 sec 476 MBytes 4.00 Gbits/sec 1602 298 KBytes - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - [ ID] Interval Transfer Bitrate Retr [ 5] 0.00-10.00 sec 4.21 GBytes 3.61 Gbits/sec 10032 sender [ 5] 0.00-10.00 sec 4.20 GBytes 3.61 Gbits/sec receiver iperf Done. Studio PC -> Router network speed [ ID] Interval Transfer Bitrate Retr Cwnd [ 5] 0.00-1.00 sec 281 MBytes 2.36 Gbits/sec 27 881 KBytes [ 5] 1.00-2.00 sec 279 MBytes 2.34 Gbits/sec 0 881 KBytes [ 5] 2.00-3.00 sec 279 MBytes 2.34 Gbits/sec 0 887 KBytes [ 5] 3.00-4.00 sec 304 MBytes 2.55 Gbits/sec 308 629 KBytes [ 5] 4.00-5.00 sec 351 MBytes 2.95 Gbits/sec 737 622 KBytes [ 5] 5.00-6.00 sec 334 MBytes 2.80 Gbits/sec 808 580 KBytes [ 5] 6.00-7.00 sec 355 MBytes 2.98 Gbits/sec 686 430 KBytes [ 5] 7.00-8.00 sec 352 MBytes 2.96 Gbits/sec 564 413 KBytes [ 5] 8.00-9.00 sec 362 MBytes 3.04 Gbits/sec 809 427 KBytes [ 5] 9.00-10.00 sec 356 MBytes 2.99 Gbits/sec 665 598 KBytes - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - [ ID] Interval Transfer Bitrate Retr [ 5] 0.00-10.00 sec 3.18 GBytes 2.73 Gbits/sec 4604 sender [ 5] 0.00-10.00 sec 3.17 GBytes 2.73 Gbits/sec receiver iperf Done. House Server ‘hq.local’ TERRAMASTER F6-424 Max NAS Storage - 6Bay Core i5 1235U 10-Cores 12-Threads, 32DDR5 RAM, Dual 10GbE Ports, Network Attached Storage 500GB Nvme SSD System Drive running Kali Linux rolling 42TB of storage across moving platter drives

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.

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: ...

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. ...