Working on a park bench with my mobile office setup. 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. Being able to work anywhere brings unexpected lunchtime benefits. ...

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 cabinet. It is my opinion that every security professional ‘worth their salt’ should have a homelab. Therefore, I have built a 10Gb/second network in my home in a network cabinet. It has taught me a lot of networking, IT and cyber security skills. A network diagram can be provided under certain circumstances, e.g. job interviews. Here are the details: ...

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. ...

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. - ...

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 From Home (WFH) Office. 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. ...

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. ...