[{"content":"","date":"2 Jun 2026","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/3dprinting/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"3dprinting","type":"tags"},{"content":"Last updated: 2 June 2026\nHi, I\u0026rsquo;m Matt — UK-based, autistic, dad, and a DevOps Engineer by day.\nOutside work I tinker with 3D printing, tabletop games, photography (when I remember to take a camera outside), and the occasional bit of code or Lego. I used to do more of all of it. Conventions feel a bit big and loud these days, the regular gaming group has drifted, and the camera doesn\u0026rsquo;t come out as often as it should. But the hobbies are still here, just quieter.\nThis site is my main spot online. You\u0026rsquo;ll find:\nPosts — blog entries, occasional rants, half-finished thoughts Prints — things I\u0026rsquo;ve made on the Bambu P2S that I\u0026rsquo;m happy to sell Photography — older work, mostly, from when I went outside more BGG — what I\u0026rsquo;ve been playing I write posts, occasionally delete them before they go up, then promise myself I\u0026rsquo;ll write more. You know how it goes.\n","date":"2 Jun 2026","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/pages/about/","section":"Pages","summary":"","title":"About","type":"pages"},{"content":"","date":"2 Jun 2026","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/categories/","section":"Categories","summary":"","title":"Categories","type":"categories"},{"content":"","date":"2 Jun 2026","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/","section":"Matt Charlton","summary":"","title":"Matt Charlton","type":"page"},{"content":"","date":"2 Jun 2026","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/pages/","section":"Pages","summary":"","title":"Pages","type":"pages"},{"content":"","date":"2 Jun 2026","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Posts","type":"posts"},{"content":"A small selection of things I\u0026rsquo;ve printed and am licensed to sell. Payments are handled securely by Stripe. Shipping is UK only.\nEach print is made to order on a Bambu P2S with AMS pro multicolour, so allow a few days lead time before it goes in the post - especially if there is some assembly required. If you need something urgently - then drop me a message and I\u0026rsquo;ll do what I can.\nGot a question about a print, or want something custom? Send me a message.\n","date":"2 Jun 2026","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/prints/","section":"Prints","summary":"","title":"Prints","type":"prints"},{"content":"","date":"2 Jun 2026","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/site/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Site","type":"tags"},{"content":"It\u0026rsquo;s been a while. I\u0026rsquo;ve been busy.\nThe site looks a bit different. I\u0026rsquo;ve moved over from the hugo-blog-awesome theme I\u0026rsquo;d been butchering for years to Blowfish, with a fresh dark mode and a few tweaks to make it feel like mine. The photography page is no longer a flat list of 188 image links — it\u0026rsquo;s now an actual gallery. About page is updated. Posts list is a bit cleaner.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve also added a /prints/ section. The Bambu P2S has been earning its keep and I\u0026rsquo;ve decided to start selling a couple of the things I print. First one up is a wall-mounted Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, designed by Stag3D and licensed for sale, with embedded magnets so it can stick to the fridge or hang on the wall. Stripe handles the checkout, postage is sorted, you know the drill. Have a look.\nThe other thing I\u0026rsquo;ve been doing — and the reason posts have been thin on the ground — is a side project called SparkChoice. It\u0026rsquo;s a thing I\u0026rsquo;ve been building outside of the day job. More on that when there\u0026rsquo;s more to say, but it\u0026rsquo;s the reason my hobby time has been mostly going into a code editor rather than a slicer or onto a board game table.\nSpeaking of board games, plays are still down on previous years. I haven\u0026rsquo;t given up, just had less time and fewer people to play with. Same story as last August really.\nAnyway. This was meant to be a quick \u0026ldquo;the site has changed\u0026rdquo; post and I\u0026rsquo;ve ended up rambling. Classic.\nMore soon. Probably.\n","date":"2 Jun 2026","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2026-06-02-site-refresh-and-things/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Site refresh, prints, and a new project","type":"posts"},{"content":"","date":"2 Jun 2026","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/sparkchoice/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Sparkchoice","type":"tags"},{"content":"Gozer: \u0026ldquo;Choose. Choose the form of the destructor!\u0026rdquo;\nRay: \u0026ldquo;I tried to think of the most harmless thing. Something I loved from my childhood. Something that could never ever possibly destroy us. Mr. Stay Puft!\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026hellip;\nRay: \u0026ldquo;I couldn\u0026rsquo;t help it. It just popped in there.\u0026rdquo;\nA standout piece for any Ghostbusters fan — the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man bursting through a frame of icy peaks, ready to wreck Manhattan (or at least your kitchen). Designed by the brilliant Stag3D and printed under their official licence.\nSticks straight to the fridge thanks to embedded magnets, or hang it on the wall — your call. Either way it\u0026rsquo;s a proper conversation starter, not your average bit of tat.\nMaterial: PLA Approx size: 25cm tall x 15cm wide Mounting: fridge magnet or wall hanging Colour: as pictured (true to the film) Finish: straight off the printer, inspected and tidied up before shipping Want a different colour scheme, or a custom size? Drop me a message and we\u0026rsquo;ll work something out.\n","date":"2 Jun 2026","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/prints/mman/","section":"Prints","summary":"","title":"Stag3D Stay Puft Marshmallow Man Fridge Magnet","type":"prints"},{"content":"","date":"2 Jun 2026","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Tags","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"2 Jun 2026","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/categories/tech/","section":"Categories","summary":"","title":"Tech","type":"categories"},{"content":"","date":"4 Oct 2025","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/3d-printing/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"3D Printing","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"4 Oct 2025","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/netflix/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Netflix","type":"tags"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;m sure that by this point, everyone has heard of K-Pop Demon Hunters and their very catchy songs.\nMy youngest is definitely well into it.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve been printing a lot of halloween pumpkins this last week on the new 3D printer.\nI\u0026rsquo;m trying something I\u0026rsquo;ve never done before. I\u0026rsquo;m going to print something very big and use a metal rod to hold it all together.\nThe design is for a sword that\u0026rsquo;s used to slay demons, its got a hole all the way through from hilt through to blade tip so that you can put it all together, it should look pretty good with a purple blade and white and gold hilt.\nWill post up some pics once its done, but at the moment I\u0026rsquo;m waiting on the filament and the metal rods. I\u0026rsquo;ve found somewhere pretty cool and cheap to order the metal from cut to size, just a shame its a tenner postage.\nAnyways, just wanted to put something up - as its been a few months and the post I was going to post a few weeks ago didn\u0026rsquo;t really flow properly and was a bit woe is me.\nSo we\u0026rsquo;ll see if we can get away from that a bit.\n","date":"4 Oct 2025","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2025-10-04-kpopi/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"You know together we’re glowing","type":"posts"},{"content":"","date":"24 Aug 2025","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/boardgames/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Boardgames","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"24 Aug 2025","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/games/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Games","type":"tags"},{"content":"Up until last weekend, I hadn\u0026rsquo;t played a single board game since March.\nThis is unusual for me.\nThere was a time a few years ago where I struggled to get up to 100 plays, and I had a friend come over in the last week of the year and she helped me get up to 100 plays and everything was cool.\nLets have a look at some stats and see when that was\u0026hellip;\u0026hellip;\nOkay so, 2025 isn\u0026rsquo;t as bad as I thought with 78 plays.\n2024 had 170 plays.\n2023 had 368 plays.\n2022 had 103 plays (which is when Leanne came over and helped me get over 100 that last week)\n2021 had 109 plays.\n2020 had 200 plays. Which considering the pandemic you can look at in one of two ways.\n2019 only had 51 plays.\n2018 had 256 plays (ooh we like a good power of two).\nOkay. So maybe this isn\u0026rsquo;t as bad as originally thought.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s tracking to be a mid-level year in terms of games played. Not up at the highest of pre-pandemic levels when I was doing games night twice a week, but also not as low as it has been.\nIt doesn\u0026rsquo;t help that the majority of the people I like to play board games with live far away, have extremely busy lives and we don\u0026rsquo;t get a chance to play all that much.\nIt also doesn\u0026rsquo;t help that the conventions I like to go to have gotten bigger and bigger and bigger (and noisier, and crowdier).\nWhen I do go to conventions, I end up playing with the same handful of people anyways. So I just have people I like to play games with but in a very noisy and busy environment.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve got more games than I can realistically ever play. I need to trim that collection down to maybe a kallax worth. Maybe two kallax worth.\nThere\u0026rsquo;s definitely some I won\u0026rsquo;t ever play again. And some that I have that I would love to play but don\u0026rsquo;t get much of a chance to.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s also possible that as the boys get older, they will want to play the more advanced games with me too. So there\u0026rsquo;s that little niggling voice saying don\u0026rsquo;t get rid of all of them - just trim the collection.\nStar Wars Rebellion for example. Never played my copy. Have 3D printed an awesome insert for it. Absolutely love it, but it takes 4 hours+ and is two player only.\nThematically, there\u0026rsquo;s no other Star Wars game like it - captures the whole Rebellion vs the Empire extremely well. So I won\u0026rsquo;t get rid of it. There\u0026rsquo;s a chance that both Luke and Harry will love to play it with me at some point.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve also spent quite a lot of the last year playing the Last War mobile game. I quit a few weeks ago and whilst I really enjoyed the game and the people I met, it was such a time sink and with the scheduled events, it was hard not to be around in an evening and things.\nSo I feel a bit \u0026lsquo;free-er\u0026rsquo; after that.\nWe\u0026rsquo;ve moved things around this weekend which will see me feeling more comfortable gaming on my PC on an evening (and still being close to my wife), so there\u0026rsquo;s a chance that will pick up.\nIt might even see me doing more computer based stuff.\nThat\u0026rsquo;d be nice.\nI could do with getting something sorted with friends coming to game. The kids are definitely a lot more pre-occupied and self entertaining than they used to be.\nI can\u0026rsquo;t believe they\u0026rsquo;re back to school in just over a week. That\u0026rsquo;s insane.\nWhere has August gone?\nAnyway, I\u0026rsquo;m just talking rubbish now.\nWasn\u0026rsquo;t even going to write a blog post, was just going to update Hugo.\nLet\u0026rsquo;s see if this uploads and updates first time\u0026hellip;..\n","date":"24 Aug 2025","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2025-08-24-whoami/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Who even am I anymore?","type":"posts"},{"content":"I went to the UK Games Expo today at the NEC. I was only there a couple of hours.\nIt was very busy and far too peopley for me.\nAnyways - I picked up a board game that had just been released today.\nTimber Town. A nice little 2 player tile laying game. It looks quite fun. But there\u0026rsquo;s no sign of any insert in the box and just a few bags. So it could do with just a little organisation.\nI had a search on Printables, Thingiverse and maker whatsit to see if there were any inserts - there was not a single one. Which makes sense - its brand new ( I didn\u0026rsquo;t realise quite how brand new when I went to look. )\nI decided to have a go at designing my own insert - so I loaded up tinkercad, started creating boxes and then putting negative space boxes in there.\nRather than spending three hours printing something that might not actually work out - I\u0026rsquo;ve sliced things in half to prototype them to see what the situation is before committing to actually printing them and then making them available for other people to download and print.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s pretty intuitive and quite fun so far.\nYou can see a cross section here of some token storage and some long tile storage to just check for fit.\nWill let you know how it goes.\nIf it works out I\u0026rsquo;ll stick some links to the finished design below.\n","date":"30 May 2025","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2025-05-30-ukge/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Board game inserts","type":"posts"},{"content":"","date":"3 Sep 2024","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/general/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"General","type":"tags"},{"content":"Hello.\nSo.\nRight then, where we we?\nOh yes, Airecon in March. That was great. I did Airecon in Manchester too last month but just for a day - that was alright. Would have been better travelling with people I knew rather than just going on my own but in the end up it worked out alright and I played quite a few games.\nFinally got Outer Rim to the table this weekend - that was really good fun. Hopefully will get it to the table again soon, I just need to double check the rules as I\u0026rsquo;m not sure I moved the patrols around enough.\nJust on the way back from travelling up to Edinburgh with work for an all day planning meeting yesterday. It being on a Monday meant that I had to travel up on Sunday. It was the train that I had to get to Swindon/back once before - the worst train journey I\u0026rsquo;ve ever had the mispleasure of having to ride. I remember a woman asking if she could sit next to me and she told me that usually she had to stand for four hours every single week. Nightmare. There was luggage all over the place and everything.\nLuckily this time it was covered under the work first class policy due to travel time - but even so there were a bunch of people spilling into first class from the corridor between Darlington and Newcastle. At least this train back down south today is quiet. There\u0026rsquo;s only one over person here at the moment and the train is 9 carriages rather than 5. Huuuuge train. It doesn\u0026rsquo;t get to its final destination until 9pm. Imagine being on a train for 11 hours. Though I guess it wouldn\u0026rsquo;t be much less time driving from Edinburgh to Penzance - I\u0026rsquo;ve just checked, for the fastest train against driving, there\u0026rsquo;s about 17 minutes in it. And you wouldn\u0026rsquo;t be driving that long non-stop. So the train is probably going to be the best and easiest way to get to Penzance, as long as you weren\u0026rsquo;t wanting to do much in the way of driving around once you were down there.\nAnyway I digress, back to the work trip\u0026hellip;\nBeing in a room and being present all day without much opportunity to stretch your legs and grab a drink is really something I struggle with now - I never liked it before Covid, but now it just feels so draining. I get that for some people its super energising and they get a lot out of meeting up with people. It just has the opposite effect on me.\nAnd on that.\nI got my official diagnosis. I am autisic. All done privately through the healthcare at work and it was very speedy. Got the kids through theirs too, Luke is Autistic and has ADHD, Harry is Autistic.\nSo we just need to get Kayleigh through her diagnosis and then we\u0026rsquo;ll have a full set. I wonder if there\u0026rsquo;s a prize.\nI\u0026rsquo;m getting some CBT as part of my diagnosis to help me out a bit with some of the things I struggle with. It\u0026rsquo;s been quite useful - but I think the diagnosis itself has also been quite useful - knowing that there\u0026rsquo;s a reason for me thinking or feeling a certain way or doing a certain thing. It\u0026rsquo;s helped me to be a little more forgiving to myself.\nI don\u0026rsquo;t really even know what the point of this blog is anymore.\nI guess part of the reason I wrote so much was because of the autism, a lot of it is probably classed as oversharing.\nI\u0026rsquo;m pretty sure nobody reads it anyways.\nBut at least its still got a little AWS experience embedded in it - even if it is just a few pipelines to upgrade an S3 bucket.\nBye for now - no promises as to when the next update might be.\n","date":"3 Sep 2024","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2024-09-03-autism/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"It's been 6 months","type":"posts"},{"content":"","date":"3 Sep 2024","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/categories/thoughts/","section":"Categories","summary":"","title":"Thoughts","type":"categories"},{"content":"Last weekend saw the return of Airecon to Harrogate (and me as well).\nIt\u0026rsquo;s one of my favourite weekends of the entire year. I didn\u0026rsquo;t take many photos this time, but I got a couple. I might add them in a post at some point, but for now, you get a wall of text.\nI thought I\u0026rsquo;d prepared quite well. But once I got to Harrogate I realised that I\u0026rsquo;d forgotten my loop earplugs (purchased exactly for this convention) - it can get quite loud in the gaming halls and I can get quite overwhelmed, so I\u0026rsquo;d bought them to take the edge off.\nSo that wasn\u0026rsquo;t a great start. I ordered a replacement pair from Amazon to deliver to the local post office the next day, only Amazon tried to deliver them to the post office after it had shut. So they didn\u0026rsquo;t end up being available for pickup until Friday afternoon. I shot off to get them before we started a 4 hour game of Nemesis (which I won, yay!).\nPlayed Heat 3/4 times, played Distilled a couple of times, played Pac-Mac Quoridor a number of times with a borrowed pre-release copy (love this), didn\u0026rsquo;t really play with a lot of new people this time, in fact nobody. My friend Luzie picked up a cold from the kids and she was quite ill for a lot of the weekend and the start of this week so that put a bit of a downer on things that we could do.\nMy salary finally looks to be stable at the new job, so for now, tax woes appear to be stable. That\u0026rsquo;s nice.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s sunny today, I went for another walk and got coffee, and I got the dog some new balls because I can\u0026rsquo;t go into a shop that sells dog things without getting him treats and toys because he\u0026rsquo;s SUCH A GOOD BOY, and why can\u0026rsquo;t my actual kids be as excited and grateful when I buy them something?\nSo anyway, I\u0026rsquo;m doing okay. I\u0026rsquo;ll post something a little more substantial later this weekend I think, I\u0026rsquo;m planning on doing some micro:bit coding with the youngest, so that should be quite fun.\nI need to go and see Ghostbusters Frozen Empire at some point too.\nWe\u0026rsquo;ll see when I actually get to go\u0026hellip;.\nBack to work on Monday and I\u0026rsquo;m actually looking forward to it - imagine that, actually looking forward to work and finding it fulfilling and engaging. Wow. :D\nI need to do a few more tweaks to this site at some point too, when I get the chance over the next few weeks. We\u0026rsquo;ll see what the weekend brings.\nI need to find a decent sofa solution for the laptop. Nothing is as comfortable as the desk and the SecretLabs chair. Oh speaking of that, I need to swap out my third seat base too because the springs have popped again - luckily still under warranty and they\u0026rsquo;re quite good at sending out a new one, even if they do insinuate that it\u0026rsquo;s something I\u0026rsquo;ve done to the chair with some sort of blunt force trauma. Threads on Reddit about a number of people with this issue says different.\nHope the new one doesn\u0026rsquo;t have the problem\u0026hellip;.but we\u0026rsquo;ll see.\n","date":"22 Mar 2024","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2024-03-22-airecon/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Where did my week off go?","type":"posts"},{"content":"Website took a little longer to sort out than originally anticipated last night.\nAs it\u0026rsquo;s statically generated, the cool thing is - that until I got it working, it didn\u0026rsquo;t take the old site offline.\nSo as far as any visitors were concerned, it was a seamless upgrade. Still not convinced that there are any visitors mind.\nAll newness, just old site, then new site. Ta Da!\nAnyone who works in IT knows that\u0026rsquo;s generally never the way though. We got there though, and the photos are displaying in a roundabout way, it\u0026rsquo;ll do for now. I need to go through and sort out the alt tags for them, but again that\u0026rsquo;s something for another day.\nI had a really good day at work today.\nFirst of all, the new more powerful virtual desktop environment that I\u0026rsquo;ve been waiting for since I started was made available Friday. I got everything transferred over this morning and spent the rest of the day working on the new machine. 64GB RAM rather than 8. Lots more CPUs. Can\u0026rsquo;t even begin to tell you how hard its been the last few weeks fighting with keyboard and display lag, I haven\u0026rsquo;t had many systems like that over the years thankfully.\nI fixed a bug in a go utility, which was kinda snazzy, then spent the afternoon in AWS and Terraform sorting out some networking.\nOverall a very productive day. I even went out for a walk at lunchtime.\nHuel for lunch was great too, glad I bought a bunch of ready to drink bottles last week. They\u0026rsquo;re going to come in handy the next few weeks for sure.\nI was having an issue with hugo not rendering the local content properly as I was writing. Turning on the renderFromMemory option looks to have fixed that. Yippee.\nJust tomorrow left at work and then I\u0026rsquo;m off for nearly 2 weeks. Looking forward to lots of board games, hopefully some decent food and a bit of rest and relaxation.\nOh I finally watched Dune part I. I didn\u0026rsquo;t want to watch it on release as I knew there would be a fair old wait for Part II. Since the first movie finishes just in the middle of the (albeit a 5 hour) story, its still nice to know that I can watch the next part now.\n","date":"11 Mar 2024","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2024-03-11-monday/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"A case of the Mondays?","type":"posts"},{"content":"This post wasn\u0026rsquo;t meant to be here.\nI threw up a quick blog post, with an update about how things were going and what have you, things I\u0026rsquo;ve been up to.\nGenerated the site locally, or tried to, and hugo threw a gazillion errors at me.\nIt looked like it was an issue with my older blog posts, from 2018 and the like. Errors were being thrown about me using title: blah rather than title = \u0026ldquo;blah\u0026rdquo;. Not sure when that changed and stopped working, must have been fairly recently.\nAnyway, did all that. Got new errors (as you do), so fixed them. Got even more errors, fixed all them. Still couldn\u0026rsquo;t get it working.\nFound that something has indeed changed and the theme I was using hasn\u0026rsquo;t been updated in yeaaaaaaaaaaars.\nI tried to move away from that theme in the past but struggled because I\u0026rsquo;d made so many bespoke changes to it. So I stopped.\nNo choice now.\nSo I\u0026rsquo;ve created a new site, sorted out some of the issues that I had with the location of images and posts so there\u0026rsquo;s some proper structure now.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve managed to create a 3D printer page and embed the iframe in there for it. It\u0026rsquo;s not responsive at the moment, will have to have a look into that. But its there at least.\nAdding things to the menu seems to be pretty fancy though. I need to get the rest of the navbar from my old site moved across, definitely less messing around in the theme itself and more in the hugo config file, which is great for updating.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve managed to add the photos statically for the time being with no fancy lightroom addition.\nThe BGG last 10 games played is missing, which is a shame because I like that\u0026hellip;\u0026hellip;\nOh it\u0026rsquo;s okay, I\u0026rsquo;ve managed to get that working again. Had to add the thing back into the template partials and then embed that partial into the index page, but its done. Only 5 games now because its horizontal and it\u0026rsquo;s dark and a photo now - which looks a lot better.\nOkay cool.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve got a functioning site locally.\nAlthough I am missing images from older blog posts. That\u0026rsquo;s a pain in the backside. That\u0026rsquo;s from when I did a migration away from wordpress and I uploaded them to S3.\nAt some point I deleted that bucket, doesn\u0026rsquo;t look like I have the source wordpress backup files anymore.\nWhat a ball ache.\nHmmmmmmm, will have to have a look at that.\nI quite like the new design actually, its neater, this theme is pretty. And its defaulting to dark mode, any of you strange people out there who want to flip over to day mode, feel free to click the sun. I won\u0026rsquo;t judge.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve updated the AWS pipeline to make sure that it does what it\u0026rsquo;s supposed to do from the new file.\nSo if everything is working as it should do, this should generate, upload, invalidate the cache and should be online in the next 5 minutes or so.\nLet\u0026rsquo;s see what happens\u0026hellip;..\n","date":"10 Mar 2024","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2024-03-10-broken/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Everything is broken","type":"posts"},{"content":"So here I am.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s March.\nI\u0026rsquo;m older.\nAm I wiser? I don\u0026rsquo;t know.\nBut I\u0026rsquo;m older than I was when I wrote my last blog post.\nI haven\u0026rsquo;t been feeling great the last few weeks. I figured it was the hangover from the cold/flu thing I had (That I\u0026rsquo;m still trying to shift), but something didn\u0026rsquo;t feel quite right.\nDid my blood sugar early Feb and it looked okay, so hadn\u0026rsquo;t been bothered about the blurry vision/headaches and tiredness I\u0026rsquo;d been seeing.\nDid my blood sugar again last week and it was high, like super high - like the Metformin isn\u0026rsquo;t working anymore high.\nThis is worrying.\nSince last Tuesday I pretty much cut out all free sugar completely, cut out snacking, cut out everything and anything that\u0026rsquo;s not a fairly healthy meal and I have lost 8lb.\nMost of that will be water weight or something similar rather than actual weight, but its a fairly drastic change and it\u0026rsquo;s seeing a fairly drastic result.\nTrying not to be too obsessive about the blood sugar reads, but there was one day I did 7. It got as high as 14. That\u0026rsquo;s really not good - when I\u0026rsquo;ve not seen it go about 7 or so for 3 years since I started treatment.\nWas 5.6 when I got up this morning, but I\u0026rsquo;d been awake a few hours so not necessarily a true wake-up read, but was definitely a fasting read of maybe 15 hours or so.\nAte breakfast, checked after an hour, it was 10.0 (too early for a proper read but I was curious), did it again an hour after that (a proper post-meal read interval) and it was 8.0. Which is okay. Better than 14 anyway.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve got a review scheduled in tomorrow afternoon, where hopefully we can talk about it and can either figure out what I need to do in order to fix it or how we need to change the treatment to help more.\nWe\u0026rsquo;ll see.\nOther than that, I\u0026rsquo;ve had a fairly busy few weeks - took the 3D printer apart again last night to fit the new Thermistor and Heater that Prusa sent through. Since replacing I\u0026rsquo;ve not had a single thermal warning, so I\u0026rsquo;m hopeful that\u0026rsquo;s fixed.\nUnfortunately my first layer is garbage at the moment, so I\u0026rsquo;m trying to get that right. Rest of the print looks good, but we\u0026rsquo;re getting some blobbing.\nTried a nozzle swap out but screwed it and my only spare 0.4 nozzle is now an oozy mess. So the one I thought needed replacing it now back on and I think I\u0026rsquo;ve cleared a clog. We\u0026rsquo;ll see how it goes.\nCertainly not getting any blobbing or misteps away from the first layer on this last tray that I\u0026rsquo;m printing.\nBoard gaming wise, I\u0026rsquo;ve definitely not played as many so far this year as I did last year.\nKayleigh and I have put a lot of effort into legacy games - we\u0026rsquo;re a few games away from completing the Ticket to Ride Legends of the West game - that\u0026rsquo;s been fantastic, and we\u0026rsquo;ve made a start on Clank! Legacy. But carving out time to play them has been somewhat problematic in the last few weeks.\nNever seems to be enough time.\nBut, Airecon coming up this week and Luzie is coming to stay for a week, I\u0026rsquo;ve got a week and a bit off work so it will be nice to rattle through some games and take things steady at Airecon too - we won\u0026rsquo;t feel that we need to take as many games or try to get through as many games as we usually do when we\u0026rsquo;re limited to only 3-4 days.\nShould be a lot of fun.\nThat\u0026rsquo;s enough waffle for now.\nWill update again maybe after Airecon or later on in the month.\n","date":"10 Mar 2024","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2024-03-10-thoughts/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Marching on","type":"posts"},{"content":"","date":"19 Feb 2024","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/categories/baking/","section":"Categories","summary":"","title":"Baking","type":"categories"},{"content":"","date":"19 Feb 2024","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/baking/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Baking","type":"tags"},{"content":"Another post?\nIn the same month?\nWow!\nThat\u0026rsquo;s interesting isn\u0026rsquo;t it?\nI saw a thing on facebook about a Sourdough starter that you could get shipped over from Canada. Seemed fairly simple - feed it for a week, then you can make bread from it for a lifetime!\nIt\u0026rsquo;s available here: Kensington Market Sourdough\nWas about a tenner, arrived in less than a week and I got to work as soon as I ordered a suitable jar from Amazon, so I was delayed by about a day.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s been a week, its been fed, and I even made a loaf in the bread machine with it.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s a photo of the sourdough starter after a feeding at the end of last week\nThis is a loaf that I did in the breadmaker. I found a recipe for the 2501 bread machine where you run it through two different dough cycles, rest it for 3 hours then overnight then do a bake only programme.\nDid my first loaf using the higher level of sourdough starter, but found it was a little too pronounced a flavour. So went with the one that used a little less for the next.\nI made toast with it this morning and it turned out rather nice:\nI\u0026rsquo;m meant to be making up some pizza dough for Friday. We\u0026rsquo;ll see how that goes\u0026hellip;.\n","date":"19 Feb 2024","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2024-02-19-sourdough/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Sourdough Sally","type":"posts"},{"content":"Oh look, a post that I started\u0026hellip;.In December. On the 28th of December no less.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s now the 4th of February 2024.\nApologies\u0026hellip;.\nWelcome to Matt\u0026#39;s blog - something that ends up being updated once every few months. We\u0026#39;re fast approaching the end of the year. Yeah.\nNevermind.\nThat\u0026rsquo;s all I got. Wasn\u0026rsquo;t even really any point in keeping it in there, except to prove that I was thinking about maybe doing a blog post, and I kinda got distracted.\nI guess it was a fairly weird time for me. I\u0026rsquo;d effectively finished my old job, but was still employed and hadn\u0026rsquo;t yet started my new job. I was in a pretty odd headspace, and then since starting the new job I\u0026rsquo;ve been pretty tired - its been going fantastically and I\u0026rsquo;m loving it, I\u0026rsquo;m in a great place right now.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s Sunday afternoon, there\u0026rsquo;s a really good piece of beef cooking in the oven, the Yorkshire Pudding mixture is resting in the fridge. The veg is prepped, aside from the asparagus - I\u0026rsquo;ve left that downstairs by accident, I need to go and grab that in a sec - but after I\u0026rsquo;ve finished writing this, otherwise before you know it, it\u0026rsquo;ll be April and there will be another code block with this being yet another half written post.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve been having issues with the Prusa for a few months - I put it down to the change in temperature - at one point it was that cold in the MattCave (10 degrees C) that the printer completely refused to turn on. Complained that the temp was far too low and that obviously there was a problem with the sensors. So I had to get the room temp up above 15 before it would even entertain the idea of printing something for me.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s been mainly weird little fidget dragons for the kids, a couple of tool type things, but not really all that much aside from a couple of board game organisers.\nAnyways, I kept getting Thermal Anomalies - and when you get one of these, the printer pretty much decides there\u0026rsquo;s going to be a fire, so it shuts down.\nNo idea why, did a thermal model calibration, seemed to fix it for a print or so. Then it would do it again. I\u0026rsquo;ve been feeling pretty crappy about it.\nSince we left the EU, there\u0026rsquo;s only a year warranty on it now - and that\u0026rsquo;s up in March. So I decided to get in touch with them to see if they needed to send me a new hotend to repair it.\nThe support were amazing, I spent most of my day off on Friday talking to them. We went through the symptoms, then they asked me to take a photo of the hotend from the bottom.\nThose of you who know anything about a Prusa, might notice the problem here - I didn\u0026rsquo;t realise. But the hotend isn\u0026rsquo;t meant to be that way round.\nThis was a factory assembled unit, but I have changed the nozzle a couple of times, it must have gotten twisted around when I was changing a nozzle and then I\u0026rsquo;ve put it back the way I thought it went - and then the stupid fan shroud has melted on there.\nThe melt is probably what caused the Thermal warnings. I scraped that off, and now its not touching. It was a replacement from Ebay made from PC so I think that\u0026rsquo;s why I had the issue this particular time (even though its probably been the wrong orientation for about 6 months)\nThe cable that\u0026rsquo;s burned through, has only gone through to the next layer, its still fully shielded and is safe. All the wiring tests passed.\nIt does explain why I\u0026rsquo;ve been going through fan shrouds like there\u0026rsquo;s no tomorrow. Even though those things do seem to melt without warning, it helps if the hotend isn\u0026rsquo;t touching it.\nSupport had me dismantle the extruder assembly to get the hotend out just to double check that there weren\u0026rsquo;t any issues with it and to just reseat the thermistor as it looked like it had moved.\nAfter that, I put it back together and it looked like this, the right way round.\nSupport had me run a PID calibration, then a TM calibration. Then I started a print.\nPerfect, no warning.\nI had the printer out of the extruder and in pieces on my (3d Printed) gaming tabletop.\nI took the opportunity to clean it up, re-grease up all the rods and re-route some of the cabling around the Raspberry Pi running Octoprint too. Rather than it being thrown in the back of the enclosure, it\u0026rsquo;s \u0026lsquo;mounted\u0026rsquo; on a cable tie.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s out of the way and it looks alright anyway.\nOnce it was all cleaned and back together, it went back in it\u0026rsquo;s corner.\nI ran another print, no warnings.\nI ran another print after that, no warnings.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s running beautifully. It hasn\u0026rsquo;t skipped a beat, and you can probably catch it livestreaming on the main page right now.\nPicked up some multicoloured filament from Amazon which is something that I\u0026rsquo;ve not done before. It\u0026rsquo;s pretty funky. I like it.\nLuke chose it. He wanted (another) fidget dragon thing, and he wanted one for his mate too.\nElectricity is stupid cheap today (10p a unit on Octopus tracker, so it\u0026rsquo;s not like its really costing anything anyway)\nRight I\u0026rsquo;d best get on with the reverse sear of this beef. It\u0026rsquo;s almost had 10 minutes to sit after being in the oven for a few hours on low, reaching an internal temp of between 50-55ish.\n","date":"4 Feb 2024","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2024-02-04-feb/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"3D Printing woes","type":"posts"},{"content":"","date":"4 Feb 2024","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/categories/general/","section":"Categories","summary":"","title":"General","type":"categories"},{"content":"","date":"4 Feb 2024","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/tech/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Tech","type":"tags"},{"content":"Well.\nI started to write this.\nThen I changed my mind and decided I didn\u0026rsquo;t want to write it.\nThen I changed my mind and decided that I did want to write it.\nI just don\u0026rsquo;t feel very comfortable about it, I don\u0026rsquo;t think.\nWe always knew that the smaller child definitely showed signs of autism, extremely high functioning autism but autism nonetheless.\nThis was confirmed at a parent/teacher thing the other week.\nOkay that\u0026rsquo;s fine, my wife has several things going on - so I presumed it came from her side of the family.\nExcept said teacher mentioned that she thought it would be a good idea for my eldest to be referred for diagnostics too.\nThat means I probably have a hand in things.\nWhich is not something I thought I had a hand in.\nI always thought I was pretty neuro-typical.\nReally good problem solving skills, can spot patterns, picks things up quickly, learns quickly, has the ability to look like he knows what he\u0026rsquo;s doing, resists change and when things actually change gets very upset about it, likes to plan things out, doesn\u0026rsquo;t like getting his hands icky, doesn\u0026rsquo;t particularly like people or very loud environm\u0026hellip;..oh. Right. Yeah.\nThroughout my career, I\u0026rsquo;ve had managers try to use me as a template, for engineers with similar skills, similar outlooks, similar abilities. They haven\u0026rsquo;t really existed.\nI always put it down to a combination of my upbringing, my career, jobs I\u0026rsquo;ve had where I\u0026rsquo;ve had to figure things out or they just didn\u0026rsquo;t get fixed. That\u0026rsquo;s why I was so good at my job. I\u0026rsquo;m also quite an effective communicator. I can explain things at pretty much any level my audience requires, but I do get mad anxiety when I need to present something or speak to a group of people about something.\nI have massive self doubt, the thought of a technical test for recruitment terrifies me, even though I\u0026rsquo;ve seen multiple examples of people getting paid over £600 per day that aren\u0026rsquo;t as good as me.\nI have a short attention span, an even shorter amount of patience and I expect others to have the same sort of thought process as me, look and think about things the same way - I guess that shows lack of empathy? I don\u0026rsquo;t know. But then I think I am one of the best people I know at empathy. I don\u0026rsquo;t know.\nI felt deflated when I was told. And it\u0026rsquo;s definitely something that is taking some unpacking. I\u0026rsquo;m not seeing it as a negative thing as such, but I\u0026rsquo;m definitely thinking lots about myself, my personality, my abilities, my hobbies, my mannerisms, anything that I maybe thought was just a quirk.\nThere\u0026rsquo;s lots of things.\nZox bands - collecting them then falling out of love with them when they stopped doing the large band size. Then the RSVLTS shirts, I still really like them but they\u0026rsquo;ve added some extra costs now so building the collection further will be quite troublesome.\nBoard games too - and if you look at the friends I have, they all tend to be neuro-divergent too.\nSet collecting, hyperfocus, problems talking about my feelings. Not liking change. Feeling awkward at parties and things.\nThere\u0026rsquo;s lots and lots and lots - and every day I think of something else - but am I just trying to pigeon hole anything and everything that I can? I don\u0026rsquo;t know.\nI think I\u0026rsquo;m going to speak to the doctors and see if there\u0026rsquo;s anything that we can do. I\u0026rsquo;m not expecting a quick diagnosis, but I definitely think that I\u0026rsquo;ll start ticking that box on forms, seeing if there is any extra help and support we can get.\nI think I\u0026rsquo;ve read about a few people that didn\u0026rsquo;t find out they had autism until later in live, and it was through their kids being diagnosed.\nIt feels like it\u0026rsquo;s a little late to be doing anything about it - but at the same time, it feels like there might be a few answers for the how, why, where and what that\u0026rsquo;s going on inside my head.\nMaybe through better understanding of my own situation, I can better support the kids and my wife. And maybe in this more accepting world we can all be a little better supported.\nWe\u0026rsquo;ll see.\nStill lots to unpack, and still a lot to think about.\n","date":"6 Nov 2023","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2023-11-06-november/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Neuro-Spicy","type":"posts"},{"content":"Just spent the last 10 minutes trying to figure out why the hell this new blog post wouldn\u0026rsquo;t render on Hugo.\nTurns out when you put the date format in, and you put it inj as \u0026ldquo;2023-10-9\u0026rdquo; it won\u0026rsquo;t work. It won\u0026rsquo;t error either. But it won\u0026rsquo;t work.\nSo I\u0026rsquo;ve fixed it now, after trying two different browsers, looking around recent Hugo bugs (I just updated). Too many changes all at once. We don\u0026rsquo;t like to many changes all at the same time. It muddies the waters.\nAt least it hasn\u0026rsquo;t been three months since my last post here.\nThat\u0026rsquo;s something at least.\nI\u0026rsquo;m sat here on my way down to London, for one of the last work trips I\u0026rsquo;ll be doing (as I have a new job starting next year).\nI\u0026rsquo;m wearing an awesome Haunted Mansion RSVLTS shirt, of which I have purchased many in the last 6 months or so.\nThey are amazing. Great designs, comfy, allow me to look smart AND express my personality. They\u0026rsquo;ve just made some changes though that mean we\u0026rsquo;re looking at over $100 per shirt now delivered to the UK so I\u0026rsquo;m not going to be able to buy as many as I usually would. It\u0026rsquo;s probably for the best. It might even save me some money.\nSpeaking of changes, they\u0026rsquo;ve made some changes to the LNER first class food menu. Gone are the sausage rolls (They were nice) and the chicken sandwiches. There\u0026rsquo;s just an Egg Florentine roll now and a toasted teacake along with a casserole and a vegetable masala.\nBreakfast is much better. The bacon rolls are great. The only thing is you have to be travelling pre 12. Sometimes even pre 11. So we\u0026rsquo;ll see what options I\u0026rsquo;ve got on Thursday. At least I can have a toasted teacake if all else fails.\nNot sure what travel will look like in the new role - to be honest, there\u0026rsquo;s been a lot less travel in this role over the last 6-8 months or so. I think this might be the penultimate trip. There\u0026rsquo;s one more scheduled in for November. Hopefully London itself will be a little less busy than it had been in the Summer months. Things got a little crazy at times, especially around Covent Garden - and especially compared to how things were when I first started to travel down here.\nDon\u0026rsquo;t think I\u0026rsquo;ll be coming down in December. Probably. Unless I can squeeze something in right at the start. We\u0026rsquo;ll see.\nAnyway, updating. Not a lot to report. Thinking about whether or not this is something I want to continue on with. Jury is still out.\n","date":"9 Oct 2023","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2023-10-09-october/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Welcome Foolish Mortals","type":"posts"},{"content":"I can\u0026rsquo;t believe it\u0026rsquo;s been nearly 3 months since my last post.\nI\u0026rsquo;m sure I started to write a blog post.\nThis is on my PC. Maybe there\u0026rsquo;s a commit half finished on my laptop\u0026hellip;.lets see\u0026hellip;.\nNope.\nLooks like I got as far as updating Hugo and that\u0026rsquo;s about it.\nSo.\nYeah.\nThree months.\n3D printer had a bit of action, I decided to make myself a secondary gaming table for the living room/coffee table. I had pretty much all the pieces I needed, big legs, most of the table parts. I needed to print 4 corner bottoms and maybe 6 regular bottoms (as I had a load of spare tops from when I replaced the edges with TPU) and I needed to grab another roll of brown filament to do some more regular tiles with.\nI had some of the tiles that have gaps in them for component trays, but because it\u0026rsquo;s a smaller playspace anyway, we needed to make sure that there was enough space.\nOther than that the printer has sat fairly idle. But the cool thing is, it just worked. I loaded up a colour of filament that I wanted, and I hit print and off it went.\nI upgraded the pi it\u0026rsquo;s sat on the other day and just realised that it\u0026rsquo;s not connected to octoeverywhere. I need to fix that too. fixed. Cool. For whatever reason when I upgraded the pi, updated python 3.11 and then set up the python venvs, it looks like it lost the octoeverywhere plugin. That\u0026rsquo;s now reinstalled and working again as expected.\nI might even take a look through some of the prints and start something off. Maybe. We\u0026rsquo;ll see.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s always fun to find something interesting to print. I was looking for my SNES mini, I don\u0026rsquo;t know where it is. I picked up a PS classic mini the other day and modded it yesterday. It\u0026rsquo;s got super low powered USB ports on the front and you need a USB stick that draws hardly any power. I tried about 7 different sticks and in the end up had to use a microSD card in a card adaptor to do it.\nWaiting for a wifi dongle for that today (I tried 2-3 I had from Raspberry Pis and none of them worked. Also ordered a soundbar so that I can finally get sound coming out of this monitor for once. That way I can play some music and play games without the headphones if I need them).\nHaven\u0026rsquo;t used the table yet, then again I haven\u0026rsquo;t played much in the way of games recently.\nNeed to rectify that. But it\u0026rsquo;s effort.\nGaming convention in Milton Keynes next month so that\u0026rsquo;ll see some games played. I need to figure out what I\u0026rsquo;m taking down there. I also need to think about maybe trimming the collection a bit. But that\u0026rsquo;s also effort.\nMaybe I\u0026rsquo;ll have a look through the list and come up with a sales post and have people come and collect games from home or something. We\u0026rsquo;ll see.\nI\u0026rsquo;m tired.\nAlso got a Sunday dinner to sort out. So I need to start peeling and chopping vegetables for that soon.\nBleh.\n// wait - Kayleigh has come down and said she is going to cook dinner instead. Yay. // carries on tinkering\nI\u0026rsquo;d say I\u0026rsquo;m going to try to update this a little more often, but we all know that probably won\u0026rsquo;t happen.\nDoes anyone even read this?\nscreams into the void\nI need to finish my mini haunted mansion lego. I\u0026rsquo;ve decided that I don\u0026rsquo;t really like the mini sets. The castle was okay, but Haunted Mansion is just a pain, there\u0026rsquo;s so many 1x1 blocks and squares and circles. They\u0026rsquo;re just fiddly and they all look the same.\nI think once that\u0026rsquo;s done I\u0026rsquo;m going to make a start on the proper haunted house with the lift and stuff. Which means I need the battery/motor for the lift. Just looked and it\u0026rsquo;s £60 for the hub and a motor. That can wait. You can tell that there will be a little bit of repetition and the chain might be a bit of a ballache but I think it\u0026rsquo;ll be a fun build and it\u0026rsquo;ll just be in time for halloween.\nI won a £500 ruggable voucher, so bought a Darth Vader rug for the kitchen and a Mickey Mouse rug for the living room. They look fantastic. Very happy with them.\nAll in all, things are pretty good at the moment. As we hurtle along towards Christmas at an astonishing speed. I\u0026rsquo;ve got two weeks off now too, so hopefully will find a bit of time to relax around the big day.\n","date":"24 Sep 2023","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2023-09-24-september/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Quick life update","type":"posts"},{"content":"As we rapidly approach the end of June, quite a lot has happened in the last month or so since the last time I posted.\nI decided to give TPU another go. It went pretty well once I used a glue stick on the bed and took things super slow. I\u0026rsquo;ve still pretty much mangled a print sheet, but that was expected and I had another one lined up and ready to go.\nI had to do a nozzle swap because it got all gunked up, and when I put the new nozzle on there, I didn\u0026rsquo;t tighten it properly, so it leaked out all over the hot-end and blobbed all over the prints I was doing, but I didn\u0026rsquo;t realise until I was done. So that was less than ideal. Luckily I managed to get it all off.\nWhen I put the new (new) nozzle on I made sure it was tight and I did a few test prints to make sure all was okay.\nI managed to do a full set of top rails so it\u0026rsquo;s nicer to lean on the table. I also did 45 feet for the mini legs. (25 for its usual configuration and an extra 20 to allow me to have a full 5 x 9 setup). Had to do them one foot at a time, and it took around 50m to do each one, so no overnight printing and quite a lot of \u0026rsquo;lost\u0026rsquo; time, but it came out well and I think doing one at a time meant there was no retraction and therefore a much better print.\nThe printer has been idle now for a couple of weeks. Truth be told, I don\u0026rsquo;t have much to print at the moment - but they have just released stage 4 of the StageTop files. There isn\u0026rsquo;t much that\u0026rsquo;s changed - though they do have full on stackable legs with braces, I don\u0026rsquo;t think I\u0026rsquo;ll be looking at using them as my camping table set up provides what I need, and some additional leg room, looking at the way they have the braces set up. Who knows though, maybe I\u0026rsquo;ll print a small table at some point.\nI also don\u0026rsquo;t have much in the way of filament. Got a couple of half rolls, but nothing for anything big really at the moment.\nJust on the way home from some travel for work, I managed to get food poisoning which took me out yesterday but thankfully its passed and I\u0026rsquo;ve managed to get back up near home with no incidents which is a massive win. The worst part was having a room without air conditioning and not eating for 36 hours. I\u0026rsquo;ve had better work trips I\u0026rsquo;ll be honest with you.\nOther than that, not much else to report. We got the hot tub out a few weeks ago, not looking forward to doing the electricity meter reads tomorrow, but at least the gas meter read should be about as low as its going to get for this year given the heatwave we\u0026rsquo;ve just come out of.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve ordered a few more RSVLTS shirts. Safe to say I\u0026rsquo;m pretty addicted to them now, and I\u0026rsquo;m building up quite the collection. I think I\u0026rsquo;ve found the perfect way to express my mood and personality without having to resort to wearing t-shirts with slogans on.\nThey\u0026rsquo;re amazing quality and are very well designed. Definitely in love with them.\nWe saw Disney 100 in concert, that was absolutely amazing, loved that. Took Harry along for the show and he really enjoyed it too. I was wearing the same shirt as I\u0026rsquo;m wearing now on the way home actually.\nI\u0026rsquo;m tired, glad its nearly the end of the week. Also glad it\u0026rsquo;s going to be a little cooler over the next week or two.\n","date":"29 Jun 2023","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2023-06-29-june/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"More than halfway through the year!","type":"posts"},{"content":"Wow, how has it been nearly a full month since that Star Trek Bridge Commander post?! (And probably the last time I turned my gaming PC on too actuall, where did May go?).\nFairly busy one, we\u0026rsquo;re about to have our third bank holiday of the Month (it\u0026rsquo;s nice not working Mondays as well as Fridays). I went to Scotland for the first time properly (for work) and got to catch up with a bestie whilst I was up there. There was an Avril Lavigne concert. I went to Handycon in Milton Keynes, and I\u0026rsquo;m getting to go to UK Games Expo next weekend, which is mega exiting. It\u0026rsquo;s been around 4 years since I last travelled down to Birmingham. It\u0026rsquo;ll be well fun.\nAlso managed to pick up a copy of a game I played last week at Handycon which is all about distilling spirits, its great. Very thematic. Lots of mechanics that I love too, all in one nice package. And it fits on the table quite well.\nI just need to get hold of a playmat from UKGE next week for it. And another mat for the gentleman I purchased this extra KS copy from, and a mat for another one of my besties. All the mats.\nI really hope they have a lot in, else I\u0026rsquo;m going to have to order some from the US and that\u0026rsquo;ll be a pain.\nOf course not as much of a pain as ordering two Marvel shirts because licensing didn\u0026rsquo;t extend to the UK, only for the licensing to be extended to the UK the day after they shipped. That stung a bit, but we live and learn don\u0026rsquo;t we?\nAnyway. Back to the subject at hand.\nThe future.\nWhen I was at school, way back in the late 1900s (1992 is the year I\u0026rsquo;m talking about specifically), I went to a fancy technology college, there were computer suites a plenty, there was a CAD/CAM suite and for its time, it was probably one of the most advanced facilities in existence. I owe it so much.\nMost of the CAD/CAM stuff at the time was basically wooden cutting machines, the software I think was written a lot either in house or certainly by a local company. I remember the 286 machines running Windows 3.11, but I\u0026rsquo;m pretty sure the software ran in DoS, maybe\u0026hellip;.it was grey and there was a grid.\nIt was 2D design, you could make a sign. You could maybe set the cutting depth, but it certainly wasn\u0026rsquo;t anything like today.\nThere were also things like Vacuum forming machines where you\u0026rsquo;d made a wooden contraption, heat up a big sheet of wobbly plastic, pull a giant lever and suck out all the air and you were left with a fabricated plastic shape based on the wooden thing you\u0026rsquo;d made. And the corners and gradients had to be perfect or else the vacuum couldn\u0026rsquo;t get in all the nooks and crannies.\nAnyway..\nIt\u0026rsquo;s 2023, and I have a 3D printer in my MattCave.\nNot just any 3D printer, a Prusa, and its printed me an entire 3D printed table (which I took to HandyCon with me, it went down a storm), and I\u0026rsquo;m currently printing some board game inserts for Space Base - one of my favourite games.\nSo, we\u0026rsquo;ve got the CAM side of it down, quite easy to take something that someone else has designed, run it through a few custom settings for your machine and then print. It\u0026rsquo;s the CAD side of it that I\u0026rsquo;ve always struggled with.\nI think I\u0026rsquo;m going to find a course to do, I don\u0026rsquo;t expect I\u0026rsquo;ll be a 3D artist any time soon, but being able to put together some functional models and engineering projects and transfer some real life stuff to a digital platform would be pretty snazzy.\nSo yeah - random thoughts from me this week. Wanted to get it out of my head. I\u0026rsquo;ve got a Computer Aided Design studio in my house. And if I had the space it\u0026rsquo;d be fairly easy to extend this to other things (resin printers and what not).\nPhoto for context. Apologies for the mess. It\u0026rsquo;s not as bad as it looks. Honest.\n","date":"26 May 2023","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2023-05-26-cadcam/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"It's not quite a replicator....but!","type":"posts"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;ll start off this post by saying that the whole reason for this post (and the game behind it) is 100% due to the most excellent third season of Star Trek Picard that we\u0026rsquo;ve just had. It captured the continuation of the Next Generation era extremely well and gave me an itch that I need to scratch - be it with a board game or a video game.\nThe board game Star Trek Frontiers looks great, but it\u0026rsquo;s very hard to get hold of and is selling for well over the RRP. It\u0026rsquo;s something I might have to look at later on. We\u0026rsquo;ll see.\nOkay. Let\u0026rsquo;s set the scene\u0026hellip;..\nWay back in the early 2000s, 2001 to be precise, Microsoft ventured into the game controller space.\nThere was a whole range of Accessories sold under the Sidewinder brand. There was a gamepad that plugged into the midi port on your sound card (remember those?), they had a force feedback joystick that seemed well out of the budget of someone earning around £12,000 a year (was probably more than it felt like) and they also had the Microsoft Sidewinder Game Voice.\nAs well as allowing you to have isolated voice channels for different team mates, this also allowed voice control in certain games.\nIt was a super exciting time to be a gamer, and it was one of the first peripherals I had that was USB. Back when it was \u0026lsquo;plug and pray\u0026rsquo;.\nIn 2002, Star Trek Bridge Commander was released. This supported the Sidewinder Game Voice from release and allowed you to say things like \u0026lsquo;red alert\u0026rsquo; to make the shields go up and \u0026lsquo;fire phasers\u0026rsquo; to have it fire your phasers at your target.\nIt was the closest you could come to being an actual Starship captain on a Galaxy Class vessel.\nI remember seeing in 2021 that GoG had released Bridge Commander with a bunch of other gems like Elite Force 2. I didn\u0026rsquo;t buy it at the time, but decided that I wanted to grab it this weekend and start having a play around with it. It\u0026rsquo;s only £6.29 at the time of writing.\nStar Trek Bridge Commander on GoG.com\nIt\u0026rsquo;s a fairly simple install and download, like much of the GoG fare. In order to make the experience that bit more immersive, you can install some mods and add voice commands by following the steps below:\nOnce you\u0026rsquo;ve installed the game from GoG, you can grab the free \u0026lsquo;Star Trek Bridge Commander Remastered\u0026rsquo; mod that updates the graphics, sounds and cutscenes to make it feel like a more modern game worthy of your screen resolution in 2023.\nStar Trek Bridge Commander Remastered Mod on Nexus Mods\nOnce you\u0026rsquo;ve followed those instructions there you\u0026rsquo;ll also need to patch the stbc.exe file so that it can use 4GB of virtual memory instead of only 2GB on 64bit platforms. 4GB Patch is available here. The intructions for all of this are in a readme file in the remastered mod.\nNext up, we need to grab Voice Attack. You can either get that from their official site here and its also available on Steam. There\u0026rsquo;s a free demo that allows for 20 commands to see if it\u0026rsquo;ll do what you want it to do. This obviously isn\u0026rsquo;t limited to just STBC - you could use this for allsorts of things.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve set up and exported a profile that you can import into Voice Attack - this has 70 commands in it so far and will probably be updated in the coming days as I play through the game properly. It definitely replicates the old feelings of playing it when it came out with voice command enabled.\nHopefully you\u0026rsquo;ll have a good time playing on this just like I am doing.\nMay the force be with you\u0026hellip;..wait\u0026hellip;no\u0026hellip;.that\u0026rsquo;s the wrong franchise. Live long and prosper!\n","date":"29 Apr 2023","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2023-04-29-engage/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Helm, Set a course, Engage!","type":"posts"},{"content":"Hello!\nI started writing a new blog post about 2 weeks ago. Then forgot. Then went to write a new blog post today and saw that there was one started, I say started - I cloned the last file and changed it\u0026rsquo;s name to the date and \u0026rsquo;tired\u0026rsquo;. Didn\u0026rsquo;t update the metadata or anything, or change the page title or change the content.\nSo I didn\u0026rsquo;t really start writing a new file at all.\nThat reminds me I should check for a new hugo version\u0026hellip;..\nNope doesn\u0026rsquo;t look like it.\nCurrent situation with the table is that I have a 5 frame by 5 frame table, with all parts printed.\nThis works great for the camping table. We played a number of games on it last weekend including Heat, HeroQuest, Batman: Love Letter and a few other bits and pieces.\nI hope to get some more time on it this weekend with a few more games.\nI moved the table topper onto the kitchen table upstairs to see what it was like space wise - length wise its the same as the camping table (which is why I got the size of camping table I got) but width wise it can be extended with two leaves to quite a big table.\nWhilst the 5x5 is a good size, there are certain games that just won\u0026rsquo;t fit on there - I\u0026rsquo;m talking Star Wars Rebellion, Food Chain Magnate (comfortably) and a few others. Some of the other games that maybe don\u0026rsquo;t have quite such a large board but have player mats and panels might also struggle space wise.\nThe card holders work amazingly and I\u0026rsquo;ve moved them to the centre of each side, a new design has been created with a slightly better card tilt so I\u0026rsquo;ll be printing those for the new rails.\nI\u0026rsquo;m not overly enamoured with the component holders on the rails, I\u0026rsquo;m not too sure how useful they are for their depth. Could hold clank! pieces maybe, or cubes from Terraforming Mars. We\u0026rsquo;ll see what else I can do.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve also printed some corner and side component holders and trays (not pictured) and a couple of dice towers too.\nAs you can see here there\u0026rsquo;s quite a bit of unused space.\nSo I worked out what I needed to print, and I\u0026rsquo;m now currently printing it. This will make it a 5 frames x 9 frames table. As well as an extra 20 frames (and 20 legs and 20 short legs), I need another 16 full play tiles and another 8 half play tiles. Corners obviously don\u0026rsquo;t need a any additional for play space or rails.\nI also need another eight rails (top and bottom) and another eight rail clips. I decided to extend Red and Purple since they are the best colours.\nOverall I\u0026rsquo;m extremely happy with the table, and I\u0026rsquo;m very happy with the printer. I\u0026rsquo;ve had a couple of teething issues with the TPU (which I\u0026rsquo;m now using furniture foam feet for instead) and the filament IR sensor has been a bit flakey - generally after I\u0026rsquo;ve gone to bed and generally causing me to lose 7 hours of printing or so, which is less than ideal but its not the end of the world.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve reseated the sensor and it seems to be okay - but with it being a temperamental issue you never really could tell anyways. What was daft was, I\u0026rsquo;d reload the filament in (without changing anything) and then it would quite happily print for 15 hours during the day without skipping a beat. Stupid thing.\nI think I\u0026rsquo;ve managed to mostly avoid having to buy any more filament - just\u0026hellip;.. (with the exception of some more eSun brown PLA for the playspace) some of the frames are going to be a slightly different grey, as are the new legs, mini legs and the locks, but since you can\u0026rsquo;t see any of that anyway it isn\u0026rsquo;t really a problem.\nI should have enough blue left for extra rails. The black bottom rails should also be just about okay filament wise. Probably. We\u0026rsquo;ll see.\nSo I didn\u0026rsquo;t know what I was going to print after I finished the table, and the answer is, more table. So there\u0026rsquo;s that.\nI don\u0026rsquo;t know what I\u0026rsquo;ll print after I\u0026rsquo;ve finished more table. We\u0026rsquo;ll see.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s been a busy month at work too. Can\u0026rsquo;t believe next week it\u0026rsquo;s gonna be May\u0026hellip;.\n","date":"27 Apr 2023","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2023-04-27-hello/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Do you want to play a game?","type":"posts"},{"content":"Table progress has been going okay - mostly. Up until I tried to be clever, that is.\nI was printing some bottom rails. These were taking about 8 hours. Set another lot going overnight before bed and woke up to find the printer had been beeping for hours (and had woken up my wife who was not happy). Looks like the Prusament refill for galaxy black is less than ideal for use as there\u0026rsquo;s a number of bad reviews on the website about it jamming/getting pinched in the sides of the spools.\nSo I won\u0026rsquo;t be buying any more of that.\nI tried some more TPU after that. The first print of which went fine and I peeled it off the build plate with no issues. So I did a second one with less infill and for whatever reason, the bonding properties of TPU and PEI decided they were going to apply this time and the TPU stuck to the plate like you would not believe.\nNo matter what I tried, I couldn\u0026rsquo;t get it off. Found out you\u0026rsquo;re meant to use glue or similar. My own fault. SO I ordered a gluestick.\nGot the buildplate as clean as I could, and decided to flip it. Ran some prints and all was okay on regular filament. Got to the evening and decided that I was going to try and do some feet overnight. Started it at about 9pm, should have been done for about 10am. Did a single foot with glue first, just to check it was doing what it should be doing. All good.\nStarted the print, watched the first layer, went to bed.\nWoke up this morning and checked the camera, expecting to see feet that were 3/4 done. What I saw instead was air printing.\nBalls.\nI stopped the print and got up and went downstairs to investigate.\nThere was no filament coming out. I did a filament unload and it snapped away from the hotend. Not a great sign.\nOpened up the idler, nothing in the extruder gears at all. No dice.\nTried to load up some PLA to see if I could get anything through. Nothing.\nUnloaded the PLA.\nHeated up to 280 degrees. Tried to feed some PLA through again.\nNothing.\nFound this awesome troubleshooting guide:\nClogged nozzle/hotend (MK3S, MK2.5S)\nDisabled the autoloader as suggested, tried to push the allan key through the extruder, couldn\u0026rsquo;t get any movement on it.\nChanged the nozzle, the old one was black.\nNo change.\nUsed the acupuncture needle on the new nozzle, could definitely feel some goo up there. Nothing was coming out.\nTried some more PLA to dislodge it.\nNothing.\nBefore I resorted to taking the hotend assembly apart completely, I removed the new nozzle and tried to push the allan key up from the bottom instead. Struggled to get it in, but did and then got some movement on the second push.\nI checked the idler again and could see some TPU!\nI pulled it out, this is what was stuck in the PTFE tube:\nAnd this was the state of the build plate (mind the glue, and the mess, you can see all of the tools I had to use this morning to try and clear the clog.)\nSo.\nThat was a complete and utter pain in the arse.\nI got everything back together, fed some PLA in and it started to ooze out and we got some more TPU clog out. Cleared it through and started a print.\nWasn\u0026rsquo;t overly happy with the first layer but I let it go. Got a thermal anomaly warning which wouldn\u0026rsquo;t clear. Accidently hit the X button (which I didn\u0026rsquo;t even know was a button) to clear it, which actually acts as an emergency stop button and cancelled the job.\nDecided to do a heat calibration as the one that I did after the firmware update when I got it was pre case-build, so there was a chance that we were getting a false positive as the radiators had come on in the house and things probably warmed up a little faster than usual in there.\nThat took 12 mins and was fine. Started again. Still not happy with that first layer.\nI cancelled it and started a first layer calibration. Took probably 5 attempts, but got there and got it beautiful. Set off the print again and after 4 hours ended up with some really nice looking game tiles. Everything is back into a good, known working state and everything is okay.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve decided to leave the TPU for now, and am going to print the top rails in a nice PLA blue, they won\u0026rsquo;t be good to lean on and there won\u0026rsquo;t be any squish but to be honest, nobody was probably going to lean on it anyways, its fine.\nI might come back to it another time - maybe once the rest of the table is done and I\u0026rsquo;ve got some proper time to sit down and try to get the printer printing TPU without issues.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve bought some rubber feet for the bottom of the legs, cost £3. They\u0026rsquo;ll be more than adequate for the time being.\nSwapped out the filament for some blue and am doing the rails. Doing a couple of corner ones at the moment that\u0026rsquo;ll finish at about 9pm, then I\u0026rsquo;m going to kick off an 11 hour set of four card rails that\u0026rsquo;ll take 11 hours. That\u0026rsquo;ll give me a few rail pieces to do one edge of the 5x2 table I\u0026rsquo;m doing, then I\u0026rsquo;ll do some more brown tiles and then some more rails overnight.\nOnce I\u0026rsquo;ve got these in a good place, I\u0026rsquo;ll start doing some more frames (I need another 10 of those) and the remaining rails I need overnight, swapping out the prusament stuff isn\u0026rsquo;t too much of a hassle and it seems to fall right back into a print again.\nOn the subject of Prusa - they sent out a message to say that anyone who had bought an MK3S+ within 30 days of the announcement of the MK4 release would get a voucher. I think I was about 45 days before the announcement but I didn\u0026rsquo;t receive the printer until about 19 days before the announcement.\nThey\u0026rsquo;ve said they\u0026rsquo;ll honour the voucher offer and I should be receiving it through soon. Which is lovely of them.\nI might put it towards the upgrade to an MK4. Not decided yet. It\u0026rsquo;ll either be that or the next filament order. Problem is, the MK4 upgrade is only about £100 less than just going for the full MK4 kit, I\u0026rsquo;ll end up with a bunch of spare parts that\u0026rsquo;ll never get used again.\nWill have to have a think on it.\nAnyway, hopefully we\u0026rsquo;re going to have a few good days of printing again now. I\u0026rsquo;m going to stay away from TPU for a while. Get the table built and hopefully in a position to play small games by this weekend, with a view to having the full thing built for next weekend.\n","date":"5 Apr 2023","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2023-04-05-tpu-smells/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"TPU can suck it","type":"posts"},{"content":"So here we are, a week after the clocks \u0026lsquo;sprang forward\u0026rsquo; and an hour was stolen from me.\nAs I\u0026rsquo;ve gotten older, the clock change has been consistently kicking my ass year after year and I don\u0026rsquo;t know why.\nI presume its effectively jetlag. And I presume it\u0026rsquo;s because I start work early and I\u0026rsquo;m not used to being up that early anymore.\nStarting work at 7:30, the clocks go forward and all of a sudden you\u0026rsquo;re starting work at 6:30. Takes a little while for your body to get used to the change, all of a sudden its still light at 7pm, nobody knows what\u0026rsquo;s going on. I mean I\u0026rsquo;m 42, I should be used to be this shit by now.\nLast Sunday I spent all day messing around with the webcam on the Raspberry Pi attached to the printer. Originally it was coming through a route53 record through my router, through an Nginx reverse proxy and to the camera through octoprint. That worked alright, but more than a couple of people watching and it used to suffer a bit - I don\u0026rsquo;t think this was upstream bandwidth so much as compute capacity or throughput on the Pi itself.\nSo I figured it was probably a good idea to look at Kinesis. I got that working but couldn\u0026rsquo;t find a decent way to have this livestreaming on the site without some sort of auth, which I didn\u0026rsquo;t want. So I looked into a few other AWS services, then Twitch, then YouTube. I couldn\u0026rsquo;t get a lag free streaming experience that I was happy with.\nFinally decided to just buy the supported version of OctoAnywhere and use that instead. So you\u0026rsquo;ll see that there\u0026rsquo;s a nice new interface on the main page showing the name of the thing I\u0026rsquo;m printing, how long its been going and how long it has left.\nThe cool thing about this is that I can have Kayleigh clear the build plate if I\u0026rsquo;m away and I can start something else off remotely. Which is great if I\u0026rsquo;m away and trying to print something like a Gaming Table.\nStageTop kickstarter page\nSpeaking of which, the gaming table print is coming along wonderfully. Here\u0026rsquo;s a photo of the frame so far.\nThe frame, locks and tile locks are mostly done. I\u0026rsquo;ve got another 10 frames to print (for it to be a 5x5 table) and maybe 30 tile locks and I think maybe 20 more frame locks (over and above the 4 that are being printed with each frame).\nRails are going to take a little while, then its the play surface itself. I don\u0026rsquo;t think I\u0026rsquo;m going to have enough filament to do an all one colour play surface, I definitely don\u0026rsquo;t want it to be just grey like the frames. The rails are going to be black, probably sparkly black underside with squishy TPU tops. It\u0026rsquo;ll take a while for the tops to print, and I\u0026rsquo;ve never printed TPU before so that in itself could be very interesting. We\u0026rsquo;ll see.\nI estimate probably another 2 weeks before the table is ready to play on. I\u0026rsquo;m going 5x5 so that I can easily play something like Nemesis on it, and it\u0026rsquo;ll sit quite happily on the 90x90 camping table (and kitchen table) that we have with a nice little overhang.\nExtremely impressed with the quality of STLs and support from Gut Shot games. This is an amazing project and the fact that I\u0026rsquo;m just able to start printing this stuff out and put it together with ease is testament to the hard work and design of both them and their testers (and members of the community who have also been hard at work testing everything).\nI\u0026rsquo;ve always wanted a gaming table, but until we buy a house, spending up to £5000 on a solid wood, custom built gaming table with a decent place to put it isn\u0026rsquo;t really feasible. But to be honest, when I tot up the price of the printer, the filament and electricity\u0026hellip;.. actually, lets not - :D\nReally glad they brought out some short legs for this, it means it\u0026rsquo;ll be nicely sized for games nights sitting at either table and I\u0026rsquo;m hopeful that the TPU squish will be nice to lean on. Even if its not good for actually leaning on, we\u0026rsquo;ll see\u0026hellip;.. I have high hopes for this thing.\nReally enjoying printing it and really enjoying this printer too. Love it.\n","date":"2 Apr 2023","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2023-04-02-april-table/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Hello Spring!!","type":"posts"},{"content":"It told me not to worry about the machine uprising.\nI told it to write me some stuff about retro computing and this is what it came up with\u0026hellip;.\nWhat is Retro Computing? The History of Retro Computing The Advantages and Disadvantages of Retro Computing How to Get Started with Retro Computing The Future of Retro Computing Let\u0026rsquo;s dive in!\nWhat is Retro Computing?\nRetro computing refers to the use of older computer systems or technology, typically those that are at least 10-15 years old or more. Retro computing enthusiasts use these systems for a variety of reasons, such as nostalgia, personal interest, or for their unique capabilities.\nRetro computing can include a wide range of hardware and software, such as classic game consoles, home computers, vintage mainframes, and operating systems. Retro computing enthusiasts may collect and restore vintage systems, create new software for old hardware, or even develop their own custom hardware and software.\nThe History of Retro Computing The history of computing goes back several decades, and retro computing enthusiasts often focus on different eras of computing history. Some of the most popular periods of retro computing history include:\nThe 1970s and 1980s: This period saw the rise of personal computers and home computing, with systems like the Apple II, Commodore 64, and Atari 800 gaining popularity. Retro computing enthusiasts may focus on these classic systems, either for nostalgia or to explore the early days of home computing.\nThe 1990s: This decade saw the rise of Windows-based PCs, as well as classic game consoles like the Nintendo 64 and Sony PlayStation. Retro computing enthusiasts may focus on these systems for their unique capabilities or for nostalgic reasons.\nEarly mainframe and computing history: Some retro computing enthusiasts focus on even earlier periods of computing history, exploring the earliest mainframes and computer systems from the 1950s and 1960s.\nThe Advantages and Disadvantages of Retro Computing Like any hobby or interest, retro computing has its advantages and disadvantages. Here are a few of the pros and cons of retro computing:\nAdvantages:\nNostalgia: For many retro computing enthusiasts, the appeal of older systems is the nostalgia factor. Using an old system can bring back memories of a particular time or place, or evoke a sense of nostalgia for classic games or software.\nAccessibility: Many retro computing systems are relatively inexpensive and easy to find, making them accessible to a wide range of enthusiasts. Additionally, older systems may not require the same level of technical expertise as modern systems, which can make them more approachable for beginners.\nUnique capabilities: Some retro computing systems have unique capabilities that make them useful for certain applications. For example, vintage mainframes may be useful for running legacy software or emulating older systems, while classic game consoles may offer a unique gaming experience that can\u0026rsquo;t be replicated on modern hardware.\nDisadvantages:\nLimited functionality: Older systems may be limited in terms of processing power, memory, and storage, which can make them less useful for certain applications. Additionally, older systems may not be compatible with newer hardware or software, which can limit their usefulness.\nMaintenance: Older systems may require more maintenance than modern systems, especially if they have been sitting unused for many years. This can include cleaning, repairing, and replacing parts as needed, which can be time-consuming and expensive.\nSecurity: Older systems may be more vulnerable to security threats than modern systems, especially if they are connected to the internet. Retro computing enthusiasts should take care to secure their systems and keep them up-to-date to avoid potential security risks.\nHow to Get Started with Retro Computing Getting started with retro computing can be a fun and rewarding hobby, but itcan also be overwhelming for beginners. Here are some tips for getting started with retro computing:\nResearch: Before diving into retro computing, it\u0026rsquo;s a good idea to do some research on the systems and hardware that interest you. There are many online forums, communities, and resources dedicated to retro computing, and these can be a great source of information and support.\nStart small: If you\u0026rsquo;re new to retro computing, it\u0026rsquo;s a good idea to start with a relatively simple system or project. For example, you might start with a classic game console or a vintage computer that\u0026rsquo;s relatively easy to find and use.\nBuild a collection: Retro computing can be as much about collecting as it is about using and exploring old systems. You might start by building a collection of vintage hardware and software, and then work on restoring or repairing these systems as needed.\nJoin a community: There are many online communities and forums dedicated to retro computing, and these can be a great source of information and support. Joining a community can help you connect with other enthusiasts, share ideas and resources, and learn more about the hobby.\nThe Future of Retro Computing While retro computing is often associated with the past, it also has a role to play in the future of computing. Here are a few ways that retro computing may continue to be relevant in the years to come:\nPreservation: Retro computing can play an important role in preserving computing history and culture. By collecting, restoring, and using vintage systems, retro computing enthusiasts can help ensure that important technologies and innovations are not lost to history.\nInnovation: Retro computing can also be a source of innovation, as enthusiasts develop new hardware and software for old systems, or find new ways to use old technologies in modern contexts. For example, some retro computing enthusiasts have developed new games or applications for classic systems, or have found ways to use vintage hardware in modern robotics or engineering projects.\nEducation: Retro computing can be a valuable tool for education, helping students and enthusiasts learn about the history and evolution of computing, as well as the underlying principles and technologies that make modern computing possible.\nIn conclusion, retro computing is a fascinating and rewarding hobby that offers a glimpse into the history and evolution of computing technology. Whether you\u0026rsquo;re interested in classic game consoles, vintage home computers, or early mainframe systems, there\u0026rsquo;s a wealth of hardware, software, and resources available for retro computing enthusiasts. By exploring the past of computing, we can gain a deeper appreciation for the present and future of this rapidly evolving field.\n","date":"26 Mar 2023","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2023-03-26-chat/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"ChatGPT wrote this","type":"posts"},{"content":"","date":"26 Mar 2023","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/categories/life/","section":"Categories","summary":"","title":"Life","type":"categories"},{"content":"","date":"26 Mar 2023","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/life/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Life","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"26 Mar 2023","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/categories/work/","section":"Categories","summary":"","title":"Work","type":"categories"},{"content":"","date":"26 Mar 2023","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/work/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Work","type":"tags"},{"content":"So less than 90 hours since returning home, I\u0026rsquo;m on the way to London for work again. On a Sunday, on Mothering Sunday of all days.\nLast trip of March though. When I return home on Wednesday that\u0026rsquo;ll be it and now that I\u0026rsquo;ve cancelled the Star Wars Celebration tickets, the scheduled travel over Easter isn\u0026rsquo;t happening anymore either.\nSo I get to just stay home for a bit, recenter and refocus and hopefully start to do a few things at the weekends now that the weather is improving. Trips to the coast and trips out with the dog will be quite nice.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s quite a nice Spring day today. The sun is shining, its not nearly as cold as it has been for the last few weeks. I even left my big coat up in Leeds.\n3D Printer has pretty much been printing non-stop since I got home. I\u0026rsquo;ve shown Kayleigh how to clear the print bed ready for another print, and I can set prints off from anywhere using all the software I\u0026rsquo;ve got running now. Which means I\u0026rsquo;m pretty much halfway to automating the entire process.\nStageTop files were released late last night. I\u0026rsquo;ve been doing all of the Maths for it and figured out what I need to turn my little camping table into a gaming table. It should be pretty epic once its all put together.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve ordered all of the filament I\u0026rsquo;m going to need and once that arrives I can get underway. Considering there are 12 frame pieces to print and they take 12 hours each, we\u0026rsquo;re looking at a minimum of 6 days just for that.\nThen there\u0026rsquo;s clips, rails, legs and game plates.\nBloomin\u0026rsquo; exciting though and that\u0026rsquo;s what I bought the new printer for.\nVery much into it now, and haven\u0026rsquo;t had a single failure. It\u0026rsquo;s a beast and I\u0026rsquo;d urge anyone on the fence about buying a Prusa MK3s+ to just buy it. It\u0026rsquo;s expensive but it just works, and it works extremely well.\nLoving it, and its made me love 3D printing again.\n","date":"19 Mar 2023","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2023-03-19-blah/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"I'm on a train....again?","type":"posts"},{"content":"Hopefully you sung that to the melody of a Nirvana song, just like I did when I wrote it.\nThe time is 20:24. It\u0026rsquo;s Wednesday 15th March and there is a train strike tomorrow. I\u0026rsquo;ve been in London since Monday afternoon and I\u0026rsquo;m currently on my way home. Ordinarily I\u0026rsquo;d be travelling home in the morning after another night of sleep, but with the strikes, there\u0026rsquo;s no way of getting back up.\nTrains are running Friday but I don\u0026rsquo;t work Fridays and by the time we get there, I might as well stay here (I\u0026rsquo;m coming back Sunday afternoon).\nSo I\u0026rsquo;m currently sat on a train. I am extremely tired. I was tired before I even came to London on Monday. I was tired on Sunday. I was falling asleep on the sofa. My social batteries were drained.\nI got the 3D printer set up and did a couple of prints, things came out extremely well. It just works, like the Apple Mac of 3D Printing. I haven\u0026rsquo;t build the enclosure yet - that\u0026rsquo;s to do over the next few days into Friday/Saturday. Should only take about 4 hours apparently. I just need to sort out some space and do it. It\u0026rsquo;ll have an LED light in there and things too. The Raspberry Pi camera seems to work quite nicely - we\u0026rsquo;ll see what mounting options look like when its all in the enclosure. I\u0026rsquo;m sure I can print something out.\nWill probably spend the train journey doing a bit of research on the things I\u0026rsquo;m going to print over the next few days and see how everything goes. I\u0026rsquo;m very impressed so far though. Very impressed indeed. Very happy with the purchase.\nSo one more trip this month and then I am completely done for a while. As of this morning, I was faced with my 11th hotel breakfast of the month, I couldn\u0026rsquo;t eat anymore cooked breakfast food, so I had continental instead. It was nice to just have some toast and a few other bits, even if someone had polluted the strawberry jam sachets with raspberry and redcurrant (which actually turned out to be pretty nice).\nIt\u0026rsquo;s Thursday tomorrow and I\u0026rsquo;m supposed to be working but I don\u0026rsquo;t know how much I\u0026rsquo;m physically going to be able to do. I need to take some time back in lieu for this travel I\u0026rsquo;m doing right now but not sure what that looks like in real terms.\nI\u0026rsquo;ll sleep in for a bit probably, or try to, if my body clock lets me do so. Then I\u0026rsquo;ll do a few hours, get things in order for Sunday probably and then call it a day. Going to have to pack and get everything together for the trip down in my own time anyway this weekend so to be honest, there\u0026rsquo;s not really going to be much I need to do tomorrow in order to \u0026lsquo;make up time\u0026rsquo;.\nI\u0026rsquo;m so tired, I can feel it in my bones. So, so tired.\nAnother blog post with pictures probably coming over the weekend once I build the enclosure and do a bit more printing.\nThe Clank! card holder I did doesn\u0026rsquo;t suit sleeved cards so I need to try printing at 7% larger or something. We\u0026rsquo;ll see how that works out. I should be able to print the interjoining middle bit and not waste too much filament and if that looks to fit the cards, then that\u0026rsquo;s what I need to print across the board.\nTired now. Less than 2 hours until I\u0026rsquo;m home though. Yay.\n","date":"15 Mar 2023","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2023-03-15-london/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"I'm on a train","type":"posts"},{"content":"","date":"12 Mar 2023","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/categories/3d-printing/","section":"Categories","summary":"","title":"3D Printing","type":"categories"},{"content":"I had an amazing time in Airecon this weekend. Lots and lots of boardgames were played. In fact, my total games played for the weekend (Thurs-Sun) stands at 61 games. My total for 2023 so far stands at 131, which is in no small part thanks to Dracarys Dice. Love that game. So much it\u0026rsquo;s been played 69 times since I got it.\nI\u0026rsquo;ll post up some more thoughts and photos and stuff when I\u0026rsquo;m less tired.\n3D Printer arrived whilst I was away on Friday, is calibrated, is printed and we\u0026rsquo;ve got some sort of makeshift bluetak camera holder on the pi-cam until I can find time later this week to build the enclosure and get something together properly for it.\nI\u0026rsquo;m impressed so far and have printed the batarang and the whistle from the enclosed SD card.\nHooked up to the Raspberry Pi with no issues, camera is currently \u0026lsquo;mounted\u0026rsquo; upside down but I\u0026rsquo;ve added a little javascript magic to fix that.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s very quiet. Hopefully get a clank! Catacombs insert printed soon amongst other things. Yay!\n","date":"12 Mar 2023","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2023-03-12-gaming/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Airecon 2023","type":"posts"},{"content":"","date":"12 Mar 2023","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/categories/gaming/","section":"Categories","summary":"","title":"Gaming","type":"categories"},{"content":"","date":"12 Mar 2023","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/gaming/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Gaming","type":"tags"},{"content":"When Prusa say 2-3 weeks lead time, they really mean it. It\u0026rsquo;s been 11 days and no movement yet on my order.\nMy estimated dispatch date period keeps changing from anywhere between the 3rd to the 11th of March. More than likely it\u0026rsquo;ll ship whilst I\u0026rsquo;m out of the country and end up in customs hell or something. There\u0026rsquo;s about £200 VAT to pay on it with DHL (unless they forget to charge it), so they\u0026rsquo;ll phone me/email me to pay before they try to deliver it anyways.\nIn preparation for that:\nI decided to spend a spare hour I had waiting around before setting off to pick Harry up from the halfway point getting the Raspberry PI I had with Octoprint set up ready for the arrival of the printer.\nFairly easy I figured. Would just be a case of getting the camera back together (it had fallen off the ribbon cable), running an apt update and an apt upgrade, probably upgrading Octoprint. Then getting the certbot stuff for the ssl certificate going again as its sometimes a little flakey.\nTurned into a Debian distro upgrade. Then HAproxy broke because of a bunch of deprecated config, then the webcam broke, then I kinda got it working, then it broke again. Python decided it needed an upgrade, OctoPrint then decided it didn\u0026rsquo;t like using Python 2, so I upgraded to Python 3, all the while the webcam stopped working and I was going around in circles.\nSpent hours on it.\nHours and hours.\nDidn\u0026rsquo;t want to reflash the microSD because of all the customisation I had on there for automatically updating Route53 with the new IP as and when it changes, the cert bot stuff, things I figured it would take me days to re setup.\nWell. after giving up and reflashing the drive at around 7pm, less than an hour, I had everything back up and running, the webcam was working off the bat, I set up the haproxy SSL cert customisations. Cert renewal done, Route53, done.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s ready for the Prusa.\nSo.\n4 hours of pain, vs 1 hour of just reflashing it.\nI\u0026rsquo;ll never learn.\nI\u0026rsquo;ll always take the harder path. But then the harder path is always more fun, isn\u0026rsquo;t it? :D\nAt least that\u0026rsquo;s all back up and running and ready now.\n","date":"26 Feb 2023","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2023-02-26-backto/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Back to.....the.....future?","type":"posts"},{"content":"","date":"26 Feb 2023","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/categories/printing/","section":"Categories","summary":"","title":"Printing","type":"categories"},{"content":"So.\nFunny story.\nI bought a printer today. Went for a Prusa. Went direct (was looking at kit builds that people had built - but they had a lot of build time and you just don\u0026rsquo;t know what these things have been doing).\nIt wasn\u0026rsquo;t cheap.\nNot one bit.\nBut I went for the fully built version (rather than spending 8 hours on what would have probably been fun, but also a pain) - plus it comes with warranty and 10% discount on future orders this way.\nAlso went for an enclosure as if you buy the enclosure with the printer, you get it for an extra £150 rather than an extra £400.\nI\u0026rsquo;m not sure the enclosure is going to fit where I want to put it - it might\u0026hellip;..but it also might have to go on the floor. We\u0026rsquo;ll see what happens when it arrives at some point in the next month or so.\nI also purchased the STLs for the StageTop gaming table stuff - because of course that\u0026rsquo;s the main reason why I got a printer again. Also the lack of the ability to print out some board game inserts.\nI\u0026rsquo;m looking forward to getting back into the hobby again.\nWith less stress this time - I don\u0026rsquo;t mind tinkering. But I also like to have things set up a certain way and come back to them how I left them. I\u0026rsquo;m hoping that with the quality that Prusa offers up, I should be in a much better position to just print.\nI might also try to beat Kevin at a Batman print :D\nExpect the 3D printing livestream stuff to come back at some point on the main page - Once I\u0026rsquo;ve got the thing set up and printing in the enclosure with a raspi camera mount.\nI should probably update octopi.\n","date":"15 Feb 2023","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2023-02-15-printing/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"3D Printing......update","type":"posts"},{"content":"You know, I\u0026rsquo;ve gotten a number of boardgames the last few months that need decent inserts.\nInserts that have been designed and are freely available on things like thingiverse.\nDo you know what I don\u0026rsquo;t have?\nA 3D printer.\nThe Creality CR20-Pro was a pain in the arse. I spent days, literally days calibrating it and getting it perfect, and it would print fine, and then for no reason whatsoever, it\u0026rsquo;d just stop printing fine.\nI love tinkering with things, I love fixing things. If I need to. If I want to.\nWhat I don\u0026rsquo;t like, is tinkering with something, sinking time into it and then having to start from scratch again for no particular reason (see previous blog posts on 3D Printing frustrations).\nSo. If I go back to it, it would have to be Prusa.\nIf it\u0026rsquo;s Prusa, then its probably going to be expensive. Probably.\nBut it\u0026rsquo;ll work. And I can tinker if I want to tinker.\nThere\u0026rsquo;s also just been an insane Kickstarter campaign for a 3D printed gaming platform, which looks insane. Missed it on account of looking for printers (as its just the STL files), but they\u0026rsquo;re going to have late backers.\nSo.\nYeah.\nMaybe there will be a livestream 3D printing camera again. Maybe.\nAt least I can look back at my githistory for the code I made to make it all work. Though saying that, I\u0026rsquo;m pretty sure its all still there, just not linked from the navbar :p\nWatch this space. We\u0026rsquo;ll see how things look in the next week or two.\n","date":"4 Feb 2023","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2023-02-04-printing/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"3D Printing","type":"posts"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;ve been using spreadsheets to manage the monthly finances for years now. What we\u0026rsquo;ve got coming in, what we\u0026rsquo;ve got going out, bills, debts, spends, food, what we can afford to pay out.\nOne thing we\u0026rsquo;ve not had much of over the last 10 years or so is savings, that\u0026rsquo;s about to change as we\u0026rsquo;re about to start hammering the savings so that we can hopefully look to buy a house at some point. You know, if houses become reasonable to buy. It\u0026rsquo;d be nice to have a big one, with a study, a games room, maybe even that arcade room I\u0026rsquo;ve dreamed of since first playing Maniac Mansion on the Amiga.\nWe\u0026rsquo;re in a pretty good position right now. Money coming in is a little more than money going out, we\u0026rsquo;ve got plenty of debt still, but its managed and its coming down, bit by bit. As each bit is paid off, we unlock a bit more money and are able to then pay that towards something else.\nAt some point this year, most of the immediate debt should be gone, money will go into savings, which will go towards a house and who knows - maybe even an emergency fund. That\u0026rsquo;d be nice.\nOn an unrelated note, I\u0026rsquo;ve started to mess around with Azure. It\u0026rsquo;s a little less clunky than it was the last time I played around with it, and they seem to want to throw $200 at me to mess around with. I\u0026rsquo;m informed they\u0026rsquo;ve always done this, but I don\u0026rsquo;t remember ever been offered it before.\nMet up with a friend this week whilst I was down in London, played a bunch of games, drank some good beer, put the world to rights and just generally had a good time in the middle of a bunch of stressful days filled with stressful meetings.\nI need more of that. Beer and games, not stressful meetings. Nobody wants those.\n","date":"21 Jan 2023","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2023-01-21-finances/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Finances","type":"posts"},{"content":"A week-ish on from the last post, January blues seem a little less prevalent today.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve resubscribed to BoardGameArena and spent an hour or so playing some of my favourite games. Won a game of Can\u0026rsquo;t Stop. Won a game of Color Pop. Lost a game of Welcome To, Railroad Ink, Ticket to Ride.\nI love Welcome To, it\u0026rsquo;s such a fun game, and it\u0026rsquo;s one of those really interesting ones where everyone has the same opportunities as everyone else, but its clear after a few turns that everyone has gone off on a tangent and you have several different games going on.\nEndgame is also extremely fun, depending on what cards come out and what spaces you\u0026rsquo;ve left, you can sometimes find yourself one or two turns away from a win, and you run out of time due to another player triggering endgame without warning because they\u0026rsquo;ve not been able to place three cards. Boo to them. Happens all too often to me.\nThis isn\u0026rsquo;t my handwriting btw, I can\u0026rsquo;t write that neatly, its generated by the BGA website. Fun!\nI haven\u0026rsquo;t logged them on BGstats, so they won\u0026rsquo;t appear on the website as recent plays. I\u0026rsquo;m in two minds really. I mean I did play the proper games, digitally rather than on a table, but with strangers, so maybe I\u0026rsquo;ll just log ones with friends where I care about the scores and I already have people in the app. Who knows, we\u0026rsquo;ll see.\nWhilst playing I\u0026rsquo;ve had a 90s playlist on shuffle. It\u0026rsquo;s not that I don\u0026rsquo;t get on with modern music - I get on with some of it, but I think its definitely true that your musical tastes are formed in your younger years.\nBabylon Zoo - Spaceman just came on. That was on a Levi\u0026rsquo;s advert, and everyone bought the single and it wasn\u0026rsquo;t all speeded up and high pitched, it was boring as hell once the chorus went away. Ha. My brain is so full of rubbish bits of information. It\u0026rsquo;s surprising that there\u0026rsquo;s any space for anything that\u0026rsquo;s actually useful.\nGames day on Sunday but I can\u0026rsquo;t get down there till later on because I have to go pick up the eldest from his grandparents. I\u0026rsquo;ll hopefully get up there for a few hours after that, and hopefully I can start to get up there on a Tuesday evening again soon. Can\u0026rsquo;t next week as I\u0026rsquo;m not around but I might have some game playing opportunities, you never know.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s not even really hump day. Compressed hours mean I only work Mon-Thurs, so tomorrow is my Friday. Yay.\nNext week promises to be a toughie, with travel, days of meetings and probably rubbish weather. It\u0026rsquo;ll be nice to see friends again though.\nI guess the main point of this post, is that I\u0026rsquo;m ok.\n","date":"11 Jan 2023","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2023-01-11-ok/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Positive Headspace","type":"posts"},{"content":"Happy New Year. Hope it\u0026rsquo;s a great one for you, that you achieve all of your dreams and goals and that you get through it in one piece.\nPersonally I\u0026rsquo;m taking a break from social media and having a social media free 2023 - so we\u0026rsquo;ll see how that goes.\nJanuary blues have set in early this year.\n","date":"5 Jan 2023","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2023-01-05-hny/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"It's 2023!","type":"posts"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;m in quite a fortunate position generally when it comes to my career. I\u0026rsquo;ve had quite a few interviews over the course of the last 23 years or so and I can count the number of times I\u0026rsquo;ve not gotten a role I\u0026rsquo;ve gone for (as far as interview stage) on one hand.\nI always tend to do quite well on interviews, not so great on technical tests (AWS aside) but in talking through concepts and competency questions, usually, anyway.\nI had my gallbladder removed at the end of November. Then followed by three weeks off work for recovery. Then had an interview scheduled for a possible promotion at the end of that third week. Despite spending 6/7 hours prep time during the week and writing notes up, getting things arranged in my head - I absolutely crashed and I could tell, referring to thingies and unable to grasp terminology that would usually come to me with no issues.\nI\u0026rsquo;d not been anywhere near so much as a command line terminal in anger for three weeks. I was rusty, I wasn\u0026rsquo;t thinking straight and a week before Christmas, my head just wasn\u0026rsquo;t in it.\nI knew I\u0026rsquo;d fucked it. I knew it. Scores were out of 5 across the competencies, and you had to get 3s, 4s or 5s. I got 2s across the board. Absolutely shocking. Feedback was sympathetic, but I could also tell that he was disappointed that I wasn\u0026rsquo;t where I should be.\nThen came the email..\nHaving considered you carefully against the requirements for the role, we’re sorry to tell you that you’ve been unsuccessful on this occasion. If you’d like to receive specific feedback on your interview, you’re welcome to contact your interviewers to arrange this. I don\u0026rsquo;t often get emails like that, and seeing it in writing hurt more than the video call to tell me that I didn\u0026rsquo;t get it.\nDo I handle rejection well? I don\u0026rsquo;t know, I don\u0026rsquo;t think so - probably not.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s fine to fail. Because there\u0026rsquo;s always lessons to be learnt. There\u0026rsquo;s always something you can do better. I guess it would have just been nice to have something go my way at this time of the year.\nI started this post on the Friday night (16th), I couldn\u0026rsquo;t figure out how to do a blockquote, the markdown for hugo just was not working, stupid blockquotes. So I\u0026rsquo;ve figured out a different way to handle it for the time being.\nI\u0026rsquo;d have a look at changing the theme up a little, but I\u0026rsquo;ve added that much customisation to this one that I\u0026rsquo;d have to spend a lot of time adapting something else.\nI might mess with the css and change the colours and fonts up a bit. Maybe.\nSo. Directions. I\u0026rsquo;m looking for some at the moment and I\u0026rsquo;m trying to figure out what way I want to go. I want to stay technical. I love tinkering, building stuff and solving problems.\nI\u0026rsquo;d like to see how far I can get with AWS. I might even be in a position to self fund a trip to Vegas for RE:Invent next year. That\u0026rsquo;d be nice wouldn\u0026rsquo;t it?\nLots to think about over the course of the next few weeks and months and over the new year.\n","date":"20 Dec 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2022-12-20-bleh/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Bleh","type":"posts"},{"content":"The ASUS zenwifi mesh nodes I have at home have been pretty stable up to press.\nI had some issues when we first got a BT TV box a few months back and I scoured the Internet for any information.\nThe BT TV box is a Youview box and it uses the Internet to get all of the non terrestrial channels. It actually uses multicast for this. There\u0026rsquo;s a few settings that you need to enable on your router to get this to work. It had been working fine up to when I went to add Sky Cinema to my package as a trial.\nChecking out the new channels in both SD and HD, I got an IPC6023 error.\nEverywhere you look, you\u0026rsquo;ll find issues around DHCP, Internet Speed, Multicast, IGMP snooping - there\u0026rsquo;s a bunch of information.\nThe only settings you actually need are these:\nWith these settings, everything should work fine.\nI was extremely confused, until my wife told me that when she\u0026rsquo;d gone to watch the Discovery channel the other day, it hadn\u0026rsquo;t worked either.\nI remembered that we\u0026rsquo;d seen not one firmware upgrade, but two in November, and things had been fine since before then. I\u0026rsquo;m not sure that we\u0026rsquo;d watched any IPTV since then. It\u0026rsquo;s been a busy few weeks and when we\u0026rsquo;re watching TV its generally been terrestrial.\nAnyway, after spending a bunch of hours changing settings, restarting everything along the chain, I decided to try a firmware downgrade.\nThe firmware version we were running was the latest (as of 30th Nov 2022) - Version 3.0.0.4.388.21617\nI\u0026rsquo;ve actually taken us back to the firmware version from August - Version 3.0.0.4.386.49873. That was definitely the last known working config, and I can confirm that this has resolved the issue for me.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve logged a support ticket with ASUS so hopefully they should be able to fix whatever bug they\u0026rsquo;ve introduced in October or November.\nIf you find this post, hope it\u0026rsquo;s helped and saved a few hours of your time.\nASUS ZenWiFi AX (XT8) IPC6023 multicast error. Lets see if a bit of SEO works.\n","date":"30 Nov 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2022-11-30-bttvwoes/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"BT TV woes and ASUS routers","type":"posts"},{"content":"And another three months between blog posts pretty much. Things have been somewhat hectic, between house moves, school moves, work uncertainty, half terms, hospital admissions and board game conventions, it\u0026rsquo;s been pretty manic really. Even though it doesn\u0026rsquo;t feel like I\u0026rsquo;ve done that much.\nI\u0026rsquo;m hoping to actually play some more games this weekend, Harry has asked so I need to figure out what exactly we can play - I\u0026rsquo;d love to play Rebellion with him but I don\u0026rsquo;t think he\u0026rsquo;d get it just yet - give it another 12 months if we can step up gradually. Will ease him back into things this weekend - especially since I\u0026rsquo;ve got a camping table in my room which doubles as a pretty cool gaming table (and probably lego building table tbh), see how many games he actually wants to play and what sort. I think he might quite like Deckchairs on the Titanic.\nIn fact, I\u0026rsquo;m going to have a proper look through the game list and come up with a list of games to play with him over the next few weeks and we\u0026rsquo;ll see how it goes. There\u0026rsquo;s probably some function that I can use in BGStats to compile a list or a challenge and do that. That sounds like a good plan.\nCurrently on a train back from London after coming down for work on Tuesday. Managed to get a first class upgrade through seatfrod (as per the norm) for £13 each way. Given this gives me access to food, drinks and generally more space and comfort, it\u0026rsquo;s well worth the price.\n1st Class is quite full on this train back up, I\u0026rsquo;ve not been able to grab a big table - so I\u0026rsquo;m perched on a little table with just enough room for my macbook pro m2 - the work laptop has no chance of fitting on this table and besides the wifi isn\u0026rsquo;t working properly so I\u0026rsquo;m having to hotspot on to my phone.\nThree nights away from home is a tad too much for work, it was meant to be two nights this week but there was a train strike, then there wasn\u0026rsquo;t a train strike and rather than mess around any more with rail and hotel bookings (which I\u0026rsquo;d already had to mess around with due to the strike), I decided to do two days in the office. It wasn\u0026rsquo;t a completely wasted experience, I got to spend a lot of 1-on-1 time with one of the new hires.\nIn the world of mainly remote working, it\u0026rsquo;s good to get some face time with people, especially early on so that they feel comfortable asking the questions and approaching you on teams or whatever.\nI\u0026rsquo;m definitely ready for a bowl of cereal for a meal - cooked breakfast, followed by a lunch and then eating out for three days has done me in, especially since there were no beans at breakfast. Everything else was great - but there were no beans? How can you have a full English without beans?.\nGiven the horrid journey to Swindon in September on the Cross Country train (worst train I\u0026rsquo;ve ever been on) that goes from Edinburgh to Plymouthm jumping on at Leeds and then having to jump off at Cheltenham and then swap onto another train - it\u0026rsquo;s much simpler getting on to a tray where it starts and getting off when it finishes, though I believe that upgrading to first class also helps with that quite a bit.\nI know that when I get in, the dog will be SOOOOO happy to see me. Happier than anyone else ever is, mostly - though the wife is generally quite happy to see me, but she doesn\u0026rsquo;t jump 4 feet in the air and try to lick my face - mostly.\nI don\u0026rsquo;t think I\u0026rsquo;d ever drive down to London, driving down to Milton Keynes was bad enough - 2.5 hours on the M1 is just too much, especially when people are driving like morons and there\u0026rsquo;s torrential rain. Also even though its 2022, you\u0026rsquo;d be amazed at how many cars don\u0026rsquo;t have indicators or even headlights!\nThat\u0026rsquo;s enough ranting for now, see you in 2023, probably.\n","date":"4 Nov 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2022-11-04-rememberremember/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Remember, Remember","type":"posts"},{"content":"Almost managed to get through the entirety of August without a blog post. Almost. In fact, we\u0026rsquo;re fast approaching it being two months since I last posted.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s been quite a ride, not long after my last post, the patio in the garden of the house that we were renting was finished, there was a hot tub sale on at the local B\u0026amp;Q and I decided to surprise my wife with an inflatable hot tub that she\u0026rsquo;s been asking me for the last few years. So I got one, filled it up with water, heated it up, that was expensive :D\nAnyway, first night we were sat in the hot tub, thinking about life, the next morning everything was thrown upside down and we were told we would have to move out earlier than originally anticipated.\nThere was upheaval. There was stress. There were tears. We found a new place, just around the corner from where we were and hoped to secure it, there followed more stress, then lots of delays and finally we got in.\nWe\u0026rsquo;ve been settled for about 2 weeks now. It\u0026rsquo;s bank holiday Monday and I\u0026rsquo;m writing a blog post sat on a chair with the laptop on my knee. This is nice.\nHad last week off work, was supposed to be away at the caravan but we just couldn\u0026rsquo;t make everything work in time and we had to be here for the fibre activation. Three weeks running the house from a 4G mini hub was horrendous, working from it was even worse - even more so when you throw in all the stress from the uncertainty around everything.\nRent is more expensive, we\u0026rsquo;ve lost the fixed energy deal we had, but we\u0026rsquo;re all okay and we have a roof over our heads. Eldest is still in the catchment area for his new school. Things are settling down and things are looking okay.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s going to be a tough winter, no doubts about it. Bills are going up, we\u0026rsquo;ve got more going out than we did have before. but we are more fortunate than a lot of people, hopefully it\u0026rsquo;ll just be a tough few months rather than having to choose between heating and eating like some people will unfortunately have to do.\nMight even get to play a board game before August is up, you never know. Think my last game played was May. So much for getting through more games this year than last. Meh.\n","date":"29 Aug 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2022-08-29-newdigs/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Sheesh","type":"posts"},{"content":"Almost three months since my last post. I think we\u0026rsquo;re at the point where it\u0026rsquo;s to be expected now.\nThere\u0026rsquo;s been so much that\u0026rsquo;s happened. I got a new laptop, the new laptop broke and got a new motherboard, the new laptop broke again so went back for a full refund.\nWe went on holiday, the youngest got chicken pox and we got stuck out there. It was a bit of a nightmare really. Holiday insurance is 100% necessary.\nMy eldest son has had a domain registered since he was born (it was important to take care of the important things). Never done anything with it, though. He\u0026rsquo;s expressed a little interest in tech but nothing massively.\nHe starts secondary school in September so his exposure to IT and technology is going to increase exponentially, he\u0026rsquo;s started to play around with scratch in the last few weeks and has been doing some more of the in depth bits and pieces in Minecraft. I guess it\u0026rsquo;s only a matter of time before he either catches the bug or doesn\u0026rsquo;t\nI wanted to have a way of approving anything that he put up there, without having to teach him gitflow or confuse things with regards to branch strategy. I\u0026rsquo;ve set the backend up the same as mine, S3 hosted, cloudfront and SSL fronted, Hugo generated with a pipeline - along with a manual approval step.\nI get an email (thanks SNS) which tells me he\u0026rsquo;s uploaded a change, I can pull the repo, take a look at it, make sure he\u0026rsquo;s not giving too much information away that he shouldn\u0026rsquo;t be, then approve and watch it build, or I can deny, make some edits and re-push.\nIt\u0026rsquo;ll do for now. We\u0026rsquo;ll see how things go, I might put something better in place with PRs and branching if he does show some aptitude in coding.\nAlong with other life lessons around budgeting, cooking, being a nice person and trying to put good things back into the world, I\u0026rsquo;ll add it to a list of things I can teach the kids to make them more valuable to the world and make them nice, rounded, well mannerered individuals.\nI\u0026rsquo;m only really posting so that I\u0026rsquo;ve got a fairly recent edit and he doesn\u0026rsquo;t show me up\u0026hellip;\nI\u0026rsquo;ll post something around the ASUS ROG debacle and the holiday at some point probably. Maybe even this year. We\u0026rsquo;ll see.\n","date":"2 Jul 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2022-07-02-cloudy/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Always two there are","type":"posts"},{"content":"","date":"2 Jul 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/cloud/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Cloud","type":"tags"},{"content":"Okay, so yeah, it\u0026rsquo;s been a while. It always is. Two months this time.\nBut.\nI saw something today that compelled me to write a new blog post.\nLets start at the beginning\nThe Secret of Monkey Island, and the sequel LeChuck\u0026rsquo;s Revenge, were two of the games I played \u0026lsquo;A LOT\u0026rsquo; on the Atari ST and Commodore Amiga. I listen to the soundtracks, when they released special editions of the games I pretty much bought them on every platform that I could.\nThere was something SO good about the early Lucasfilm Games erm games, the logic, puzzle solving, humour all fed into the person that I am today. I love the games so much.\nI remember playing Curse of Monkey Island and it being pretty cool, but I didn\u0026rsquo;t really like the art style that much, though MURRAY THE TALKING SKULL was amazing, and there were some really standout moments too.\nI used the Insult Sword Fighting to build one of my first PHP apps, really simple, you chose an insult and the page delivered you the correct retort.\nTales of Monkey Island from Telltale was OK, I guess, but it never really captured that puzzle solving feeling, the telltale games often left me feeling unsatisfied.\nRon kickstarted Thimbleweed Park which was quite a big success and was a classic return to the point and click adventure game.\nSo cut to today, I was on Facebook, and I saw a post from a Monkey Island fan page that said the news from April 1st wasn\u0026rsquo;t actually an April Fools. What news? thought I\u0026hellip;..\nTurns out, Ron Gilbert announced that he\u0026rsquo;d made a new Monkey Island game.\nTurns out\u0026hellip;..that wasn\u0026rsquo;t an April Fools.\nRon has been trying to get the rights back to Monkey Island for YEARS. I think one of the first things he said when Disney picked up Lucasfilm was PLEASE SELL ME IT, I HAVE MONEY!\nHe also said that he wouldn\u0026rsquo;t make another MI game unless he owned the IP\u0026hellip;\u0026hellip;no news on whether that situation has changed or not.\nTurns out someone was listening\u0026hellip;.\nThere\u0026rsquo;s a trailer, a website and everything.\nAND, it\u0026rsquo;s coming THIS YEAR!!!!\nI can\u0026rsquo;t even begin to explain how this makes me feel. I welled up with tears of joy.\nWe\u0026rsquo;re going to get modern soundtracks, modern game graphics, puzzles from Ron Gilbert and Dave Grossman. I am SO EXCITED. I can\u0026rsquo;t wait.\nHey Disney, how about we get the Secret of Monkey Island and LeChuck\u0026rsquo;s revenge updated and added back to the Apple App store yeah?\n","date":"4 Apr 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2022-04-04-monkeyisland/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Return to Monkey Island","type":"posts"},{"content":"Things have been extremely busy.\nAt work, at home, everywhere else. Busy.\nThe last few months, things feel like they\u0026rsquo;ve accelerated, and they\u0026rsquo;re still accelerating. Things are getting back to \u0026rsquo;normal\u0026rsquo;, whatever that is.\nCompanies are wanting people to head back into the office after nearly 2 years of enforced working from home. That feels a bit weird. A lot of people aren\u0026rsquo;t as fortunate as I am. I get to go down to the office when it suits, but there\u0026rsquo;s always the option to join in with whatever activities are going on remotely too if it doesn\u0026rsquo;t work out.\nIt is very nice to be able to work from my home, control the temperature and noise levels, wear what I want to, listen to whatever music I want to, not have to spend a fortune on coffee shops and sandwich shops (though Deliveroo do delivery quite a lot of food here, which isn\u0026rsquo;t great - but swings and roundabouts, hey?).\nManaged to play a few board games already this year. Have been attending the local club which is fantastic. They even did a full game day the other week. It was magical. I\u0026rsquo;m supposed to be playing games today with the eldest, but he\u0026rsquo;s snubbed me in lieu of playing on the Xbox with his friends\u0026hellip;.so yeah.\nAirecon in just four weeks. A whole weekend of gaming, I can\u0026rsquo;t wait. It will be fantastic to play again with people I haven\u0026rsquo;t seen for far too long.\nWith any luck, Handycon might be on later this year too and I\u0026rsquo;ll get to go down to that. I really enjoyed everything being in the same hotel, that felt really good.\nKCon is another convention I want to try my best to get to this year. All being well, if things carry on going the way they look to be going, then this year is shaping up to be a good year.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve put a £4 reservation down on a Steam Deck, it\u0026rsquo;ll be useful to take down on business trips with me and give me the ability to play portable Monkey Island again. Miss that from the app store so much, wish Disney would reform Lucasarts and bring it all back. That would be fantastic.\nBook of Boba Fett has finished, that was good. Obi-Wan has a release date (45th anniversary of the original Star Wars release).\nAt the moment, things feel like they are going well, which is nice for a change. Fingers crossed it continues.\n","date":"12 Feb 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2022-02-12-2022-wait-what/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Happy new year I guess","type":"posts"},{"content":"Wha?\nEvery time I post a new blog post up, I start it off with \u0026lsquo;omg, I can\u0026rsquo;t believe its whatever date/time it is\u0026rsquo;\nYup, that\u0026rsquo;s me.\nThis time though, its been almost 4 months, that\u0026rsquo;s over a quarter of the year, we\u0026rsquo;re talking a third of the year - what gives?\nI haven\u0026rsquo;t really blogged at all since changing jobs at the end of August.\nIt has been busy!\nI\u0026rsquo;ve hardly had time to sit and gather my thoughts at all.\nToday I got rid of my old desk and set up the new desks in the MattCave. This allows me to be a little further away from the ultrawide and also allows me some space for things like the PiCade and an area I can use to build lego (of which there is now a significant backlog)\nI\u0026rsquo;ve gotten rid of the kitchen table that was in here for gaming because quite frankly it had hardly been used for any gaming. The setup now will allow for some smaller games to take place in here, with bigger ones happening downstairs or elsewhere.\nUnfortunately, due to the additional Kallax requirements, and because I haven\u0026rsquo;t really printed anything for months (I got so fed up of the filament woes and the printer just needing constant tinkering), I\u0026rsquo;ve unplugged the printer. It\u0026rsquo;s sat in the corner of the room until I figure out what I\u0026rsquo;m doing with it. I\u0026rsquo;ve taken the livestream away from the website, no point it being on there anymore.\nIf I end up finding somewhere else to plug it in and it makes a return, then I\u0026rsquo;ll re-add it. Not like it\u0026rsquo;s hard to re-add the page and the DIV tags for it.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve also hopefully got a little bit of space for VR. We\u0026rsquo;ll see. If I move the chair out of the way it should certainly be possible to play BeatSaber in here (something that hasn\u0026rsquo;t really happened since we got the dog because he has a habit of standing in front of you on the stairs at the best of times when I can see what\u0026rsquo;s going on)\n**Update - I tried out the VR and there\u0026rsquo;s a lot more room for it, yay!\nAnother busy week ahead at work but but then hopefully we should be starting to wind down into Christmas. Hopefully.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve got a decent 10 days off or so with the Christmas week and bank holidays so it should be a nice time to hopefully eat lots of food, see lots of friends and family, play some games and just figure out how the hell we\u0026rsquo;re in 2022 when I\u0026rsquo;m still processing 2019 (amirite?)\nI\u0026rsquo;ll leave it here for now, hopefully post up again in a few days. We\u0026rsquo;ll see\u0026hellip;.right?\n","date":"5 Dec 2021","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2021-12-05-byeprinter/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Bye printer!","type":"posts"},{"content":"Just a quick post test to check something is working out.\nFull post to follow at some point this weekend. Lots to talk about.\nHope everyone is keeping safe.\n","date":"10 Sep 2021","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2021-09-10-quicktest/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Quick test","type":"posts"},{"content":"I replaced my Macbook Pro battery for the third time today. It seems that when you order replacement batteries, they aren\u0026rsquo;t always that good.\nThe replacement battery from Ebay was better than the Ninjabatt one, but it still suffered from issues with the capacity dropping down to 6% out of the blue and then told me that the battery could only hold 94% of it\u0026rsquo;s factory designated charge.\nI contacted the seller on eBay and he sent me a replacement. I\u0026rsquo;ve put that in today so I\u0026rsquo;ll start to condition it later on and hopefully over the next few days, I\u0026rsquo;ll have as good a working 2013 Macbook Pro as I can.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s been a bit of a funny week evenings wise on the old engineering front. I\u0026rsquo;ve had nothing but problems with the 3D printer since changing the filament over to a new batch of the same brand/colour I\u0026rsquo;ve been using to print out my Zombicide 2nd Edition inserts, which I\u0026rsquo;m still no closer to having finished.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve been chopping and changing between Klipper and Marlin firmwares and I was having some issues with print quality so decided to replace the whole hot end assembly with a spare one that I had. Wasn\u0026rsquo;t too hard an installation but had really strange heater behaviour once I put it all back together, it kept cutting out due to safety protocols and it not heating/reheating/cooling as it expected.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s been extremely frustrating to the point I was almost ready to throw it in the bin and just buy a new one (if I could afford it). As it happens, I can\u0026rsquo;t really afford it so we\u0026rsquo;ll try and fix it. I\u0026rsquo;m hopeful that by this time tomorrow, the webcam will be streaming and I\u0026rsquo;ll be printing some more Zombicide inserts.\nOrdered a whole new assembly but the fan connectors aren\u0026rsquo;t quite right for one of the fans, so that\u0026rsquo;s going back. Ordered some new cartridge heaters and thermistors and will hopefully have that back together tonight when Amazon eventually deliver. Whenever that might be.\nI don\u0026rsquo;t know about anyone else but Amazon deliveries recently have left me wondering why I bother to pay for Prime. Aside from The Boys I\u0026rsquo;ve never really watched anything on Amazon Prime Video and now that they aren\u0026rsquo;t delivering until 7-9pm at night, the next day delivery is hardly worth it, especially if you\u0026rsquo;re wanting something to do something with that day.\nGetting a Day one pre-order delivery of a brand new console back in the day would mean a day off work and a day of playing brand new games. Nowadays you might as well not waste a day\u0026rsquo;s holiday and take the next day off instead.\nWill keep this one short as I\u0026rsquo;m in the middle of cooking a Sunday Dinner and meat thermometers are beeping at me to say things need checking.\n","date":"22 Aug 2021","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2021-08-2-repeat/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Repeating the same thing, but expecting a different result","type":"posts"},{"content":"I mentioned in my last post that I\u0026rsquo;d ordered a new battery for my aging Macbook Pro 2013 15\u0026quot; Retina.\nBefore I continue, I would just like to say that I do not recommend or advocate that you carry this particular piece of maintenance out, Apple are quite clear that the battery in these Macbook Pro models is not user serviceable. You should take your MacBook Pro to the nearest Apple Store and pay £199.99 for them to replace the battery for you with one of their OEM models.\nThat should cover me off from being sued.\nIf you decide to ignore the above, and replace your battery anyway, then proceed at your own risk, be careful and do not come running to me if you set yourself on fire. I strongly believe in the right to repair something that you buy and own, but you have to accept that you might well destroy what you\u0026rsquo;re attempting to fix if you either don\u0026rsquo;t take the proper precautions or the manufacturers really don\u0026rsquo;t want you to mess around inside there.\nMake sure you do your research, set aside some time where you can be fully focussed on the task at hand and make sure you\u0026rsquo;re confident that you know what you\u0026rsquo;re doing. Backup your data. Be careful. Don\u0026rsquo;t die.\nThere are many manufacturers selling battery replacements. Some on Ebay, some on Amazon. I had a look at it before and decided that I would give it a go with a company named NinjaBatt. They seemed to have pretty good reviews and prices seemed to be around the £80 mark, which seemed about right. Apple charge £200 but that obviously includes them swapping out said battery, which can be a little tricky if you don\u0026rsquo;t have the right tools or watch the right videos.\nThere are many videos on Youtube. Some are downright scary and walk you through disconnecting and removing every single component from the laptop and then finally removing the battery using adhesive remover and an ifixit kit. This kit is pretty handy to be honest, its got cards, scrapers, allsorts of tools to get into things and the all important adhesive remover which dissolves adhesive on contact. Other videos talk you through leaving everything in, using thread to effectively friction burn the adhesive away.\nAll in all, it depends on what model/year your MacBook pro is. The video I watched the touchpad wire went over the back of the battery and had to be removed and then reconnected. I bought some nylon thread but it snapped, so decided to wait for the ifixit kit I\u0026rsquo;d ordered.\nI started off by opening the back of the MacBook pro.\nAs there are no user serviceable parts inside, and the RAM is hard soldered/part of the logic board this is the first time I\u0026rsquo;ve had the back off. You can see the 1TB SSD drive to the left which was a huge deal in 2013 and if I remember rightly it cost an extra £850 :D\nIt is extremely dusty. Good job I bought some SprayDuster.\nThe battery is connected to a single port on the logic board, which can be easily detached.\nI gave it a good spraying of compressed air and off I went to the next stage.\nI didn\u0026rsquo;t get any photos of the adhesive remover going in but you get it in a little dripper bottle and you drip it around the edge of the battery cells and give it a moment to work through. Then you take one of the plastic ifixit cards and gently work your way under the cell, trying to lift it if you can.\nYou work your way around those first two cells on the left, then move over to work your way through the two that are on the right, they leave around some residue and sticky pads but there\u0026rsquo;s nothing down here aside from the magnets that tell the laptop the shell is closed when they connect to the magnets/whatever detects the magnets on the screen.\nOnce you\u0026rsquo;ve gottem either side out, you then work on the middle cells, which are helpfully glued to the underside of the touchpad. Be careful, and go in from the middle of these two cells rather than the edges, see the gap below.\nOnce you have them out, it\u0026rsquo;ll crumple into a big mess, as these things are connected at the bottom only. Be very careful, these are lithium-ion batteries and if you damage them or mishandle them, they could explode or set on fire.\nAfter its removed, you\u0026rsquo;re left with this, a big sticky mess. Whilst it isn\u0026rsquo;t necessary, its best practice to remove all of this gunk to make sure that the new battery is properly fitted. Because hopefully (and we\u0026rsquo;ll get to that in a bit) when you put the battery in, it\u0026rsquo;ll be in there for a fair few years and you\u0026rsquo;ll have to repeat this process (if you can still boot your 15 year old MacBook Pro) sometime in late 2028.\nIt takes quite a bit of work with the adhesive remover and the tools to pry up the edges of the stickers and then get the residue off.\nThe stuff that comes off them is a pain, it sticks to everything. Wear the rubber gloves provided.\nAfter a bit of work, you\u0026rsquo;re presented with a lovely clean MacBook Pro shell, ready to receive your brand new battery.\nNew battery lined up, adhesive protector removed and pressed down.\nCase reassembled, power adapter plugged in and an orange light to show its charging (that\u0026rsquo;s a good sign)\nBefore you power the Macbook Pro back on, you need to reset the SMC. Usually this is down by holding down the Shift, Control, and Option keys on the left hand side of the keyboard while simultaneously holding the power button. After 10 seconds, let go and you should see your charging cable change colour and then back again.\nIt also doesn\u0026rsquo;t hurt to reset your PRAM.\nTurn on your computer and immediately press Option, Command, P and R. You\u0026rsquo;ll hear the startup chime. Keep holding until you hear the startup chime for the second time.\nMake sure that you dispose of your old battery in line with the laws/requirements of the place that you live. These are dangerous and should not be put into the general waste.\nOnce you\u0026rsquo;re booted into OSX, download and have a look at Coconut Battery to see what\u0026rsquo;s going on.\nThere are a few guides for calibrating your battery - this is the one that I used. It\u0026rsquo;s important that you calibrate the battery properly.\nAll in all, not the hardest hardware swap out that I\u0026rsquo;ve done, and I\u0026rsquo;d be more than willing to do it again to save £150.\nThat said, I had some issues post installation.\nWhilst conditioning the battery, the charge seemed to be dropping down as expected. Then all of a sudden the battery warning/This Mac will go to sleep soon warning flashed up. The battery charge level had been around 68%, now it was reporting as 7%. I didn\u0026rsquo;t manage to get a screenshot of it happening. I had a search around and found many, many instances of this happening and not necessarily with NinjaBatt batteries. It seemed to happen with IFixIt batteries and others too. Either bad cells or something has happened somewhere in transit I guess.\nThe explanation seemed to be a dead/defective cell and the only real option was a replacement. I reached out to NinjaBatt who asked me to reset the SMC, check for OS updates and then asked me to come back to them. I tried that (again) and went back to them and told them that the discharging was still happening but it had gotten more out of it the second time but they told me to return via Amazon.\nI raised a request via Amazon but noted that I had to self-return rather than have them pick it up with Hermes, which is unusual. When I went to print off the postage labels, there was a warning that stated if the battery I was returning was defective or damaged, I needed to contact Amazon Support. So I opened up a chat, explained and they said they would refund to my original payment method and I could just dispose of the battery.\nI was going to order another one from Amazon but I had a look on eBay and found some genuine Apple replacement batteries, brand new and cheaper than the NinjaBatt one. I decided to give it a go and ordered one.\nDuring the week, I\u0026rsquo;ve been discharging and recharging the NinjaBatt battery, each day, its gotten slightly better at \u0026lsquo;holding charge\u0026rsquo; before dropping to 7% - yesterday it got to 23% before dropping, but then I still got another 45 minutes out of the battery before it shut itself down. So something wasn\u0026rsquo;t right, and whilst the laptop isn\u0026rsquo;t worth \u0026rsquo;that much\u0026rsquo; now, I still paid close to £3,000 for it in late 2013 so I\u0026rsquo;ll want to hang on to it for a while longer yet.\nThe new battery arrived today and I put it in during my lunch break.\nRemoving the NinaBatt battery was easier than removing the Apple one. I\u0026rsquo;m not sure if its because it had only been in there 5 days or whether or not the adhesive wasn\u0026rsquo;t as good, but I didn\u0026rsquo;t need to use adhesive remover to get the Ifixit tools under the cells and got them all out without too much bother - still left some stickers on the shell though which was a pain.\nI reset the SMC and the PRAM and the battery has charged. It\u0026rsquo;s just flashed to tell me that it\u0026rsquo;s fully charged so it looks like I can leave it plugged in for two more hours before I start to drain it. With any luck I\u0026rsquo;ll get to drain it properly this evening and leave it overnight to fully discharge, then plug it in tomorrow and we should be conditioned.\nI\u0026rsquo;d definitely do this again if I had to (and I guess I have had to) rather than pay £200 for Apple to do it, especially on a machine that generally looks to be going for less than £400 on eBay (but they might not have 1TB SSDs), you\u0026rsquo;re talking about spending half the value to get it working properly without a power lead again.\nIt was rated as advanced/expert repair level on some guide sites I\u0026rsquo;ve seen, I\u0026rsquo;d rate it probably medium, depending on your experience and skills.\n","date":"13 Aug 2021","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2021-08-13-lowbattery/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Low Battery!","type":"posts"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;ve managed to catch a breath this morning, in between (another) water change in the aquarium, updating the Raspberry Pis and waiting for the new 3D printer nozzles to arrive today.\nLets talk water changes. So. When I last had tropical fish (probably 15 years ago), I got a tank, left it for a few days, got some fish, cleaned it out when it got dirty, cleaned the filters every few weeks, all was great.\nI went down to the pet shop the weekend before Luke\u0026rsquo;s birthday, with the intention of buying him a £20 fish tank and a goldfish, maybe two.\nTurns out you\u0026rsquo;re not allowed to do that anymore, at least not unless you have a pond that you can transfer said goldfish into when they grow bigger, and bigger, and bigger and don\u0026rsquo;t fit into that Spongebob Squarepants plastic aquarium with the handy little viewing portal anymore.\nWhen I was little, you generally didn\u0026rsquo;t buy a goldfish, you \u0026lsquo;won\u0026rsquo; a goldfish from a fair. You had a plastic bowl tank, generally kept in your kitchen and when you cleaned the tank (with soap and water, no less), you\u0026rsquo;d stick the goldfish in a mug to keep it safe. They lived for years, and we were always told that goldfish would only ever grow to the size of the tank.\nThat\u0026rsquo;s a load of rubbish.\nWell, it isn\u0026rsquo;t, they will only grow to the size of the tank, on the outside, but their internal organs get too big and have no room, and they die after 2-3 years.\nThe average age of a goldfish is 10-15 years, some can live up to 30 years with the proper care.\nCrazy isn\u0026rsquo;t it?\nSo, goldfish were out.\nThere was a special offer on a tropical tank, £65 down from £95. Looked pretty nifty, a sizeable 40L which seemed pretty good. They\u0026rsquo;ve got this \u0026lsquo;points\u0026rsquo; system which basically gives you a dead easy way of seeing a tank capacity in points and then choosing fish that can fit inside that points total.\nThe 40L tank has a capacity of 20 points.\nTetras are 1 point each. Goldfish are 20 points each.\n40L for a little goldfish? mental.\nAnyway, we got the tank home, I talked to some friends who are big fish keepers and they talked to me about the nitrogen cycle, I ordered water testing kits and water conditioners and Seachem Prime and everything else.\nThe nitrogen cycle is where the fish produce ammonia through waste excreted through their gills, this ammonia is eaten by bacteria and nitrites are produced, which are then eaten by a different bacteria - nitrates which is then removed either by water changes or another type of bacteria, if you have the right filter media.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s been a right pain in the buttocks.\nLuke\u0026rsquo;s birthday was in May, we\u0026rsquo;re now in August and my tank still isn\u0026rsquo;t \u0026lsquo;cycled\u0026rsquo;. I\u0026rsquo;m definitely closer than I was, and I\u0026rsquo;ve pimped up an Interpet CF2 and created an awesome custom filter with the help of some handy videos on YouTube, added bacteria balls, done everything I need to, and we\u0026rsquo;re still not there.\nWe went away for a week to the caravan and I was worried about the ammonia, it was spiking to stupidly high levels within 24 hours of a 50% water change and you have to re-dose with Seachem Prime at least every 48 hours to detoxify the ammonia. If I wasn\u0026rsquo;t there to add prime, the fish would all probably die.\nI tried a few things, almost bought a £70 dosing pump from amazon to automatically dose with prime every 2 days, but decided not to and did a full 100% water change and gravel rinse too. Washed everything, got the levels down to 0, before I went away and everything was happy enough. Filters were rinsed in old tank water to get rid of the gunge but otherwise, everything was treated with prime to dechlorinate and what have you.\nWe returned after 7 days and I did a water test and this is what we had:\nThis is darker than the 8.0ppm, I don\u0026rsquo;t even know what colour this was.\nAll the fish (and shrimp) are present and correct, everyone seems happy, no evidence of gill burns or appetite loss, they are all eating properly and swimming around nicely.\nI dosed with prime, then started with water changes - did maybe 50% water changes daily for 3-4 days after and got the ammonia levels down to 0ppm again. We\u0026rsquo;re now in a position where I can leave it 48 hours between water changes and we\u0026rsquo;re just getting to about 0.25ppm of ammonia.\nStill 0 readings on Nitrite and Nitrate - but with me not going anywhere for the forseeable, at least I have the capacity to treat the water, change the water, keep an eye on the water daily. Which is all I need. It could well take another 6 weeks to cycle the tank, but I\u0026rsquo;m happy with the way it is right now, although I\u0026rsquo;ve had to buy another testing kit from Amazon as my testing kit is running low on the ammonia testing bottles.\nI did another 50% water change today and rinsed out the filter sponges again in the water I was taking out, the water was black. At least it shows the filter is working though to keep the water crystal clear.\nWas a little worried that the third shrimp had gone walkies, but he came out of hiding after a while and started to eat a shrimp ball. They\u0026rsquo;re fun to watch. Apologies for the focus on this one, they\u0026rsquo;re hard to capture whilst avoiding reflections from the glass and being able to get them in any sort of focus at all when they\u0026rsquo;re that close is a challenge.\nThese fish require more upkeep than the dog, the kids, anything else I\u0026rsquo;ve ever known.\nOur dog stayed with family whilst we were away - we felt he was a little too young to unleash on my mum and dads caravan this year, but we\u0026rsquo;ll take him next year for sure :)\nHe grew so much in that week we were away, we\u0026rsquo;ve come back and I struggle to pick him up now, it\u0026rsquo;s crazy how quickly they grow.\nHe had his first puppy groom a few days ago to start to get him used to being groomed and to clear the hair away from his eyes too.\nThe plan last week when I was off was to spend at least a day or so looking at some new tech that I\u0026rsquo;ll be using in the new role. Unfortunately, the 3G/4G signal was so bad, it made even browsing impossible. When we\u0026rsquo;re so reliant on streaming for media consumption and Internet Connectivity for pretty much anything work/hobby related, it presents a bit of a problem. When you\u0026rsquo;re only a few hundred meters from the edge of the East Coast of the UK, surrounded by nothing but fields, seagulls and the sea I guess you can\u0026rsquo;t expect much else. Well, I expect it to be at least as good as it was 2-3 years ago. Someone has broken something somewhere for sure.\nNow then, the 3D printer.\nI was finally in a position where I was printing solid for around 4 days, even overnight - I said in the last blog post didn\u0026rsquo;t I?\nAnyway, I keep trying to print these 9-10 hour prints and it\u0026rsquo;s stopping about 4 hours in. Looks like it\u0026rsquo;s probably retraction, I\u0026rsquo;m guessing the parameters on this different batch of filament are slightly different and it\u0026rsquo;s just getting mangled by the extruder gears. I\u0026rsquo;ve adjusted my retraction settings, I\u0026rsquo;m going to give them a go when the replacement nozzles arrive and probably run some retraction tests. I just wish there was some consistency with the Amazon deliveries. Some mornings they deliver at 8am, some days you can be lucky if you see them before 7pm, and other days it\u0026rsquo;s somewhere in the middle of the day.\nLooking at the Amazon delivery ETA, we\u0026rsquo;re looking at between 3:30 and 5:30pm.\nThese inserts that I\u0026rsquo;m printing for Zombicide 2nd edition are really, really good and ensure that everything fits into the three boxes you get with the main box, reboot box and figure box, doing away with the weird moulded plastic holders for the minis and creating little stands for them to sit in. You can find it here.\nHopefully it won\u0026rsquo;t be long today before the parts arrive and I can start tinkering with the printer again. We\u0026rsquo;ll see. Every time I get into the flow of using it, I get a few more weeks out of it and then it decides to need some maintenance. It\u0026rsquo;s probably still easier to work with than the fish though.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve bought a replacement battery for my 2013 Macbook Pro, it\u0026rsquo;s been telling me for probably a good 12 months now that it needs a service and I generally get less than an hour or so out of it when its not plugged in.\nTaking these things out does not look easy, they\u0026rsquo;re glued in and depending on your model, there can be allsorts of cables routed in, on and around your battery, so you have to be extremely careful. I\u0026rsquo;ve got some spray duster arriving today too as there\u0026rsquo;s some interesting dust inside the fans and vents. I\u0026rsquo;m waiting for an i-fixit git with adhesive remover and a variety of tools to assist before I decide how to tackle it. I\u0026rsquo;ll probably photograph it and blog about it too. I\u0026rsquo;ll have to put a massive disclaimer on there that says \u0026lsquo;Apple say do not do this, there is risk of fire, explosion and death, so don\u0026rsquo;t do it\u0026rsquo;. If its the difference between £200 for them to do it and £80 for me to do it then I\u0026rsquo;m willing to give it a shot.\nWorst case scenario, I\u0026rsquo;ll need a new Macbook Pro. Best case scenario, I\u0026rsquo;ll have a laptop I can use without it being plugged in again :D\n","date":"7 Aug 2021","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2021-08-07-lifeupdate/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Another blog post, just 2 days after the last one!","type":"posts"},{"content":"Busy is not even the word. Busy is in there somewhere, along with \u0026lsquo;OH MY GOSH, WHY AM I SO\u0026hellip;.\u0026rsquo;.\nThings are crazy. They\u0026rsquo;re crazy at home, they\u0026rsquo;re crazy at work. I\u0026rsquo;m about to enter the final three weeks of a three month notice and it has simply flown by, I\u0026rsquo;ve never known anything like it. Time feels like its accelerating and it just doesn\u0026rsquo;t slow down.\nWhich as a concept is strange, I know I\u0026rsquo;ve spoken about time perception before - and there are still days where depending on what I\u0026rsquo;m doing and what I get done, the day or at least the morning can seem to stretch out forever. If I\u0026rsquo;m sat in front of the keyboard coding or doing something that requires a fair bit of concentration, time seems to skip through in 15 min intervals, if not longer. I\u0026rsquo;ve seen this especially when working on an issue that needs some in depth troubleshooting. It\u0026rsquo;s crazy.\nWe\u0026rsquo;re already a few weeks into the kids 6 weeks holiday, I was away last week and now we\u0026rsquo;re about to hit Friday of the week after that. My mum and dad always told me that time speeds up as you get older, I never really believed them. They used to tell me that school was the best days of my life - I still don\u0026rsquo;t agree with them there - I had more time for friends, and I had a lot more time for gaming (even with homework), but the bullies and other issues I had growing up, not so much fun. Plus not being able to buy random shiny things.\nThe dog has grown so much in the last few weeks, he\u0026rsquo;s huge now. The fish I needed to do a 100% water change and a gravel wash before we went away to try to get to grips with the ammonia spike. I\u0026rsquo;m sick of testing water now but I think we\u0026rsquo;re actually making some headway with the Nitrogen cycle finally and I might even be in a position to move away from daily testing and move to weekly testing in the next few weeks. I\u0026rsquo;ve bought a second API water testing kit just in case though as I\u0026rsquo;ve been going through the ammonia tests like you would not believe.\nEveryone is still in the tank and seems happy. We lost a shrimp but still have three. Not sure what happened to the fourth. Just found him all pink, attached to the plant. Once things are definitely sorted I\u0026rsquo;ll be getting another 4-5 shrimp as they are great fun to watch and do a good job with cleaning up the tank.\nManaged a few games last week and finally managed to get Zombicide 2nd Edition and New York Zoo to the table. I\u0026rsquo;m in the middle of printing a bunch of inserts for Zombicide, I\u0026rsquo;ve had to get a couple more rolls of filament in so that I don\u0026rsquo;t have a mismatch of colours and I think since the last blog post I had the printer in bits again because something broke and at one point I was close to throwing it out of the window (again).\nI had to take it apart again tonight and chop some of the pipe away, and I lost yet another nozzle. The new filament snapped at the extruder. Not entirely sure why - its a brand new roll, fresh out of the bag and it was packed with silica gel. I guess its probably a different batch to the one I got in May. Will see how it goes.\nI\u0026rsquo;d just gotten into a position post mobo/firmware upgrade where I was happy leaving the printer on overnight too, some of these pieces for Zombicide are 8-9 hours each so printing more than one a day without using it overnight is a pain. Means we\u0026rsquo;re probably looking at next week for completion now.\nStill haven\u0026rsquo;t managed to get to a games night, always something that ends up cropping up. I\u0026rsquo;m sure I\u0026rsquo;ll get there eventually though. We\u0026rsquo;ll see. Hopefully there are a few things in the pipeline. More games afoot with any luck.\nGoing to leave it there with a view to posting again in the next few days, but we all know it\u0026rsquo;ll probably end up being September.\n","date":"5 Aug 2021","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2021-08-05-time/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Every time I look up from the keyboard, another month has passed.....","type":"posts"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;ve just spent the last 10 minutes, updating Hugo, trying to figure out what the heck is wrong with my Visual Studio Code and why I couldn\u0026rsquo;t see this new blog post in the local render.\nTurns out it\u0026rsquo;s not the 11th of July. That\u0026rsquo;s in the future, that\u0026rsquo;s tomorrow.\nStupid date.\nStill, that\u0026rsquo;s good I\u0026rsquo;ve gained a day. At least it\u0026rsquo;s not Sunday\u0026hellip;.yet.\nI am still alive, promise. I\u0026rsquo;ve just been extraordinarily busy. Like stupidly so.\nI\u0026rsquo;m in the process of working through my notice in my old role, trying to sort out handover and whatnot, whilst also trying to learn some of the new tech I\u0026rsquo;ll be working with in the new job Found this today, it\u0026rsquo;s pretty cool - some online, in browser K8s labs. I also bagged myself a t-shirt from JFrog for some docker bits and pieces through Artifactory, so this week in particular has been a very good week for new technology. I like t-shirts, especially when they are free.\nWe got some tropical fish (that\u0026rsquo;s a story in itself), we got a puppy (everyone should have a dog, they\u0026rsquo;re amazing things). Things have been crazy busy at home because of this and the kids still need attention too and want to play Fortnite with me and what have you. Phew. I need more time. Still, I\u0026rsquo;ve started to get up at 5-6am now because of the dog so I guess I kinda have an extra couple of hours in the day now. So that\u0026rsquo;s good.\nYou might have noticed that the 3D printer has been offline recently.\nYou might have also noticed, if you were anywhere near my website last weekend that I was having a bit of a play with the fish tank and the raspi camera to see if there was any easy way to make a fishy webcam. There isn\u0026rsquo;t really a solution for a fish tank based camera as such. I think I saw one that was built into a rock, and there was some suggestion of just using a go pro for it, but there\u0026rsquo;s no real option if you want to set up a fish tank. Glare is an issue, obviously if you have the camera outside of the glass. Water is the other fairly large problem if you have it on the inside of the glass. And poop, obviously. Those fish definitely like to poop.\nSpeaking of the puppy, here is an obligatory photo:\nThis little guy is amazing. Love him to bits, aside from when he\u0026rsquo;s overtired and he bites down really hard when we\u0026rsquo;re playing. That\u0026rsquo;s not so great.\nHe\u0026rsquo;s sleeping through nearly all night now, going to try him a little longer tomorrow and if that\u0026rsquo;s successful then it looks like we\u0026rsquo;ll be in a position where he can go from 10:30pm to 6am without needing to get up for the toilet. That\u0026rsquo;s pretty much a full night (he did 5am today, and I had to wake him up). Definitely a faster process with a puppy than a baby :D\nI can\u0026rsquo;t believe that we\u0026rsquo;re a third of the way through another month already. The passage of time is still going really quickly and I never feel like I have enough of it. Hopefully once things start to calm back down a little bit.\n3D printer is back on today. You\u0026rsquo;ll see from the recently played board games that we had another crack at Scooby Doo, Betrayal at Mystery Mansion - a kid friendly cut down version of Betrayal at House on the Hill. It has maybe 12 different types of tokens and they\u0026rsquo;re all in a big bag, all messed up and its a pain to sort out. Someone has kindly designed and shared a token organiser that fits in the box on Thingiverse and someone else has made some pretty nifty character card holder and stat counter/sliders for them that are much better than the stock sliders that just totally wreck the cards, so that\u0026rsquo;s the printer tied up for this weekend.\nI need to print out some Zombicide Season 2 organisers too. But there\u0026rsquo;s not much around for the minatures as yet, which is a bit of a pain.\nI got a folded space organiser for Nemesis the other week, that\u0026rsquo;s fantastic, I love folded space, so lightweight and fun to build and they\u0026rsquo;re held together with PVA glue.\nSo many games on the pile of shame, now that things are opening up again and there\u0026rsquo;s a local club, I might even manage to get out for a game or two at some point in the next few weeks. We\u0026rsquo;ll see. Need to get used to being around people again. That\u0026rsquo;s always fun.\nI\u0026rsquo;ll leave it at that for now, make sure that the thing builds on the new version of Hugo and that everything is still working as expected. Who knows, I might end up posting again tomorrow or next week. We\u0026rsquo;ll see if we can get some consistency back in place.\n","date":"10 Jul 2021","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2021-07-10-kube/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"So it's July now..","type":"posts"},{"content":"Good afternoon evening!!\nI started writing this blog post nearly a week ago, well, maybe Sunday last week - either way it\u0026rsquo;s been 5 days or so and a lot of it doesn\u0026rsquo;t make sense anymore and has mostly been rewritten.\nBoth this week and last week have been an action packed thriller with excitement, sadness, ups, downs, highs, lows and a fair few bits in between. That\u0026rsquo;s why the amount of blog posts reduced from one every day or so to pretty much radio silence for two weeks.\nI\u0026rsquo;ll talk about it over the next few weeks and months no doubt. For now, I\u0026rsquo;ll leave you in suspense. There\u0026rsquo;s an awful lot going on though, I\u0026rsquo;ve had to make a few changes and things are improving, and I\u0026rsquo;m not dead - so that\u0026rsquo;s a bonus, right?\nThe printer is printing, and working. After my last post I tightened up all of the wheels and it stopped extruding, took me a day or two to get my Z-Offset back to the right place (I have even more scratches on the glass bed) but I finally got the 15 or so Dinogenics trays into the box and organised it all - it\u0026rsquo;s fantastic! Everything fits into the main box and its a lovely, lovely well thought out insert.\nI might have gone through another nozzle too, I can\u0026rsquo;t remember.\nDefinitely got another blister (they\u0026rsquo;ve almost all healed now).\nI also increased the resolution of the camera, so the stream should be clearer now. I noticed a little lag earlier in the week when printing something but it looks to be okay right now and is streaming smoothly.\nFeel a bit sharper in my head, which is good. I\u0026rsquo;ve had a bit of brain fog for maybe a month, but it\u0026rsquo;s hard to say. It\u0026rsquo;s cleared up now and I\u0026rsquo;ve had a laser focussed week at work, gotten through shedloads of things, worked many hours, solved many problems and come to the rescue of many people requiring assistance.\nI\u0026rsquo;m pretty worn out. I\u0026rsquo;m glad its the weekend.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve got a few new board games arriving in the next few days from Kickstarters. There\u0026rsquo;s the Rival Networks, a two player version of the networks game which is very fun - the designer sent out an update a little while ago with a link to a 3D printable insert so that\u0026rsquo;s going to be printing on the printer tomorrow and Sunday (feel free to watch).\nThere\u0026rsquo;s the Terraforming Mars big box arriving on Monday which is great news because my original box with all the expansions inside is straining like mad and is struggling. There\u0026rsquo;s actual metal cubes in with it too that I upgraded to - the components for Terraforming Mars were always called out for being a low quality. The original cubes chipped, the player \u0026lsquo;boards\u0026rsquo; were flimsy card.\nMost of these issues have been sorted and I can\u0026rsquo;t wait for a properly designed storage solution to organise everything away into. That\u0026rsquo;ll be Monday sorted.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve still not started on Ecto-1 or the Razor Crest lego sets yet. I should probably get around to doing that at some point. We\u0026rsquo;ll see if things start to calm down a little and I\u0026rsquo;ve got some more mental capacity for it.\nIn a month or so when the boat gets in and clears customs I\u0026rsquo;ll be receiving the first wave of Nemesis, a survival horror game that\u0026rsquo;s meant to be as close to an Aliens game you can get without the IP rights, though there has since been an Aliens game released. I\u0026rsquo;m not sure how that compares.\nIs it payday yet? I need to buy some more stuff for printer upgrades :D Only joking, I\u0026rsquo;m not sure what I really need to buy at the moment. PC has upgraded RAM so we\u0026rsquo;re running 32GB rather than 16GB as it was just a little under what I needed\u0026hellip;.oh that reminds me.\nI ran the Gaming Rig through the Performance Test passmark system. I\u0026rsquo;ll buy this when I get paid because the evaluation is cool and its interesting to see how drivers and overclocking settings affect the PC.\nSo yeah.\nNot sure what the weekend holds, probably more fun, might go get the youngest a goldfish. We\u0026rsquo;ll see.\nI\u0026rsquo;ll post again later this weekend or early next week.\n","date":"14 May 2021","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2021-05-14-life/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"I started writing this nearly a week ago","type":"posts"},{"content":"So.\nIn yesterday\u0026rsquo;s update I said how I\u0026rsquo;d managed to get everything fixed and all was working, or so I thought.\nThat didn\u0026rsquo;t last very long.\nI started having some issues with extrusion. The bed wasn\u0026rsquo;t level and the Z-offset was dragging the print.\nI was also getting strange stoppages where the print would start the brim, do a line then lock up.\nThere were a few weird timeout issues too.\nWe\u0026rsquo;d changed that much in the firmware that I really didn\u0026rsquo;t know where or how to start.\nDesperate to get back to some level of known good configuration, I went back to the firmware from Wednesday before any of the changes.\nI was getting some weird filament feed behaviour still so I had one last ditch attempt at re-connecting the filament feed.\nI took the assembly apart (again), and put it together in this order:\nMake sure you heat up to printing temperature\nChopped the end off the pipe.\nPushed the old pipe through to get rid of all of the gunk.\nNew nozzle (again), screwed in all the way.\nPneumatic fixture on the hot end.\nThen I connected the pipe, pushed down until it stopped, then pushed down some more.\nLoosened the nozzle just a touch, pushed the tube down again and re-tightened.\nAll seemed okay.\nI was looking at bed levelling and trying to get the bed as level as I could, it was printing some patterns, looked okay in parts and wasn\u0026rsquo;t right in others.\nThen it just stopped.\nNo more filament.\nI couldn\u0026rsquo;t figure it out.\nThen I tried to manually push some through and it came through just fine.\nI looked at the extruder and saw that the gear had slipped down the shaft. Balls.\nI had to take the entire extruder assembly apart, used a screwdriver to move the gear up so that I could get to the allan keys (it was still fairly tight), then I tightened the little allan screws on the gear tighter than any allan screws should be. It\u0026rsquo;s not going to move now.\nI got all that sorted, printed a cube and all looked okay.\nI started the tray again:\nSee those bobbles there? that\u0026rsquo;s over extrusion. A lot of over extrusion.\nI set the extrusion steps in the printer using M92 and tried to bring it down from 101.20 to 96. Had the same sort of bobbling, but not as much.\nI thought I\u0026rsquo;d taken it down to 93 but it didn\u0026rsquo;t stick (I didn\u0026rsquo;t know this at the time), I got a similar print so went down to 90.\nThat was too much.\nThis is under extrusion, and maybe a wrongly set Z Offset too.\nI set it at 93, and it looked pretty much perfect.\nKevin gave me a link to a Prusa Knowledgebase Article and it had an STL to print a cube, using some vase settings.\nI printed it after adjusting a few settings around fans for the layers and ended up with this:\nThe cube was strong, you can hardly see the lines between layers and it looked fantastic.\nI decided to try and print the tray again.\nI had a couple of issues with adhesion so 3D-lacc\u0026rsquo;d up the bed and it is printing again now.\nIt is around 2 hours into the print with 4 hours 40 to go.\nThis is where we are right now.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s printing and it looks good, it\u0026rsquo;ll be interesting to see what the final print looks like, I\u0026rsquo;ve never managed to get this tray to print (and I\u0026rsquo;ve had maybe 8 attempts at it now in the last week)\nI\u0026rsquo;ve also adjusted the focus on the RasPi cam so the image on the stream should look a little sharper, with any luck :D\nObviously I don\u0026rsquo;t have linear advanced enabled at the moment. I don\u0026rsquo;t have the new stepper drivers in play in the firmware. I don\u0026rsquo;t have any of the additional settings in that Kevin is currently running.\nWhat I do have (hopefully) is a baseline working printer, with upgraded parts. There\u0026rsquo;s going to be no physical changes for a little while now and everything should be where it needs to be. There\u0026rsquo;s no feed stuttering, extrusion is where it needs to be.\nI definitely need to bake that extrusion setting into the firmware - unless I\u0026rsquo;m going to be enabling the extra features (probably will be) and I need to double the extrusion rate.\nI still can\u0026rsquo;t get over how quiet the printer is.\nIn terms of where it is at the moment, it\u0026rsquo;s great. I know I can get more out of it so I will be playing around with the firmware again (after taking a hard, hard copy of the current files for a backup, and maybe a backup of a backup), those stoppages/random hangs are troubling though.\nNo mention of any undervolt messages in /var/log/messages so I don\u0026rsquo;t think its a power issue to the RasPi.\nPrinter hasn\u0026rsquo;t missed a beat since I rolled back. We\u0026rsquo;ll see how things go. I\u0026rsquo;ll probably enable one or two things at a time, do some test prints and go from there and try and figure out why I\u0026rsquo;m having problems and Kevin isn\u0026rsquo;t.\nOne of the good things about all of this is that my c# skills are definitely improving. I don\u0026rsquo;t think I\u0026rsquo;ve looked at it properly since I was in 6th form. Back then it looked like nonsense. Now it looks like code, I can read it and I can tell you exactly what it\u0026rsquo;s doing and where.\nClever that. I still don\u0026rsquo;t like the fact it uses a # the way it does.\n\u0026lsquo;# no comment :D\u0026rsquo;\n","date":"2 May 2021","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2021-05-02-levels/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Levelling, extrusion and Z-Offset manipulation","type":"posts"},{"content":"One of my \u0026lsquo;golden rules\u0026rsquo; pretty much wherever I\u0026rsquo;ve worked is that we never release to production on a Friday afternoon.\nThere\u0026rsquo;s a few good reasons for this.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s Friday - quite often, more end customers will use your platform(s) at the weekend. There\u0026rsquo;s generally less support staff around on a weekend. Any issues may not come to light until Saturday It\u0026rsquo;s just a bad idea. Don\u0026rsquo;t do it. Nope, not even for that reason you think is a good idea. Wait till next week ;) So, ignoring all my own advice, I made several changes to the printer after work yesterday, on a Friday.\nGranted there\u0026rsquo;s only me using the printer, and I\u0026rsquo;m responsible for anything that I break, but still - making changes on a Friday evening might not have been the best course of action now that I think about it in hindsight.\nI replaced the stock extruder with a lovely metal one, new gears and all the gubbins and also cleaned out the motor of filament I guess you could say dust, but I think residue is more apt.\nI put on a new tube between the hot end and extruder, this is meant to be much better than the stock tubing.\nI replaced the nozzle, since we were replacing all of the things.\nI replaced the bed with a brand new shiny one without any marks, residue, scratches or anything else.\nAnd of course I made ALL the changes in the firmware after Kevin\u0026rsquo;s adventures in getting the Linear Advance and everything else working (he\u0026rsquo;s a good egg).\nI think that\u0026rsquo;s all the changes I made. Felt like a lot yesterday. Think there were maybe 20 lines of code change, which is a fair bit.\nDecided to try and print a calibration cube.\nAfter replacing the nozzle with a new nozzle from an Amazon delivery from a different manufacturer to the existing nozzles.\nAnd I didn\u0026rsquo;t do the Z-Offset before doing so.\nDRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR\nThat sound is not very pleasant. That is the sound of your brand new nozzle, grinding against your brand new glass bed.\nSo, I stopped it. I felt very sorry for myself at having something so shiny and new and perfect and ruining it with the first use. It\u0026rsquo;s amazing how many times I\u0026rsquo;ve had similar things happen throughout my life - not necessarily with the first use, but I\u0026rsquo;m sure you\u0026rsquo;re familiar with that sinking feeling you get.\nsigh\nOh well, it\u0026rsquo;s fine, lets move on.\nI\u0026rsquo;d also managed to somehow bend the BL-Touch sensor. So I had to put that back where it was.\nSorted all that, and I started to print a cube again.\nHalfway through the print, there was a knocking noise, and it had stopped extruding. The filament wasn\u0026rsquo;t feeding through and seemed to be getting stuck. This wasn\u0026rsquo;t good.\nSpent an hour or so messing around with different things and loosened the screw holding the spring on the arm that held the gear in place on the new extruder and that seemed to fix it for the most part.\nI\u0026rsquo;d also ended up taking the tube out, resitting it, putting the nozzle back in, changing the nozzle (I went through four nozzles) and trying to get it into a position where it would print a cube.\nKevin also suggested I feed through the old tube and push it through (whilst the hot end was 210 degrees C) to get out any old filament from the heating block.\nThere was a load of it! The end of this tube was empty to before I pushed it through and it got this massive lump of filament out of there, it was a solid outer blue with allsorts of colours inside it.\nI kept having issues, I lopped the bottom of the tube off, made sure it was flush, pushed it all the way through, pulled it back a bit, then attached (another) nozzle and tried again.\nFinally, I got a cube out of it.\nIt was a pretty decent cube too, with nicely defined edges and definition. It was a good cube.\nI turned off the printer and I went to bed. Ready to start a \u0026lsquo;proper\u0026rsquo; print this morning.\nThe first few times I tried to start printing I ended up with communication timeouts halfway through the brim print and it just stopped. Was weird. Swapped USB ports on the raspi and all seems okay now.\nSo I started the tray. A little while in, the print just lifted straight off the bed. It did this a couple of times, I re-did the Z-Offset and tried again and got the same.\nDecided to use some 3D-Lac and tried again.\nStuck fine this time but I was getting some really weird over-extrusion on the middle of the layer. Randomly.\nI got my old firmware files (pre kevin changes) and built them in VS Code ready for deployment, I was looking to get back to that last known working configuration.\nI stopped it, raised the Z-Axis a fair way and had a look at the underside of the hot block.\nThere looked to be filament coming out from underneath the nozzle.\nDamn.\nSo, heated the hot end to 210 again, took off the tube and the hot end connector. I burned my thumb.\nTook the nozzle off, it was full of filament. I burned my finger.\nI removed the tube completely. I burned another finger.\nGot the old tube, again and put it through the hot end and pulled out yet more filament that had gotten stuck this morning. I burned my thumb in a different place.\nScrewed the pneumatic end back into the heatsink, got yet another 0.4mm nozzle (I think I\u0026rsquo;ve used 6 inside 18 hours or so), connected that properly and then got the new tube and pushed that into the hot block until it stopped. I unscrewed the nozzle just a touch, pushed down on the tube some more then re-tightened the nozzle.\nDid a cube, it came out perfectly, no problems with extrusion, no problems with filament feed, it all looked food.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s now printing the tray, looks like the first layer had a little issue with either under extrusion or adhesion but the second layer is looking okay.\nGosh it\u0026rsquo;s really dusty under there isn\u0026rsquo;t it? I\u0026rsquo;d best clean that up after this print has finished.\nWe\u0026rsquo;ll see how it goes.\nBefore all these changes I\u0026rsquo;ve tried to print this tray twice.\nIt gets about halfway round and then \u0026lsquo;something\u0026rsquo; happens, either with extrusion or with the thickness of the walls but it\u0026rsquo;s all brittle. This is the last of the trays I need to print for Dinogenics, and I\u0026rsquo;ve gone through sooooooo much filament with these issues this last few days. Hopefully it\u0026rsquo;ll be worth it.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve learned a lot about the make up of the printer. I guess I kinda thought of the hot end and the whole mechanism of the way the filament gets to the nozzle as some sort of magic box. In effect, it\u0026rsquo;s actually a tube, with filament in it that gets pushed through a hot piece of metal which is heated to the temperature you set which then melts it and the pressure forces it down through the nozzle, at which point it extrudes.\nYou can manually force this by releasing the spring loaded switch and forcing filament through. It\u0026rsquo;s funny how your brain invents these ideas about what something is doing and the actual reality ends up being that much simpler. Hmmm. Wonder if that\u0026rsquo;s just me.\nObviously you can follow the progress of the tray (and whatever else happens to be printing on the home page of this website. If the printer is online, you\u0026rsquo;ll see a live feed. Otherwise you\u0026rsquo;ll see a placeholder image.)\nSo I probably need to buy another set of 0.4mm nozzles in the not too distant future and I need to get a week or so of stability with the printer. It\u0026rsquo;s going to be a little while before I\u0026rsquo;m confident enough to leave it running either overnight or whilst we\u0026rsquo;re out of the house too.\nJust noticed that the nozzle looks to be leaving a few \u0026lsquo;dirty\u0026rsquo; marks on the print, thought it was that you could see the bed through the tray but I\u0026rsquo;ve peeled off the print and its definitely from the nozzle. Looks like the Z-Offset might have been a tad too low, adjusted it mid print to a level I\u0026rsquo;m happy with and have set it off again.\nThe good news is that mark the nozzle left yesterday on that first print looks to be coming away.\nI guess glass beats brass.\n","date":"1 May 2021","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2021-05-01-blisters/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Never, ever make changes on a Friday","type":"posts"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;ve been using the 3D printer quite a bit this week. I\u0026rsquo;ve still not finished the Dinogenics stuff yet, just a couple more things to finish and then I\u0026rsquo;ll be able to rearrange all of the dino meeples into their own little containers. Fun eh?\nThe only problem is, the stepper drivers are EXTREMELY loud, whilst this doesn\u0026rsquo;t bother me too much if I\u0026rsquo;m listening to music on my noise cancelling headphones, it can cause problems on meetings, though the noise cancellation on Teams is pretty good, it sounds like it still gets through from time to time.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s payday today, which means I got hold of my spending money that I can blow on pretty much whatever I like.\nGenerally speaking, it\u0026rsquo;s board games, but there\u0026rsquo;s not that much I want to buy at the moment (I\u0026rsquo;ve not been looking), and I\u0026rsquo;ve got a couple of Kickstarters inbound in the next few weeks anyways.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve had my eye on the updated motherboard for the Creality Series Printer. Apparently it was supposed to be pretty much plug and play. The ports/sockets all looked to be the same, but it was promised that the WHIRRRRRRRRRR BERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR WHRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR NERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR noises would go away.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s a video of what I mean.\nMy friend Kevin and I have been on sort of a 3D printing adventure for quite a few months. We have the same machine and when I pulled the trigger on the board with same day delivery, Kevin did the same. Kevin updated the firmware on his original board a long time before me and has spent months and months calibrating, testing and figuring out how to get the best out of his printer.\nThe race was on. First to print, first to win! or something.\nI took the opportunity to activate the arc welding settings on the printer firmware that I neglected last time and also enabled linear advance at Kevin\u0026rsquo;s recommendation.\nKevin got his board first, and started installation first.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s the new board:\nAnd here\u0026rsquo;s the Link to buy it from Amazon - it\u0026rsquo;s an affiliate link\nSo the actual swap out was fairly easy, that is if you\u0026rsquo;ve done anything with circuit boards and connectors. No jumpers or anything to speak off, mainly connectors and a couple of wires that needed to be screwed into a block.\nIt was very reminiscent of any work I\u0026rsquo;ve been doing with the PiCades or X-Controller stuff. Most of it is fairly plug and play.\nAll the connectors and wires that were on the original board all seemed to have a place to go on the new board:\nBeing (overly) confident in my abilities (and tempting fate), I obviously screwed everything back together on the bottom of the case (8 screws, if I remember correctly),took it back upstairs and plugged it in.\nI powered on the switch at the socket\u0026hellip;..and nothing happened.\nThen I remembered I\u0026rsquo;d turned it off at the machine switch. So turned that on and it sprung into life!\nI got power to the screen, I was fully expecting it to be empty as the stock board firmware doesn\u0026rsquo;t carry a config file for the screen.\nThe BLTouch wasn\u0026rsquo;t lit up.\nDamn, that\u0026rsquo;s not good.\nI took the screws out, had a look and realised that the cable for the BL Touch had hidden itself under the board. Plugged it into where it was meant to go and left the bottom off, just in case.\nI plugged it into the PC, flashed it with the newly compiled firmware, all good. Did a power cycle and we were good to go.\nSet it to auto home and it was near enough silent. This is INSANE.\nAnd after:\nWho would have thought that a motherboard could make such a big difference in the way that the motors are driven? It\u0026rsquo;s absolutely insane.\nI did some temperature stuff to optimise the settings for the temperature of the hot end, the graph in Octoprint looked very fun (see the 10 peak things here).\nThe other few peaks you can see there were some test prints.\nAnyway, that was about 3 hours ago.\nWe\u0026rsquo;ve spent three hours diagnosing why the extruder motor stopped working after it printed the brim/initial release of filament. Finally got there - the fix for Kevin was to remove the G90 code from his machine settings in the slicer. The fix for me was to remove the linear advance from the firmware and reflash, and then sort out my Z-Offset because it wasn\u0026rsquo;t quite right. I\u0026rsquo;m just about finished printing a calibration cube now.\nIt was good that we both experienced the same issue and could work together to try to find the fix for it - initial thoughts were obviously Argh! we\u0026rsquo;ve got a board that\u0026rsquo;s not compatible or something has blown up.\nWas a strange one to diagnose and troubleshoot though because obviously the extruder works initially then when it starts to do the print \u0026lsquo;proper\u0026rsquo; the gears just stop turning.\nJust as well we sorted it out because I\u0026rsquo;ve got an extruder upgrade coming tomorrow that I\u0026rsquo;ll need to fit. Shouldn\u0026rsquo;t be as much of a chore as this was, and at least it\u0026rsquo;s all surface work on the machine and I don\u0026rsquo;t have to mess around with the motherboard and wires. I will need to do some work on replacing the tubing though to make sure I get that right.\nI still can\u0026rsquo;t get over how quiet it is.\nWell, aside from the fans. I need to sort out the fans. Stop them running quite so noisy. We\u0026rsquo;ll see. It\u0026rsquo;s already a massive leap forward. The only other sound I can hear is the filament spool moving, which is also weird. :D\nAs for who won the race, I was the first to print, well, the first to start a print. Then we both had the issue, and Kevin fixed his issue and started printing first.\nI mean, my printer laid down the first line of filament, but Kevin was the first to get a print going properly.\nWe\u0026rsquo;ll call it a draw, though Kevin\u0026rsquo;s board arrived an hour earlier than mine and we both had glue to contend with on the old board/cables.\nI can see this firmware flashing being a fairly regular thing, though it depends on how often the Marlin contributors put together a new release - the last proper full release was October 2020.\nWe are still living in strange times though.\nWas a fun way to spend an evening, with further delving into c#. Which is such an odd language. # doesn\u0026rsquo;t mean single line comment as with most modern languages, it does use // though, but # is used to actually define/enable/do things, which I find relatively jarring being used to bash, python, YAML and HCL (other languages are available).\nI still can\u0026rsquo;t get over how quiet this printer is.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s just finished. The only reason I know that is because the fans have shut down.\nApologies for the oil on my fingers, I ended up touching the rail on the printer that was covered in oil.\nCube came out pretty well - the bottom is a little messed up because I had to fiddle with the Z-Offset at the start of the print to get it perfect.\nAside from the bottom, this is probably one of the best cubes I\u0026rsquo;ve printed.\nVery good.\nGood evening\u0026rsquo;s work :D\n","date":"28 Apr 2021","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2021-04-28-printer-upgrade/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Payday! and impulse 3D printer mainboard upgrades","type":"posts"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;m sure that everyone has seen the memes that ask what if oxygen is toxic and it just takes 80-100 years (if you\u0026rsquo;re lucky) to kill you, or if the trees are really using us and it\u0026rsquo;s not us using them. Anyway, that was an attempt at a funny, relevant title and description. I don\u0026rsquo;t really buy into conspiracy theories. I might buy an axe though if they keep it up :D (only joking, I like the trees, they provide shade, and oxygen)\nI didn\u0026rsquo;t manage to mess with the firmware of the 3D printer this weekend, I spent the majority of Saturday laying on the sofa with my eyes closed.\nI thought it was too much monitor staring (is there such a thing?) my eyes hadn\u0026rsquo;t been right all week. Dry and not really itchy, but they weren\u0026rsquo;t right and I didn\u0026rsquo;t feel right in myself either.\nI grabbed some eye drops and they helped a little, but checked the pollen count and saw that the pollen count at home was quite high for tree pollen. Our garden has 7-8 trees in it, never had that to deal with before so it\u0026rsquo;s quite possibly that.\nI grabbed an eye mask, some antihistamines and more eye drops and dug out the Vax air purifiers we bought for the kids room and our room a few years ago because both my eldest and my wife suffer with hay fever later in the season and I\u0026rsquo;ve got that running in the office today.\nIt seems to have made a big difference.\nYesterday I spent most of the day in the kitchen. I prepped the veg for dinner and made up the yorkshire pudding mixture.\nThen I played board games with Harry for quite a while. That was nice, we haven\u0026rsquo;t played games for quite a while. I need to nip to Ikea at some point to go and grab a desk to get the 2nd pc out of my office and in to his bedroom :D\nFilament is due for delivery in the next few hours, so the printer is printing stuff again and hopefully I\u0026rsquo;ll get the dinogenics inserts printed this week and I can move onto something else.\nSpeaking of the 3D printer, the RasPi it\u0026rsquo;s plugged into never seems to bring up HAProxy cleanly, I need to have a look at that to see if there\u0026rsquo;s some kind of race condition there that I can fix. It\u0026rsquo;s streaming to the website now anyways.\nThe roast dinner was awesome by the way, here\u0026rsquo;s a photo of the Yorkshire Puddings. See my recipe blog post on the method/ingredients on how to make that one.\n","date":"26 Apr 2021","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2021-04-26-hayfever/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"MY EYES!","type":"posts"},{"content":"","date":"26 Apr 2021","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/categories/personal/","section":"Categories","summary":"","title":"Personal","type":"categories"},{"content":"","date":"26 Apr 2021","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/personal/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Personal","type":"tags"},{"content":"Following on from my 3D printing firmware escapades, the printer is still working (quite nicely) and it hasn\u0026rsquo;t burnt the house down (bonus) though I am still a little wary of leaving it on overnight.\nI\u0026rsquo;m pretty much at the end of my filament run, with my failed giant Ahsoka bust and the various other bits and pieces I\u0026rsquo;d printed, I Was down to my last half roll of 3DQF aqua PLA. I\u0026rsquo;ve found the 3DQF filaments to be really, really good and they print at a slightly higher temperature which seems to suit my CR-20 Pro nicely.\nI started printing some Dinogenics board game organisers from Thingiverse. They take about 8 hours to print and there\u0026rsquo;s around 20 different pieces to print. I\u0026rsquo;ve printed some of them but now I\u0026rsquo;m dangerously close to running out fo filament. I didn\u0026rsquo;t want to just buy any old filament and I kept missing the 3DQF restocks - they seem to follow the lunar cycles and release filaments at a strange time of the day and whenever I think \u0026lsquo;oh, I need to check for filament\u0026rsquo;, it\u0026rsquo;s always sold out. Obviously I need to get some more of the same colour because having board game inserts that are half one colour and half another colour would not be the best thing in the world, unless I did different coloured player trays, that could work.\nThe 3DQF website is here. I\u0026rsquo;ve tried a few different filaments now and am quite happy with the recyclable spools they use and the filament seems really really good. It comes out really nicely and once you\u0026rsquo;ve printed a temperature tower it tends to do exactly what you want it to do as long as you stick to that temperature.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve also started to use PrusaSlicer. I\u0026rsquo;m sure it\u0026rsquo;s printing slower than it used to when using Cura. Maybe I\u0026rsquo;ll get a chance to properly look at the settings when the new filament arrives. When you\u0026rsquo;re down to your last few grams of filament, there\u0026rsquo;s no real point to messing around with anything settings wise because you know full well that as soon as you get it somewhere near perfect, you\u0026rsquo;ll run out of filament and won\u0026rsquo;t be able to print anything anyway. Then things will sit and settle and you\u0026rsquo;ll just need to recalibrate it again.\nOnce we hit May 17th and we can have people around to the house again, it\u0026rsquo;ll be lovely to actually play some of the board games I have. I\u0026rsquo;ve acquired a few more through lockdown and with my wife not really being interested in them and my eldest preferring Minecraft, the opportunity to plan has been somewhere stunted.\nThe last time I played any proper games in person was at Airecon in 2020 just before lockdown hit. I can\u0026rsquo;t wait for that part of normality to come back once more.\nI was off work last week, this week has been a bit of a blur so far, lots and lots of things on the go and home has been pretty hectic too.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s Thursday again tomorrow (why is it always Thursday?)\nPlans for this weekend (if the filament turns up) involve tweaking a couple of settings in the firmware and reflashing with some additional options enabled that I missed the first time around, doing some more work on Terraform and maybe a little on K8s and spending some time preparing my roadmap for passing my professional level AWS certification before my associate one expires in September. I should probably spend some time playing Fortnite with the kids too, and should probably remember that I have a wife. Just not enough hours in the day for everything at the moment.\n","date":"21 Apr 2021","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2021-04-21-filament/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Hurrah! new filament!","type":"posts"},{"content":"I haven\u0026rsquo;t used the 3D printer for around 8 weeks or so. I have to admit, I\u0026rsquo;ve missed the background noise a little.\nI started off a huge 6 day print, and something happened to it about 4 days in, it had some weird layer shift (which I think was caused by infill being too little at certain points) which meant the otherwise flawless print was pretty much ruined. What\u0026rsquo;s worse, because it was the best part of 700g of filament, there wasn\u0026rsquo;t a lot left from my 1KG roll.\nI had about half of another roll in a box but the passion for printing had just completely evaporated. Especially considering this was the first \u0026lsquo;big\u0026rsquo; thing I\u0026rsquo;d printed.\nMy lovely wife helped (did) tidy up and dusty around everywhere and I decided to wash the build plate, get the clips back on and try a print.\nLuke wanted a Darth Vader (again), I decided to print something a little more practical.\nI settled on a controller stand for an Xbox Series X controller for my desk.\nI loaded up the STL file into Cura (admittedly the first time I\u0026rsquo;ve done anything since migrating to a new PC), sliced the file, grabbed the Gcode, uploaded it to Octoprint and started the print off.\nA few seconds into the print, it started making a weird noise, the part of the machine where the filament is run in was going crazy. The head was just printing a load of garbage in a weird pile:\nTried again, messed with the machine, tightened a few things up and everything seemed okay to me.\nDecided to print a temperature tower from some already compiled Gcode. That printed fine.\nI figured since I\u0026rsquo;m nearly out of filament, the printer is being a PITA and I have some time that I might look at updating the firmware again.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve been meaning to look into it for some time now, the machine was on a nightly bugfix build from November 2019 and there\u0026rsquo;s been quite a few releases since then. It always seems overly complicated and so weird that you need to compile the firmware yourself - surely everyone\u0026rsquo;s CR-20 Pro is the same and it should just be a case of someone building it and making it available.\nIt seems not though, and I guess there\u0026rsquo;s an awful lot that could theoretically go wrong should you have a firmware file on the net that crashes the print head into the bed. A lot of broken machines. Perhaps it\u0026rsquo;s just always been that way because of the very nature of the machines - people buy them, hack them, play with them, make them better, break them, fix them.\nEither way, it felt like even for me it was one of those things that needed some dedicated time to properly look into, especially given the chance that one misstep could brick the machine.\nI had a dig around, downloaded the latest Marlin files and saw that there were effectively two files that needed to be modified, the firmware compiled and then uploaded.\nI ran an M503 on my printer which gave me the following output:\n= Send: M503 Recv: G21 ; Units in mm (mm) Recv: M149 C ; Units in Celsius Recv: Recv: M200 D1.75 Recv: M200 D0 Recv: M92 X80.00 Y80.00 Z400.00 E101.10 Recv: M203 X250.00 Y250.00 Z5.00 E25.00 Recv: M201 X500.00 Y500.00 Z100.00 E1000.00 Recv: M204 P500.00 R500.00 T500.00 Recv: M205 B20000.00 S0.00 T0.00 X10.00 Y10.00 Z0.40 E5.00 Recv: M206 X0.00 Y0.00 Z0.00 Recv: M420 S0 Z0.00 Recv: G29 W I0 J0 Z-0.27500 Recv: G29 W I1 J0 Z-0.17250 Recv: G29 W I2 J0 Z-0.03000 Recv: G29 W I3 J0 Z3.34500 Recv: G29 W I0 J1 Z0.05500 Recv: G29 W I1 J1 Z-0.00250 Recv: G29 W I2 J1 Z-0.02750 Recv: G29 W I3 J1 Z0.01500 Recv: G29 W I0 J2 Z0.28000 Recv: G29 W I1 J2 Z0.14500 Recv: G29 W I2 J2 Z0.06250 Recv: G29 W I3 J2 Z0.04500 Recv: G29 W I0 J3 Z0.58750 Recv: G29 W I1 J3 Z0.36250 Recv: G29 W I2 J3 Z0.20750 Recv: G29 W I3 J3 Z0.11000 Recv: M145 S0 H200 B60 F0 Recv: M145 S1 H230 B80 F0 Recv: M301 P20.84 I1.96 D55.47 Recv: M413 S1 Recv: M851 Z-3.00 Recv: M900 K0.00 Recv: M603 L0.00 U100.00 Recv: ok Recv: T:47.62 /0.00 B:39.44 /0.00 @:0 B@:0 I grabbed the latest Marlin 2.0 from here\nhttps://marlinfw.org/docs/basics/install.html\nI found this plugin for VScode.\nhttps://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=MarlinFirmware.auto-build\nThe plugin will automatically download PlatformIO.\nIf you open the Marlin project up, you\u0026rsquo;ll see that there\u0026rsquo;s a Marlin folder. Inside there was a configuration.h and a configuration_adv.h file.\nI grabbed the CR-20 Pro config files from here:\nhttps://github.com/MarlinFirmware/Configurations/archive/release-2.0.7.2.zip\nAnd put them into that Marlin folder along with the _statusscreen.h file. There\u0026rsquo;s not a statusscreen file in the default Marlin firmware fileset so I do wonder if that\u0026rsquo;s what a lot of people run into when they get a blank screen post firmware update and think that they\u0026rsquo;ve bricked the machine.\nI took a few of the M503 values, searched for the relevant GCode and replaced the figures with what I had in there.\nI clicked on build, then plugged the printer into the PC (it\u0026rsquo;s usually plugged into a Raspberry Pi) and I clicked on the Upload button.\nIt flashed the firmware, verified it and I had brand new firmware, yay!\nMy Z-offset had been lost and the clips on the print bed had to be moved a bit because it\u0026rsquo;s checking a \u0026lsquo;slightly\u0026rsquo; different point for the front and back right points but other than that, there were no catastrophes.\nIn order to fix my Z-offset I used this fantastic guide here:\nhttps://danieldoesmanythings.com/351/how-to-set-your-3d-printer-z-probe-offset/\nI gave the printer the commands through Octoprint and it was really nice to get into it on a code level, the guide is great, just be careful when you\u0026rsquo;re lowering your Z-Offset by hand on the machine as part of this process involves disabling the safetys so there\u0026rsquo;s nothing to stop you from lowering it into the bed and destroying the nozzle/hot-end/machine.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s currently printing a small storage box for Dinogenics. I also took the opportunity to set up PrusaSlicer, install ArcWelder on the Octoprint server (something that I needed to upgrade the firmware in order to use) and I wanted a fresh STL and Gcode that I\u0026rsquo;d not used before for a fresh test.\nIdeally this would have been less than an 8 hour print, but it is what it is.\nThe SSL cert I\u0026rsquo;ve got for the webcam expires 30th April, Certbot isn\u0026rsquo;t doing what it\u0026rsquo;s meant to do, it\u0026rsquo;s probably something to do with the machine being off for two months since I last fixed it, need to go and figure out which part of my firewall, haproxy or certbot config isn\u0026rsquo;t working right. I\u0026rsquo;ve noticed that certbot is quite a bit out of date and there\u0026rsquo;s a new version that I have to install through something called snap. Looks like another package manager. Could be interesting.\nLongest blog post for a while and certainly the most tech heavy one. Feels good. Maybe more to come..\n","date":"10 Apr 2021","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2021-04-10-3d-printing-again/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"3D Printing and firmware hacking","type":"posts"},{"content":"I turned 40 in March. The event itself was pretty much just like any other day. I had a little bit of an existential crisis in the weeks leading up to the \u0026lsquo;big day\u0026rsquo; but then around a week before, I started to feel fine about it.\nTime is such a weird concept. I always remember being a teenager, my mum and dad always said that school was the best time of your life and when you get older the days just fly by. It was something my grandma would often say too about the days just whizzing by. So it\u0026rsquo;s not an isolated \u0026lsquo;feeling\u0026rsquo;.\nWhen you\u0026rsquo;re a kid, and you\u0026rsquo;ve got 6 weeks off school, it feels like an absolute age. But if you\u0026rsquo;re only 5, and you\u0026rsquo;ve only had 5 birthdays then the time between them is going to feel like ages. There\u0026rsquo;s also a lot of development that goes on year to year.\nWhen you\u0026rsquo;re 40, you\u0026rsquo;ve got 40 birthdays behind you, all of a sudden you\u0026rsquo;re counting the days between bin collections and supermarket deliveries. At work you\u0026rsquo;re planning or reflecting, learning and adapting. There are some days that can drag and there are some days where you don\u0026rsquo;t get much of a chance to look up from what you\u0026rsquo;re doing before you\u0026rsquo;ve run over lunchtime and you feel busier than you ever have been before.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s strange when the brain is engaged in something, the passage of time changes completely. I notice it when I\u0026rsquo;m deep into an issue I\u0026rsquo;m trying to troubleshoot or if I\u0026rsquo;m watching a film or playing a game.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s weird to think that I\u0026rsquo;m approaching (or in) middle age now and that time might continue to speed up exponentially. That\u0026rsquo;ll be weird. There\u0026rsquo;s still so much I want to do. The last 12+ months of things being on pause won\u0026rsquo;t help with that.\nI\u0026rsquo;m getting my 2nd Covid jab today, so in 3 weeks I will be \u0026lsquo;fully vaccinated and protected\u0026rsquo; from the main strains. We\u0026rsquo;ll see what those pesky ever adapting strains do but for the most part, I should be good.\nGoing to try to post a little more than once every 3 months. Mainly just checking the pipeline still works on the new machine :D\n","date":"9 Apr 2021","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2021-04-09-birthday/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"I'm not old, I'm retro.","type":"posts"},{"content":"","date":"9 Apr 2021","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/thoughts/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Thoughts","type":"tags"},{"content":"I can\u0026rsquo;t believe it\u0026rsquo;s been over three months since my last blog post. Anyone would think I didn\u0026rsquo;t update the site or something.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s been a weird few months, in and out of lockdown, haven\u0026rsquo;t really been out, haven\u0026rsquo;t really seen anyone. Work is carrying on as normal from home.\nThe games room (or the MattCave as I call it), has been pretty much a full on working from home office for the last god knows how many months. It\u0026rsquo;s been a while. I think that\u0026rsquo;s why there\u0026rsquo;s not been that many board games played over the last few months. It\u0026rsquo;s not just the equipment being on the game table (I can move that out of the way pretty easily), it\u0026rsquo;s more spending 8+ hours a day in the room that is meant to be my games/hobby room working, looking at the monitor, and I just don\u0026rsquo;t want to carry on doing it at the weekend.\nI\u0026rsquo;m pretty sure that last weekend I didn\u0026rsquo;t even plug the keyboard back into my gaming pc, just left it in the work laptop.\nThe 3D printer has been sat gathering dust two. With two of us working in here full time, and it not being the quietest of things, Kayleigh just didn\u0026rsquo;t appreciate the noise all day.\nI did buy her some noise cancelling headphones for Christmas, so it probably would have been okay for the last month, thinking about it.\nAnyway, she\u0026rsquo;s painted her room, I\u0026rsquo;ve ordered a desk and a kallax for down there from Ikea which is coming tomorrow and I\u0026rsquo;ll have the MattCave back to it\u0026rsquo;s former glory.\nIt\u0026rsquo;ll be nice to not have to constantly look at equipment everywhere all the time, might even get a board game set up, you never know.\nBecause the 3D printer has been offline for a few months, the Rasperry Pi plugged into it needed a fair bit of work. The auto DNS update script for Route53 updated itself without too much hassle, but the letsencrypt SSL cert that I hacked into place in September just would not work - and I couldn\u0026rsquo;t for the life of me remember how I\u0026rsquo;d configured HAProxy to deal with it.\nSo I had to reverse engineer everything, get it to the stage where it was working, then set up a cron job to renew the cert, concatonate everything into a file where it\u0026rsquo;s meant to be and then restart HAProxy, so that should make any cert renewals easier going forward.\nNobody else cares about the stuff that I do, but its nice to write about it from time to time.\nAnd it gives me something to do in order to make sure that the workflow still works in codebuild and my codepipeline.\n","date":"30 Jan 2021","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2021-01-30-january/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"What the....where the hell did 2020 go?","type":"posts"},{"content":"We got a notification from Luke\u0026rsquo;s school late on Friday that one of the staff who had been in close proximity with Luke has tested positive for COVID-19.\nThis means he has to self isolate for 14 days and isn\u0026rsquo;t allowed back at school until Friday 23rd October - which coincidentally is the same day they break up for October half term. Government guidelines say that if someone is self isolating, they should stay away from the rest of the people in the household - how on earth are you supposed to do that with a 4 year old?\nLuckily he\u0026rsquo;s showing no symptoms thus far.\nFingers crossed that it carries on that way.\n","date":"11 Oct 2020","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2020-10-11-october/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Time flies....when you're quarantined","type":"posts"},{"content":"I got hold of a 3D printer this week, and I\u0026rsquo;ve been playing around printing things.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve been slicing things on the PC and loading them onto SD card and then letting them print.\nI was messing around trying to get a webcam streaming setup, didn\u0026rsquo;t find anything with a stream latency I was happy with.\nThen I came across Octoprint, and Octopi, and oh my. It can control the printer, it can do timelapse, it can do streaming.\nNot going to print anything tonight but I\u0026rsquo;ll set it off tomorrow and it should livestream to my page.\nExciting!\nI\u0026rsquo;d best print something useful/fun.\nNot sure where the last 3-4 hours have gone, but I\u0026rsquo;ve had a lot of fun hacking around with hardware and software.\n","date":"25 Sep 2020","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2020-09-25-september/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"3D Printing","type":"posts"},{"content":"I can\u0026rsquo;t believe that it\u0026rsquo;s almost been a month since my last post (again).\nWe\u0026rsquo;ve had so much going on the last few weeks, it\u0026rsquo;s been crazy. We\u0026rsquo;ve moved house - I\u0026rsquo;m living somewhere that I\u0026rsquo;ve never lived before and we\u0026rsquo;re still waiting on getting the kids sorted out in their new school, but they should be back this week at some point, so that\u0026rsquo;s at least some form of normality restored after the last 6 months of home schooling and god knows what else.\nMoving house is definitely one of the most stressful things you can do, I really hope we don\u0026rsquo;t have to move again any time soon, but I can 100% recommend using a removals company to move your stuff, because that at least took away a bunch of the stress we had that day.\nWe\u0026rsquo;re just about unpacked now, I have a MattCave™.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve never had a space of my own, not really - this is a dedicated room for my board games, tech and general geekiness. It\u0026rsquo;s great. And I\u0026rsquo;ve finally got something for all the rubbish I\u0026rsquo;ve collected over my lifetime.\nI haven\u0026rsquo;t managed to play a boardgame in it yet - in fact, since we were on holiday at the coast I\u0026rsquo;ve played nothing. The last 30 days of my BGStats app is showing 4 plays and all of them will expire tomorrow.\nBack at work and a lot of the weekend is again taken up with sorting stuff out.\nHopefully things will start to calm down a bit now going forward. We\u0026rsquo;ll see.\nAlways seems like there\u0026rsquo;s so much to do, all the time. I need a holiday :D\n","date":"6 Sep 2020","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2020-09-06-september/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Moving house","type":"posts"},{"content":"Woke up to some absolutely fantastic news via email this morning.\nEarlier this year, I entered the A Cloud Guru \u0026lsquo;AWS Guru of the week\u0026rsquo;. They basically post an exam question on their forum, and you have to answer it and justify your answer to say why it\u0026rsquo;s the best response and why the others don\u0026rsquo;t work - so you have to know what you\u0026rsquo;re talking about.\nSo I did that. And I won. I got a t-shirt, I was featured on the \u0026lsquo;AWS this week\u0026rsquo; YouTube video and was entered into the grand prize draw to win a ticket to AWS:ReInvent in Las Vegas.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve always wanted to go to Re:Invent, it\u0026rsquo;s my dream \u0026lsquo;work-related\u0026rsquo; trip, so many oppertunities to learn, to network, to be a part of something so huge. Anyway - it\u0026rsquo;s been cancelled this year because of the whole global situation with COVID-19. So unfortuntely there\u0026rsquo;s no ticket to Vegas this year.\nLuckily though, they have a backup plan. My prize now consists of a year\u0026rsquo;s sub (extension) to ACG, a new swag pack and a choice of starring in an AWS this week video as a guest star to speak about my experience and getting into cloud, getting a personalised video from the host or featuring in a cartoon created by the very talented Forrest Brazeal.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve chosen to be immortalised into a comic. I can\u0026rsquo;t get enough of tech comics. They\u0026rsquo;re fab. And the ones written by Forrest often make me chuckle. I\u0026rsquo;ve just found out that he\u0026rsquo;s got a book coming out, in the style of a children\u0026rsquo;s book that explains the concepts of Cloud. I\u0026rsquo;m going to have to get that if only for my kids to show them what Daddy does at work.\nAbsolutely on top of the world this morning. Hoping this sets me up for a great day.\n","date":"12 Aug 2020","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2020-08-12-august/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"A Cloud Guru's Guru of the Week","type":"posts"},{"content":"I could have sworn it was July just a second ago. I guess that\u0026rsquo;s what happens when you go on holiday to the coast on the 31st of July, have a crazy first day back at work on a Monday and wonder where on earth the time has gone.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve written about time perception before and how it speeds up as you get older, it also speeds up as you start to take less notice of your surroundings. The start of the few days away seemed to stretch out long in front of me, minutes passed by slowly, hours even more so. Towards the end of the week, before I knew it, it was 4pm every single day.\nCrazy.\nI got a few board games played but not as many as I expected, I don\u0026rsquo;t think we\u0026rsquo;ll be anywhere near the total play count for July in August as there\u0026rsquo;s a very busy month ahead.\nConsidering by the end of this week, we\u0026rsquo;ll be halfway through the month again - it\u0026rsquo;ll be Christmas soon. Scary.\nI guess I\u0026rsquo;ll have to buy a tree.\nBut still, change!\nChange is good.\nChange is scary. Change can be upheaving. Change can be risky.\nBut ultimately, change is good.\nWithout change, you can\u0026rsquo;t grow.\nHere ends another ramble.\nI should really start posting here more.\n","date":"10 Aug 2020","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2020-08-10-august/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"As quick as a flash!","type":"posts"},{"content":"I don\u0026rsquo;t know about anyone else, but I\u0026rsquo;m seeing this day we call \u0026lsquo;Thursday\u0026rsquo; (Or Thorsday as my friend Gareth would say) come around extremely often.\nI mean, I know that it only comes around once per week. But it feels like it\u0026rsquo;s a lot more often than that. Every other day seems to be Thursday.\nI guess that because tomorrow is Friday, and we\u0026rsquo;re well past the middle of the week and we\u0026rsquo;re almost at the weekend, it sort of feels like 3/4 of the way through. Maybe I\u0026rsquo;m just not paying attention to any of the other days. I know that I don\u0026rsquo;t particulary like Monday as far as days go.\nSometimes I don\u0026rsquo;t enjoy Sunday\u0026rsquo;s either, depending on what\u0026rsquo;s happening on the Monday. It\u0026rsquo;s not that often that there\u0026rsquo;s a feeling of impending doom, but sometimes I wish the weekends were just a teeny bit longer.\nWe\u0026rsquo;re nearly a month past the longest day of the year now. That means pretty soon it\u0026rsquo;ll start feeling darker around 9 then 8 then 7 then it\u0026rsquo;ll be dark at 4. At least with the pandemic, if we\u0026rsquo;re all still working from home it won\u0026rsquo;t feel quite so bad getting up when it\u0026rsquo;s dark and coming home when its dark.\nIf there\u0026rsquo;s one thing the pandemic has proven, it\u0026rsquo;s that working from home \u0026lsquo;works\u0026rsquo;. People can be trusted, efficiency and productivity is through the roof and companies are not suffering at all.\nI hope it continues and puts the world into a position where we don\u0026rsquo;t have to spend an hour each way travelling to sit in a big stuffy room with a load of people making too much noise when we can have more engaging conversations and interactions with using MS Teams. I\u0026rsquo;ve been in and out of a lot of meetings this week especially but being able to screenshare and see people\u0026rsquo;s faces has been a lot better than sitting at a weird angle at a table in a meeting room, straining to see text on a projector or large-ish tv.\nThe world is a weird place at the moment. It\u0026rsquo;s not getting any better. But at least we have board games :) I mean family and friends and love. No, I mean board games.\n","date":"16 Jul 2020","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2020-07-16-thursday/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"So...It's Thursday again then","type":"posts"},{"content":"","date":"11 Jul 2020","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/categories/cloudengineering/","section":"Categories","summary":"","title":"Cloudengineering","type":"categories"},{"content":"How did we get to July?\nI mean seriously?\nI\u0026rsquo;ve done only 6 other posts since March, and I just, I don\u0026rsquo;t know. It\u0026rsquo;s like the passage of time has sped up.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve had a bit of a fiddle around with the front page. I\u0026rsquo;ve dropped off the giant selfie. It looked daft. I didn\u0026rsquo;t like it. I\u0026rsquo;ve added a link to BoardGameGeek (BGG) in the navbar. I\u0026rsquo;ve rejigged the order a little and shortened the names so that they look better on a mobile.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve added a widget to show the last 5 board games that I\u0026rsquo;ve played. This is pretty cool as it ties into Board Game Geek and ties into the the BGStats app that I track every single game that I play in. They\u0026rsquo;re clickable links that take you to the page for that game, so if anything does look interesting, click the picture - you never know, you might find a new hobby to fall into.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve embedded twitter to show my latest tweet, even though I don\u0026rsquo;t really actively use twitter and I gave up my main handle years ago. I hardly ever tweet, but now I have it hooked into the website, I might well just start posting random thoughts.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve also embedded twitch, though I\u0026rsquo;ve just found out that they delete your bloody streams after 60 days. So there\u0026rsquo;s nothing there. Barstewards. That means all my glorious comedic glory has gone away. Maybe I should back twitch off to youtube or something.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve just configured restream.io. We\u0026rsquo;ll see what that does next time I decide to stream. I obviously haven\u0026rsquo;t streamed anything for 2 months.\nMaybe I\u0026rsquo;ll stream something at some point. We\u0026rsquo;ll see.\nFor now, let\u0026rsquo;s push these website changes live\u0026hellip;.\n","date":"11 Jul 2020","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2020-07-11-july/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Ju--what now?","type":"posts"},{"content":"The wonderful people at Disqus have given me a plus subscription (worth $10 a month) for free as my site is a personal blog/non-profile.\nI guess that means that the comment section is here to stay. Which is pretty good. Considering this is all statically generated, and Disqus plugs into Hugo as part of the built in code, I like it a lot.\nConsidering the speed of the site, the cost of running it and the ability to be completely dynamic with it, I\u0026rsquo;m seriously impressed.\nIt gives me the functionality of running a fully fledged wordpress instance with photoblog backend, server running processes and a database server. But without any of that. It\u0026rsquo;s just a statically served website from an S3 bucket. It\u0026rsquo;s got SSL provided for free via a cloudfront distribution. It\u0026rsquo;s fast. It\u0026rsquo;s cheap and it\u0026rsquo;s very adaptable.\nStuff like this just excites me, you know?\nCloudformation, YAML, markdown, source control, build pipelines.\nIf I could go back even 5 years and show 2015 me the sort of stuff I\u0026rsquo;m into now, it would have blown his tiny little mind. Heck, if I could go back to 2001, it would feel like witchcraft.\nJust having the ability to provision and spin up a server in the cloud in a matter of minutes rather than waiting for a quote, approval, purchase order, order, stock, delivery, then finally getting your hands on the kit and having to try to figure out how the hell to get hold of the installation media (Even USB sticks back then were a pipe dream, we were still using floppy disks)\nWhilst overall, 2020 has been a bit of a shitshow, there\u0026rsquo;s no denying that the technological advances made in the last decade are astounding. The ability for entire businesses to work from home, for teachers to set work that children can do remotely and for society to carry on pretty much exclusively without cash, is somewhat remarkable.\n","date":"8 Jun 2020","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2020-06-08-comments/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Comments are here to stay","type":"posts"},{"content":"In typical fashion, I over-engineered a solution in my head, went through all the hardship of setting it up and then wasn\u0026rsquo;t overly happy with the results so went and did what I wanted properly.\nI had this idea of having two different repos, and two different hugo pipelines. I could have the photoblog linked off the main site off the navbar, set up another cloudfront distribution, SSL fronted and a new repo. This new repo I could push to independantly of the main site and it would all just work.\nI had to go back to an earlier commit from the repo before I changed theme and refactored, copy the data into a brand new repo folder, strip it down until I just had the portfolio/photo section and then go from there.\nThat was all fairly easy and I got all the AWS side of things set up. With the build pipeline using a buildspec.yml it was easy to point to a different S3 bucket and a different cloudfront distro too.\nFirst of all, I wasn\u0026rsquo;t happy with the jarring way that the themes didn\u0026rsquo;t really match up. So I started trying to use the css and page templates from one theme to get the other one to look the same. It went sort of a shade of grey, but didn\u0026rsquo;t match up (no idea why). I got everything to a stage I was sort of happy with and got it uploaded.\nThen I decided to try and fix it properly and it was fairly easy (after spending 3 hours dicking about with the files), to know which pieces I needed to add into the new theme to get photos working.\nI got to the point where I could see the list of photos, it was working but when you clicked on the photo, it just made it big and there was no way to navigate back cleanly.\nAfter playing with the code for a bit, I googled the plug in, found the section of code responsible for what I wanted it to do and I noticed that it was already in place on the page, but it was inside a defined block. For whatever reason, this defined block wasn\u0026rsquo;t triggering, so I took the code out of the block, placed it on the portfolio page directly and bingo.\nWhen I commit and push this post here, the photoblog will be back up and running in all it\u0026rsquo;s glory - and I need to make sure I cleared down all my AWS resources.\nAh well, at least I learned something.\nAnd, when I eventually come to taking a photo of something again, I can stick it up here with hardly any hassle.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve also added an RSS feed for good measure.\nAnd I\u0026rsquo;ve added the share buttons back. I\u0026rsquo;ve even put them on the images. We\u0026rsquo;ll see how that goes.\nCommenting is now live too, which is fun.\nAfter all that, I\u0026rsquo;ve also rejigged the menu and renamed it to Photography Portfolio, because why not.\nThink I\u0026rsquo;m done tinkering for tonight.\n","date":"4 Jun 2020","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2020-06-04-photoblog/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Photoblog is back up and running","type":"posts"},{"content":"I don\u0026rsquo;t think it\u0026rsquo;s any secret that I\u0026rsquo;ve suffered from mental health issues throughout my life. I don\u0026rsquo;t even think it started when Sue passed away either. I think there were issues before then.\nAs you may or may not have noticed, I don\u0026rsquo;t really blog anymore. I certainly don\u0026rsquo;t blog all that much about my thoughts or feelings. I don\u0026rsquo;t know whether or not it\u0026rsquo;s because I\u0026rsquo;ve matured and seem to internalise things more or whether or not it\u0026rsquo;s opinion that some things shouldn\u0026rsquo;t be shared and the world shouldn\u0026rsquo;t know about my problems.\nEither way, I\u0026rsquo;m missing some sort of an outlet at the moment. Lockdown and constant working from home isn\u0026rsquo;t helping with that either.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve heard a lot about journaling. I\u0026rsquo;ve got friends that have done it for years. There\u0026rsquo;s even specialist forms of journaling called bullet journals where there\u0026rsquo;s special codes and notation for things.\nI\u0026rsquo;m old fashioned, I don\u0026rsquo;t like bullet points and I tend to just stream out paragraphs whenever I need to.\nI\u0026rsquo;m also not big on hand writing. I need to type. I can type a whole page out faster than I could handwrite a paragraph. And the resulting text would be legible too. Which is a bonus.\nTonight I\u0026rsquo;ve taken a look at \u0026lsquo;Day One\u0026rsquo;. It\u0026rsquo;s digital, its apple centric and has an app for my MacBook, my iPad, and my iPhone. I can have multiple journals - so I can have one about work stuff, one about thoughts, one that I might stick blog posts into prior to posting them.\nLooks pretty good, has templates for daily stuff. 5 min journals, standups for work, task lists and lots of other things. I think it would really help me.\nSo I\u0026rsquo;ve started to journal.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s not like it\u0026rsquo;s going to affect the frequency of posts here. Then again it might result in more posts coming here. I used to write a lot. I don\u0026rsquo;t write at all anymore.\nI\u0026rsquo;m looking forward to the organisation that with any luck, this new habit (once formed) will bring to my life.\nI think if I start off each day with task lists, do the work standup prep and also do the 5 min catch up day and night, I might end up with a more organised, streamlined brain.\nAnd it doesn\u0026rsquo;t matter if its fit for consumption by other humans. It doesn\u0026rsquo;t even matter if I read through it ever again.\nIt might help me to understand my highs and lows a little more.\n","date":"3 Jun 2020","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2020-06-03-journal/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Dear Diary","type":"posts"},{"content":"","date":"3 Jun 2020","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/categories/mental-health/","section":"Categories","summary":"","title":"Mental Health","type":"categories"},{"content":"","date":"21 May 2020","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/categories/aws/","section":"Categories","summary":"","title":"Aws","type":"categories"},{"content":"","date":"21 May 2020","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/aws/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Aws","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"21 May 2020","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/design/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Design","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"21 May 2020","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/hugo/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Hugo","type":"tags"},{"content":"I decided that I was fed up of the theme I had in place on the website. It was fairly basic looking and didn\u0026rsquo;t have a right lot going for it. It was good, just wasn\u0026rsquo;t as good as it could be, and it needed to have a dark mode, because nobody likes looking at a white screen at night, amirite?\nGosh its a pain in the backside if you want to post more than one post on the same day and all you\u0026rsquo;re using is date stamps and not timestamps. At least I\u0026rsquo;m developing locally at the moment and can see exactly what\u0026rsquo;s going on when I save my changes.\nSo I\u0026rsquo;ve gone back to the last sort of 12 months of posts, added a new header that brings in some more metadata, there\u0026rsquo;s a description now that\u0026rsquo;ll show on the front page with a quick heads up as to what any post in particular is about. That seems to work quite well. I could even start coming up with clickbait descriptions to be funny.\nThe portfolio is offline at the moment, one of the big reasons I went for the last theme is because it had a built in gallery function. I\u0026rsquo;ll get that back up and running at some point in the next few weeks when I have some time. I don\u0026rsquo;t want the images to have to be stored in the repo, I\u0026rsquo;d much rather they were pulled from S3 as before. It makes more sense. So that\u0026rsquo;s on the to-do list.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve also gone through and properly categorised and tagged everything that wasn\u0026rsquo;t tagged up properly. Will try and keep up to that when I\u0026rsquo;m creating new content.\nI quite like this theme, it\u0026rsquo;s much easier to read and has a much nicer layout.\nThat\u0026rsquo;ll do for now, I\u0026rsquo;ve done enough tinkering in markdown, html and css for tonight.\n","date":"21 May 2020","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2020-05-21-new-theme/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"New Look","type":"posts"},{"content":"","date":"21 May 2020","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/website/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Website","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"20 May 2020","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/categories/amazon/","section":"Categories","summary":"","title":"Amazon","type":"categories"},{"content":"","date":"20 May 2020","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/random/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Random","type":"tags"},{"content":"When I fixed the draft post I\u0026rsquo;d left up since March the other day, I added in my Amazon Wish List to the menu. People are forever asking me when my birthday comes around, what I want - they\u0026rsquo;re constantly saying that I have everything and never want anything. So rather than buying things, I\u0026rsquo;ve started to put them on an Amazon wish list. These aren\u0026rsquo;t things that I want people to buy me, nor are they things that I would expect people to buy. It\u0026rsquo;s merely a list of stuff I quite fancy and might buy at some point. I\u0026rsquo;m not expecting someone to buy me a £2500 Macbook Pro or even a £100 hard disk.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s just if you wanted to buy me a present, thats the stuff I\u0026rsquo;m thinking of buying myself at some point.\n","date":"20 May 2020","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2020-05-21-wishlist/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Wishlist","type":"posts"},{"content":"","date":"18 May 2020","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/categories/covid19/","section":"Categories","summary":"","title":"Covid19","type":"categories"},{"content":"I should probably post a new blog post at some point, I\u0026rsquo;ve been sort of busy with the lockdown though.\nI\u0026rsquo;ll post up something soon. Probably.\n","date":"18 May 2020","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2020-05-18-lockdown/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Lockdown","type":"posts"},{"content":"","date":"12 Mar 2020","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/airecon/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Airecon","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"12 Mar 2020","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/categories/boardgaming/","section":"Categories","summary":"","title":"Boardgaming","type":"categories"},{"content":"","date":"12 Mar 2020","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/convention/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Convention","type":"tags"},{"content":"T\u0026rsquo;was the night before Airecon, and all through Harrogate, not a gamer was stirring, not even a MtG player.\nLanded in Harrogate this afternoon and checked into my hotel. Promptly received a free upgrade to a club room, which in itself is fantastic, but the benefits that come with it are even better. There\u0026rsquo;s access to the club lounge which comes with free drinks and nibbles. I\u0026rsquo;m currently on my second bottle of Corona (yes, I chose it on purpose) and I have tortilla chips, popcorn, sweets and crisps. It\u0026rsquo;s fantastic. I can get drunk, on my own, in a hotel, not a care in the world. There\u0026rsquo;s even free breakfast tomorrow too.\nYAY!\nThe check in at Airecon this year was smoother than ever. It was great being able to drop my games off at the bring and buy the night before and also grab my tickets. It should save some time tomorrow and mean I can get gaming more quickly. There\u0026rsquo;s not a great deal that I want to buy this year, so fingers crossed I\u0026rsquo;ll end up leaving with more money than I came with, and I can save up for that monster gaming monitor.\nReally looking forward to catching up with friends I haven\u0026rsquo;t seen for a long time. It\u0026rsquo;s long overdue.\nNothing like sitting around a table face to face with people playing games.\nThere was a bit of a scare with the emergency cobra meeting at lunchtime and a lot of people were hesitant to set off on their journeys. I think that attendance will be affected slightly, but I know there will be enough people that rock up and we\u0026rsquo;ll have an absolutely fantastic weekend.\nIf you fancy playing some board games, and you can get to Harrogate, come down and say hi!\n","date":"12 Mar 2020","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2020-03-12-preairecon/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"T'was the night before Airecon","type":"posts"},{"content":"","date":"12 Mar 2020","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/tabletop/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Tabletop","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"3 Mar 2020","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/birthday/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Birthday","type":"tags"},{"content":"It\u0026rsquo;s my birthday tomorrow!\nYay!\nI don\u0026rsquo;t really get all that excited by them anymore to be honest. They\u0026rsquo;re just a reminder that I\u0026rsquo;m not 16 anymore and they\u0026rsquo;re always pretty disappointing. Same sort of stuff. Same sort of day.\nMy amazon wish list for anyone that wants to buy me anything\u0026hellip;. :D\nStuff Matt wants\nAnyway. I\u0026rsquo;m going to my mums tonight, she\u0026rsquo;s making her world famous Cornish Pasty, and there will be cake.\nI absolutely cannot wait. It\u0026rsquo;s my favourite thing of all time. Plus I get to see my mum, dad, brother and sisters. It\u0026rsquo;s great.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve made sure to do a little extra workout today so that I can eat whatever the hell I want and still have a calorie deficit.\nI think that\u0026rsquo;s the way forward. If you want to eat it, you have to work for it.\nOnwards and downwards!\n","date":"3 Mar 2020","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2020-03-03-birthdays/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Birthdays","type":"posts"},{"content":"So here we are, three weeks on from the phone call from the doctor where I was told that I was prediabetic.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s been a fairly productive three weeks, I\u0026rsquo;ve gotten control of both my calorie intake and my exercise levels.\nThe exercise bike that I purchased is generally used most days (today is a rest day on account of my calves telling me so) and I\u0026rsquo;m generally having less than 1800 calories a day, with the occasional pure Huel x 3 1200 calorie days to keep things interesting.\nTotal loss at this point is 1st 0.4lbs.\nObviously this rate of loss is not sustainable, and I fully expect it to level out, but for a start, it\u0026rsquo;s pretty good going and I\u0026rsquo;m happy with it.\nStarting weight was 23st 11.4lbs. My initial target is 18st, I don\u0026rsquo;t think I\u0026rsquo;ve been that \u0026lsquo;small\u0026rsquo; since I was in my teens. So we\u0026rsquo;re certainly talking 20+ years. I\u0026rsquo;ve been as low as 19st 11lbs in recent years and that\u0026rsquo;s a weight that I can get on every single rollercoaster ride without even worrying about fitting - even Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey.\nAt 18st, I\u0026rsquo;ll look at what I look like, where I\u0026rsquo;d like to be, and I might go for 17st, then 16st, then 15st. It depends. I don\u0026rsquo;t want to look ill, but at the same time I want to be healthy and live for a long time.\nHuel Black (mostly protein rather than carbs) is insanely good at satiating hunger, some days I could probably even go without a lunchtime one and skip the 400 calories but I\u0026rsquo;m keen not to have too big a deficit and cause any problems.\nThe new V3 (regular) Huel Vanilla and Banana are so much better than the v2 stuff was and the Huel Black tastes good too. I used to get some digestive/fibre related issues with the V2 stuff but I can quite happily have this for three meals a day and not suffer any ill effects.\nIf you want to try it for yourself, I\u0026rsquo;ve got a code that\u0026rsquo;ll give you £10 off your first order (and I\u0026rsquo;ll get £10 off my next order too, yay!):\nHuel Referral Link\nI\u0026rsquo;m also concious that now I\u0026rsquo;m doing 30 minutes on the bike, my leg muscles have definitely become more defined, so going on the number on the scales alone isn\u0026rsquo;t going to be a good way to measure my success.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve still managed to build in some treats, we had a pizza the other week, I went for the healthy(ish) option, had a full english at the cafe down the road and a cake later in the day so pretty much had a full weekend off, and went back on it Monday.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve been here before, and I know just how easy it is to slip off the wagon, fall off and before you know it, you\u0026rsquo;re binge eating 3000 calories in front of the TV on a night. I\u0026rsquo;m determined that this will not happen again. Everything has to be allowed, in one form or another, with sacrifices and balance changes throughout so that I can still enjoy the occasional treat.\nThis week, snacks have pretty much been off the table. I\u0026rsquo;ve filled my evenings with things that occupy my hands (mainly gaming) and removed myself from the near vicinity of snacks to stop the cravings.\nMeals have generally been a mixture of meat and veg with 3-4 different types of vegetable on the plate each night. I\u0026rsquo;ve not been feeling hungry at all.\nI won\u0026rsquo;t be posting with progress on this all that often, maybe once a month. We\u0026rsquo;ll see.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve got a few tech posts to write at some point in the next week or so. If I get around to it.\nFor now, have a great weekend, whatever you\u0026rsquo;re doing.\n","date":"28 Feb 2020","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2020-02-28-progress/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"3 weeks on","type":"posts"},{"content":"","date":"28 Feb 2020","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/categories/weight/","section":"Categories","summary":"","title":"Weight","type":"categories"},{"content":"","date":"28 Feb 2020","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/weight/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Weight","type":"tags"},{"content":"I started to write this post nearly two weeks ago. I say I started to write, I created the basic post, figured out how to put images in to a folder so that Hugo would see them and generate them and then I didn\u0026rsquo;t actually write the post. Post was dated the 6th Feb. It\u0026rsquo;s now the 17th Feb.\nSo. Here we are.\nI had my bi-annual blod test done and general check up at the doctors late January. It was delayed from December due to a lack of appointments. As such, one of the blood tests that checks the blood glucose level on red blood cells (covering pretty much the previous 8 weeks) was high. This might have been due to 4 weeks pre-Christmas and 4 weeks post-Christmas, but even if I tried to use that as an excuse, its not really a fantastic situation to be in.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s a table from the Diabetes UK website.\nAs you can see. A normal reading is less than 42. Up until this reading, mine had been below 42.\n48 is Diabetic and 42-47 is what they class as prediabetic.\nMy reading this time was 46.\nMindblowing.\nJust 2 away from being classed as diabetic.\nNeedless to say, it took me a couple of days to come around to what the Doctor had said. It took a lot of processing. It took even longer for me to tell the people close to me and its taken even longer for me to write this blog post.\nI made fairly drastic changes on the day I found out. I generally use Huel as meal replacement for 2 meals a day. On that Thursday, I used it for all three meals. I had only 1200 calories. I was that\u0026hellip;I guess flabberghasted.\nSince then, I\u0026rsquo;ve been taking a healthier route. I still have treats, but every single thing that passes my lips is counted and tracked in Lose It!\nI also bought an exercise bike. Not really something that I could afford at the time (thanks Paypal Credit), but I saw it as a requirement in order for me to not die.\nWith the weather being like it is, and being a parent to two young boys, it\u0026rsquo;s hard to find time to exercise by say running outside. I\u0026rsquo;m also not at a stage with my body where I\u0026rsquo;m happy putting shorts and a t-shirt on to go out jogging again. That might come, it might not.\nSince the bike arrived, I\u0026rsquo;ve been using it most days. I\u0026rsquo;ve had it just under a week. I did 20 minutes for the first couple of days and today I used it for 25 minutes at lunch time. Working up to 30 minutes and then eventually an hour.\nOver the weekend, I used it first thing when I got up, and as a result caused myself insane hunger all day whilst my body tried to grab every calorie that it could. So I ended up eating more than I should have done really. Everything was tracked, and I still came in a little below my calorie allowance but it meant that the exercise had gone into food rather than being a deficit.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s hard going. But knowing that this situation is fully reversible and I can fix it by losing weight has acted as a catalyst for change.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve tried to lose weight before. It works for a bit, then I end up stopping and then I end up back in the same situation as before again.\nThis time I have to succeed. Whether that means I end up with a bunch of loose skin or not. I don\u0026rsquo;t want to die. Well, not yet. I don\u0026rsquo;t really have a choice in the matter overall do I?\nHopefully writing this blog post and getting it published will allow me to move on and blog about more things rather than just seeing this post in the draft stage in the content folder and thinking \u0026lsquo;yeah, I really need to go back and finish that\u0026rsquo;.\nHaven\u0026rsquo;t made a big song and dance about what I\u0026rsquo;m doing. Haven\u0026rsquo;t posted on social media with \u0026lsquo;Hey look at me, I\u0026rsquo;m eating healthy\u0026rsquo;, haven\u0026rsquo;t advertised my current situation. I probably won\u0026rsquo;t blog about it overly - might add a before and after shot once I\u0026rsquo;ve lost something significant.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s my birthday in a couple of weeks. No plans, don\u0026rsquo;t think anything special is happening. There\u0026rsquo;s nothing much on my wishlist aside from a 900+ quid gaming monitor and I can\u0026rsquo;t see me getting that anytime soon :D\n","date":"17 Feb 2020","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2020-02-06-borderline/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Borderline","type":"posts"},{"content":"In just under two months, I\u0026rsquo;ll be travelling to Harrogate to attend Airecon. Airecon is a board gaming convention that runs over the weekend (Fri-Sun). It\u0026rsquo;s a fantastic weekend, away from digital distractions and an oppertunity to sit down with friends (old and new) around a table and play board games.\nTickets are still available here on the Airecon website.\nThe convention is running from March 13th to March 15th. It\u0026rsquo;s at Harrogate Convention Centre and the closest hotels are the Premier Inn and the Crowne Plaza (right on the doorstep).\nThere\u0026rsquo;s a fantastic Bring and Buy section, traders from all parts of the industry as well as game designers showing off their latest designs. Last year I got to playtest the upcoming expansion to Dice Hospital with none other than Mike Nudd, the designer of the game. I beat him :D\nI also had the pleasure of meeting Jamie Frew, designer of the Old Hellfire Club - a game due this year which I cannot wait for. It\u0026rsquo;s like Gloom with the epic weaving of storytelling but with a rather interesting game mechanic where a roll of the dice can set the scene with a suggested overall topic. Just what were we doing in the airing cupboard?\nThe last 12 months have been pretty sparse in terms of oppertunities to play. Hopefully over the next few months, I\u0026rsquo;ll be able to get back into the swing of going to game nights. Maybe even travel a little way to game nights that aren\u0026rsquo;t on my doorstep to visit friends I\u0026rsquo;ve not seen for a while.\nI might even see if I can get Harry into one or two of them again now we\u0026rsquo;ve left it 6 months or so since the last attempt.\nOh also, I got commenting working, not sure if I\u0026rsquo;ll stick with this one or try to find something a little more engineered, no point paying for something that I can code myself.\n","date":"28 Jan 2020","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2020-01-28-airecon/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Airecon 2020","type":"posts"},{"content":"","date":"27 Jan 2020","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/cloudengineering/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Cloudengineering","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"27 Jan 2020","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/categories/coding/","section":"Categories","summary":"","title":"Coding","type":"categories"},{"content":"","date":"27 Jan 2020","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/coding/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Coding","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"27 Jan 2020","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/developer/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Developer","type":"tags"},{"content":"Without buying any more hardware, and wanting to use the equipment I already have to not only update my blog, but to do further development work concerning not just AWS but pretty much anything, there wasn\u0026rsquo;t much choice.\n£19.99 feels like a bit of a sting, but only because we\u0026rsquo;re so used to free software and iPhone/iPad apps being so cheap.\nSupporting indie developers is important, and to be fair there really is nothing else out there.\nNow I\u0026rsquo;m committed, I can get my workspaces set up properly, get the repos cloned and my workflows sorted.\nIn terms of billing, considering I\u0026rsquo;ve been running this for a few weeks now, I think we\u0026rsquo;re looking at a total cost of less than $5 a month. Probably even less than that. My $8 workmail and $2.50 route53 costs will dwarf any hosting, pipeline and cloudfront costs.\nWhich is pretty nifty.\nAlways nice to have a place to talk about stuff that Facebook friends might not necessarily be interested in.\nWonder if there\u0026rsquo;s a way for Hugo to add commenting facilities, I wouldn\u0026rsquo;t expect so, given the static site and the fact that the site you\u0026rsquo;re actually viewing is the product of a deployment process that deletes the old stuff when a new commit is made.\nThat is unless there\u0026rsquo;s a way to hook something in.\nHmm. Further reading required.\n","date":"27 Jan 2020","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2020-01-27-wc/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Ended up buying working copy","type":"posts"},{"content":"It\u0026rsquo;s almost payday. Which is great because I have no money left. At all.\nWorking copy worked a treat, git push is a paid for feature, you can free trial it for 10 days but then it\u0026rsquo;s £19.99 to unlock. It\u0026rsquo;s one of those where you get to use paid features for a certain amount of time and then when the developer decides, they charge another upgrade fee.\nI\u0026rsquo;m not using this enough to warrant that at the moment. For the sake of markdown editing, I can save a copy of my repo to icloud/onedrive and then add content on there and add/commit/push when I\u0026rsquo;m at a computer with an up to date sync of it.\nKeep looking at my open university stuff. I wondered if there was a photography degree that I could switch out to, but it\u0026rsquo;s just art with a bit of photography or a standalone photography course which I\u0026rsquo;m not really interested in.\nThere\u0026rsquo;s English Literature and Creative Writing, which actually sounds really, really, really interesting. I might give it some thought.\nThe maths stuff that I was learning about in the IT modules was good, but the IT stuff itself - its nothing I don\u0026rsquo;t already know and it\u0026rsquo;s whether or not it\u0026rsquo;s worth doing a 4-6 year part time degree for something that just gives me a certificate for something I know I can already do.\nAWS/Google Cloud/Azure/Redhat professional certs would probably be a better use of my time.\nCreating writing however, that could be really, really useful. And who knows? I might even get a novel out of it.\nTime of course is still an issue, saying that I\u0026rsquo;ve got to level 351 on Fortnite this Battle Pass season. So I do have time.\nWe\u0026rsquo;ll see how the next few months go. I\u0026rsquo;ll start to make enquiries into a degree switch (it\u0026rsquo;s been on hold for a year anyway).\nI might have enough money left over after I\u0026rsquo;ve been paid to finally upgrade the RAM in my PC. Only had that on my list for about 8 months. We\u0026rsquo;ll see.\n","date":"26 Jan 2020","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2020-01-26-payday-yay/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Just how many days does January have anyway?","type":"posts"},{"content":"","date":"26 Jan 2020","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/categories/money/","section":"Categories","summary":"","title":"Money","type":"categories"},{"content":"","date":"26 Jan 2020","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/money/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Money","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"26 Jan 2020","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/payday/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Payday","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"16 Jan 2020","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/development_tools/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Development_tools","type":"tags"},{"content":"Downloaded working copy, have set up the git repo on here and have cloned down from codecommit.\nCreated a new file, renamed it, am now typing into it.\nWhen I commit and push, this should trigger the build and deploy process as per expectations.\nLet\u0026rsquo;s see what happens.\n","date":"16 Jan 2020","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2020-01-16-working-copy/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Working Copy","type":"posts"},{"content":"","date":"14 Jan 2020","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/cost-efficiency/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Cost-Efficiency","type":"tags"},{"content":"My website has been offline for pretty much 5 months or so, simply because I wasn\u0026rsquo;t using it all that much and the AWS credit that I had, finally ran out and those $40 of services that I was running (and being billed for) every month just wasn\u0026rsquo;t really affordable.\nOne of my colleagues at work happened to mention hugo, I had a look into it and it looked moderately easy to migrate over from wordpress. You end up with a generated folder of content that you can host in s3. Stick a cloudfront distribution in front of it and you can have secure connections.\nThrow codecommit, codebuild and code pipeline into the mix and you can have hugo dynamically rebuild your site every time that you commit to the repository.\nAll of the content is written in markdown. Ir\u0026rsquo;s fairly easy to learn and is obviously used a lot in confluence and wiki sites. I simply clone the repo, create some new files, commit and push, codedeploy is triggered and hugo generates the site, it\u0026rsquo;s copied to s3 and the cloudfront distribution is invalidated, forcing a recache.\nSeems to work well, I\u0026rsquo;ve learnt a bit about go and have also learnt about the way that the themes work, with overrides being available at multiple points to static content, css and page layout.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve gotten my featured pages to work. I\u0026rsquo;ve gotten something of a gallery up and running but I need to go through my pictures and get all that sorted properly. It\u0026rsquo;ll take a bit of time.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s going to cost pennies to run and has given me a nice little intro to CI/CD and build pipelines.\nOh and I\u0026rsquo;m not running a database server anymore, I don\u0026rsquo;t have to keep two ec2 instances up to date and I don\u0026rsquo;t have to worry about the security flaws contained in a wordpress installation and all of the plugins therein.\nYou can git clone your codecommit, run hugo in live server mode, make changes and see how things will look before you push back, meaning that you can do all of your development offline if you want to. Handy.\nPretty awesome, even if I do say so myself :D\n","date":"14 Jan 2020","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2020-01-14-going_serverless/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Going Serverless","type":"posts"},{"content":"","date":"14 Jan 2020","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/optimisation/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Optimisation","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"13 Jun 2019","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/automation/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Automation","type":"tags"},{"content":"I’ve been told that when the company I work for first started to create new AWS accounts, they would have to set aside a day for it. A director also had to be tracked down in order to get hold of the company credit card details.\nFast forward a few years and this process still took at least an hour – maybe two hours depending on what it was you were creating. There was a 42 page word document to follow with step by step instructions, policies that had to be typed in by hand (following screenshots) and cross account access rights that had to be in place. The likelihood of missing something or a user inputting a typo was just too high and added another layer of complexity in that every new account had to be double checked. I was tasked with automating as much of this process as I could to save time. I started this by enabling AWS Organizations and bringing all of the accounts under control properly. Previously, cloudtrail was set up on new accounts manually, setting up all of the S3 bucket rights as you went, making sure that the trail created properly, that it was logging where it should, etc.\nBy turning on AWS Organizations and enabling cloudtrail, I was able to set an organisation wide cloudtrail policy that applied to all accounts old and new automatically. I was then able to delete the manually created trail configs in each of the old accounts.\nI was trying to find a little guidance on how to leverage cloudformation for the creation of accounts and I was lucky in that Amazon had written this blog post earlier this year and it looked to be the starting point for what it was we needed. https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/mt/automate-account-creation-and-resource-provisioning-using-aws-service-catalog-aws-organizations-and-aws-lambda/\nThe problem being – it wasn’t quite what we needed, and it certainly wasn’t the drag and drop solution I was hoping that it would be. For starters, this tooling assumes that your users will be in the master account for the organisation. We have them in a separate organisation. It also asks for allsorts of Region and AZ config, along with CIDR ranges for network addresses – we don’t need this level of customisation. I set about stripping out what it did, from both the cloudformation template used in the service catalogue and the python script which creates the account and all necessary resources. It also asked for the baseline template, s3 bucket name and various other variables that would just never change for us. Hardcoding them and removing them from the user form meant further improvements in speed and accuracy. I didn’t want an admin user creating, we don’t need one – so I stripped that out. It also created a service catalog (at a charge of $5 per month per account) with a load of stuff in that we just don’t need right now (though we will be moving to this in the future I would think). We have a different role name that we use for cross account access – I had to make changes there.\nThis cross account access needed to have a trust relationship to the user account, and not the master org account, so again I had to make some changes there. There were also special policies that restrict the creation of IAM Users and Groups that I needed to put in place along with other organisation accounts and policies.\nattach_policy_response = iam_client.attach_role_policy(RoleName=newrole,PolicyArn=iammarn)\nIt’s all well and good when you’re assigning AWS built in policies, that arn never changes. PolicyArn=\u0026lsquo;arn:aws:iam::aws:policy/AdministratorAccess\u0026rsquo;\nWhen you want to create a policy, in your new account, and then assign that policy to a new role – then things get a little trickier – but it is possible by creating a variable based off other variables and text:\niammarn = \u0026lsquo;arn:aws:iam::\u0026rsquo;+account_id+\u0026rsquo;:policy/IAM_User_Restrictions\u0026rsquo;\nI also added the function to set up the IAM alias for login, based on the accountname provided by the user. This was done using:\ncreate_alias_response = iam_client.create_account_alias(AccountAlias=accountname)\nThrough a lot of trial and error (and a lot of created dummy accounts) I’ve finally gotten us to a place where a new account is set up automatically and the admin user needs only provide the name of the new account and the email address for the root user. Due to the way that cloudformation triggered the python code, and the lack of any ability to edit an account in-situ, I had to make changes and then fire a new dummy account (which needed its own unique email address). The entire process takes less than 3 minutes. 3 years ago – this took a person out for an entire day. Now, it takes less than 3 minutes and most of that is non-interactive time. The user time this takes up is probably less than 20 seconds. The finished product is:\nA brand new AWS account within our AWS Organisation.\nA trust relationship back to the user AWS account, allowing admin access through assume role.\nSpecial company policies that we have in place for restricting the creation of users and groups.\nDenies access to the billing screens.\nCreates 2 company specific roles, with their own policies (will create as many as we need to have in a standard account) and assigns these policies on the fly.\nSets up CloudTrail.\nSets up the IAM alias so that users can log in using a friendly name rather than an account ID.\nIt probably does a little bit more magic too – it doesn’t sound like a lot, but it took hours and hours and hours of engineering. I’m not finished yet – there are a few more tweaks I need to make and the code is definitely not the best it could be – but I’m a sysop/engineer by trade and my python is a little rusty. AD integration is also coming in the next few months taking away even more of the setup from the user account side of things – everything will be managed with RBAC groups and it’ll just be a case of setting up a group in the AWS account that ties back to that AD group with the relevant STS assume role permission for that particular group of users – be it developer or ReadOnly access for an architect. Automating laborious, long winded and repeatable processes to reduce human error and free up more engineering time for service improvements and maybe even some professional development to ensure that that you’re in the best position for supporting the business going forward is the key here. Cloudformation is a fierce beast, especially when partnered with lambda functions running python scripts from S3. #engineeringwin\n","date":"13 Jun 2019","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2019-06-13-optimising-aws-account-creation/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Optimising AWS account creation","type":"posts"},{"content":"","date":"20 May 2019","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/braindump/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Braindump","type":"tags"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;m not sure about you, but my main experience of bullying at school was on the receiving end. I was bullied mainly about my weight. I\u0026rsquo;ve always been big. It\u0026rsquo;s never been that fun. It restricts some of the things I can do, it results in being pointed at and laughed at by strangers, it results in unwanted comments from some other strangers too and \u0026lsquo;friends\u0026rsquo;.\nThe worst part of this was at school. Kids are cruel. Some kids are downright evil. Kids want to look good in front of their mates, kids want to crack jokes at other people\u0026rsquo;s expense. After all aren\u0026rsquo;t we all told that \u0026lsquo;sticks and stones will break my bones but names can never hurt me\u0026rsquo;?\nI call bullshit.\nWords are powerful. Sometimes more powerful than physical acts. They can stay with you for life. They can have an effect on you and how you lead your life. They can make you feel less \u0026lsquo;worthy\u0026rsquo; than you should.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve spoken before about the problems with social media, I think back when I was in the early stages of my career, just after I\u0026rsquo;d left school and in the 5 years after, social media was in the myspace era. Friends Reunited was still around with its annual fee if you wanted to send messages to your friends and not many people wanted to reconnect anyways. Not at that stage.\nFast forward 20 years and we\u0026rsquo;ve got Facebook, everyone has got facebook, well most people. People tend to be suspicious of people without facebook its not normal (even though its probably healthier and a much better position to be in). Everyone has twitter, and snapchat and instagram or whatever else the flavour of the month social media portal is out there and \u0026lsquo;hot\u0026rsquo; right now.\nFacebook allows us to see interactions on friends walls with \u0026lsquo;friends of friends\u0026rsquo; people your friends are friends with but you are not.\nSometimes, I get these \u0026lsquo;friends of friends\u0026rsquo; taking part in a discussion that I\u0026rsquo;m involved in and I can\u0026rsquo;t help but get a wave of resentment and almost I guess hatred sweeping over me.\nPresumably they\u0026rsquo;ve long forgotten that comment they passed that afternoon in school whilst you were all lining up to get into Science, or when they made fun of you for wearing the same t-shirt on yet another non-uniform day (My Jurassic Park t-shirt was awesome, okay?). About the style of your shoes being like loafers, whatever the hell they were.\nFalse compliments too Saying that your hair was nice or looked good or you looked good. Being asked questions on a dare from their mates.\nI remember.\nI remember every. Single. Word.\nEvery single instance of bullying, I remember it.\nEvery single time you put me down, I remember it.\nAnd you were a dick.\nYou might have changed. You might be a wonderful person that helps fire scarred orphans to drink from bottles of milk. I don\u0026rsquo;t really care.\nYou were a dick, and you made my life at school horrible. And the words that you cut me with, the words that you used to get a laugh out of your minions who followed you around everywhere (what even is that about?), have left scars to this day.\nAs I hurtle toward 40, I care less and less about what other people think and say. If I decide not to give those words any power, then they can\u0026rsquo;t affect me. If I don\u0026rsquo;t let the opinions of others have any weight whatsoever, and recognise that they are the ones with the problem, not me, then it makes it easier to cope with.\nThe problem is, as a kid, or as a teenager, you don\u0026rsquo;t have this life experience and you don\u0026rsquo;t have the skills or the tools to deal with it. You get told by your parents that school is great and its the best days of your life even though you know its not.\nNot having bills was great, and not having as many responsibilities was also fun. 6 week holidays in summer seemed to last forever and you had seemingly hours of time to play computer games that goes away as you get older. But that environment of fear and constant abuse/put downs from certain people and \u0026lsquo;peers\u0026rsquo; that you had to spend those 7 or so years of your life with were downright horrible.\nThose 150 people in my year I\u0026rsquo;m in contact with less than 10 of them. At the time, they are your world. You don\u0026rsquo;t realise that every time you change jobs, you get another set of 150 people that you spend that 8 hours of your day with. But what you do end up with, is respect and politeness. And generally speaking, people are much nicer to you at work than they were at school.\nMaybe its time we stopped telling kids that words can\u0026rsquo;t hurt them, and time that we tried to give them the tools to cope with those words and the pain caused by them. Most importantly, maybe we should try to teach kids that their words and actions have real impact and consequence. I know that if I ever found out that either of my boys were bullying anyone I would do everything in my power to make them stop not by necessarily making an example/making them feel the same way but try to explain from the other person\u0026rsquo;s point of view how they might feels, and teach empathy to help them understand just how they would feel if someone made fun of them.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve also seen people say that bullying is a part of growing up and it builds character. No it doesn\u0026rsquo;t. It shouldn\u0026rsquo;t be a part of growing up mutual respect should be. You don\u0026rsquo;t build character by destroying souls, stamping on peoples feelings and rubbishing their interests.\nWe\u0026rsquo;re all responsible for giving our kids everything that they need in this world, we give them hopes and dreams and we inspire them to be whatever they want to be. From my mum and dad, I got manners, respect, a clear definition of what is right and wrong and was taught how to treat other people.\nThe best thing you can teach your children is kindness.\nTeach your children to be kind.\nIf everyone in this world was kinder, the world would be a very different place.\nSome people aren\u0026rsquo;t as strong as I am, some people have been affected by words in a much deeper way, and some people have taken their own lives as a result of bullying.\nBe kind, and always treat people how you would like to be treated yourself. You never know what battles the people you deal with every day face. You don\u0026rsquo;t know what hardships they face. So be kind, and help to make their day a little brighter and more bearable.\n","date":"20 May 2019","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2019-05-20-bullying/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Bullying","type":"posts"},{"content":"","date":"20 May 2019","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/bullying/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Bullying","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"16 May 2019","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/categories/cooking/","section":"Categories","summary":"","title":"Cooking","type":"categories"},{"content":"Right, after finally getting around to it, I\u0026rsquo;ve sorted out my httpd conf so that it\u0026rsquo;s working as expected, moved some common parameters into a separate common configuration file, set up an additional VirtualHost entry and turned on listening through port 80 again.\nAlso taken another image of that so that when the spot instance invariably fails, I\u0026rsquo;ve got a new golden image to go.\nI should probably add in some backup scripts and config backing off to s3. Maybe even just move the static parts of the site to s3 and serve from there. Hmm.\n","date":"16 May 2019","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2019-05-16-finally-sorted-the-http-redirection-and-port-80-problems/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Finally sorted the http redirection and port 80 problems","type":"posts"},{"content":"","date":"16 May 2019","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/food/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Food","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"16 May 2019","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/homemade/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Homemade","type":"tags"},{"content":"The below makes 12 but if you only fill the tins halfway up rather than most of the way up you\u0026rsquo;ll end up with crispier puddings rather than big floppy ones.\nYou will need:\n250ml (about 1 US cup) of milk (I\u0026rsquo;ve used whole, semi and skimmed it works well with all)\n163g (1 and 1/3 US cups) of plain flour\n5 large eggs\n(you can also use the measuring jug method – break your eggs into the jug, say they make up to 400ml, pour them into your bowl, add 400ml of milk, pour that into your bowl and then pour flour in up to 400ml line then pour that into the bowl- what’s important here is equal measurements of the ingredients)\nsome lard/or beef dripping\na muffin tray\nhand whisk/beater/electric beater – I have this one and it works a charm https://www.amazon.co.uk/OXO-Good-Grips-Hand-Held-Mixer/dp/B004VLYQFO/\nIf you\u0026rsquo;re in the USA (you want this link here) https://www.amazon.com/OXO-Good-Grips-Egg-Beater/dp/B004VLYQFO\nMethod:\nBreak the eggs into a bowl. Whisk until its well mixed.\nAdd salt and pepper to season\nAdd the milk\nWhisk some more\nAdd the flour\nWhisk a lot\nYou want bubbles all over, lots of nice airy bubbles\nStick the mix in the fridge to rest – for an hour, for the day, whatever time you’ve got works well.\nIdeally do that a few hours before you need them.\nTo prep your tray:\nAdd about a teaspoon of lard to each section of the tray.\nPut it in the oven between 210-230 degrees (410F-440F) (you\u0026rsquo;ll have to experiment with your oven over a few batches)\nLeave it in there for a good 5-10 mins\nTake out your mix from the fridge\nEvenly distribute mixture between them\nStick it back in the oven Leave for at least 20 mins\nUnder no circumstances open that oven door. Not even to check, or turn something else, or anything.\nDON\u0026rsquo;T OPEN THE OVEN\nSomewhere between 20-25 mins, they will be done. Again, this depends on your oven and it\u0026rsquo;ll take some experimenting to get it right. You don\u0026rsquo;t want to take them out too soon as they\u0026rsquo;ll deflate and you\u0026rsquo;re stuck with smaller puddings than you deserve, but you don\u0026rsquo;t want them to catch and burn either.\n","date":"16 May 2019","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2019-05-16-yorkshire-pudding-recipe/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Matt's Yorkshire Pudding recipe","type":"posts"},{"content":"","date":"16 May 2019","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/recipe/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Recipe","type":"tags"},{"content":"The AWS summit was absolutely fantastic. Met up with a few colleagues I haven\u0026rsquo;t seen for years, learned a few new bits and pieces, saw some really energetic and charasmatic people present ideas, solutions, challenges and ideas and mingled with around 12,000 people who were all interested in AWS.\nIt was mind blowing to think that there were people all around me, brilliant people, trailblazers, thinkers, do-ers.\nI can\u0026rsquo;t wait to go back next year, and all it did was whet the appetite to get out to AWS Re:Invent in Vegas. That still remains a pipe dream unless I can get good at machine learning and DeepRacer and have a sub 9 second model in place by this time next year.\nHad a few lightbulb moments, it cleared a few foggy patches and it reaffirmed where I wanted to go and what I wanted to do.\nI need to look to the future, and I need to make sure that I capitalise on my time by doing whatever I need to further that knowledge and that journey.\n","date":"9 May 2019","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2019-05-09-aws-summit-in-london/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"AWS Summit in London","type":"posts"},{"content":"This one has been brewing in my head for a few weeks now. It\u0026rsquo;s strange.\nDo you ever feel like your life is a little bit like playing The Sims? Trying to juggle work, home, friends, other responsibilities and maintain all of those different relationships?\nYou used to have to give them a phone and have a chat with them to maintain that level of friendship. Absolute nightmare to manage, it still gives me palpitations now. Ha.\nSometimes, with the way that shifts are working out, its hard enough to maintain the relationships between the people I live in the same house with let alone people that I just don\u0026rsquo;t get to see as often anymore.\nThere are loads of people I used to work with that I considered as really close friends, once you remove that daily 9-5 exposure, the relationships start to drop off, and even though I think fondly of them often, there\u0026rsquo;s just not enough time in the day to maintain these relationships and they start to break down into acquaintances .\nI don\u0026rsquo;t think there\u0026rsquo;s anything that anyone can do to stave this off people I used to work with from 3-4 jobs ago I still have on Facebook, they still pop up on my memories and they still make me smile but remove that thing you have in common, the daily grind and you just don\u0026rsquo;t have enough time anymore.\nThrow in a few kids, family, shopping, constantly growing feet and bodies, Open University degrees and that 24 hours you have in a day seems to be an ever shrinking pool of nothingness.\nI was talking to my dad about why he never speaks to or sees a friend that lives in the village that he used to work with and he just didn\u0026rsquo;t know he says it just happens. I remember we used to visit this guy fairly often as we had a shared interest in Atari and Commodore computing. But as we move away from those common platforms, relationships degrade.\nHaving started a new job 2 months ago (I can\u0026rsquo;t believe how quickly its flown) I\u0026rsquo;m paying more attention to how these relationships are degrading. People that I talked to every day, I\u0026rsquo;m speaking to once a week or so. Some people I\u0026rsquo;m not speaking to at all. It\u0026rsquo;s sad, but things move on and it seems to be the circle of life. You can certainly see how people as they get older and move away from work that they can lose those circles and connections.\nStay at home mums and things too it must feel so isolating.\nI\u0026rsquo;m in a very good position, I have a job I love, a family that I love and I don\u0026rsquo;t want for anything. It\u0026rsquo;s still a shame that we have this 9-5 thing going on 5 days a week and the kids have school and it just stops us from being able to enjoy some of the finer things in life I guess.\nThere\u0026rsquo;s always retirement, if you make it that far and that\u0026rsquo;s where you\u0026rsquo;re meant to be able to enjoy those things that you\u0026rsquo;ve worked your whole life for. I just hope I get there and I get to enjoy it. Everything crossed. 🙂\n","date":"29 Mar 2019","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2019-03-29-relationships/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Relationships","type":"posts"},{"content":"Came across this YouTube video earlier.\nIf one of the guys involved in putting together facebook (who has since left) is telling you to stay away and not use it, you should probably do that.\n","date":"27 Feb 2019","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2019-02-27-social-media-is-bad-mmmkay/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Social media is bad mmmkay?","type":"posts"},{"content":"Looks like my main web server instance is costing less than $2 a month on a T3 Micro. That\u0026rsquo;s a spot instance with a fairly high bidding price set so that it\u0026rsquo;s very unlikely to ever be outbid and is still the cheapest way to provision EC2 capacity.\nBy the same token, my database server is also a T3 micro instance and that\u0026rsquo;s looking to cost just under $7 a month on demand same uptime as the web server so you can see there\u0026rsquo;s a $5 saving.\nThe bamboo server is having to run on a medium server and that\u0026rsquo;s used around $27 this month. Don\u0026rsquo;t you just love java?\nStill got $300 of credit in my account so there\u0026rsquo;s no massive rush to move off the on demand instances right now. Maybe I should think about it though.\nWorkmail is $4 per user per month plus tax. Route53 is $0.50 per domain per month, there\u0026rsquo;s no getting around that. If I can keep my monthly bills less than $30 a month that would certainly keep my wallet happy.\nNeed to do a fair bit more work with bamboo to see if I can get it running on something a little less powerful or spot instance it. We\u0026rsquo;ll see.\n","date":"25 Feb 2019","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2019-02-25-40-a-month-on-ec2-instances/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"$40 a month on EC2 instances","type":"posts"},{"content":"Turns out Bamboo wasn\u0026rsquo;t working properly I think I\u0026rsquo;d started to create a test job, and that had broken the DB patch/reboot job. Just re-ran it through and all seems good now.\nNeed to stop it from emailing me every night and having me just ignore the emails. I might tie it into SNS or something. It\u0026rsquo;s good to have something to play with.\n","date":"25 Feb 2019","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2019-02-25-bamboo-fixed/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Bamboo fixed","type":"posts"},{"content":"Not a single server outage in the last three weeks. Which is great, it means that I\u0026rsquo;ve gotten everything set up properly as far as server updates, security groups and maintenance are concerned.\nBamboo seems to be doing what it\u0026rsquo;s meant to do and is rebooting the servers nightly. Everything seems to be working properly with regards to database backups and everything. I need to double check what the monthly cost is looking like when I start to run out of promotional credit at the end of this year. Could be quite costly.\n","date":"25 Feb 2019","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2019-02-25-stability-is-a-wonderful-thing/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Stability is a wonderful thing","type":"posts"},{"content":"Last week I was on holiday from work, looking after the kids on half term. I found that a new game has hit the Nintendo Switch E-Store Tetris 99. It\u0026rsquo;s Tetris meets Fortnite and it\u0026rsquo;s amazing.\nA fast and frantic battle royale with 99 players all playing tetris at the same time, with a slightly updated version of the Tetris theme that we all know and love and with completed lines being sent to opponents that you can target in order to scupper their plans.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s very fast, very fun and very pick up and playable. I really should start bringing the switch to work so that I can play on my lunch breaks. Maybe if and when Harry gets his own switch and I don\u0026rsquo;t feel so bad about taking it away whilst I\u0026rsquo;m out of the office. We\u0026rsquo;ll see.\nSounds like it might be a limited free download for Nintendo switch online you obviously need membership to the online service for this.\nhttps://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/tetris-99-switch\n","date":"25 Feb 2019","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2019-02-25-tetris-99/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Tetris 99","type":"posts"},{"content":"Today I start my new job. I\u0026rsquo;m really excited.\nEven though its just over the road from where I used to work, and the commute is pretty much exactly the same as what I have done for the last 7 years, I still drove over there yesterday to check out the car park in a bit more detail, find the visitors spots I\u0026rsquo;m supposed to park in and just make sure that nothing has changed in the last three months since my interview.\nI can\u0026rsquo;t remember being this excited about going into work for a long time, I\u0026rsquo;m looking forward to meeting the people I\u0026rsquo;m going to be working with, I\u0026rsquo;m looking forward to the technologies I\u0026rsquo;m going to be working with and I\u0026rsquo;m really looking forward to a fresh start with a whole raft of new adventures.\nOh, I\u0026rsquo;m looking forward to ordering my first ever company car too. The kids are telling me it has to be red (it was going to be red anyway to be fair, but don\u0026rsquo;t tell them). I\u0026rsquo;ve been driving around in a Hyundai i30 all weekend its a beautiful car to drive and it reinforces my decision to order a Hyundai Ioniq Hybrid. The hire car has to go back in the next few days and I\u0026rsquo;m going to be using a Skoda Octavia pool car. Hope it has heated seats! I didn\u0026rsquo;t half miss them this weekend in the cold.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s been a long three months. I\u0026rsquo;m feeling full of positivity and hope for the future.\nLong may it last 🙂\n","date":"4 Feb 2019","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2019-02-04-new-job/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"New job!","type":"posts"},{"content":"Thought I was having some apache woes earlier this week. Looks like it was just a red herring and the real issue was the 80 \u0026gt; 443 forced redirection I\u0026rsquo;d set up.\nProperly set up and test now. You never know, I might even start getting traffic.\n","date":"1 Feb 2019","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2019-02-01-ssl-redirection-now-working/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"SSL redirection – now working","type":"posts"},{"content":"I’ve always had a thing for lemmings. It’s my go to Amiga game and always one of the first ever things I fire up when I plug the Amiga in or Amiga forever. There’s something oddly satisfying about getting those little guys from the entrance of their hazard filled world to the exit.\nI got to thinking the other day, I played a lot of lemmings during my early computer stages. The game came out when I was 10. I loved the puzzles. And I still love them now.\nIt teaches you to think quickly, it teaches you to manage resources. It teaches you logic and sometimes it teaches you to defy logic. You’ve got a limited amount of climbers and builders so you may well have to change your strategy part way through a level or start again.\nFound this really interesting article on it today. Games on the Mersey, Part 5: The Lemmings Effect Anyway. The reason that lemmings has come back to the forefront is that Sony have recently released their mobile version. It’s laden with in app purchases but it is possible to play without spending a penny as long as you’re willing to limit your time playing to 20 mins here and there (actions cost energy and energy is limited).\nThe levels aren’t as clever or intricate as DMAs were. I’m pretty sure that they’re randomly generated to be fair. But they work. And they’re fun. Rather than assign roles to lemmings you assign them to squares on the screen. Tell it where you want stairs and the next lemming to hit that square will build them for you. Floaters with umbrellas? Just stick a floater space in. Every lemming that falls through it will glide softly to the bottom. Be careful though, effects wear off as soon as they touch the ground again so you might find yourself needing tiered floaters to get down safely.\nAt first I didn’t like the new control system. After a little while I realised there was no other way this could be done on a small touch screen. Lemmings is available here on the App Store and I heavily recommend it.\nhttps://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/lemmings/id1238114713?mt=8\nFor me, it’s the quintessential puzzle game that helps to teach you how to think, how to manage things under pressure and how to know when the only option is to hit the nuke button.\nOh no!\n","date":"31 Jan 2019","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2019-01-31-lemmings/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Lemmings","type":"posts"},{"content":"Just one week until I start my new job. Excited is an understatement. Can\u0026rsquo;t wait to get going. My playing around with bamboo was in preparation for this, and it seems to be running pretty well it\u0026rsquo;s updating and rebooting both of my ec2 instances nightly using AWS tasks and emailing me using SES to let me know whether the job has passed or failed.\nEverything seems fairly stable. Bamboo itself is the biggest server I\u0026rsquo;ve got running in ec2, but it\u0026rsquo;s Java and Java likes to eat all of the RAM so, it is what it is.\n","date":"28 Jan 2019","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2019-01-28-one-week-to-go/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"One week to go!","type":"posts"},{"content":"The only way to use Amazon\u0026rsquo;s free SSL certificates is if you pipe them through something like cloudformation, use them with cloudfront or a load balancer.\nTried that for December and it turns out its fairly expensive to run an ELB for a month it\u0026rsquo;s all fine and dandy whilst I\u0026rsquo;ve got EDU credit to burn through but I can\u0026rsquo;t afford $20 a month to shortcut an easy way to SSL cert up the site. I started to look at certbot and lets encrypt as an automatic way of getting a cert in place, changed my apache config and here we are running through a straight connection on port 443 to the web server.\nTo be fair, it was a little silly having a load balancer in front of a single web server, but I didn\u0026rsquo;t have the time to do anything else with it.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve got a little bit of time now, so setting things up properly.\n","date":"16 Jan 2019","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2019-01-16-certbot-and-lets-encrypt/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Certbot and Let’s Encrypt","type":"posts"},{"content":"Since we\u0026rsquo;ve got a dedicated DB server, not running as a spot instance now (so it shouldn\u0026rsquo;t just disappear whenever the hell it wants) and we\u0026rsquo;re not running RDS, I\u0026rsquo;ve re-implemented nightly sql backups to S3.\nGosh technology, isn\u0026rsquo;t it great?\n","date":"16 Jan 2019","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2019-01-16-db-backups/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"DB backups","type":"posts"},{"content":"Make sure that bamboo isn\u0026rsquo;t backed off to the RDS instance you deleted, and if it is, make sure you take that final snapshot so that you can easily move it over. Oh, also be aware that mariadb isn\u0026rsquo;t compatible with bamboo unless you throw in some startup arguments.\nIt was a fun couple of hours at least. Yay.\n","date":"16 Jan 2019","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2019-01-16-note-to-self/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Note to self","type":"posts"},{"content":"Yet another DB migration this time to a dedicated box running mariadb. Testing to make sure that posting a new post works and it appears in the right database….\n","date":"16 Jan 2019","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2019-01-16-testing-db-migration/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Testing DB migration","type":"posts"},{"content":"It\u0026rsquo;s always a good idea not to forget your password. Especially to your blog, especially when you haven\u0026rsquo;t posted to it for months.\nSo, yeah, it\u0026rsquo;s also a good idea to not remember your password and then be fooled by it not working because you\u0026rsquo;ve locked your account out yet there\u0026rsquo;s no visual feedback of having done so.\nI find more and more that I\u0026rsquo;m just letting my phone randomly create a password for me/store it in my keychain seems better that way, plus when I do actually start forgetting important things it won\u0026rsquo;t matter, because my phone will for all intents and purposes be me anyway.\nHappy New year everyone!\n","date":"14 Jan 2019","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2019-01-14-helpful-tip/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Helpful tip","type":"posts"},{"content":"As a professional working with AWS, is there any event in the calendar year that is more exciting than AWS RE:Invent?\nGutted I didn\u0026rsquo;t get the chance to go this year. I am SO EXCITED by the new tech coming out of there though.\nRobotics AND SATELLITE DATA!?\nAmazing stuff.\n","date":"28 Nov 2018","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2018-11-28-aws-reinvent/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"AWS RE:Invent","type":"posts"},{"content":"Today is the day we get to see which retailers have elastic scaling infrastructure and half decent architects with forward planning and those who do not.\nCDKeys and ChaosCards have already been hit with downtime post mail shots don\u0026rsquo;t email your customer base if you can\u0026rsquo;t cope with them all clicking the link at the same time.\nChaos tried to put a queing system in front but the site still ended up offline mid browse.\n","date":"23 Nov 2018","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2018-11-23-happy-black-friday/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Happy Black Friday!","type":"posts"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;ve started to play around with Bamboo and a few other bits and pieces in an evening and I\u0026rsquo;ve managed to find a few promotional $150 vouchers for AWS that you would usually get from AWS training courses on ebay prices range from about £11 to £35 depending on expiry. Bamboo will not run on a T3 micro it just doesn\u0026rsquo;t have the CPU capacity definitely needs 2cpus, even for a tiny installation that\u0026rsquo;s Java for you 😉\nI had a spot instance running but it kept going away due to capacity. It\u0026rsquo;s running again on a spot instance but I\u0026rsquo;ve whacked up the price to $1 an hour now so hopefully that\u0026rsquo;ll never go away. But again, I\u0026rsquo;m putting database backups in place to make sure it doesn\u0026rsquo;t go anywhere, should it go down.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve got $450 of credit on my account and it goes towards the EC2 cost along with quite a few other services. Here\u0026rsquo;s the complete list:\nAmazon Simple Storage Service AWS Lambda Amazon Glacier Amazon Sumerian Amazon Relational Database Service Amazon SimpleDB AWSCloudDirectoryInternal Amazon CloudSearch AWS IoT Amazon Lightsail Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud AWS Elastic Beanstalk Amazon Simple Notification Service AWS Config Amazon Redshift AmazonCloudWatch Amazon Elastic File System AWS Data Pipeline Amazon ElastiCache Amazon CloudFront Amazon Elastic Transcoder Amazon Virtual Private Cloud Amazon Lex AWS Data Transfer Amazon Simple EDI AWS OpsWorks AWS Storage Gateway Amazon Simple Email Service Amazon Machine Learning Amazon SageMaker Amazon Elastic MapReduce AWS X-Ray Amazon DynamoDB Amazon EC2 Container Registry (ECR) AWS Glue AWS Budgets Amazon Polly Amazon Route 53 AWS Support (Basic) Amazon Elasticsearch Service AWS CloudTrail Amazon Rekognition AWS Key Management Service Amazon Simple Queue Service Amazon AppStream Amazon Kinesis \u0026lt;p\u0026gt; \u0026amp;nbsp; \u0026lt;/p\u0026gt; \u0026lt;p\u0026gt; So, seeing that EC2 was in the list, and there was no way in hell I was going to burn through that much credit by the end of next year, I decided to purchase some Reserved Instances. A T3 micro for 3 years and a T3 small for one year, all upfront total cost was $264 + 20% VAT. And this charged itself directly to my credit card, with pretty much no confirmation. To be fair to Amazon, I did click the purchase button, I just expected to see a final confirmation screen that showed me where the funds were going to be coming from. That didn't happen. \u0026lt;/p\u0026gt; \u0026lt;p\u0026gt; \u0026amp;nbsp; \u0026lt;/p\u0026gt; \u0026lt;p\u0026gt; To be fair, there is documentation to support that: \u0026lt;/p\u0026gt; \u0026lt;p\u0026gt; \u0026amp;nbsp; \u0026lt;/p\u0026gt; \u0026lt;p\u0026gt; \u0026lt;a href=\u0026quot;https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/knowledge-center/credits-ri/\u0026quot;\u0026gt;https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/knowledge-center/credits-ri/\u0026lt;/a\u0026gt; \u0026lt;/p\u0026gt; \u0026lt;/div\u0026gt; \u0026lt;p\u0026gt; \u0026amp;nbsp; \u0026lt;/p\u0026gt; \u0026lt;p\u0026gt; I just didn't see it before I clicked the old purchase button 😉 \u0026lt;/p\u0026gt; \u0026lt;p\u0026gt; \u0026amp;nbsp; \u0026lt;/p\u0026gt; \u0026lt;div\u0026gt; \u0026lt;p\u0026gt; Their support team have been lovely, they've managed to cancel the Reserved Instances and are starting the process to refund me. I upgraded to developer support at $29 a month to get my request actioned sooner. I've not decided whether or not I'm going to keep this in place or not yet there are benefits to it for sure, and as I start to do more and more with it over the coming months, it might be a good idea. We'll see. \u0026lt;/p\u0026gt; \u0026lt;p\u0026gt; \u0026amp;nbsp; \u0026lt;/p\u0026gt; \u0026lt;p\u0026gt; Workmail isn't covered by the credit, thats $4 per user per month, but to be honest, it is so much better than what I'm used to with my previous host, it makes me realise just how great an enterprise level solution it is. \u0026lt;/p\u0026gt; \u0026lt;/div\u0026gt; \u0026lt;/div\u0026gt; ","date":"22 Nov 2018","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2018-11-22-promotional-credit-can-not-be-used-for-reserved-instances/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Promotional credit can not be used for Reserved Instances!","type":"posts"},{"content":"In the middle of a migration from the local EC2 instance of mysql back to RDS. Need to burn through this promotional credit somehow.\nLets test that DB writes are still working…..\n","date":"22 Nov 2018","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2018-11-22-running-from-rds-again/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Running from RDS….again","type":"posts"},{"content":"Turns out that WAF costs $5 per acl and $5 per rule per month. And that $10 protection I had in place for a simple geo block against China and a few other countries I was getting probing attacks from wasn’t included in the AWS credit I’ve got so I’ve turned it off.\nDone some playing around with ALBs and fail2ban including setting up a custom filter for script attacks but need to do some further refinement with x forwarded for headers and what not.\nHopefully i’ll get some more time to have a fiddle with it over the weekend.\n","date":"8 Nov 2018","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2018-11-08-waf-is-pricey-for-personal-use/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"WAF is pricey – for personal use","type":"posts"},{"content":"Since I\u0026rsquo;ve got $300 of AWS credit to use up before December 2019 and my t3 micro instance isn\u0026rsquo;t really doing a good job of that, I decided I might as well throw up a load balancer, get the certificate assigned to it and set up route53 properly to that alias.\nSo far so good. Green padlocks are fun.\n","date":"7 Nov 2018","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2018-11-07-were-ssl-enabled/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"We’re SSL enabled","type":"posts"},{"content":"Picked up the October Mickey Mouse memories edition from the Disney store this week.\nWasn\u0026rsquo;t sure about it when I first saw it but after looking at it for a few minutes and realising it\u0026rsquo;s the same terminal colour scheme as I use on SecureCRT for my Mac, and it\u0026rsquo;s full of binary, I absolutely love it.\nPretty sure the binary will say something. Haven\u0026rsquo;t worked it out it googled it yet.\nLove it.\nThere\u0026rsquo;s a mug and a pin set too. I haven\u0026rsquo;t picked those up. Yet.\n","date":"22 Oct 2018","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2018-10-22-digital-mickey/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Digital Mickey","type":"posts"},{"content":"So I passed my AWS solutions architect associate exam on the 27th September. I think I ended up with about 87%\nPretty happy with that. Now trying to decide if I\u0026rsquo;m going to go for the systems administrator exam and developer exam or if I\u0026rsquo;m going to concentrate on solutions architecture.\nI\u0026rsquo;m also eyeing up an open university degree in computing. I say I\u0026rsquo;m eyeing it up, I\u0026rsquo;ve registered and I\u0026rsquo;m waiting to see if I get approved for a part time student loan.\nBSc (Honours) Computing and IT\nSounds impressive doesn\u0026rsquo;t it?\nFrom a career perspective, it won\u0026rsquo;t give me much more in terms of experience and career usable knowledge especially in an ever changing cloud landscape.\nWhat it will give me, is a revisit to solid maths for the first time in over 20 years and a grounding in programming that I felt has always been missing from my repertoire.\nI feel a deeper understanding of the maths side of things along with some hardcore software development will help with both my python and bash scripting.\nI can read most code (even badly commented code) and tell you what it does. What I struggle with is writing something from scratch. Hoping this will help. Plus there\u0026rsquo;s some cool modules like robotics which I\u0026rsquo;ve always had an interest in.\nIf I decided to go for the networking speciality there\u0026rsquo;s always the option to revisit the CCNA too. We\u0026rsquo;ll see.\nNext few months promise to be exciting regardless.\n","date":"22 Oct 2018","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2018-10-22-what-next/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"What next?","type":"posts"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;ve put together a skill as part of a tutorial from acloudguru and I\u0026rsquo;ve had this published by amazon.\nIf you\u0026rsquo;re studying for your AWS solutions architect associate exam and you\u0026rsquo;d like to stream exam tips and tidbits of information to your Alexa have a look at it here.\nhttps://skills-store.amazon.co.uk/deeplink/dp/B07HJ4T9DH?deviceType=app\u0026share\u0026refSuffix=ss_copy\n","date":"20 Sep 2018","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2018-09-20-i-published-an-amazon-skill/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"I published an amazon skill","type":"posts"},{"content":"This is absolutely crazy.\nLook at the price difference between a t3 micro and a t3 small running spot.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s well under half the price.\nMuch cheaper running it this way than having apache on a t2 small and a seperate RDS instance.\nS3 backups running well or they are now that I\u0026rsquo;ve sorted out the cron job. Had a little issue with a misplaced * instead of a 0 which meant I got 60 backups between 1am and 2am rather than just one backup at 1am 😉\n","date":"19 Sep 2018","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2018-09-19-costings/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Costings","type":"posts"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;m 3/4 of the way through my acloudguru AWS training course for solutions architect associate and decided that now I\u0026rsquo;ve done most of the VPC chapter and my understanding of the subject is helped infinitely by my experience, it was time to use the practice exam voucher on the AWS.training site to see how far off I am with less than 2 weeks to go until i sit it.\nThe questions were tough and certainly very similar if you didn\u0026rsquo;t know for certain what a particular service is called or what a service does then you\u0026rsquo;re in trouble.\nI scored 84%\nLooks like the thing I need to focus on the most over the next week or so is security.\nAlso just need to firm up on a couple of bits of terminology that almost caught me out. The main thing is making sure I read the question all the way through and that I apply logic to the answers that \u0026lsquo;could\u0026rsquo; be correct.\nStudying is going well. Still enjoying the subject matter. Going all in on AWS.\n","date":"19 Sep 2018","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2018-09-19-practice-makes-perfect/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Practice makes perfect","type":"posts"},{"content":"So less than a week after returning to school, Harry has brought a cold home.\nMore importantly than that, he\u0026rsquo;s shared it with me, and now i have the cold.\nLuckily, this appears to be a cold that is paying attention to Day Nurse, so I\u0026rsquo;m at least getting a clear head once the tablets have kicked in.\nLots of stuff going on recently, passed my AWS certification exam, got another one at the start of October, so that\u0026rsquo;s going to be good.\nPlayed a load of two point hospital, its really good fun.\nAlso started watching Greys Anatomy which I\u0026rsquo;m really enjoying!\n","date":"12 Sep 2018","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2018-09-12-manflu-is-real/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Manflu is real","type":"posts"},{"content":"Turns out that running an RDS database is quite pricey moving this over to the EC2 instance whilst I re-evaluate my architectural decisions. Spot pricing looks to be the best way forward still, but I need to make sure I\u0026rsquo;m getting backups will have to set up a nightly mysql backup to s3 I think, probably the best way to do it.\nTest post to make sure the database is working as it should be.\n","date":"12 Sep 2018","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2018-09-12-migrated-the-db/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Migrated the DB","type":"posts"},{"content":"So the RDS instance has been terminated now.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve got S3 backed mysql backups running nightly, so I\u0026rsquo;m saving myself an absolute fortune.\nStill some tuning to do and I\u0026rsquo;m not sure if I\u0026rsquo;m going to stick at spot pricing or look into reserved pricing. I need to get some tuning in place first with regards to apache and mysql and make sure with Trusted Advisor that I\u0026rsquo;m running at the right sort of level.\nIf I can get it running properly on a t2.nano or a t3.nano I could probably save a small fortune paying just $70ish over the course of three years rather than the on-demand pricing.\nSpot is okay, but now my database is running on the same ec2 instance, I risk data loss if Amazon were to terminate my instance.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s only the 12th of the month look at the state of the costs:\nWe\u0026rsquo;d be looking at easy $13 a month just for RDS probably more like $16 a month. Just too expensive for what I need and lets be honest, RDS backed mysql is a little overkill for a couple of wordpress blogs.\nIn terms of EC2 cost:\nThe biggest cost here is obviously the gaming instance I threw up for a work demo last week even though I\u0026rsquo;ve only done 9 hours with it, the cost is $2.48.\nIn comparison, the spot instance running my web server at the moment (a t3 small) has cost me just $1.22 for 178 hours.\nWhilst it was fun to play around with RDS and the security groups governing rules in and out, it\u0026rsquo;s just not required for my use case.\nWe\u0026rsquo;ll see how the next few weeks go 🙂\n","date":"12 Sep 2018","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2018-09-12-migration-complete/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Migration complete","type":"posts"},{"content":"I’m on the train on the way back from Manchester to Leeds after having completed my AWS Cloud Practioner examination.\nI passed!\nNot sure on my score yet, waiting for the report and the certificate to be available from my certification account.\nI’ve just realised that this is my first certification since getting my Network+ way back in 2004. That’s insane. 14 Years.\nNo wonder interviewers asked me if I’d considered getting certified for anything recently its like those restaurants that have restaurant of the year 2004-2005 on a sticker in the window it just looks out of date.\nQuite nervous now about the Associate Solutions Architect exam that I have at the start of October. This first exam was meant to be a breeze and it was bloody tough. I guess that means that it’s worth the $120 I paid for it though.\nLots of focus on direct connect a technology that I haven’t really had much chance to play around with as yet, and a few questions about AWS Rekognition, which is a relatively new technology too.\nIn terms of advice, prepare, prepare, prepare and read the white papers. The practice exams won’t get you ready, the questions are worded so much harder and the answers are so similar to one another that if you don’t know what you’re answering, you simply won’t get it right.\nSo yeah. AWS certification path started!\nMore training to complete over the next few weeks.\n","date":"5 Sep 2018","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2018-09-05-aws-certified-cloud-practitioner/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner","type":"posts"},{"content":"I came across an issue with my DNS entries that mean every time that my spot instance was terminated, I had to manually change the A record. That\u0026rsquo;s not very cloud-like.\nFound an article(below):\nAuto-Register EC2 Instance in AWS Route 53\rThe problem with the article, is that the API has changed since it was written and the script no longer works.\nSteps 1-5 are spot on, and most of step 6 is perfect aside from the script my fixes are below, I\u0026rsquo;ve updated the api call and also added in a path statement so that the script will run non-interactively.\nFollowing the blog above, If you are using an amazon linux ami as your base image, you\u0026rsquo;ll already have the awscli package so you can skip the first part of part 6 also.\n=========\nvi /usr/sbin/update-route53-dns\r#!/bin/sh\rPATH=$PATH:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/sbin\r# Load configuration and export access key ID and secret for cli53 and aws cli\r. /etc/route53/config\rexport AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID\rexport AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY\r# The TimeToLive in seconds we use for the DNS records\rTTL=\"300\"\r# Get the private and public hostname from EC2 resource tags\rREGION=$(curl -s http://169.254.169.254/latest/dynamic/instance-identity/document | grep region | awk -F\\\" '{print $4}')\rINSTANCE_ID=$(curl -s http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/instance-id)\rINTERNAL_HOSTNAME=$(aws ec2 describe-tags --filters \"Name=resource-id,Values=$INSTANCE_ID\" \"Name=key,Values=internal-hostname\" --region=$REGION --output=text | cut -f5)\rPUBLIC_HOSTNAME=$(aws ec2 describe-tags --filters \"Name=resource-id,Values=$INSTANCE_ID\" \"Name=key,Values=public-hostname\" --region=$REGION --output=text | cut -f5)\r# Get the local and public IP Address that is assigned to the instance\rLOCAL_IPV4=$(curl -s http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/local-ipv4)\rPUBLIC_IPV4=$(curl -s http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/public-ipv4)\r# Create a new or update the A-Records on Route53 with public and private IP address\rcli53 rrcreate --replace \"$ZONE\" \"$INTERNAL_HOSTNAME $TTL A $LOCAL_IPV4\"\rcli53 rrcreate --replace \"$ZONE\" \"www $TTL A $PUBLIC_IPV4\"\r=========\nWhilst this is great if you have tags in place, sometimes you want to have something hardcoded to update the DNS records quickly in case of failure/spot request going away.\n=========\nPUBLIC_HOSTNAME=$(aws ec2 describe-tags --filters \"Name=resource-id,Values=$INSTANCE_ID\" \"Name=key,Values=public-hostname\" --region=$REGION --output=text | cut -f5)\rINTERNAL_HOSTNAME=$(aws ec2 describe-tags --filters \"Name=resource-id,Values=$INSTANCE_ID\" \"Name=key,Values=internal-hostname\" --region=$REGION --output=text | cut -f5)\r#!/bin/sh\rPATH=$PATH:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/sbin\r# Load configuration and export access key ID and secret for cli53 and aws cli\r. /etc/route53/config\rexport AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID\rexport AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY\r# The TimeToLive in seconds we use for the DNS records\rTTL=\"300\"\r# Get the private and public hostname from EC2 resource tags\rREGION=$(curl -s http://169.254.169.254/latest/dynamic/instance-identity/document | grep region | awk -F\\\" '{print $4}')\rINSTANCE_ID=$(curl -s http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/instance-id)\rINTERNAL_HOSTNAME=web01\rPUBLIC_HOSTNAME=www\r# Get the local and public IP Address that is assigned to the instance\rLOCAL_IPV4=$(curl -s http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/local-ipv4)\rPUBLIC_IPV4=$(curl -s http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/public-ipv4)\r# Create a new or update the A-Records on Route53 with public and private IP address\rcli53 rrcreate --replace \"$ZONE\" \"$INTERNAL_HOSTNAME $TTL A $LOCAL_IPV4\"\rcli53 rrcreate --replace \"$ZONE\" \"$PUBLIC_HOSTNAME $TTL A $PUBLIC_IPV4\"\r=========","date":"4 Sep 2018","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2018-09-04-script-draft/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Auto updating Route53 DNS when you launch a new EC2 instance based on an AMI","type":"posts"},{"content":"Interesting lunch hour today had to fix a script I\u0026rsquo;d found to update route53 dns records on reboot because the API has changed since the guy wrote it. Gave him my additions and it works a treat. Also got bucket storage set up, so my images are all being server from S3.\nMore technical data on what I did to come soon.\nExam tomorrow. Eeeeek.\n","date":"4 Sep 2018","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2018-09-04-route53-config-updated-cron-job-added-wordpress-storage-offloaded-to-an-s3-bucket/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Route53 config updated, cron job added, wordpress storage offloaded to an s3 bucket","type":"posts"},{"content":"So as expected, I’m going to need to make a few tweaks to the ami and the image running along with adding a bit of scripting magic to make things run more smoothly.\nIn regards to the ec2 instance, spot requests are definitely the way to go. The cost saving is insane, and it’s not like this website is business critical.\nThat said, I would like to keep it up and running which in itself presents a few challenges.\nThough the database backend is RDS backed, ensuring that all posts are brought back as they were if anything happens to the website, the EBS is deleted upon vm termination.\nThis presents some challenges for the photoblog plus any media that I upload here. I either need to find a way to back up somewhere, or I can leverage s3 buckets in order to do something clever.\nThat’s this weeks challenge.\nI also need to implement some cleverness around automatically updating route53 entries from the web server should it move. Found a few articles I’m going to look at this week in regards to that.\nSo far I’m pretty impressed with the way the knowledge has stuck. Exam on Wednesday then I can concentrate fully on the solutions architect associate course. Full steam ahead on that one.\nTried to get the cloud gaming rig back up tonight but it would seem a month offline has screwed something with steam and parsec and the vpn. I need to go back to that, give it some TLC, update various bits and pieces and remove anything superfluous.\nOnce I’ve done all that ill snapshot it again, start from scratch and create an easy to follow guide for gaming using a high powered AWS gaming rig and steam :)\n","date":"2 Sep 2018","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2018-09-02-a-few-tweaks/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"A few tweaks","type":"posts"},{"content":"So, I’ve got this new site all set up and running, split into several sections to have a proper separation between tech posts, photography posts and other stuff. We’ll see how it goes.\nThree separate RSS feeds, for three separate areas of interest with varying levels of updatedness. But hey, if it gets me away from Facebook, that’s good.\nPhoto was taken at my dad’s 60th birthday celebration the other day. Great little photo of Harry and I. Kayleigh was outside with Luke trying to keep him entertained. He did really well being sat still for so long though, so that’s good.\nAnyway, that’s enough fluff for now, I’ll probably post something else later.\n","date":"26 Aug 2018","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2018-08-26-a-new-site-a-new-photo/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"A new site, a new photo","type":"posts"},{"content":"Technically we were always in the cloud. I mean, after all, the cloud is just somebody else’s computer, right?\nI was using a hosting company called tsohost, been using them for years and years and years. £50 a year, they manage the underlying infrastructure and I manage the sites and mail and whatnot.\nMail was crap, it was slow, the ssl certs kept erroring and to be honest, I didn’t think I was getting value for money.\nA few weeks ago, I started my AWS training in earnest, learning about EC2, S3, elastic beanstalk, Route53 and a whole host of other really cool tech.\nBuilt a wordpress system about 6 different ways some more manually than others.\nIt’s amazing the breadth of experience I’ve gained since I first started doing this stuff and first registered my domain way back in 2001. Things have changed a lot.\nThis blog will be mainly tech based, see the menu above for different kinds of posts. This is the preliminary design, its subject to change and I still need to carry on with some bits and pieces in the back end.\nMore information on what’s powering this thing to follow.\nI might even end up sticking some load balancing and auto scaling on but that may well cost a fortune, so a smallish Linux server with a separate RDS backed MySQL database can do for now.\nI should probably go to bed, I’ve been doing this stuff for the last 6 hours since the kids went to bed.\n","date":"26 Aug 2018","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2018-08-26-were-in-the-cloud/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"We’re in the cloud!","type":"posts"},{"content":"New site, new hosting, new blog, new content.\nNew hosting that I built myself, I might add, in AWS (woo). Using my Cloud Engineering skills.\nIn fact, more to the point, everything that you’re seeing here, this blog, the photoblog, the underlying infrastructure, I built it all from an IPad Pro, tethered to a mobile phone from a caravan on the east coast of England.\nNow that is 21st century engineering, yo!\nOrdinarily I’d import all of my old blog posts, my moans, my weight loss progress, my general splurge posts. Not this time.\nI haven’t really blogged since 2013. I used to blog a lot. I think there were maybe two posts since Sue died and that’s about it. Bottom line is I’m not the same person I was 5 years ago. We all evolve and we all change, and it is our ability to cope with that change that defines us.\nPretty sure that mostly I’ll be talking about tech, board games, maybe some ramblings that are a little too long for facebook, but we’ll see.\n1st post, here we go. Woo.\n","date":"26 Aug 2018","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2018-08-26-well-hello-there/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Well hello there!","type":"posts"},{"content":"A collection of photos taken on my DSLR, back when I was getting out and about with a camera. I\u0026rsquo;ll add more once I\u0026rsquo;m back in the habit.\n","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/pages/photography/","section":"Pages","summary":"","title":"Matt Charlton - Photography","type":"pages"}]