I have been working with servers for as long as I have been using PCs, having been introduced to the more technical side of computers by my father, I was very active in IRC and usenet at a young age working with like-minded techies to build IRC bots and websites for various purposes and events.
Going through school and college I continued to focus on expanding my skills, building a variety of systems such as a maths testing website which paired well with tutoring I was doing at the time. Occasionally invoking the ire of my teachers at the time by misusing school equipment.
By the time I reached university I was well-aware that I wanted to work in the web development field, so I chose to go to Southampton University due to their focus on web technologies as well as it being the UK academic home to Sir Tim Berners-Lee.
During university I built up a great relationship with the staff at the ECS school, often finding myself being given access to old computer hardware or extra software license keys. I remember discussing with a friend how we could possibly transport a full-height server cabinet the 3 miles to my house, eventually giving up on the idea and lugging two 24-inch flat screen CRT's to the car instead.
During my last year of university Linode launched their London data center, a friend and I decided to test out Linode and hosting some personal sites there, a solution we have never migrated away from.
Through my employment I was initially introduce to Bytemark and their cloud offering. Although during my time at Dedoko we generally continued with bare-metal servers running the Xen hypervisor with 5-10 virtual machines per host. At Dedoko, 2012 onwards, I was solely responsibly for the Dedoko, Vendigital and Efficio hosting infrastructure. Building and maintaining the suite of services which kept those solutions up and running.
During my time at Dedoko I worked on a personal project unimaginatively named "Hostman" this was a Laravel based tool which was used to fully manage Bytemark, Linode and Rackspace services, as well as integrating with Nominet, Tucows and Namecheap for domain, email and ssl certificate management. The solution was built to handle many clients, each with many sites/services hosted across many servers, it could perform the management of all DNS, repository(SVN or Git), deployment and build processes, configuration, secrets, email accounts (only Tucows) and client billing. This tool was eventually fully integrated into Dedoko, Vendigital and Efficio to manage their hosting infrastructure.
Once I moved to Vendigital I began an AWS migration project which took a few months, migrating the infrastructure from Bytemark to a solution on AWS which was more powerful, scalable, secure and allowed easier trials of new solutions. As part of this process I fully upgraded Hostman to support AWS services, integrating it with the AWS API to allow for full management of EC2 and related services, also integrating the ability to manage and install LetsEncrypt SSL certificates.
While the existing Hostman has become somewhat outdated at present, I have plans for a re-built commercial solution for the future as I remain keen on the idea and the usefulness to small and medium-sized businesses.
Smart Home (IoT) / RGB
To go with my interest in server architecture and hosting I have also always had a strong interest in electronics, taking tech apart from an early age and sometimes even putting it back together. This interest was encouraged by my parents with gifts of Lego Mindstorms, K'nex, and Meccano which could be somewhat brought together to create some truly unique contraptions.
I started to get back into electronics during my work at Vendigital. During my time there senior team members were asked to run away days, in September 2018 with a lot of help from my development team I organised a coding challenge for the company where teams had to use Arduino based tank tracked robots to draw shapes on large sheets of paper. The teams had to video their robot completing the drawing and upload the video along with their code to a website created for the event. Large screens at the event would display the current team ranking along with the uploaded videos for everyone to watch. The winning team each won a robot (worth around £150) to use as they wished. Excluding a few hiccups (The tables were not nearly as stable or level as I had been expecting) the event worked well, I believe it's fair to say that it was one of the most enjoyable away days Vendigital had hosted.
During this time myself and my housemate were also learning to use Arduino's to control RGB LED lights. This was originally focused on creating custom dynamic Christmas tree lighting systems, although this soon got completely out of hand, with custom RGB desks and Arduino controlled Hornby train sets and helicopters. We eventually progressed to Teensy and Raspberry Pi based solutions with our largest Christmas tree containing around 5,000 LEDs, a Teensy 4.1 connected to a Raspberry pi running a web server with a site to control the LEDs as well as play Christmas music. The tree drew about 10 amps from the wall under full load and was blindingly bright.
Of course I have a large investment in off-the-shelf smart systems, With Phillips Hue(Lighting), Samsung SmartThings(Everything), Somfy Blinds(Powered Window Blinds), Netgear Arlo(Cameras/Alarm) and a Yale Smart Alarm(Alarm System) making up the main components of the smart systems in my house.
While it is currently out of action all of our smart tech can be managed through our Home Assistant server (except the Yale alarm) which acts as a programmable central hub for the various smart home worlds we use.
DIY
Growing up my father spent much of his spare time building and extending my families house and horse yard, as such I spent a lot of time working on DIY projects with him and these days I find it provides a nice separation from my usual world of computers and tech.
My first house in Southampton did not escape my DIY efforts, having been fully re-decorated several times in the few years which I owned it. The DIY work on this house though was fairly trivial, flooring, painting, wallpaper etc. The only major project I performed with the help of my father was replacing the bathroom which was fairly dated when I moved in.
Moving to Bristol was when my DIY efforts ramped up considerably though. I purchased a house in April 2019 which had been abandoned for several years, the interior decoration was from the mid-nineties. Walls and ceilings had to be re-plastered, wooden windows had to be replaced with PVC, suspended floors had to be taken up, repaired and insulated, the kitchen and bathrooms needed to be gutted and replaced, the house pipework had to be fully replaced and the wiring had to be modernised. Where possible I completed the work largely myself with the assistance of a window installer, electrician and a plumber to handle the jobs which required a qualified worker as well as assistance from my family and friends for the larger jobs.
There is still plenty of work to do with my house though, I honestly did not realise how big a project this was when I started. I am glad I took it on though, its allowed me the freedom to set the house up exactly how I want it.
Walking
Walking is my most recent hobby, it has been largely driven by the introduction of a puppy named Fennec into my life in September 2021. Fennec and I enjoy travelling around to various locations and spending time walking as well as frequently visiting the various parks located around Bristol.
In April 2022 we went on a walking holiday to the Chiltern Hills enjoying some time visiting the Ashridge Estate and the surrounding villages. The picture above was taken from Dunstable Downs and overlooks the London Gliding Club.
Fennec and I are also frequently found in the Quantock Hills and on some of Somerset's more dog-friendly beaches. Having grown up in this area it provides us a nice break from the city life in Bristol.
Currently I spend 1-2 hours walking with Fennec per day, most commonly around the Blaise estate which is located close to my house. However, I am lucky to live in Bristol which has some stunning parks and woodlands.
