I’m Dan. I live in the Golden Valley, Herefordshire. I work remotely as a software engineer, team leader, and system architect.

I like to talk about engineering, networking, and system design. There’s a higher change I will also talk about many of my other interests – photography, digital minimalism, lego, gaming and game dev, coffee, or the great outdoors.

Recently listening to:

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Server Rack Gear - 2024 Edition

Here is the current list of hardware that lives in my server rack, from top to bottom. I am making use of blanking and brush panels at the moment but as I add more to the rack I will move the power supplies to the back and tuck them out of the way. Until then I enjoy this aesthetic. 1U Blanking panel Unifi Switch 24 port patch panel PDU Brush panel Dual monitor panel that I made 1U Blanking panel Behind: Intel NUC - Docker host Ubuntu i5-3259, 16gb RAM PlayStation 5 PDU Brush panel Windows PC - Mainly used for gaming Ryzen 5 3600, 32gb RAM, nvidia 2060 Lives in a Logic Case 4U Chassis 1U Blanking panel Unraid server - Docker and VM host, NAS i5-12400, 32gb RAM, 8TB storage Lives in a pretty generic 4U NAS Chassis UPS

February 10, 2024 · 1 min · 141 words

Turning my smart phone into a dumb phone

One of the first things I wanted to explore in my mission to cut myself off from compulsive connectivity was to find the options for turning my smart phone into a dumb phone. The main aim was to make my phone as uninteresting as possible. One of the main tips thrown around for this is to turn your phone greyscale. Luckily on the iPhone that is quite simple, and you can also setup a toggle button....

February 5, 2024 · 2 min · 425 words

Cutting off from Compulsive Connectivity

Towards the end of 2023, a growing unease prompted me to seriously evaluate my device and app usage. I found myself habitually reaching for my phone, ostensibly to “just check”. Recognizing that I wasn’t alone in this sentiment, I delved into the realm of digital minimalism and connected with various communities centered around this philosophy. The main issue that surfaced was my persistent need to stay connected— whether through Discord, iMessage, Reddit, or email....

January 24, 2024 · 3 min · 564 words

Increasing upload size for WordPress docker on Unraid

If you’re using unraid and want to use the docker engine to run your wordpress site, you’re likely going to want to increase the maximum upload size. This is the simplest way I found of doing it, though I am sure there are other methods. First locate the .htaccess file in your webroot. If you don’t know where to find the appdata path you can just edit the container and look for the following option:...

January 9, 2024 · 2 min · 261 words

Upgrading our coffee experience – a review of Rave Coffee

One of the first presents we bought ourselves after we got married was a proper bean-to-cup coffee machine. For the longest time we just picked up whichever beans were cheap enough and easily available, be it from large online retailers or the local supermarket. We really needed to upgrade our coffee experience - here is my review of Rave Coffee. More recently we decided we should be focusing on quality over quantity....

October 31, 2023 · 3 min · 605 words