JPoser/Blog

What a Foiled Cyberattack Tells Us About How Ai Is Changing How We Work

Thu, 26 Feb 2026 22:01:58 +0000

On 13 November 2025, Anthropic, a company that, in its own words, builds AI agents to “study their safety properties at the technological frontier”, released a report claiming it had disrupted a major nation-state cyber-espionage operation that co-opted its services to execute the attack. The full report is fascinating, and you should read it because it shows how AI is already changing how knowledge workers operate. The headline claim is that a group Anthropic believes is Chinese state-sponsored co-opted Claude to run a cyber campaign at scale, with far fewer personnel than would be possible without modern AI tooling.

How to authenticate to Hashicorp’s Vault from AWS Lambda using Python and HVAC

Thu, 01 Apr 2021 11:30:00 +0000

Recently I’ve been working on a project that involved using an AWS Lambda to interact with resources that required authentication using secrets. This is a fairly typical problem in cloud engineering and the “modern” approach is to use a secrets management engine to make sure only resources that should have access to specific secrets can get access to them.

This environment was using Hashicorp’s Vault as a secrets engine, this seemed relatively straight forward and in the end was but some slightly outdated documentation made it much harder than it ought to have been so I’m writing this up to help anybody who has to do this in the future not have to go through this process.

Joseph’s amazing technicolour MMOcoat: part two

Mon, 08 Mar 2021 17:30:00 +0000

Having bought a bunch of the materials I need to make my dumb wearable project and told the internet about it I now have no excuse to get started. I think the project can be reasonably broken down into 3 components; the twitter account that people can interact with, a server that exposes an API for my jacket to consume and the jacket itself.

Joseph’s amazing technicolour MMOcoat: part one

Sun, 28 Feb 2021 12:00:00 +0000

An idea has been floating around in the back of my mind for a few months now. I want to build a coat that connects to the internet. This is what motivated me to figure out how to use micropython on an internet enabled microprocessor like the esp32.

The internet of things gets a bad rap but being a massive nerd who loves William Gibson novels means I dig the idea of connecting pointless things to CYBERSPACE so long as it’s the bit of CYBERspace I control. So I’ve embarked on making a stupid leather jacket with lots of shiny LED’s stapled to it.

How to install Micropython on an ESP32 dev board

Sat, 30 Jan 2021 17:52:00 +0000

I’ve had a couple of ESP32 dev boards knocking around for years now but thought I’d pick one up in lockdown as a fun little project to see if I can make something cool ahead of COVID permitting EMF in 2021.

This afternoon I sat down to install Micropython on the board . This isn’t the first time I’ve done this and probably won’t be the last so I thought I’d write up how to do it.

You should buy Star Wars: Squadrons

Sun, 29 Nov 2020 12:34:00 +0000

Star Wars: Squadrons is a dream game. It plays like a modern X-Wing vs Tie Fighter and that’s exactly what I wanted. In VR the sense of sitting in a space fighter cockpit is arresting. Being able to track targets naturally as you dogfight is a huge improvement to the “chase the targeting arrow” gameplay that playing a space sim on a monitor usually ends up with.

Just look at this clip, it’s incredible.

Biden beats Trump

Wed, 11 Nov 2020 11:00:00 +0000

I don’t often write about politics but 4 years ago I made two posts about the 2016 elections for the President of the United States. One I wrote on the night of the election where I expressed my fears and a second where they were realised. I don’t think we’re seeing a return to the heady days of 2008 when anything seemed possible but for me the 2020 presidential elections were cathartic.

Leaving New Cross

Wed, 23 Sep 2020 13:00:00 +0000

I’ve lived in New Cross for six years now but my time here is coming to an end. It’s been great living in the same place for an extended period of time, you really get to know an area and I’ve been incredibly fortunate to have been able to do so. So many of my friends have moved two or three times in the period we’ve stayed here.

New Cross and the surrounding streets have changed so much in the time we’ve been here, Queen’s Road Peckham is unrecognisable. All of the pubs have been refurbished, there are multiple excellent restaurants and we’re leaving it all behind.

Installing the PNP GC-Loader

Sat, 06 Jun 2020 11:00:00 +0000

I came across the GC-Loader while browsing the Gamecube subreddit for some cheap nostalgia thrills. It’s a little daughter board for the Gamecube that replaces the disk drive and allows you to boot directly from an SD card. This makes running homebrew incredibly easy and unlike modchips the PNP version doesn’t even require any soldering. I was actually up for a bit of soldering but given this is my first time modding a console the easier the setup the better.

Upping my Pasta Game

Tue, 19 May 2020 14:30:00 +0000

I always thought I was good at making pasta, I cooked until al-dente and ‘finished’ in a pan. But I was wrong, my sauces tasted good but never stuck to the pasta. Until now anyway, I’ve been delving into food youtube which I’d mostly written off for reasons that I don’t quite understand and found NOT ANOTHER COOKING SHOW.

The lad knows his stuff, I’ve been trying to do a decent Lemon Spaghetti for years and had never really got close to something edible. I’ve basically learned I was missing two tricks:

Life in Lockdown

Sat, 16 May 2020 13:00:00 +0000

It’s time for me to add to the vast pile of posts about life under the COVID-19 lockdown. So far in terms of day to day living it hasn’t been too bad. After the initial panic buying slowed down and people accepted the measures locally it’s been easy to get hold of food and other essentials and we never went short of anything we needed.

I’ve found myself reading more which I think is a positive, my diet has undoubtedly improved as I’m not commuting to work and buying terrible office worker food and I’ve been exercising most days. I’ve not been skating as it seems like a risk that society could probably do without while hospitals are swamped with COVID cases, as the outbreak in London dies down I’ll look to find a way to fit it into my life again as I miss it.

February skate update

Mon, 17 Feb 2020 15:00:00 +0000

It’s been a while since I wrote about skating. I took it up because I wanted a physical activity that was rewarding, fun and physically demanding. Skateboarding delivered on all three counts and saved me from the horrors of gym membership.

In terms of progress, I haven’t really made much since I learned how to ollie. I’ve been trying to learn how to frontside 180, a variation on the ollie where you turn 180 degrees in the air. It’s taken me over a year and I think fundamentally I just don’t have a huge amount of talent, which has been frustrating. Skateboarding is hard, if you watch somebody do a trick it’s difficult to comprehend the amount of hours on average it took them to learn it. Nothing about the sport is natural, the way you move, the muscles you use, the way you move your upper body everything makes a huge difference. I think that’s what makes watching skateboarders who make it look easy so amazing.

Installing Arch

Wed, 12 Feb 2020 13:00:00 +0000

What’s a Linux Distro?

I’ve been a Linux user on and off for over a decade now, sometimes I even get paid to use it. If you’ve never used Linux the terminology around it can be quite confusing, Linux isn’t an operating system like Windows or MacOS but can be better thought of as a platform for building operating systems. In Linux land (population nerds) these operating systems are called distributions and the differences between them can make a huge difference to the way you use your computer. I’ve been a long term user of the Ubuntu distribution only recently switching to Fedora because of its relationship with Red Hat.

Grokking Helm

Thu, 23 Jan 2020 13:00:00 +0000

I’ve recently had to brush up on Kubernetes rapidly and that’s meant figuring out how Helm works. This has not been helped by the recent release of Helm 3 but I think I’ve got a handle on what Helm is and thought I’d share my thoughts.

I see yaml, it’s everywhere

To me one of the great things about Kubernetes is the way it encourages you to build your infrastructure as code. At least it would be great if you didn’t have massive amounts of code duplication. That seems to be where Helm comes in.

Playing too much Destiny 2

Tue, 21 Jan 2020 13:00:00 +0000

Free to yay

A few months ago I noticed that Destiny 2 had gone free to play and boy have I fallen for that trap. It is sublime, Bungie really knows how to make an engaging video game and Destiny 2 absolutely nails much of what made the Halo series so engaging.

I wasn’t expecting how hard I’d fall for Destiny’s grind which I guess is proof that if you put enough reward mechanics in any game then you’ll eventually start developing some compulsive habits. Thankfully it hasn’t led to me compulsively playing to finish the really long quests but I have found myself writing ToDo lists for what I thought was a video game and that is somewhat worrying.

Blogging in 2020

Sun, 29 Dec 2019 15:00:00 +0000

The Phoenix Blog Project

I’ve been reading Gene Kim’s book the Phoenix Project over Christmas which has been on my reading list for a while and was struck by this line.

The need for rigor and discipline, and constantly practicing and honing our skills are important lessons I’ve kept with me from the Marines.

Improvement through repetitive practice is a lesson I’ve learned from my life experience which thankfully so far hasn’t included military service. But it struck me that I wanted to get better at writing again and I just don’t do it enough. This is for a few reasons but I think the most common one is that I often don’t know what I want to write about and I don’t have an easy place to publish what I’ve written.

Reflections on the End of my Decade

Sun, 29 Dec 2019 11:45:00 +0000

What is that beautiful house?

I was reading through some of this Blog’s early posts last night. One of the reasons I started it was I wanted to have some kind of record of the things I’ve done and now the decade is coming to a close that’s proving useful. I was particularly drawn to this post where I talk about comitting to a career in software development and some of the things I was learning at the time achieve that. What’s interesting to me is the things that I taught myself, the Python, the Linux, running code remotely are all skills that I use today and the Java night school while useful has not lead to a job as a software developer.

Albums of 2019

Tue, 24 Dec 2019 09:00:00 +0000

The end of year lists return, these are my favourite Albums of 2019.

5. Grey Area by Little Simz

4. Dogrel by Fontaines D.C.

3. Young Enough by Charly Bliss

2. Ventura by Anderson .Paak

1. One of the Best Yet by Gang Starr

Operationalising Terraform with Jenkins

Fri, 18 Oct 2019 17:15:00 +0000

Implenting Everything as Code

I started a new role around a year a go at a FinTech startup which has afforded me a level of freedom to implement DevOps practices in a way that wasn’t possible in my last job. One of the first things I wanted to implement was a way of managing our infrastructure as code.

I’d like to quickly run through how I achieved this with Terraform, Git and Jenkins. Terraform I’ve looked at before, it’s a product from hashicorp that provides a common language for configuration of infrastructure resources. This makes it perfect for managing cloud deployments.It also makes managing that code base extremely sensitive as incorrect or conflicting changes can cause huge disruption an even irretrievable data loss to production systems.

Learning to ollie - part two

Thu, 25 Apr 2019 11:04:00 +0000

[Authors note - this has been sitting in my google docs for months now, I’ve not really progressed much further but I’m still skating and still enjoying it so I thought I’d post it now. I’m going to try and post more this year even though four months of it are already up, so hopefully you’ll get some more #content. It was also far too long so I’ve split it accross two posts.]

Learning to ollie - part one

Thu, 25 Apr 2019 10:53:00 +0000

Games of my life

Sat, 10 Mar 2018 19:41:00 +0000

Superuser on the Geek News Radio discord (which should already be in your podcatcher) got Megaslippers to post one of these lists and it sounded like fun. I tried to stick to games I played in the year they were released but there are a few exceptions like the years where I didn’t know what a Nintendo was.

1990: Mario Bros 3
1991: F-Zero
1992: Zool
1993: Doom
1994: Tie-Fighter
1995: Mechwarrior 2
1996: Super Mario 64
1997: Age of Empires
1998: Half-Life
1999: Unreal Tournament
2000: Tony Hawks Pro Skater 2
2001: Star Wars Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader
2002: Super Smash Bros. Melee
2003: The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker
2004: Rome: Total War
2005: Battlefield 2
2006: The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
2007: The Orange Box
2008: World of Goo
2009: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
2010: Mass Effect 2
2011: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
2012: FTL: Faster than light
2013: Tomb Raider
2014: Transistor
2015: Cities Skylines
2016: Stardew Valley
2017: Super Mario Odyssey

My films of 2017

Sun, 31 Dec 2017 19:25:00 +0000

I have a very basic taste in film that hasn’t really evolved since I was 14. Even so there were loads of films that I loved this year. These were my 5 favourites.

5.John Wick 2

4. Thor Ragnarok

3. Baby Driver

2. Blade Runner 2049

1. Star Wars: The Last Jedi

My albums of 2017

Sun, 31 Dec 2017 16:33:00 +0000

This was the year I finally caved and subscribed to Spotify and started listening to music again. These are my 5 favourite albums of the year.

5. Swear I’m good at this by Diet Cig

4. First weapon drawn by Czarface

3. Blade Runner 2049 (The original motion picture soundtrack) by Hans Zimmer and Benjamin Wallfisch

2. Sounds of Silver by Waxahatchee

1. Compilation (I, II & III) by Sheer Mag

My games of 2017

Fri, 29 Dec 2017 09:11:00 +0000

I can’t think of a better year for video game releases this decade and these are my favourite 5 of the year. I’m not being super strict on release dates. I tend to buy games a few months after release to take advantage of sales, so there are a couple of games here that are from the last half of 2016 and one which is a re-release. They are however all games I played this year. I’m going to write a separate post on the Nintendo Switch which I think is a transformative gaming console. Not only is it a great bit of hardware it has had an astonishing run of releases two of which have made this list.

2017 Round ups

Thu, 14 Dec 2017 21:33:00 +0000

It’s the end of the year and I thought I would do the traditional blog series running through the culture I’ve enjoyed and the technology I’ve used. So over the next few weeks I’ll be writing up my thoughts on the this years games, films and music.

I have bought or borrowed a signifcant amount of hardware this year and I wanted to collect my thoughts on it all. Two things have changed my perception of what is possible with modern technology, my Nintendo Switch and a Macbook Pro.

Three months with the Google Pixel

Mon, 11 Dec 2017 21:33:00 +0000

The end of an icon

My Nexus 5 finally died 4 years of near constant use. It was one of the best pieces of technology I have owned. Reliable, functional and powerful. If they still made them I wouldn’t have hesitated in purchasing an identical model with updated software.

Unfortunately Google has decided it wants to square up to Apple and now has it’s own flagship line, the Pixel series. I had heard that the Nexus phones were much cheaper to buy then they were to make so I can understand the decision. It still stings though, but I am so deep in the Google ecosystem that changing to an iPhone would be tough.

The piBot 1.0

Wed, 29 Nov 2017 10:52:00 +0000

It lives!

After 6 months of the parts I bought in march sitting on my desk I’ve finally built my robot.

Given how easy it was I have absolutely no excuse. I guess I just wasn’t in the mood for projects.

Build

The kit I’ve bought is cheap, it bolts together haphazardly if functionally but for the price it’s pretty good. I decided to solder the motor cables to avoid them coming loose and shorting, especially as I’ve used a LiPo battery to power the robot.

A city break in Lisbon

Mon, 10 Apr 2017 21:33:00 +0000

Lisbon is stunning. I am not a city break person, most of my favourite holidays have been in smaller towns. I love places like Verona, Veja De La Frontera and Valparaiso. I find them more managable.

Lisbon reminds me of these places, it’s full of ocean views, orange trees and great seafood. Trams from the 1920’s roll up and down hills between neat white buildings. It has one of the best art museums I’ve ever visited.

Building a robot using the new Raspberry Pi Zero W

Sun, 19 Mar 2017 21:36:00 +0000

I’ve wanted to build a robot for as long as I could remember and with the price of the electronics needed to do so falling exponentionally now feels like the right time.

My initial plan is to build a small two wheeled rover that I can control using the arrow keys of my computer. The new Raspberry Pi Zero W is absurdly small and includes wifi and bluetooth which makes it perfect for this type of project. Hunting around on amazon I found this platform with two motors and a caster which is ideal. To provide PWM control to these motors I’m using the Picon Zero hat which has two outputs for motors and additional inputs and outputs for adding sensors and servers in future.

How the trumpquake has shaken our faith in democracy

Sun, 25 Dec 2016 10:52:00 +0000

###Thinking about the Trump Presidency

A few weeks a go I went to the LSE to listen to a lecture on ‘Thinking about the Trump Presidency’. It delivered on that title. Professor Will Howell posed some very difficult questions about what President Trump means for American politics drawing on a blog post he wrote on how ‘a Trump presidency will be a Stress test for American Democracy’. The full event has been released as a podcast by the LSE and is well worth a listen.

Rogue One: revenge of the spin off

Sun, 25 Dec 2016 10:52:00 +0000

Now that Star Wars is an annual event, going to see the latest film on opening night is becoming a family tradition. The Science Museum has an excellent Imax screen and it’s a great cinema to go see the films with other nerds. To give fair warning this is me jotting down how I feel about the new Star Wars film. If you haven’t seen it some of my thoughts might spoil the film for you, so if your worried don’t read this until you have.

The end of hope - the aftermath of the 2016 US presidential election

Fri, 16 Dec 2016 21:05:00 +0000

Trump won and won well.

Early analysis of exit poll data seems to show it was white people who swung the election. I was wrong about Hispanic voters saving Clinton’s campaign, as many as 29% appear to have voted for Trump and deportations. Instead white people look to have discovered block voting. I thought that Obama’s presidency had shown that America had largely come to terms with it’s often dark history. I was wrong.

Polling day for the president of the United States

Tue, 08 Nov 2016 21:05:00 +0000

I’m writing this on the morning of the most frightening election of my lifetime. The contest between Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump to be the most powerful human on the planet has been utterly terrifying. Contrast this to 2008 when we had the most charismatic and inspiring candidate audaciously come from being a complete outsider to being victorious on a message of optimism and hope.

Trump has defied the established rules on how to run a campaign, instead of mitigating controversy he has sought it recklessly. He is unfiltered, crass in the extreme and pays no heed to our common humanity even of those whose votes he seeks. His relentless attack on the Hispanic community and his open sexism should be political poison, but it hasn’t killed him yet. The recordings of him sexualising his own daughter, boasting of sexual assualt, accusing migrants of criminality and making open racial slurs are as widely reported as they are ignored or cheered by his support.

Transistor: Art Deco Overdrive

Thu, 06 Oct 2016 20:30:00 +0000

Transistor is a stunning video game, the music is perfect, the combat is engaging and the art direction is magical. Supergiant have now made two of my favourite video games. Bastion is ‘A New Hope’ and Transistor is The Empire Strikes Back. Although that doesn’t bode well for their third game Pyre. It starts with a murder and deals with love, loss and sacrifice. I have tried to avoid talking about the plot in the post but forewarning there may be spoilers.

Spreadsheets in Spaaaaaaaaace - Margin Trading in Eve Online

Wed, 31 Aug 2016 22:38:00 +0000

Eve going mainstream?

As I write this Eve is back in the gaming cultural zeitgeist. After 13 years of subscription only play Eve is one of the last MMO’s to offer a free to play element. It’s back on the front page of Reddit and the next few months should prove to be very exciting. So I find myself writing about my experiences returning to Eve at a time of transition for the venerable MMO.

My Blackout Mini H

Mon, 29 Aug 2016 21:05:00 +0000

As a present to myself two years ago I bought a one of Blackout the drunks Mini H frames. These were the original mini quad frames, built for FPV it is the frame that started the drone racing revolution. With the pace of advancement in miniquads it is clearly very much two year old technology.

I bought Cobra 2204’s and DYS SN20A’s, running BL Heli and capable of Oneshot and active motor braking. The first time I tried active breaking with a high P value tune that was only made possible by Oneshot it transformed the way FPV quads flew in my mind. The extra control you get in throttle response alone is everything and flight controller software has only got better since. The advent of Betaflight has made setting up a 250 trivially easy. You can pretty much flash it and fly.

Returning to Eve Online

Sat, 20 Aug 2016 08:52:00 +0000

I spent a good amount of my early teens playing Eve Online, at a time when I was on a 56k modem and the world was moving to broadband. It was one of the few compelling multiplayer games that I could play. It was also about awesome looking spaceships, player made empires and terrifying PvP. I have some amazing memories of spectacular fleet engagements, high politics and well organised mining operations.

Shogun: not Total Warhammer

Fri, 10 Jun 2016 13:19:00 +0000

Too many games

I’ve arrived back in the UK to a glut of new video games want. I’m particularly keen to play the new Doom despite my system not looking up to the task, Stellaris looks really interesting and Total War: Warhammer is a bonafide childhood dream game. Unfortunately I’m short on cash money at the moment on account of having spent a lot of it seeing the world so I’ve turned to my Steam back catalogue for my strategy fix.

Walking amoung glaciers

Mon, 02 May 2016 11:45:00 +0000

Walking on the Perito Mereno Glacier was awesome in the traditional sense. It is the most amazing thing I have ever done. Parts of the Chistopher Nolan film Insterstellar were filmed on a glacier and it really does feel like stepping onto another planet.

The way light refracts through the ice giving it a spectrum from white through to dark violet. The huge crevasses that crack into the ice from the unstoppable flow of ice are azure blue and make you feel very small. And drinking whiskey on the rocks with glacier ice is my perfect end to a tour. If you ever make it down to southern Argentina you should contact Heilo y Adventura who are the only company to offer walking tours on the glacier.

Heading into Patagonia

Tue, 26 Apr 2016 21:52:00 +0000

We’ve arrived in Patagonia later than I’d like but I’m still hugely excited. Tomorrow we are walking on the Glaciar Perito Moreno which has a footprint larger than Buenos Aires and is the only glaciar in the world that is neither growing nor shrinking.

We are currently staying in El Calafate which is both touristy and isololated. It feels very wild and in the autumn is an island of yellow trees in a landscape of brown, blue and white.

In the Sacred Valley of the Incas

Sun, 27 Mar 2016 13:52:00 +0000

I have wanted to go to Cusco since I was eighteen years old and in my first year of university. It is phenomenally beautiful, Inca walls prop up Spanish colonial mansions and churches in a clash of cultures unlike anywhere else I know of. The city is higher than most mountain peaks in Europe and within stones throw of some of the most impressive megalithic ruins I’ve ever seen.

Sacsayhuaman in particular has enormous blocks of granite that must way hundreds if not thousands of tons fitted together in an irregular pattern with a level of precision that is astonishing. There are theories as to how these blocks were placed but given that Inca history doesn’t have the written record of many of the other great historic civilisations the truth is unclear and even includes some “aliens did it” rubbish.

Python progress

Sun, 27 Mar 2016 13:04:00 +0000

I’ve recently picked up working on my programming and come back to the course Learn Python The Hard Way by Zed A. Shaw. I’ve just finished Excercise 43 which covers designing object oriented programs which brought flashbacks to my time learning Java at City University.

I’ve also updated my workflow so you can follow along with my progress if your interested. I was using Dropbox so I could do coursework across multiple machines and this was fine but I wanted to get better at Git. So I migrated to Github, this means I get used to the:

Terraforming AWS

Sun, 20 Mar 2016 19:23:00 +0000

Since I started learning to program the field of Dev Ops has been the area I’ve found fascinating. In January I attended a DevOps Exchange meetup where a member of Sainsbury’s Dev Ops team presented on Terraform and decided I’d try it to manage some personal infrastructure. The talk is available for free on the Dataloop.io Blog along with an extremely entertaining presnetaiton from my friend Simon Vans-Colina on how to build a bank.

Iquitos and the Amazon

Tue, 15 Mar 2016 10:49:00 +0000

On Tuesday the 8th we flew to Iquitos in the North East of Peru. Iquitos is the largest city in the world not accessible by road, the only way in and out is by air or boat. Sitting on the banks of the Amazon and it’s tributaries it feels like the end of the world.

The day we arrived we looked for tours into the Jungle, there are lots of local operators some more professional than others. Having access to trip advisor and the internet to vet the people who approached us was invaluable. Given our budget we searched out a recommended lodge in the village of San Pedro.

Sun setting over the Pacific

Sun, 06 Mar 2016 10:39:00 +0000

The view from the cliff tops looking out over the pacific is spectacular and watching the sun set over the pacific, an ocean I’ve never seen before, is very special.

There are hoards of surfers riding the waves coming in from the pacific. I've never seen anything like it and managed to catch one carving as the sun went down.

People here are very welcoming and patient with my appalling Spanish. The food is as excellent as it's reputation, I've had a couple of massive sandwiches filled with meat, coriander and lime which is the holy trinity in my mind. We went to a bar last night and were serenaded by a couple of large Peruvians singing old crooner songs and 60's rock'n'roll in Spanish.

We’re planning to take a dog leg north on Tuesday to Iquitos by the Amazon before heading back South and I’m trying to book flights as we speak.

Arriving in Lima

Wed, 02 Mar 2016 20:30:00 +0000

We arrived in Lima at 8:00am. I’ve got a really nasty cold which made the plane journey uncomfortable although uneventful.

The taxi over to the Hostel we’re staying in was somewhat of an eye opener, people outside the center of town live in communities surrounded by walls and most homes and businesses not within these have large gates in front of them. It’s a far cry from the open front doors of the village I grew up in.

To South America

Wed, 24 Feb 2016 22:00:00 +0000

This blog’s been quiet of late. Not because I have lacked things to write about but mostly from being busy and lacking a good workflow for writing.

No more, I’m going to be alot less busy for the next couple of months and I’ve improved my workflow. I’m using Dillinger.io as a browser based text editor alongside Sublime Text, this lets me write from most of of my machines so long as they are linked to my Dropbox. I then run it through Pelican and push it to the server provided by my good friend Thomas Greer. Check him out at TSOne for any IT consulting or hosting needs, he’s excellent.

Building my ZMR250

Sun, 22 Feb 2015 13:51:00 +0000

This build came about from spare parts, it is heavily compromised but represents a very cheap entry point into FPV mini quads. The ZMR250 is simply the best frame you can get for the money, carbon fibre(ish) mini h quad goodness for under 20 odd quid. Be warned you may (as I did) receive a glassy carbon edition which is fibreglass sandwiched between carbon. It’s still pretty strong and light but not as strong or light as a genuine CF frame and they are out there.

First Steps Into FPV

Sun, 04 Jan 2015 22:40:00 +0000

I’ve been very bad at keeping this site up to date recently. As if often the way with blogging, good intentions quickly slip into bad habits and I have got into the habit of not writing about my projects.

That’s not to say I haven’t been doing anything. My burgeoning RC hobby has been carrying on apace. My latest project has been building a new quadcopter with enough size and power to carry FPV gear. FPV is an acronym for First Person View and is a relatively new development in RC aircraft that allows pilots to fly from the perspective of the model. Using small video transmitters and repurposed closed circuit television cameras to send images to video receivers it is possible to fly model aircraft almost as if you were sat inside it.

Quadcopter Realities

Sun, 29 Jun 2014 00:00:00 +0000

After a couple of months of dreaming, planning and waiting for parts to ship from China I have a complete quadcopter! It flies and everything. Its a small Diatone fpv250 minus the fpv (first person view) and was actually very easy to put together. I zip tied it together over a long hot saturday at the London Hackspace and have spent the remaining weeks trying to find time and space to fly.

Quadcopter Dreams

Sat, 26 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This like all the best blog posts is named after a spreadsheet. Quadcopter_dreams is a list of parts and prices to build my third Quadcopter.

I recently moved to London and I immediately trekked on down to the London Hackspace. A Hackspace is essentially a giant community garden shed, the best garden shed in the world. It’s a community workshop that gives it’s members access to equipment, training and opportunities to meet like minded people for a monthly subscription. If you have one in your area and are interested in programming, electronics, woodwork, 3d printing, biohacking, mindhacking, cooking, baking, brewing, robots and pretty much anything that you can make/hack then get involved.

How Pelican: Part 2

Tue, 01 Apr 2014 21:28:00 +0000

With Pelican installed and configured the final couple of tasks are sorting out the design and posting content to your site. Thankfully Pelican makes both of these really easy. Themes are handled by the excellent [Pelican Themes git repository](https://github.com/getpelican/pelican-themes/) and submitting content is as simple as write, build and push. Write a post in Markdown. Tell pelican to build your site, and then push it to your web server.

The design of your blog is handled by themeing. The Pelican Themes repository contains some excellent designs but Pelican makes it very easy to build your own if you have flair for website design. You will have to learn some Jinja but it will be well worth it. If you are like me and can write some CSS and HTML but lack any real knowledge of web layouts, then there are many superb themes that are just a config variable away. Clone the Pelican Themes repository into your website directory and set this variable in your pelicanconfig.py to the relevant directory name.

How Pelican: Part 1

Sat, 22 Mar 2014 22:34:00 +0000

I’ve posted on why I picked Pelican as a static blog generator but now I’m going to get into the nuts and bolts of how to use it. It does require you not be afraid to edit configuration files, and a little knowledge of Python and markup languages will go a long way. You will also need a webserver, but if you just want to get your feet wet, there are plenty of free hosting providers you can try out before you fork out for hosting. However if you want to use Pelican hopefully this will be a good introduction.

Why Pelican

Sat, 15 Mar 2014 16:38:00 +0000

Up until this one, all the other posts have were written before I had a live site. That’s because I was umm’ing and arr’ing on what platform and more, specifically what type of platform I’d build it in. I finally settled on a static blogging platform called Pelican. Pelican is a static site generator written in Python. Static site generator’s are becoming popular amongst tech bloggers for the advantages they give to those looking to write a small personal page.

Python, Programming and Somthing Beginning with P

Thu, 06 Mar 2014 22:22:00 +0000

I’ve actually started a number of projects! So far I’ve got a fair bit to show for them which I’ll commit to print in the next few posts. The biggest one I guess is I’ve set my sites on a career in software development. To this end on advice from fellow nerds (and family) I’ve signed up on a Java course at City University in London which starts on Friday the 31st.

Plans, Projects and P...introductions

Tue, 04 Mar 2014 20:52:00 +0000

This post was written about 3 months ago and alot has happened since then, however it was also the first thing I commited to text when I decided I’d learn how to programme. As such there are some things that have changed. I did create a comments section because it turned out to be easy when you farm it out to Disqus (Thank you Disqus). The blog is now statically generated. It has been lightly edited for obvious typo’s and to make it read a little better.

About

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

My full name is Joseph Poser but most people call me Joe. This is where I write about the things I’m interested in and stuff I’m working on. The plan is that if I write about starting something it will push me to finish it. At the moment I’m interested in computers, the internet and quadcopters. I’m still learning Python, didn’t like Java and can build a drone or two.

Books

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

This is just a list for me to keep track of the books I’ve been reading that I thought I’d share on the interwebs. I read very slowly but I’ll try to keep it as up to date as possible.

Reading:

Hyperion - Dan Simmons
Python Cookbook - David Beazley & Brian K. Jones
The Go Programming Language - Brian W. Kernighan

2020

The Phoenix Project - Gene Kim

2019

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Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000