I'm Blake, a self-taught developer from Walsall. I build things, then host them myself on hardware I run at home.
It started with a Discord music bot and grew into a rack server running radio, APIs, a phone system, game servers and public websites that people use every day.
Journey
So farSeeing what people built
Music bots, utility bots, all sorts. I wanted to know how they worked and whether I could make one myself.
Glowstiks' tutorials
My first music bot came together by working through Glowstiks' series line by line until it clicked.
A bot from scratch
No tutorial this time. I designed and wrote my own music bot start to finish, and it worked. Still the thing I'm most proud of.
Hosting my own stuff
The Pi turned code into something that ran all day. I started self-hosting and learning Linux the hands-on way.
Sites people actually use
SYNK Radio and its API, WhensMyBus and the Mimso IP lookup went live, all served from hardware I own.
A rack server at home
A Dell PowerEdge R820 with two Xeons, 256 GB of RAM and a GTX 1060 6GB, split into a public side with its own IPs and a private host.
How I work
The short versionHost it myself
If I build it, it runs on my own hardware. I like knowing every layer, from the disks to the DNS.
Keep it apart
Public things live on their own side of the server with their own IPs, so the rest of the box stays private.
Plan for failure
Mirrored drives, two power supplies, a failover link and a 5G backup line. Things break, so I try to make it not matter.
Learn by doing
Everything here started as "how does that work?" and then building it until I knew.
Interests
Off the clockMusic
Something is playing basically 24/7. It's probably why I ended up running a radio station.
Hardware and networking
Taking things apart, wiring things up and finding new jobs for old kit. There's a VoIP desk phone at home running off my own PBX, and a 5G line for when the broadband drops.
BeamNG and ETS2
Mostly driving games. I host my own BeamMP server for multiplayer BeamNG.
Buses and cell towers
Cell towers first, buses after. Working out who runs what is half the fun.
Friends and familiar places
Meeting up with mates and going back to places I already love.