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Wake On LAN

For a long time I’ve wanted to be able to send a “magic packet” from my laptop to my desktop in order to power on my desktop machine remotely. Unfortunately my old ass motherboard didn’t support it which was always a source of frustration.

my old ass dusty motherboard

Then I bought a new Raspberry Pi 5 because they released a new version which had 16G RAM which I desperately needed to build some software. When I bought the Pi I also bought an NVME HAT and a new 1TB NVME. Unfortunately something wasn’t working but I wasn’t sure what was causing the error. So I went ahead and bought a new NVME from Crucial via Amazon and it worked first time. So I knew the NVME was at fault and returned it to Pimoroni expecting a refund. I didn’t get a refund, I got a replacement.

My old ass motherboard had an NVME slot so I thought “oooh, I don’t really need a 4th drive in this desktop machine but I’ll plug it in anyway”. So I took it apart, plugged in the NVME drive, put it all back together and booted it up. Nothing, except for the dreaded BIOS beeps of death. 5 of them – which means something is wrong with the motherboard or the processor. Expensive. “No worries” thought I – I’ll just take out the NVME drive again. Took it apart, removed the NVME, put it all back together. 5 beeps. Damnit.

This desktop machine has been my workhorse for about a decade. When I first got it I absolutely maxed it out. It was beautiful. Silent. Fast. Compiled code in seconds. However, it seems taking a ten year old motherboard and plugging in a cutting edge NVME drive wasn’t a great idea.

I did some research and went for a reasonable Ryzen motherboard with a new AMD processor. £200 for the pair and my existing DDR4 RAM was compatible. The MoBo arrived and I ripped the entire machine apart. Came to put my RAM in and realised the new board only had 2 DDR4 slots – whereas I had 4 8G DDR4 modules.

So I fired it up with 16G RAM. Tried to do a build whilst some background processes were running and ran out of memory. This would not do. I quizzed Oli about his machine and he had 32G made up of 2 * 16G modules. So we swapped. It was a win win. I got 32G again and Oli got 32G but the RAM I gave him was faster than the RAM he had. Since he’s a gamer he’ll benefit from faster RAM – about 50% faster. To me the speed of RAM didn’t really matter so much.

Get to the point Darren!

After a few weeks of my new AMD Ryzen motherboard I once again remembered my goal of being able to do a WOL [ Wake On Lan ] – I did a quick check on the motherboard and it indeed supported Wake-On LAN.

So…..I set up a systemd job to enable Wake-On LAN each time it boots and I can now finally fire up my laptop and run a script which basically does:

wakeonlan <MAC ADDRESS>

and as if by magic my desktop starts up and gets on with doing it’s thing whilst I eat breakfast.

So I now have a slightly faster, slightly quieter desktop again and I haven’t quite got around to testing if the replacement NVME drive works anywhere.

Clouds, silver linings and all that.

But hey kids, in general if your machine is working fine and you don’t need another 1TB of storage then just leave it alone. Put the NVME in the spares cupboard and get on with life. But WOL is cool 🙂

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Trampoline Moving

Many many years ago when my kids were little they decided they wanted a trampoline. Being the doting father I am I bought them one, and then built it. A few years later it was getting a bit small and knackered but they still played on it all the time so we bought a bigger one.

I didn’t have a photo of the original so this is a screen grab from a video showing the OG trampoline in the background and the new one in the foreground.

After a few years the “new” one started showing signs of wear and tear and then a storm came in.

2017

I got Uncle Chris to do a bit of welding and did some work to bring it all to a working state but I’d be constantly repairing it and was getting pretty annoyed with the whole situation.

2020

Eventually I decided it was a bit of an embarrassment and decided it had to go. Getting fed up with buying new trampolines, building them and disassembling the old one I decided the next trampoline was gonna be a keeper. Plus I was earning good money at the time thanks to Sky so I basically bought the best outdoor trampoline on the market

A thing of beauty, weighs a tonne.

This trampoline was then secured to the ground with ground anchors and ratchet straps and survived many many storms without incident.

Fast forward to 2025 and the underneath of the trampoline was looking a proper mess since I couldn’t fit the ride-on mower beneath to keep the ground looking good. Every now and then I’d get the strimmer and fly-mo out but it was a PITA to do that and eventually it all just got overgrown.

I assembled the Droylesden Avengers, stocked up on beer and wine and invited them along for a trampoline moving party. Which involved 10 minutes of trampoline moving and 5 hours of drinking beer and wine.

four “burly” men moved it and then I ran the ride-on over the mess that was left behind. It’ll green up soon enough and the untrained eye will never know.

A side-quest to this whole adventure was to get rid of the random beers left over from Oliver’s after party party.

As we can see Deej turned out to be a superstar and take a Fosters for the team. Charlie and James likewise helped to get rid of some bottles of Madri. Then we got stuck into far too much wine. We drank the whole recent delivery from Naked Wines, drank my two bottles of wine that I’d brought back from the winery in Greece and generally just emptied the wine fridge. Still, it was worth it.

Mission accomplished. I suspect the next trampoline moving day will be August 2026.

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Bench Repairs

John, my father in law : “Darren, could you have a quick look at our garden bench and give it a quick tidy up?”

Me : “Sure, shouldn’t take long”

2 months later :

Every single screw, nut and bolt was rusted. They all had to be drilled out, chiseled out, or angle-grinded off.

The wood was rotten in a few places so that had to be chiseled out and filled with wood filler.

Two of the slats were too far gone to be saved so I had to go out and buy new slats that were about the right size and then plane them down to be close enough to the originals so that it wasn’t too noticeable.

The metal work was all scrubbed down and painted with some metal paint and then the whole thing had to be reassembled. I think Oli and I may have put the back rest on upside down though.

Still, I was pretty proud of the end result.

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Chilli update

After returning from Greece I was super excited [ I wish I could say “we” but it’s really just me ] to find that my chilli fruits were going red.

This is partly due to Charlie and Ellie doing a super job of keeping them watered in our absence. Many thanks!

A while later they started to be properly ready and I harvested a few and put them into my home made bowl that I created on a wood turning course.

We’ve now started putting them in dishes and I’m absolutely loving the results.

It would be easier to just buy them from the shop but as my wise-beyond-his-years-son pointed out “It’s not about the destination – it’s about the journey”

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Greece, is the word

The family Steele boarded an EasyJet flight and traveled to Cephalonia where a not-so lovely car and a rather lovely villa were waiting for us

Just normal for Greece innit
Loved the villa!

Whilst there we mostly took it easy but tried to get out in the car during the mornings when it was a bit cooler.

We saw this lighthouse from land, and then again from the sea when we were out with Denis

We had lots of lovely meals together

and Emma and I had a rather lovely day learning about, and more importantly, drinking Cephalonian wines.

We had a full day out on the boat with Denis, where unfortunately I managed to get completely burned by the hot Greek sun!

and we spent some time in Agostoli

Before finally returning home after one last farewell to the villa

All in all – we had a brilliant time. Absolutely love Greece. The people, the food, the incredibly cheap wine, the blue skies – everything!

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Three stripe dog walk

For quite a while I’ve been suffering from either Plantar Fasciitis or a bit of a bruised heel. No idea which and it doesn’t really matter. It’s bloody painful – sometimes. Anyway, in an attempt to not hobble around like an old man I’ve been taking ze hound for a walk in my trainers for a while. This is fine at the moment in a beautiful British Summer, but I’ll have to go back to my boots in the Winter. Walking in my trainers does seem to have improved things but recently disaster struck.

My sole became disconnected from my heel. I spent the rest of the walk with a funny flapping slapping noise coming from my foot as I hobbled along.

The day it all began

My trainers are currently in my garage waiting for a bit of super glue but I’m pretty sure a bit of plastic or rubber or something fell out of the heel as I walked so I’m going to walk the same route a few times and see if I can find the fally outy bit before committing to glueing the trainers back together

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Tesla air filters

I noticed that my air con didn’t seem to be quite as effective as I thought it should. It could just have been my imagining things as the UK was bloody hot at the time, well, you know, by UK standards. It was either get the air con system re-gassed or put some new air filters in as they may have become blocked. A bit of googling and it seems the air filters should be changed every two years. The car is now five years old and I can almost guarantee they’ve never been done – so that was the first stop.

Order new air filters

Watch youTube video about how to replace air filters

Rip car apart and change filters

It wasn’t a particularly tricky job, but laying on your back across the door frame looking up underneath the steering wheel to remove some air vent ducting was a trifle uncomfortable.

Air filters replaced. No real noticeable difference in the air con but the UK has cooled down a bit now so no rush. I’ll probably start investigating re-gassing the system soon. Maybe it can wait until Spring – we’ll see

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After-party party prep

Oli has finally finished high school and will soon be making his way to college to study some yet-to-be-determined-which A-Levels. Before all that nonsense they had, as is the tradition in the UK these days, a prom to to attend. After the meal in the pub prom celebrations the class decided they wanted to have a proper party with beer and drugs and dancing girls and what have you.

OK, just beer.

In an overly optimistic moment Oli decided to put up some tents where everyone could sleep. Josh came along and helped by putting his tent up. Which is currently still in my garage.

The night arrived, pretty much the whole class came back to my house. I went to bed. My hard work had been done organising the garage just in case it rained.

I came downstairs at about 6am and opened the kitchen blinds. There were still a bunch of boys partying and I think it’s the first time I ever saw my little boy drunk. Apparently the last girl left at 5am so a pretty good party all in all.

I made them all a bunch of sausage butties and a plate of beans on toast with cheese and egg on top for Ayman.

Then I started the clear up. I swear to god – these kids must have just been opening a beer, taking a sip and then wandering off before coming back and opening another beer. The quantity of beer and cider I had to pour away before recycling the cans was simply heartbreaking. Flippin’ youf!

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Tesla woes

We’ve been having a minor issue with the Tesla. If you hit a bump in the road with sufficient force then the whole car goes haywire and the cruise control stops working, the regenerative braking stops working, ABS stops working – all sorts of crazy stuff. As soon as you stop the car, get out and lock it then the whole thing resets and it’s back to the normal “drive with just the accelerator” mode. So it’s not anything too worrying – just massively annoying. Massively, massively annoying. Especially annoying given the absolutely atrocious condition that British roads are in.

After combing the UK Tesla owners group posts several people were suggesting it was either a dodgy ABS sensor or a loose earth connection on the 12v battery. I checked the battery – no problem there. So I decided to jack the car up and re-seat the sensors.

This is me mid unplugging and replugging the sensors

After unplugging and re-plugging the sensors I took it for a test drive. Before the work you had to hit something with quite some force to send the car mental. After the work you had to just glance in the direction of a pothole and the car would have a meltdown. I’d made it worse. Oddly though this actually encouraged me. It made me think I was messing about in the right area.

I bought a couple of new ABS sensors on eBay for £30 and then me and the boy decided to jack up the car and do the drivers side first. After doing the drivers side sensor I took it for a test drive. First bump in the road….nothing. The place where it usually goes on the drive to the high school….nothing. Speed bumps which would always trigger it…..nothing.

Pretty god damned proud of myself.

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Chilli update

I’m well pleased with the way my chilli plants have grown. I probably should have topped them when they reached about 30cm but I was kind of curious to see how big they would get. Pretty damned big is the answer. I reckon the biggest is just less than 1m tall. However, the most excellent news and the reason for this post is I now have a pile of chillis growing.

I’m going to leave them on the plant until they ripen and go red. Then I have to decide something to cook with them. I’m thinking tofu.

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New Sofa

The old sofa was falling apart. It had been sat on for over a decade, flipped over to turn into a mini fort for the kids on many many occasions, had gallons of tea/wine/lager spilled on it – but I still love it and it’s taken up residence in my office for lunchtime snoozes.

It’s been replaced by this bad boy

When it first arrived my initial thought was “it’s too big”. After having had it for a while I’m now thinking “it’s too big”. We have to get rid of the purple sofa, get rid of the tripod lamp and then maybe, just maybe we’ll be able to move around in our living room.

I can however confirm it’s very good for snoozing on. Many naps already completed and we’ve barely got the labels off it.

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Bathroom Shelves

We’ve always had this space in our bathroom that was just crying out for some shelves. I just happened to have an Oak beam left over from my Workshop build which would turn into some rather lovely shelves.

So I popped around to Dan’s house and we machined the beam into some usable planks

.

This is how they looked after I chopped them to size and Danish oiled them.

The next step was to fashion some supports and break out the digital spirit level that I borrowed off Jason Howarth.

Finally the oiled shelves were put in place.

Quite happy with the way it all turned out.

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May Manchester

My plans to visit Manchester every month and London every three months are coming along quite nicely. I think I missed January in Manchester [ but January in Manchester is miserable ] and I didn’t actually make it to London until May. But all in all doing pretty good.

Affleck & Brown – Ellie, Charlie, Deej and Me

Not sure at what point in the day this was – flares may or may not have been purchased by this point. But I definitely left Manchester with a pair.

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Fascia Boards

It was about two years ago that I started building my workshop and pretty much managed to complete it in six months. I say “pretty much” because I never quite got around to putting fascia boards on it so the front and back roofy bits always looked a bit scruffy.

Well….no more

So the fascia boards are the bits of wood that make the top triangle.

Now you can see that because I didn’t know what I was doing I didn’t put a load of nails into the cladding which is why you can now see a bunch of the boards starting to warp. Fortunately I still have some nail gun nails so I’ll have to rent my favourite power tool from Hodgsons, mark out where the stud walls are and then shoot a load more nails in. Sounds like a job for the Summer.

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The Chillis … are coming

For those people old enough to remember the halcyon days of mobile gaming, Angry Birds, Cut The Rope, et al before the developers got all greedy with In-App purchases and adverts every 30 seconds, will surely remember Plants v Zombies.

For those that do remember PvZ then you will surely remember the opening audio to each level “The zombies…are coming”. Well, ummm, I kinda changed it to be “The Chillis … are coming”

Some Scotch Bonnet and some finger chilli – not sure which is which yet

Earlier I pondered if the seeds in the Chilli’s from Aldi would germinate. Turns out they did.

I’ll keep you posted.

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Tea summoner with Dog ACK

Being the early rising dutiful husband that I am I often greet Emma with a cup of tea in the morning. On normal days I’ll have a quick look at what time she set the alarm for and I’ll make tea and take it upstairs just in time to switch off her alarm and then we settle in with tea to do the Guardian crossword.

This is fine except for weekends. She doesn’t set an alarm on weekends. So I’d always in the past try and pick a reasonable time and wander up. This seldom worked out. She’d either be fast asleep or she’d come downstairs before I made tea. This situation could not persist.

A long long time ago Amazon released these really quite cool things called “Amazon Dash Buttons” where you would hook them up to your WiFi and when you press the Dash Button it would contact the Amazon Mothership and order you another whatever, box of teabags, toilet roll, dishwasher tablets – whatever it was set up for.

So I bought one on eBay.

A lot of the info on the web talked about them having a soldered in flat battery which was going to be a pain. After taking my Dremel to the button I discovered that the version I had was filled with a AAA battery. So I replaced the battery and got to configuring my firewall so that the MAC address of the Dash Button couldn’t get outside my network since it seems Amazon are being a bunch of dicks about this sort of thing and remotely bricking any devices that contact the server.

After much hacking involving playing some audio into the Dash Button, performing a factory reset, and then using a Python script to configure the button for my IOT network I had the beginnings of a solution. I have a Raspberry Pi that was already doing a few things and now it also sits and listens for an ARP packet from the MAC address of the Dash Button. When it receives the ARP it will then call a Telegram script that I wrote which will message my phone with a “Bring Tea” message.

So far so good – but there’s no ACK. I could go to the bottom of the stairs and shout up “OK, tea incoming” but that would just wake everyone else up. So I released the hounds…well hound.

Violet, our pet Whippet loves getting in bed with us when we’re doing the crossword. So the sequence of events is now:

Emma wakes up.

Presses the tea button.

I open the door for Violet and she runs upstairs and gets in bed with Emma

I make tea and take it upstairs.

We complete the crossword and the nine-letter anagram.

There we have it – the Dash Button tea summoner.

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Garage Door

Quite a long time ago I had a new garage built https://junglefreedomfighters.com/?p=1320

Not long after it started getting these minging scuffs on the front of it making the whole garage door look a bit rubbish. I couldn’t work out what was causing the problem so every now and then I’d give it a lick of spray paint and it would nice again, for a while.

Recently one of the locking straps snapped so I took it all apart and discovered that some of the plastic circle things that hold the locking straps in place had snapped too. So I ordered a bunch of bits from eBay and set to work. Whilst I was doing all this I noticed that there were scuff marks on the inside of the steel housing that corresponded with the scuff marks on the door. That was it! That was what was cacking up my doors. Upon closer inspection it seemed the top part of the steel housing was bowing down a bit – no idea why but I put a small hole in it with a metal drill, stuck a 100mm torx screw through the hole and screwed it into a roof support above. Screwing the screw in raised the housing top higher and no more scuffing occurred. A jet wash and a bit of spray paint later and we have this

Perfect. Beautiful. Superb.

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Quick drink with Mama

Every now and then my Mum and I will have a few drinks in the rather fabulous Goats Gate and then get a Chinese takeaway. I took a picture to send to Uncle Chris who was busy holidaying at the time. It turned out to be such a lovely picture I had to publish it.

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Chillies

I like cooking. I like cooking with chillies. I like growing stuff. So I’m growing some chillies from some seeds that were inside the chillies that I bought from Aldi. I’m unsure whether they will produce any plants since there was always a rumour that vegetable producers irradiated their produce to keep it fresher and stop people growing the seeds.

We’ll see what happens anyway.

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Tree protectors

As part of the work I do for the local Parish Council I put lots of effort into keeping some woodlands that we own in good condition. One of the things that’s been bothering me for a while is a bunch of plastic tree protectors on trees that the council planted before we bought the land off them.

So I rallied the troops from my Facebook group and off we set one Saturday morning and took down about 400 tree protectors. A week or so later Oli, Amelia, Violet, Jace and I went down to do a little tidying of the tubes. Jace had to shoot off so he didn’t quite make it into the photo.

A month later and the tubes are still on the floor of the woods as recycling them is proving to be a bit tricky – but I have a new lead.