Techno Hakuli

Welcome, Willkommen, Bienvenue...

...to the new, more informative, holding page for my domain. This version has some pros, and some cons, over the old one.

Pros

  1. It's not a Bootstrap template that I lifted from a template library, meaning...
  2. There aren't half a million numerous (~400) dependencies involved for seemingly no good reason, and so...
  3. It doesn't cause GitHub to send me a weekly alert about a new security issue with one of the aforementioned dependencies.
  4. Oh, and I think I like the dark colour scheme better than the old light one. Easier on the eye, no?

Cons

  • It's not responsive. At least the old site had that going for it. Eventually, I'll either learn how to do that myself or I'll replace this with something that's built with Foundation which will do it for me...
  • It looks an awful lot like a Bootstrap template...

Who am I?

In short, I'm a technology consultant from Manchester. Kudos to you if you already knew that, because you recognised St Peter's Square or the Metrolink. My day job revolves around infrastructure - servers, switches, storage, routers, firewalls... - as well as the software and firmware which runs on them. I've been doing this now for almost a decade, before which I worked in travel and logistics.

I got my start in tech after a friend told me about a job vacancy at their company for a first-line support person. I interviewed and got the job, before getting stuck in learning everything I could about anything I could get my hands on. I've been working my way up from there...

What is this?

Techno Hakuli is a domain I bought as a test bed for some ideas I had for projects, as well as to allow me to get to grips with some aspects of cloud platform providers which use custom domains. Techno, obviously, because I work with technology. Hakuli, on the other hand, is not just a part of Finland but it's also the name I go by on GitHub (where I am not very active) and has been a prominent part of my character name on the MMORPG EVE Online for a while now too.

At the moment, the site is simply this holding page to replace the one which came before with no info at all. Over time, though, I intend to flesh this site out a bit; the idea is for it to be part resumé, part portfolio for my hobby projects, and part blog for anything I find interesting or worthy of discussion.

Hobby Projects

I did dabble a little in programming back when I was in high school. Some things I understood quite quickly, like HTML; others I never really got a proper understanding of, like JavaScript. Some things that I learned are completely archaic now - like classic ASP, the one with the VBScript embedded in the page!

As well as having this domain as a test bed for cloud platform use, another reason I acquired it was to be able to run little hobby apps as I get around to making them. I occasionally have a thought for an app, many of which have yet to become anything more than a scribble in a notebook, and the challenge of trying to build them is interesting to me. As and when I get them running, if they're not dreadful I'll mention them here.

Who doesn't like beer?

Beer is pretty good, and one of the serious benefits of living in Manchester is the wealth of independent craft breweries in the city. We've got some bigger players as well, sure, but Manchester is definitely putting out some of the best craft beer in the UK right now.

Brewing is also something that I've taken an interest in recently, as with the coronavirus pandemic I've had more time at home. I received a Brooklyn Brew Shop beer making kit - for Punk IPA, no less - as a gift and, though it took me a while to get around to using it, when I came to make the beer I found the process quite enthralling and fun.

It's still early days, and I'm no brewer, but one of the things I could definitely see featuring as blog content would be the craft scene in Manchester - and the North as a whole, because there's some cracking breweries outside of the Manc Republic in places like Leeds and Newcastle.

Any recommendations?

Sure, here you go:

Manchester Breweries
Northern Breweries

This section is nothing more complicated than collections of links to things I either like, or which I think you may find useful.

Beer

  • Brewfather -- Brewfather is a web app for homebrewers. Recipe creation, brew tracking, inventory management... it does the lot. I've used it for a couple of my own brews, and the feature set is astonishing. There's a lot of things in here that I've yet to use, because it's functionality that exceeds my skill level.
  • Brooklyn Brew Shop -- The Brooklyn Brew Shop 1 (US) gallon kits are really good, and an excellent introduction to all-grain brewing. Everything that you need to make good beer, with kits for some beers from top craft breweries like Brewdog, Mikkeller and Stillwater Artisanal.1

Technology

  • Alteris -- I've known Ian (from Alteris) for a couple of years now, he's a good dude. If you need someone to help you wrangle some Ruby gems, he's your guy. More broadly, the Alteris team are split between Berlin and Malaga and can help with Node/JS as well as Ruby.
  • Digital Tigress -- I've known Suzy for many years. If you're looking for a web developer / designer for a PHP job; if you need someone to help with site analytics/SEO; or you need a photographer, look no further.

Other Fun Stuff

  • EVE Online -- Not just "spreadsheets in space" as many people like to say, but a hugely in-depth sandbox where actions genuinely have consequences. Besides, who doesn't like Internet spaceships...

1. I've tried out the Punk IPA kit. It wasn't quite Punk IPA, but I don't know how much of that was down to it being my first attempt...