Music & Minecraft Part 2: From Xanadu to the Kitchen... or Building a Cyberdeck-Adjacent Self-Managed Network Audio Player
Part 2: The Return Home and the Break from Consumer Tech By December 2025, that setup in our kitchen had grown into the absolute backbone of our home entertainment. On paper, it was brilliant: a £60 mini PC effortlessly serving up local media, handling background audio streams, and hosting a family Minecraft server without missing a beat. It was doing everything I originally set out to achieve. But if I’m honest, I was getting restless. Work had been overwhelmingly busy since the new year, so my structured training lab had to be shelved for critical tasks. My spare-time tinkering hadn't stopped completely. I’d actually been working on a totally unrelated GPS master clock project after a time-syncing issue at work inspired me, but that one is taking a while to complete. Meanwhile, the kitchen setup felt too reliant on fragile apps and external wrappers. I was desperate for a proper reset and a fresh, hands-on audio project I could actually get my teeth into and finish. That ...