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 holiday became the turning point. I spent hours poolside completely absorbed in Titan—the prequel Red Dwarf novel. With its uptown and downtown districts, I imagine Xanadu as a classic cyberpunk vertical city: for the officers, a pristine resort in the clouds, but for the crew down at the lower levels, it’s an industrial, smog-choked nightmare where cyberpunk meets classic British comedy and visceral body horror. It’s an environment so brutal you need a buddy system just to stay alive, and the local street food will literally make your head explode. Tragic news hit when co-creator Rob Grant sadly passed away, making that dark, brilliant world feel all the more poignant. Throw in watching The Matrix on the flight back home, and my brain was primed for a bit of gritty cyberpunk engineering.

​The tipping point came at Bristol Airport’s baggage carousel while waiting for our luggage. Modern consumer streaming tech was driving me mad: login popups, subscription prompts, ad-clogged radio streams, and smart speakers requiring three perfectly phrased voice commands just to play background noise. Why was I putting up with fragile app nonsense when I manage enterprise infrastructure for a living?

​I rebuilt two ThinkPads with Debian and put tmux on my phone, but the Brix was calling me to turn it into a lean, self-healing, cyberpunk-inspired audio deck.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Learning How to Deploy a AlmaLinux VM With Packer (Part 1)

-
Learning How to Deploy a AlmaLinux VM With Packer I looked into the process for using Packer, and while I understand its purpose, I wanted to gain a clearer insight into how to effectively implement it for my needs. Packer is a tool that automates the creation of machine images across various platforms. It allows you to define a configuration file that specifies how to build your images, ensuring consistency and repeatability in deployments. However, as I explored several templates for cloud-based systems, I found myself somewhat perplexed by the complexity of it all. I learn best by doing, but I didn’t want to dive into writing a template from scratch. So, I asked myself, what would Captain Picard do to get this thing up and running? He’d ask the ship’s computer. And in this case, I believed he might also consult Commander Data for a bit of extra insight. Consequently, I sought help from our own artificial intelligences to streamline the process, drawing on the information I had gat...
Read more

Installing and Using Git on Windows

-
Image
Installing Git on Windows: My Usual Method Here’s a straightforward guide to installing Git on Windows: Download the Latest Version Go to Git’s official download page and download the latest version for Windows. Run the Installer as Administrator Right-click the downloaded installer and select “Run as administrator.” Follow the Installation Wizard Information Screen: Click “Next.” Select Destination Folder: Click “Next” (accept the default option). Select Components: add "Add a Git Bash to windows Terminal" then click “Next.” Select Start Menu Folder: Click “Next” (accept the default option). Choosing the Default Editor: Select Notepad++ or Notepad, then click “Next.” Adjusting the Name of the Initial Branch: Click “Next” (accept the default option). Adjusting Your PATH Environment: Click “Next” (accept the default option). Choosing SSH Executable: Click “Next” (accept the default option). Choosing HTTPS Transport Backend: Select “Use the native Windows Secu...
Read more

Setting Up a RADV and NAT64 Router with Packer and VirtualBox

-
Setting Up a RADV and NAT64 Router with Packer and VirtualBox In this post, I'll go through setting up the core functionalities to make the bare bones VM fully operational as an IPv6 router, including configuring RADV and NAT64. After that, I'll secure the VM, power it down, and run some final checks to ensure everything is working as expected. Once validated the build phase will be complete and will be setting up for the final step, packaging it for deployment. Prevent Premature OVF Export To ensure that the VM remains available for further customisation before being wrapped into an OVF, I adjusted the Packer HCL file. This change allows me to apply additional configurations directly within the guest environment. By keeping the VM in this state, I have more flexibility to refine the build process before creating the final image. Here's the adjustment I made to the HCL file: skip_export = true keep_registered = true The skip_export setting prevents ...
Read more