Hello and welcome. I’m a technology lead & enthusiast in Wales. I enjoy ðïļââïļ fitness, I love to âïļ travel, and I’m a ðķ proud dog dad!
I’m into startups & small businesses, indie or open-source tech projects, and self-hosting.
ðĄ Since 2016 I have been Chief Technology Officer at enterprise SaaS company Simply Do Ideas. Before this I was a software engineer at Chaser.
ðĶ I build and maintain a number of projects - both open-source and commercial. I am a co-founder of Trialflare.
ð I completed my PhD at Cardiff University’s School of Computer Science & Informatics in 2015.
ðĪ I worked on the IBM-led UK MoD and US Army Research Labs coalition ITA project as a postdoctoral research associate.
ðĻâðŦ I lectured the Advanced Computer Science MSc module Web & Social Computing and the Computer Science BSc module Human-Computer Interaction
ð I write about technology and things I find interesting on my blog (ðĨ RSS feeds available).
ðą I curate a collection of thoughts, links and notes.
ð I (occasionally) publish additional content on my geminispace at gemini://wilw.capsule.town (see this post for help with opening this link).
ðĻâðŧ Some of my research publications are available here.
ðŠī Find out more about this website and its purpose.
You can follow me on Mastodon (ðĢ @wilw@fosstodon.org) and Pixelfed (ðžïļ @wilw@pixelfed.social).
You can also get in touch directly with me on Telegram (@wilw88).
Nextcloud was probably my first foray into proper self-hosting. I ran it on Linode for a few years before moving it to run at home over Tailscale.
It was my self-hosting gateway to all there was to come – from RSS aggregation through to HomeAssistant, recipe management, and business and accounting services (and everything in between). As such, it was a sad day last week when I docker compose down’d my Nextcloud deployment for the final time.
In March, the Online Safety Act comes into force for UK online services.
The Act attempts to curb the spread of harmful content online and puts the onus on the service providers to ensure that online spaces are kept safe from such content. The Act applies to services that involve user-to-user generated content and online search services.
Services of all shapes and sizes that have “links” to the UK are in scope for the Act, which is being regulated by Ofcom. Ofcom have also published a tool you can use to check if your service is in scope. If a service is in scope, penalties for non compliance are very high and potentially personal, even for people that are officers at businesses limited by liability.
For some reason, I have a printer at home. I think I bought it for printing wet signature-requiring legal documents a few years back, and buying a printer was cheaper/easier than getting things remotely printed and posted back to me. It’s a cheap-ish Brother greyscale laser printer.
Whatever the reason, since having the printer I have become immensely popular with my family, as it turns out that no one else near us has one. Despite no one else owning one, it also turns out that people do need to use them from time to time – e.g. for printing out shipping labels, gift voucher codes for birthday cards, ID document scans for certification, etc.