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In this blog posting I show you how to use Overleaf Community Edition and store the resulting container on on self-hosted gitlab. I used to use Bangors Overleaf to write my Masters thesis, but Bournemouth (as of March 2025) didnt have a overleaf server available. I found quickly that the free overleaf server online gives […]

I have at last completed my enrolment at Bournemouth University for my Part-Time Phd. As Post Graduate Researcher (PGR) we dont have a set ‘time table’ like Master students – its left to us and our supervisors to arrange those meetings. Before I go there I’ll go thru my first week at Bournemouth University. Ahead […]

Having already added a 2nd P100 to the other GPU server, it was time to maximize the 2nd R720 empty PCI slot and add a 2nd P40. This GPU whilst old, still does pretty well, the main thing for me the amount of available NVRAM to work on larger models – now a combined 48G […]

So I’ve been doing lots of other stuff between now and the last posting (lab reorg, server rebuilds, new tech), but I’ll cover those in another post when I can put them all together nicely! I thought I’d make a short but nethertheless interesting post on a new AI platform for image generation. I have […]

As I’ve recently been using AI for generating static graphics via Stable Diffusion, I was interested to see if my setup could also generate video. As I’m running older series of GPU’s (Telsa P100 & P40), this might be a limitation on both memory and CUDA capability version. I searched methods and found ‘Cog video‘ […]

So having physically built my GPU server, I wanted to test it out. One of the things I’ve not been able to do before is graphical machine learning, such as converting text to images, with the additional resources, I’d give it a go. I searched around and found an excellent tutorial by Daniel, I followed […]

When I was completing my masters thesis, I used EC2 Machine p3 instances along side my ‘on prem’ devices. As I was moving various code/models all the time these instances where on, the bills where racking up – sure it was great to have such powerful GPU’s on demand and I could easily setup EKS […]

HistoCrypt 2024 was held in Oxford and then on the final day a tour of Bletchley. I had been fortunate enough to book my tickets earlier in the year, and it came as no surprise that this years HistoCrypt was breaking records on attendance, submissions and posters. Also the weather was exceptionally good, allowing for […]

So its been a busy couple of weeks, with writing up and collating information for my first Post Graduate Review (PGR) and actually being going to Bangor for training seminars, but more on that in a few weeks or so when all the sessions are completed ! Today I’d like to focus on a new […]

Whilst last weeks post was all about attending a conference, this weeks post is about things I am doing ready for the upcoming Histocrypt at Oxford and Bletchley. I’d like to take a different approach and introduce some of the programs and videos I’ve been watching. Codebreaker: The Alan Turing Story This is a gem […]

Pre-talk prep Ahead of going to to the talks I made a list of the specific talks I wanted to got and the related papers, I also bought several books (which will be in a separate posting) on the fundamentals of Quantum Computing. I found the following video accessible and succinct in understanding more about […]

So its been a little while since my last post, just simply with work, research and life taking over. Yes there was some downtime as well, seeing the excellent Truck Fighters in London with my son was time well spent ! Outside of work and having fun, I’ve been very busy on the research front, […]

Google Scholar – Notification of research I like to review at least 2 – 3 publications per week from Google Scholar – a nifty way to receive automatic notifications is to use the ‘create alert’ tool. Firstly, goto Google Scholar and enter the search term, in my case, cryptanalysis. I set my sort ‘by date’ […]

Doing a PhD (or any level of study) requires good time management, and lets face it, that can be exceedingly difficult when you may be in the same position as myself, in running your own business (even basic administration tasks take time), servicing clients from that business and dealing with spikes in workload, then there […]

As a first year post-graduate research student, we have to present our work. As I only started in October, my findings, whilst limited, did give me the opportunity to explain my work and also get to present in person in front of other academics, which was a great experience. All the presentations where very interesting […]

Having had a very busy back to my regular job as a DevOps consultant as well completing my presentation slides, it was time for some much needed time away with my good lady. We stayed in a local hotel and thoroughly enjoyed our time together – away from the distractions of work and studies it […]

With the lab taking on its setup into a known configuration, I set about making it tidier. Not only does this look good aesthetically, it reduces the risk of damage and issues coming about if it was freely moveable. I use Nagios to monitor my servers, and setup a new group for the raspberry pi’s. […]

With my research proposal being around cryptanalysis, there is potential for it to illegal or not suitable for research. With this my supervisor and I reached out to the research ethics member for Cyber Security. I had to complete a form providing details of my research and explain the lab environment of where the data […]

Initial build of the lab with 2*Raspberry Pi 4 and DUALCOMM ETAP-2003 Raspberry Pi Image Buster loaded onto RPI4. In RPI Imager setup Wifi and user account so could SSH from home LAN to RPI’s. Matched hostname to labels printed, node0 and node1. Configured the ethernet interfaces to static IP’s for a point-to-point link Rebooted […]