Posts

Universal SSL (free) doesn’t support multi-level subdomains I’ve battled another Cloudflare issue recently which is almost certainly due to my lack of experience with Cloudflare! However, I’m documenting it here for my own benefit and hopefully others. After migrating some of my applications that have staging versions of a backend API, I came across some domains that just wouldn’t resolve the SSL certificate. The error was simply ERR_SSL_VERSION_OR_CIPHER_MISMATCH. ...

Overview In my day job, the wider team that I am a part of run a twice monthly informal-ish team meeting. The format is that we each take turns to host and cover various. These are mostly non-work related fun activities or discussions. It’s a good way for team bonding and getting to know each other better at a personal level, especially when we’re spread across various geographical regions. As my turn has come up again, I wanted to achieve something slightly different. In the past, we’ve covered our favourite books, films, music, our character traits and hosted quizzes. I wanted to come up with something that: ...

I’ve just come back from an amazing weekend at the Isle of Wight Festival 2025. I watched Faithless played on the Friday night (20th June) which was an incredible end of the night on the main stage. During the set, I was struck by an old song I haven’t heard for years with a great melody. I actually think I’ve heard the Paradiso Remix version before and not the actual song. Anyway the song is called “Drifting Away” which has this cool repetitive piano melody. Now I’m back in the land of living today, I went off to YouTube to find how to play it, but I couldn’t find any sheet music or video tutorials. ...

I’ve been away from recording progress recently but despite that, I have been keeping up with my Piano practice and learning. My excuse for not recording is mainly due to the jump in complexity from Grade 1 to 2. I’m also concurrently working on three pieces, Mozzie (this), Écossaise in G and Moderato since I last posted Anglefish. Here’s where I’m at with it so far. ...

Here is my first recording of an ABRSM Grade 2 piece 🐠 titled Angelfish. My tutor gave me this as one of the three Grade 2 pieces I’m currently working on. This piece is from the ABRSM 2021 & 2022 Piano Grade 2 syllabus (List C, No. 2) written by Anne Crosby Gaudet. As always, it’s very much a work in progress, but I wanted to share and document my progress so far. ...

I recently created a simple web-based tool to help visualize piano chords as part of my ongoing piano learning journey. The Piano Chord Explorer was built to quickly visualize chords for another project I’m working on, but I thought it might be helpful for others learning piano and music theory. The Tool The Piano Chord Explorer is a simple web application that displays piano chords and their inversions with sound playback. You can: ...

The third ABRSM grade 1 piece I’ve been learning is a piece titled Fresh Air by Andrew Eales. Again another unpolished performance but getting the notes and rhythm mostly right. As with all grade 1 pieces I’ve learnt so far, I know I still have work to do. The biggest issue being my dynamics and articulation. The Journey At first glance this looks like an easy piece (and of course, it is as it’s a grade 1) but there are a few things that kept catching me out. Holding doing the E whilst continuing playing other notes in bar 1, 3 etc… took my brain forever to get right. ...

I’m sharing my second recording of a ABRSM grade 1 piece 😱 titled Sneaky Business by Martha Mier. My tutor gave me this as my second piece to learn. This is from Jazz, Rags & Blues, Book 1 and is part of the ABRSM 2023 & 2024 Piano Grade 1 syllabus. Again it’s by no means a polished performance but happy with the progress and will continue to work on it but also move on to other piece. ...

I’m sharing my first recording of a ABRSM grade 1 piece 😱 titled Allegretto in C by Anton Diabelli. My tutor gave me this as my first piece. This is “No. 3 from Die Ersten 12 Lectionen, Op. 125” and is part of the ABRSM 2023 & 2024 Piano Grade 1 syllabus. I’m not sure if it’s in this years 2025 syllabus? It’s by no means a polished performance but I felt it’s good enough to move on to other pieces now. I’ve probably spent about 10 hours on this piece and played 100+ times. ...

Too many redirects?! Why I spent far too long troubleshooting why a perfectly good, HTTPS enabled Web Application hosted on an Azure App Service failed after moving the DNS (proxied) over to Cloudflare. The App Service wasn’t doing anything I would consider non-standard. Simple site with a custom domain, correct SSL bindings and just a free “App Service Managed Certificate”. Symptom was simply ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS like so: ...