I’ve realised that I should probably have some kind of on-line presence - in case anyone ever wanted to cyber-stalk me. One day I might sign-up to Facebook like a normal person.
<<picture of me being an on-line presence>>
We all want to make sure you’re cyber-stalking the right person so here are some disambiguating features:
I believe there’s another software developer called David Lucas in and around Brighton and Hove. I’m not that one - I’m the other one.
Any cyber-stalkers left? Anyone???
So - in addition to servicing cyber-stalkers - this web-site is evidence that I exist and I am reassuringly dull. If other people have an on-line visibility - and I don't - it is almost like I am invisible. I don't want to be invisible. It's creepy. So - to cut the explanations short - this web-page is justifiable and it makes sense.
As an expression of sentiment to my imaginary cyber-stalkers, I wanted to kindly ask that you look after yourself, remember the good times and let the sad times pass. I am wishing you well.
NB nothing I have written on this web-site is AI generated. I have been using hyphens, rule of threes and negative parallelism in my writing for over a decade. AI "copies" my style in that respect, not vice versa. I use hyphens a lot because I was long ago advised - if I want to create a break in speech - and I am not wanting to create a subordinate clause - or I am just unsure - and it's not obviously time for a full-stop - better to use a hyphen.
This is a recent picture of me attempting to imitate a picture I saw of another prominent intellectual (with the library of books behind him). If I was visiting your web-site I would want so see a picture of you.
<<picture of me as an intellectual>>
Email: david@davidrlucas.uk
I make a few references to "cyber-stalkers" on this web-site. It's sort of a comedic cover for the fact that I have created a web-page to myself that no-one is likely to read. Although I 'm (un)lucky enough to find it absurd that anyone would want to cyber-stalk me, I thought I should say I am not meaning to say that cyber-stalking is not a serious problem for some people. I am not at all intending to deny or belittle anyone's suffering in that regard.
Links to my sonic-experimentations below.
They’re mostly improvised performances layered together on a multi-track recorder. They’re sketches that I have neither the time nor inclination to add any further polish to. Be warned, I did not create the compositions with the listener's aural well-being at the forefront of my mind. I think I make noise-sculptures for much the same reasons that people take holiday photos. I sometimes find it an engaging way to pass the time.
Most tracks are completed in under 3 hours and are substantially comprised from the first take of an improvised performance (made up on the spot at the time it was recorded). They're often driven more by a wish to experiment than an inclination to make nice sounding music. If something sounds wrong, or not as good as it could be, listeners are encouraged to use their imagination and apply corrections themselves. Think of it as an audio spolling mistake.
For many years I did not keep the sound-layouts I made - tracks were only ever heard once - deleted - and then never heard again. I am now retaining the productions and putting some of them on this website.
6th October 2026 early AM (iteration 1 - not much respect)
B-sides: The following are tracks that I wanted to finish, tidy up, or there is something else wrong with them. I don't really know what makes them worse than the unfinished untidy above but something didn't feel right about them. Except I'm not totally sure about that. I am unlikely to do any more with them and - who knows - maybe you will want to hear them anyway. If you wanted to hear more, the following is bonus material.
Like any normal human being I feel an almost uncontrollable compulsion to make lists of osbcure(ish) songs. I then feel the need to relay those lists to an indifferent and uncaring world. I suspect that inclination is some kind of anaesthetic and proxy in lieu of my having the wherewithal to do something more constructive with my time. So this paragraph is a warning (to self) that I might start doing that with this web-page.
I recently heard the song Kristin Hersh did with Michael Stipe in 1994. I did not know in advance Stipe was going to be on it and it was almost as if I had the idea while listening to it: "wouldn't it be good if Kristin Hersh and Michael Stipe did a duet?". So I almost feel like it was my idea now. Unfortunately they only ever did that one song. I've got an inkling there will be some Throwing Muses and REM tracks that when played at the same time would blend perfectly. I might try doing that as a substitute.
Although it is only 6/11/26, I think now is the time to put 2026 into a box and wrap a ribbon. That's partly because I just got around to listening to the list of songs I've been compiling during the year and I saw that it was good.
Several of the tracks were added by accident but I have kept those because they are happy accidents. I would not have added Radiohead or Beth Orton on purpose. Not because I don't like Beth, more because I have listened to Beth so often that adding Beth to a mix-tape (intended to remind me of songs I heard and liked in 2026) seems redundant.
I like to make up stories when I listen to music with lyrics. I imagine how the lyrics could be about something in my life, your life, our life, someone else's life. I experience emotions alongside those stories. The stories change on each listen and on reflection as time passes. Sometimes I can feel ashamed because I imagined a story was true, but it later turned out it was not true and I was merely fantasising. Sometimes I imagine an interpretation I had not thought of before, that can change a song from "sweet" to "sour" in an instant. It can sometimes seem like the song always was sour (I just didn't notice it before). The mix-tape is not about me, I am not trying to communicate a specific message via mix-tape. I am communicating, but also I am not. What you imagine probably is not exactly accurate. That's life.
I’ve got a shed-load of DIY I’m supposed to be doing instead. Maybe if I document my progress with that… I will actually make some progress with that.
It’s very exciting, I’m going to raise part of the garden and lower another part. On the newly raised section I will set up a patio. I’m already day-dreaming about sitting on a chair on the patio - so understandably I’m excited.
I once spent too much time around someone who was relentlessly negative and could only express himself in the form of sarcasm. Phrases like “Oh brilliant!!”, “Wonderful!”, “Great!” would recur in the form of a daily lament about the misery and futility of life. It became very annoying after a while. I began to feel that words had stopped meaning what they were supposed to mean. It’s made me want to avoid sarcasm ever since.
So I am not being sarcastic. The truth is - I actually am a bit excited about sitting down and drinking cups of coffee on this imaginary patio. If anyone is not excited here - it is not me.
4th August 2026
So I am part way through constructing a retaining wall out of gabions. Gabions are wire frame boxes filled with rocks. They’re a relatively idiot-proof way of building a retaining wall.
3 done, 2 to go.
Gabions are done. There was a bit of drama though. For a while it looked like I did not have enough stone to fill all 5 gabions! They are sold in bags large enough to fill 4, but I had 5 gabions to fill!! What do I do? Buy too much stone? So that I have enough stone for 8 gabions? What will I do with the remaining 3 gabions worth of stone? It’s like a GCSE maths question - but worse!!!
So it seems “Idiot Proof” wasn’t entirely true.
The solution was to fill up some of the space with building rubble instead. That being the space at the back that no one will see because the retained soil is piled behind it.
My more annoying cyber-stalkers will notice how the lines of the wire on the baskets do not perfectly line up. So I guess that is another way in which “idiot proof” was overstating it.
This was the summer where we had 5 heat-waves and no rain for 2 months. So the ground is rock-hard at the moment. I’m going to have to postpone the earth-works.
I am wanting to build one side of the retaining wall with rendered breeze-block. I should probably do that first anyway. So the next thing I need to do is acquire some breeze-block.
Possibly the dullest and most useful job I have done all year.
This is the first iteration of the beautiful kitchen work-surface I will one day build. The problem is this iteration does the job well enough and I have other things I would rather be doing - so this is where it has got stuck. Perhaps the shame of showing this on the internet will prompt further action. At a minimum I need to acquire a nice work top and plonk that on top. However I am thinking I can do a better job with the supporting frame - so I was also thinking of rebuilding that first.
Readers might admire how I have designed and 3D printed the plastic connecting pieces. If I was rebuilding I would use a more elegant looking connector. Instead of being 3D printed I might do an epoxy-resin cast. The silicon moulds used for casting the epoxy would be derived from a 3D print though. The picture below is a work-bench I did using that method.
I also have to decide what kind of work-top to get. There are many options and it is difficult to decide.
A complex dark pattern that hides the dirt? Or plain white so it is easy to see which parts need wiping and which parts can be skipped? Which is the lazier solution?
I intend to replace an open window with a micro-chip activated cat-flap to prevent interlopers. Evidence of that will appear here soon.
There was a time in my life when I found myself watching the opening credits to Twin Peaks over and over again. There is something about the footage of automated manufacturing processes that makes me quite emotional. So - purely as a way of paying homage to David Lynch - I have become interested in manufacturing artisanal electronic devices.
So if any reader wanted an answer to the question "Is it possible to manufacture PCBs with a CNC milling machine?" - like I did - the answer is "yes!". Although perhaps they should be called ECBs (Etched Circuit Boards) instead of PCBs.
It was a bit difficult calibrating everything on the CNC machine. There was a lot of swearing and it was not nearly as peaceful as the Twin Peaks music would suggest. However it works quite reliably now the snags have been worked out.
I also wrote a custom software application for drawing the board design and generating g-code for the CNC machine. That helped and possibly saved time. I do not know how frustrating it would have been trying to get results from pre-existing CAD software not specifically designed for the purpose of creating ECB g-code for a CNC machine. Perhaps it would have been easy. I didn’t even try. I suspect it would have been a pain in the neck.
NB I would consider distributing that software as an Android or Windows app in the very unlikely event of any readers wanting that. Send me an email.
3/9/26
Looks like it is going to be raining this weekend (finally!). So I am planning on staying in and writing an i2s driver with a simple interface for the uda1334 dac board. I guess the interface will be something like init(uint8[] pinAssignments); write(uint8[] bytes) and whatever is needed to specify the audio format. I will also need to figure out a crafty way to wire that into the testing platform (will need to do that before writing the driver).
Once I’ve got audio output working a whole world of possibility is opened. So it would be good to have done that.
It won’t happen this weekend but after that I am scheming on adapting my Modular-Synth app to generate synth/FX units that will run on the rp2050-uda1334 combo. The generated code will be either compilable c source code or it will generate a data-file that loads into a hosting framework that I’ve written separately. Not sure which to do - so that is a warning sign that I will end up doing both. The latter solution should be more flexible but less efficient with hardware resources (so in outcomes that would be an instrument with less polyphony). I believe generating c-code would be easier for simpler projects in the short-run.
I guess the big advantage of writing a “host for data-files” is that I could also make that the essence of a product available to the end-user. The user would be able to design their own synth in the Modular Synth app and then upload it into the synth/FX pedal… I could do that - but I don’t presently feel very enthusiastic about it.
I’ve also made good progress on the single-board version of the MIDI-looper. I’ve redesigned it to fit on a single (slightly larger) ecb. Alongside various other manufacturing efficiencies, I’m expecting that to more than halve the manufacturing time. Perhaps - I will have a working proto-type complete by the end of this week-end too?
The new case design is more or less finished. New design on the right vs. original design on the left.
It wasn't raining on the weekend I wrote about. The prediction was based on no more than the fact that it had been pissing it down on Thursday. Instead it turned out to be another sunny weekend and there is no uda1334 driver yet (it wouldn't have happened anyway).
I've got stuck with the new board layout. The MIDI in circuit is not working anymore and I cannot figure it out.
It's a problem I've encountered when writing a software a 1000 times. Something does not work where as logic seems to suggest that it should. I get to a point where I seem to have exhausted all the “obvious” possibilities and I am stuck.
The solution is often found by logging everything that is happening at every point in the process until I discover something which is not functioning in the way predicted. It's often either something that I can forgive myself for not having expected or something - that in hindsight - seems like it should have been obvious all along.
That's something I am used to doing with software - but with the electronics - because it is much simpler in many ways (at the level I am messing with) - I had been hoping to avoid that.
So at this stage I think I am going to create a new version of the ecb with convenient voltage monitoring nodes at convenient locations and either:
The oscilloscope would be for checking the correctness of digital signal going to and out of the H11L1 opto-coupler and the UART receiver pin.
Why not just adapt an existing UDA1334 driver? Actually - now you mention it - that's more precisely what I am intending to do (when I get around to it). I'm particularly hoping to lift the i2s bit banging code from an open-source example. I will likely just rewrite and reorganise it to fit into my preferred interface architecture (that's how it usually happens).
Why not use AI? I am ignoring AI in the hope it will go away. If that doesn't work out, I am hoping the abstinence will eventually lead me to ascend into some John Connor type role in the resistance against the machines.
At some point in my late 20's I had a behavioural transformation. Although it used to be a favoured solution, I became completely averse to the "ignore it and hope it goes away" approach to problem solving. At work - for example - I would never not respond to an email - even if it was an email from a time-wasting-nuisance-person. I confess I have slipped a lot since that peak of virtue.
It turned out that the problem was a result of two things:
Getting the direction of the diode the wrong way around exemplifies why I'd probably be best advised to keep the electronic side of my projects as simple as possible. Knowing which way things are supposed to point after they have been rotated and turned upside down, after the wires are crossed over and they're turned upside down again too - and then the current is reversed - spatial reasoning - it is not one of my strengths.
So that helped to halt progress for nearly a fortnight. Although I am dutifully following the specification as recommended by the MIDI Association, I am pretty sure the reverse voltage diode is redundant anyway:
Have I got that right? I will continue to include the diode anyway.
Proto-type fully functioning running firmware 1.4. It's schematically identical to the version that was completed end of last year - so I'm not that excited about it. It's progress though.
I like to go on walks in the countryside. I am really good at that. I live in a pretty village on the South Coast so it’s relatively easy. Here are some photos:
Looking toward Dungeness
Me eclipsing the Eclipse 2026
The sun seemed more artistic when seen through a grubby rear-view mirror.
I have been creating this web-page in Google Docs and then exporting it as HTML. I’m a qualified software-engineer and that seems wrong to me. I intend to re-write it directly in pure, clean, wholesome, reliable HTML. I was thinking of creating a HTML editor as it might have been in 1993. Basically just a tool for transparently embedding word processed text and images inside P, A, H, IMG tags (so the user does not need to remember the precise syntax). It's something that very likely already exists somewhere but it's a sort of simplicity that is sometimes surprisingly hard to find. Developers very often can't refrain from adding additional functions that undermine simplicity.
One day I will create a “things to do list” and things will finally get done.
This is a link to a video of me stroking a cat.
I was thinking it might offer some reassurance to anyone doing a background check. I can't be that much of a rascal if a cat likes me? Who ever heard of a cat stroking villain?
Cat Stroking
