A black and white portrait photo of Martin Hicks.

Software developer & AWS consultant.

Hello. I'm Martin, a software developer and entrepreneur based in Manchester, England.

I'm a co-founder of Si Novi, where we build cloud-based applications and consult on AWS architecture. I'm also currently building open source tooling for DynamoDB developers.


Latest posts

Browser mockup showing the Recently Played Last.fm widget with album artwork and track listings 8th March 2026

Recently Played: bringing back my Last.fm component

I had a Last.fm widget on my site in 2010. Fifteen years later, I brought it back as an Eleventy WebC component with SSR, live polling, and localStorage caching.

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Illustration of a lock surrounded by device icons connected through a VPN tunnel 28th July 2025

WireGuard for safe browsing on kids' devices

Kids' devices leave the home network. WireGuard tunnels their DNS back through home filtering — everywhere, automatically.

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Illustration of a shield with a checkmark surrounded by DNS query flow lines 20th July 2025

Running AdGuard Home and Unbound on a home server

AdGuard Home handles the filtering, Unbound handles the resolving. Together they give you private, ad-free DNS for your whole network.

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Illustration of a small server with radiating network connections on a dark grid background 3rd July 2025

Building a tiny Intel N100 home server

I built a silent, tiny home server for £250 using an Intel N100. It runs 24/7 on about 8 watts.

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