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fLaMEd fury 1 weeks ago

Split Enz At Spark Arena

What’s going on, Internet? Last night we headed back to the Spark Arena for another show. This weekend was Split Enz for the Forever Enz tour. After an eleven-year hiatus of playing together, they recently reformed to tour across NZ and Australia. Split Enz formed in 1972 and released 10 studio albums before breaking up in 1984. Between then and now the band has had several brief reunions. They had broken up before I was born but their music was still a big part of mine, and many other kiwis’ lives growing up. The Spark Arena was packed by the time we arrived near the end of the opening band, Hans Pucket. Our seats weren’t the most comfortable as we were at the end of the horizontal seats before they curved around so we had to twist around to catch the stage. The seats at MGK , while further back, were better positioned for viewing. Anyway, we were in for an audio and visual treat. Band member Noel Crombie’s visual art was on full display with the visuals on screen and the costumes the band wore. The setlist was packed with all the songs that a crowd this size would expect with my favourites being Hard Act To Follow, I See Red, Six Months In A Leaky Boat, and I Got You (which has to be their greatest song). I ducked out before the encore because I wanted to use the bathroom and escape the exiting crowds. Apparently I missed out on an incredible spoon solo to wrap up the show. While I was waiting for the family to get out, I noticed that the copy of True Colours I’d picked up before the show was water damaged. Not sure how but during the show water must have spilt onto it. I was disappointed, but confirmed the vinyl wasn’t damaged and shrugged it off. Adds to the story I guess. I also struck up a conversation with a woman who was also waiting for their friends to get out and we discussed how amazing it was for a band formed by a guy from rural NZ to get as big and acclaimed as they were. It’s also interesting that during the time they were able to get big while wearing the costumes and makeup they did. It was pretty out there for the time. Their music speaks volumes, I guess 😃 I had an incredible time at the show and I’m so glad I managed to add Split Enz to the list of acts I’ve been able to see live. Laterz. Hey, thanks for reading this post in your feed reader! Want to chat? Reply by email or add me on XMPP , or send a webmention . Check out the posts archive on the website.

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fLaMEd fury 4 weeks ago

MGK At The Spark Arena

What’s going on, Internet? Last night, me, my sister-n-law and our friend went into town to see the MGK gig as he brought his Lost Americana tour to Auckland for his only New Zealand show. MGK, aka Machine Gun Kelly, aka Colson Baker is one of those artists where it’s probably good to separate the art from the artist as he seems to be a ball bag in real life. I never paid any attention to him while he did hip hop records, but as soon as I saw the Bloody Valentine I was hooked. The album, Tickets To My Downfall was the exact type of nostalgia I needed for early 2000s pop punk in 2020. I skimmed through Mainstream Sellout when it released and never came back to it. We got Lost Americana last year which was a step up from the second record and I listened to it a bunch. But we also got Tickets To My Downfall All Access last year, the 5th anniversary reissue. Original tracklist, the bonus tracks from the SOLD OUT Deluxe , plus 5 new unreleased tracks. Whew. It was good to hear some more tracks from that era. We managed to grab reseller tickets, paid less for the three of us combined than a single ticket at face value, and the seats were pretty decent for where we ended up. Sweet as. Anyway, the show was good. It kicked off on time, it was loud, there were guitars and drums, only a couple throwbacks to the rap days and one or two songs from Sellout. It didn’t take long to get right into the Tickets To My Downfall songs and that was all I needed to hear. The stage was on theme too. A model of the Statue of Liberty’s head looming above with a cigarette hanging out her mouth, and his mic stand was a giant cigarette to match. Lost Americana indeed. The crowd around us were all there for the same reasons. Singing along with strangers who love the same songs is one of the best bits of a gig, especially the Tickets ones. Title Track , Drunk Face , Forget Me Too , Concert For Aliens , Jawbreaker , Nothing Inside , all hit. The cover of Paramore’s Misery Business was expected, and rocked. My absolute highlight was belting out Bloody Valentine word for word with everyone around me. My Ex’s Best Friend my second favourite on the album, still can’t get that one out of my head. We had a great time, a fantastic night out. Damn, what a show. I’ll see it again without hesitation. Hey, thanks for reading this post in your feed reader! Want to chat? Reply by email or add me on XMPP , or send a webmention . Check out the posts archive on the website.

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fLaMEd fury 4 weeks ago

Hot Cross Buns

What’s going on, Internet? I’ve been eating hot cross buns since January. Can you believe it? Growing up I remember that seasonal treats would come out a week or two before the associated holiday. As you might have noticed yourself, these days the bakeries, and supermarkets are pushing them out months before the event. For hot cross buns though, I’m not complaining. I’m not a big fan of raisins, or orange spice, and whatever else they use to make hot cross buns. But when they’re combined and baked and the end result is a fresh hot cross bun, I’m right there for all of it. While Easter is over now and my stash of hot cross buns has dried up, I’m both saddened and relieved. Since January I’ve been having at least one hot cross bun every morning with my hot chocolate (I gave up caffeine, and coffee with it, years ago). My favourite method of heating these delicious buns these days is in the air fryer. Cut in half and 170°C on the bake function for 4 minutes does the trick. Then a layer of butter. I’m not talking about a measly spread of butter. Nope. I’m talking about a slice of butter as thick as a slice of cheese. Then the goal is to eat it as quickly, but not too quickly before the butter melts and drips everywhere. Damn they’re so good. Daily Bread were the standout, but at the price I only sprung for them once. They use an Italian sourdough starter, multiple awards every year, you can taste why. Daily Bread also bakes a collab bun for Farro Fresh , sold right alongside the originals — slightly bigger, half the price, probably not the same starter but still super good. Bakers Delight ran a little drier than those two, though the size meant I could load them up with even more butter. During our road trip down to Martinborough I got to try a few. The Stables in Greytown had a hot cross doughnutm the dough was good but the sugar coating wasn’t really my thing. I would have preferred a standard bun than the doughnut hybrid. The French Baker , also in Greytown, delivered the real deal. But the surprise was Jean’s , a small bakery in Upper Hutt that my wife loves to visit. Crazy delicious like all of their baked goods. Next year I’m getting a box shipped up to Auckland the moment they’re available. I was a bit gutted when I demolished the last one the other day. I’m relieved I get a break until next year. If they were around all year I’d be in real trouble. But who am I kidding? I’m already counting down to next year’s batch. 🤙 Hey, thanks for reading this post in your feed reader! Want to chat? Reply by email or add me on XMPP , or send a webmention . Check out the posts archive on the website.

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fLaMEd fury 1 months ago

Happy Easter 2026

What’s going on, Internet? I’m writing this from Martinborough in the pockets of time I have between activities with the family. I’ve found myself reading more eBooks rather than audiobooks this year. Turns out my brain still works without someone narrating to it . I need to take note of where I hear about interesting podcasts from, because by the time I get done listening to them, like MF DOOM: Long Island to Leeds , I totally forget! Maybe this would be a great use of the notebook I carry around but never write in? Over at the Cafe , yequari got an instance of Linkding setup and made available to all community members via our SSO service. I know a bunch of people in this corner of the web use it, so I got myself some focus time and moved my Bookmarks to Linkding . It’s improved my bookmarking workflow and hoping that makes me more inclined to actually saving them as I read them and I get more regular sharing them again, which lead me to trying out a Link Dump in their own post rather than hiding them away at the bottom of these posts each month. And finally, the musical highlight this month was seeing Bic Runga At Te Paepae Theatre , Dinner and a concert. Going into new music blind, a fantastic evening out with my wife. We don’t get too many times together like this these days between everything else going on in life. I haven’t picked up an audiobook again yet, but I’ve finished the Vega Jane stories with the last two books, Vega Jane and the Rebels’ Revolt and Vega Jane and the End of Time by David Baldacci. I really enjoyed this series, and like I mentioned previously I don’t even know how the first one wound up on my Kobo! Picked up English Teacher after a trailer came up on YouTube and after the first episode I was right into it. A group of 30-something teachers at an American high school navigating their own friendship dramas while dealing with hilariously difficult students. Two seasons were available so I blasted through all of them. Crackhead is a new local dramady and I got to attend a special screening of the first two episodes with the cast and crew. Created by Holly Shervey and based on her own early experiences, the show takes place within a rehab facility somewhere in New Zealand. Watching it episode by episode on Three Now as they come out. Continued watching Shrinking S3 as well, it feels like it’s wrapping up, does this have another season in it? I’m a sucker for dumb teen movies and Summer of 69 fit the description. A young twitch streamer gets to the point in life where they want to get it on with their childhood crush. They recruit a stripper and then it all goes down. Regretting You was an interesting one, turns out to be about a mother and daughter dealing with the fallout of a fatal accident that reveals a betrayal in the family. Such a wild plot, my wife only said wtf when I described it to her. I had Roofman playing in the background while playing Warcraft. It was okay, didn’t really care for it, I don’t think I really enjoy Channing Tatum. Four new records added to the collection. Frou Frou and Lisa Loeb from the Interscope Vinyl Collective (IVC). I wasn’t familiar with either record, they’re fine and have made me aware to exercise the cancel subscription button for releases that I’m not totally keen on. They’re gorgeous releases, I love them and have listened to them but yeah, could be spending that money on records I actually want . The other two were both Bic Runga records. Her latest release (first in 15 years), Red Sunset (signed) and then her original from 1997, Drive which I picked up at her show and got it signed in person 😃 What else have I been listening to? Been on a hard house kick recently so I dug up an old favourite from the early 2000s Wellington clubbing scene - Dynotuned by DJ Shakka, and went back through the Hard House Euphoria albums. After listening to the MF DOOM podcast I dived into the albums of his I have in my collection. Operation: Doomsday and Madvillainy. On the local music front I got really into The Panthers from Diggy Dupé, choicevaughan, and P. Smith (aka Troy Kingi). “The Villain” was on repeat, such a tune. Another new find was RNZŌ SZN from RNZŌ. Released January 2025, this one’s going to be in regular rotation for a while. Hey, thanks for reading this post in your feed reader! Want to chat? Reply by email or add me on XMPP , or send a webmention . Check out the posts archive on the website.

Books

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fLaMEd fury 2 months ago

Link Dump: March 2026

What’s going on, Internet? Trying something different. All the pages I bookmarked this month, no life updates in between. Want more? Check out all my bookmarks at /bookmarks/ and subscribe to the bookmarks feed . Hey, thanks for reading this post in your feed reader! Want to chat? Reply by email or add me on XMPP , or send a webmention . Check out the posts archive on the website. Scroll trīgintā ūnus by Shellsharks - Sharing the latest edition of scrolls, posting online without overthinking. I Am Happier Writing Code by Hand by Abhinav Omprakash - Letting AI write his code kills the satisfaction that made programming worth doing. You Are The Driver (The AI Is Just Typing) by Keith - AI coding tools are only useful once you already know what you’re doing. They automate typing, not thinking. Oceania Web Atlas by Zachary Kai - Collects personal websites from across Oceania into one tidy, human-scaled directory. Building the Good Web by Brennan - Building for users instead of against them is what separates the good web from everything else. Unpolished human websites by Joel - Keep your website messy and human. What is Digital Garage - Digital Tinker’s website is a workshop built for joy, not productivity. Creation without pressure. How to feel at home on the Internet by Jatan Mehta - Is having your own domain really the only way to truly “own” your online space? Endgame for the Open Web by Anil Dash - Is 2026 the last year we have a chance to put a stop on the dismantling of the open web?

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fLaMEd fury 2 months ago

Bic Runga At Te Paepae Theatre

What’s going on, Internet? Friday night my wife and I enjoyed a couple hours out in the evening to catch Bic Runga perform the second show on her Red Sunset tour at the recently opened Te Paepae Theatre. We got into town 30 minutes before doors opened, but rather than stress about catching the warm up act we grabbed dinner at an old favourite, Depot. We enjoyed clams, snapper slides, skirt steak and potato skins. Comforting knowing this is the same food we’d get here when we last visited a decade ago. We arrived at Te Paepae around 8 pm, headed up stairs and found our seats. The warm up band which turned out to be Bic’s husband’s band were just finishing up. We had to double check, but yes that was Bic on the drums. After a short 15-20 minute interval the show was back on with Bic taking the mic, and her husband returning the favour on drums. Bic wove in old favourites among new songs from the latest album Red Sunset. Red Sunset is her first album in 15 years (if we don’t include 2016’s cover album). I hadn’t managed to listen to Red Sunset yet, so the new songs were a first listen live. Pretty sure she opened with Drive. The new songs sounded great and I can’t wait to dive into the album on an upcoming roadtrip. As the show drew to an end Bic let us know that the show was wrapping up and rather than piss around with leaving the stage and coming back for the encore she got straight into her biggest and favourite track, Sway. What a tune to end the show with. After the show Bic headed straight to the merch tent and was signing vinyls and CDs and posing for selfies with fans. I grabbed a copy of her 1997 album Drive and got it signed by her. The vinyl itself wasn’t anything special. A single cardboard sleeve with a standard black vinyl. Sony obviously didn’t put a lot of effort into the production of this classic kiwi album. Drive will always be a favourite of mine, it is one of my earliest memories of really getting into kiwi music. During third form (Year 9) for a music class project we had to find a local artist to do a report on, I wasn’t clued up on local music back then like I am now. Dad shared a newspaper or magazine article on this new album from a 17 year old, Bic Runga. And that I would say was my awakening to local music. It wasn’t too long until the third labour government under Helen Clark would invest heavily into the arts and we’d all be exposed to kiwi music for a solid few years. Leaving the venue with my wife and the signed copy of Drive in my hand was a nice way to wrap up the evening and a good reminder of why I love kiwi music. Hey, thanks for reading this post in your feed reader! Want to chat? Reply by email or add me on XMPP , or send a webmention . Check out the posts archive on the website.

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fLaMEd fury 2 months ago

MF DOOM: Long Island to Leeds

What’s going on, Internet? A quick post to share some thoughts on a great little podcast I just listened to, MF DOOM: Long Island to Leeds . Even if you’re not a fan of underground hip-hop, or even hip-hop in general you may have heard of MF Doom. MF Doom is your favourite rapper’s favourite rapper. The podcast, hosted by AFRODEUTSCHE and Adam Batty takes us through the story of how the reclusive underground MC from Long Island, New York came up in the underground Hip Hop scene and wound up in Leeds, England where he passed away in 2020. It’s crazy to me how many American based Hip Hop artists were born outside of the USA but are still able to make it big in American hip-hop. His particular circumstances when it came to leaving and coming back to the States after touring were quite unfortunate but highlights the stance the United States takes on immigration. I’d hate to think how this would have come down if he was going through this today with the current immigration climate over there. I’ve always been aware of MF Doom and listen to his music, but not a mega fan. What this podcast has done for me is bump up some of his albums to the top of my vinyl wish list. The podcast is made of five 30 minute episodes. Even if you’re not a big Hip Hop head, give it a listen 🤙 Hey, thanks for reading this post in your feed reader! Want to chat? Reply by email or add me on XMPP , or send a webmention . Check out the posts archive on the website.

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fLaMEd fury 2 months ago

Damn, I Can Still Read

What’s going on, Internet? Last December I finally got off my ass and committed to reading Jared Savages books, Gangland , Gangster’s Paradise , and the recently released Underworld . These books had been on my radar since the release of Gangland, but I was waiting on an ebook version. Then I went all in on audiobooks and decided to wait until they were available in audio format. So, back to December. It was my birthday. My wife sorted me some kid-free time so I dug out my Kobo Libra, charged it up a bit, reconnected to libby, borrowed Gangland and got stuck in. After hundreds of audiobooks and not much ebook reading outside of comics I thought I was in for a bad time. Much to my amazement I found out rather quickly that I could still read books with words, not sound. I also went through a period where I’d get into bed and snuggle in with a book only to find myself asleep after maybe getting through a single page. This made finishing books an audacious task. When I did switch to audiobooks, they became almost the only way I read. Night time reading defaulted to comic books, which I enjoyed but these have taken a back seat so far this year. I’ve got three months of X-Men to catch up on. I’ve read 10 books so far this year, four audiobooks and six books on the Kobo, a big change from previous years since I started my audiobook journey. I’ve got at least three more books lined up after the one I’ve just finished. After finishing the amazing 1985 I started another audiobook that just didn’t click so I quickly abandoned it before falling into sunk cost territory. I’ve picked up a few more podcasts to listen to during the day and have been listening to more music recently. I’m not worried though, I’m sure I’ll pick up the audiobooks again, just waiting for the right ones to make their way into my orbit. The question is, will the backlog of X-Men comics continue to grow or will I be able to find some balance in my physical reading? I just need some more of that kid-free time, right? Hey, thanks for reading this post in your feed reader! Want to chat? Reply by email or add me on XMPP , or send a webmention . Check out the posts archive on the website.

Books

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fLaMEd fury 3 months ago

Making fLaMEd fury Glow Everywhere With an Eleventy Transform

What’s going on, Internet? I originally added a CSS class as a fun way to make my name (fLaMEd) and site name (fLaMEd fury) pop on the homepage. shellsharks gave me a shoutout for it, which inspired me to take it further and apply the effect site-wide. Site wide was the original intent and the problem was it was only being applied manually in a handful of places, and I kept forgetting to add it whenever I wrote a new post or created a new page. Classic. Instead of hunting through templates and markdown files, I’ve added an Eleventy HTML transform that automatically applies the glow up. I had Claude Code help me figure out the regex and the transform config. This allowed me to get this done before the kids came home. Don't @ me. The effect itself is a simple utility class using : Swap for whatever gradient custom property you have defined. The repeats the gradient across the text for a more dynamic flame effect. The transform lives in its own plugin file and gets registered in . It runs after Eleventy has rendered each page, tokenises the HTML by splitting on tags, tracks a skip-tag stack, and only replaces text in text nodes. Tags in the set, along with any span already carrying the class, push onto the stack. No replacement happens while the stack is non-empty, so link text, code examples, the page , and already-wrapped instances are all left alone. HTML attributes like and are never touched because they sit inside tag tokens, not text nodes. A single regex handles everything in one pass. The optional group matches " fury" (with space) or “fury” (without), so “flamed fury” and “flamedfury” (as it appears in the domain name) are both wrapped as a unit. The flag covers every capitalisation variant (“fLaMEd fury”, “Flamed Fury”, “FLAMED FURY”) with the original casing preserved in the output. This helps because I can be inconsistent with the styling at times. Export the plugin from wherever you manage your Eleventy plugins: Then register it in . Register it before any HTML prettify transform so the spans are in place before reformatting runs: That’s it. Any mention of the site name (fLaMEd fury) in body text gets the gradient automatically, in posts, templates, data-driven content, wherever. Look out for the easter egg I’ve dropped in. Later. Hey, thanks for reading this post in your feed reader! Want to chat? Reply by email or add me on XMPP , or send a webmention . Check out the posts archive on the website.

HTML

JavaScript

CSS

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fLaMEd fury 3 months ago

Four More Years

What’s going on, Internet? I’ve been using my iPhone 13 Pro for a little over four years now, since September 2021 and I want to keep using it for a couple more. Keyboard lag. Apps taking a second to think before opening. Battery health sitting at 80%. I had a quick look at the iPhone 17 and couldn’t justify it when everything else about this phone is still good. Storage is only half full. Camera is fine. It’s fast when it wants to be. So I tried the logical fix first: a $90 battery replacement from a local repair shop. This is where it had been sitting for a while. Still usable, but clearly the reason iOS had started throttling performance. Straight after the swap I got a warning about the battery not being genuine which I was only made aware of right before pulling the trigger on this after reading a comment on the iPhone 13 Battery page on iFixit . I made peace with myself and I was prepared to live with it. For $90 and being done in 30 minutes without having to schedule with an authorised repair dealer and being without the phone for up to four days. I just wanted the speed back. But apparently because I’m on a newer version of iOS, I had the option to run Apple’s verification process. So I did… and it passed. Battery health back to 100%, full stats restored, and the warning moved to Parts & Service History where it belongs. That’s basically the authorised-repair end result for third-party-repair money. I followed the usual calibration cycle: charge to 100%, leave it on the charger for a couple more hours, run it down until it turns off, charge back to 100%. Mostly to give iOS a clean read on the new battery. The battery fixes the hardware bottleneck. The other half is software. Years of installed apps, background processes, cached junk. So I’m preparing for a full wipe and setting the phone up as new. No restoring from backup, sign into iCloud and let the data sync back, reinstall apps one at a time. Only the things I actually use get to come back. It’s the closest you get to a new phone without buying one. This whole reset cost less than a case for a new phone. If the lag disappears, that’s another couple of years out of a device that’s still more than good enough. If it doesn’t, then I look at upgrading. But it makes more sense to solve the worn-out-battery problem before spending thousands to avoid it. I’ll report back once the clean install is done and I’ve lived with it for a few days. Hey, thanks for reading this post in your feed reader! Want to chat? Reply by email or add me on XMPP , or send a webmention . Check out the posts archive on the website.

iOS

Hardware

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fLaMEd fury 3 months ago

Carl Cox On Waiheke

What’s going on, Internet? Ferry ride over, no kids. Bus to Onetangi. Alibi for a late lunch. Picanha steak with seasonal vegetables. Unfortunately, they had some type of beer shortage, so their usual selection was limited to four tap beers. I enjoyed the Ruru Hazy, even though it was a hazy. Hopefully, they have the full range available next time I’m there. The gig was a minute walk up the road at the Wild Estate . I was wondering how they would do the setup, and once I saw the fences and tents set up on the front lawns, it made sense. We got through check-in sweet as. The drinks were supplied by Pals. We grabbed a drink, my wife a Purple Pals and a Frankie’s Cola for myself. We took a short walk around the venue to get a lay of the land and found a table to sit down at. There was one person there enjoying a pizza. We said hello and sat down. Shortly after, a couple approached and asked if the seats were free. Of course, come sit down. Let’s chat. Want another drink? Sure, let’s go. Friends were made. Another couple, two friends, sat down in the remaining seats. Hi, how are you? More friends. Time to dance. We met up on the dance floor. A group of new friends dancing amongst the crowd to Nichole Moudaber before Carl Cox came on. Both sets were amazing and just what I wanted to hear on a Saturday afternoon. It’s pretty cool that Carl can play something like Awakenings Festival to hundreds of thousands of people, and then a month later play a small venue on Waiheke to a crowd of a thousand. The gig started at 3pm and went until 9pm. Perfect timing for us. We decided to skip staying to the end of Carl’s set and grabbed the 8:11pm bus back to the ferry terminal. I think we made the right call, as the next boat back to the city was at 9:30pm. Sure, we had to wait at the ferry terminal, but we were at the front of the line and got a seat right away as the boat turned up. There were hundreds of people left waiting at the terminal for the next boat. We managed to get home and into bed by 11pm. Perfect timing for a good enough sleep before kids’ activities in the morning. ← Previous 1 / 4 Next → Close ← Previous 2 / 4 Next → Close ← Previous 3 / 4 Next → Close ← Previous 4 / 4 Next → I miss nights out like these. Hey, thanks for reading this post in your feed reader! Want to chat? Reply by email or add me on XMPP , or send a webmention . Check out the posts archive on the website.

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fLaMEd fury 3 months ago

The Guestbook Is Back

What’s going on, Internet? Guestbooks are one of my favourite relics of the old web. My old guestbook stopped working after the database behind it shut down, and I’ve been meaning to bring it back ever since. Well, it’s finally here. The new guestbook is powered by webweav.ing , built by yequari and available to 32-Bit Cafe members. It provides web components that handle the form and comments, making it easy to drop into any site. If you’re a member, I’d recommend checking it out. Go ahead and sign the guestbook . Say what’s up. Hey, thanks for reading this post in your feed reader! Want to chat? Reply by email or add me on XMPP , or send a webmention . Check out the posts archive on the website.

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fLaMEd fury 3 months ago

Robin Hood (2025)

What’s going on, Internet? Haven’t done these in a while so here we go. I just finished up watching all ten episodes of Robin Hood (2025) . It probably isn’t a great television show but it was entertaining enough to watch across four evenings. I did find Robb a bit whingey at first, but I enjoyed how quickly he went from reluctant to ruthless. Tuck the monk was a great addition to the crew, I liked his wrestling with his faith and where he drew the line, but ultimately came back around. Little John was a weird one though, where he was literally hunting Robb, bested him and the millers, and then immediately joined the cause after a vision. That felt a bit rushed. The Earl of Huntingdon was an absolute munter though. Easy to dislike, which I suppose is the point. It’s always good to see Sean Bean in a show, he had such an impact on Game of Thrones in only a single season, but his portrayal of the Sheriff of Nottingham wasn’t as impactful. And Priscilla, his daughter, no idea what was going on there, lol. The show has me thinking about a Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves rewatch, a favourite when I was younger - maybe because of that banger Bryan Adams song on the soundtrack. The stories are similar but different enough to get me interested. I find the time period and story of Robin Hood interesting and the show has me keen to dive into some history of the Norman conquests - if you have any recs, let me know. Hey, thanks for reading this post in your feed reader! Want to chat? Reply by email or add me on XMPP , or send a webmention . Check out the posts archive on the website.

Television

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fLaMEd fury 3 months ago

Fresh 88x31 Buttons

What’s going on, Internet? Besides having an amazing website, 32-Bit Cafe community member Ritual pumps out little projects like no tomorrow. One of those projects is the 88x31 Button Creator , and I couldn’t resist taking it for a spin. The process was straightforward once I figured out what all the options did. Here are the buttons I came up with: If you do make one using Dan’s generator, just remember to use the “download” button rather than right clicking to save it. I’ve talked about Relics Of The Web previously and I love the 88x31 format, but I still think we could have a good time with a larger banner size too. Maybe Dan’s next project could be a banner generator? Let’s make it happen, lol. I’ve added these to my button archive . You may have also noticed I’ve brought the button display back to the homepage. I’ll continue adding interesting display badges over time. Hey, thanks for reading this post in your feed reader! Want to chat? Reply by email or add me on XMPP , or send a webmention . Check out the posts archive on the website.

Design

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fLaMEd fury 3 months ago

The Summer Took Hold

What’s going on, Internet? I was going to have this post as the December wrap up post but the summer took hold of me and here we are at the end of January and a week into Feb, lol. December kicked off with a Tuesday night gig, Lewis Capaldi At The Spark Arena , a fantastic show. I finished off a post about what music ownership means to me , I was happy to get that one out of drafts and published. Then we were straight into finishing up work for the year and I took some time to reflect on the beers I drunk , the books I read , and the music I enjoyed throughout the year. Christmas was an exciting time. With a four year old and a two year old we were in full hype mode. I also got into the hype and had a blast. We had a pre-Christmas lunch at my brother’s place with his family and my parents, two days of work and then straight into Christmas Eve prep which we had at my parent-in-law’s place with the kids, their aunties and all their grandparents. They actually managed to go to sleep and woke up super excited and we got to do it all over again on Christmas Day. I braved the mall on Boxing Day and managed to pick up the last copy of the 2025 Indie Store exclusive re-issue of Get Rich Or Die Tryin’ pressed on red vinyl. The mall itself wasn’t too bad, but the traffic into the mall was horrific. Worth it though. With Christmas out of the way we had a couple days down time before we started our road trip down south. This was so much fun. Our end destination was the Marlborough Sounds, and we broke the trip up into stages so we could explore some of the country and also make sure that the kids weren’t stuck in a car non-stop for days on end. On day one we headed to the Hawke’s Bay via Orakei Korako Cave & Geothermal Park . We stayed one night in Havelock North and visited the national aquarium in Napier before continuing on to Martinborough where we spent two nights. The kids got some grandparent time and my wife and I managed to head over the hill to Wellington to catch up with some friends. On New Year’s Eve we packed up the car again and made our way with the kids to the ferry terminal in Wellington to cross the Cook Strait and make the drive to a remote part of the Marlborough Sounds . After four nights down there enjoying the remote tranquility of the top of the South Island, we headed back to the ferry terminal in Picton to catch the boat back to Wellington and drove straight back to Martinborough for a week of working remote rather than cutting the road trip short. We then packed the car up for a final time and made our way back up north, back to Havelock North again for one more night. Before heading north again the next morning we took the kids to Splash Planet and had a fun time in the water and playing mini golf. We stopped off in Hastings for some ice cream before heading back to Taupō where we stopped off at the Hooker Falls and Cobb & Co for dinner. My wife and I have great memories of family dinners and birthday parties at the Cobb and were hoping the kids would have a blast, but I think they were over it and were just tired. Luckily it was only three more hours back to Tāmaki Makaurau so I made the drive home while the family slept. Then it was back home to unpack and get back to the reality of the weekly grind of school and work. What an epic road trip though. I look forward to more of them, and they’ll only get better as the kids get older. I’ve been watching a lot of great shows recently, old and new. I saw Tulsa King on Cory’s website, gave it a go and ended up watching the entirety of season one over a couple days. I’m going to get right onto season two as soon as I can. The second season of The Vince Staples Show was like a fever dream. Short episodes, easy to watch. My favourite universe, the Power Universe had season three of Power Book IV: Force on the screen and I loved it. It’s so over the top and the premise is wild. Great end to the series and looking forward to Power Book Legacy! I watched all four episodes of Sean Combs: The Reckoning - it really shows what a psycho that guy is. The fourth season of Industry has started and I’m watching my way through that, I have no idea if I actually like this show anymore - it’s kinda fever dream like itself, but I’ll keep watching it. Shrinking is back for its third season. And finally A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms started, I loved the books and I’m loving this show. Set a hundred years before the events of A Song Of Ice And Fire, it’s a bit more lighthearted and funny than Game Of Thrones was. Been a good run of movie watching over here recently. Partly due to Mr 4 taking more of an interest in them. He’d been coming home from preschool talking about KPop Demon Hunters , and we’d been listening to the music and so we sat down and watched the movie together one afternoon. I really enjoyed it. He did too. He’s also been into Paw Patrol recently so as a treat he’s been able to watch some of the Paw Patrol movies starting with PAW Patrol: The Movie , which I also ended up really enjoying. Surprising at the big names doing the voices. Totally different to the budget voices on the Tonies 🤣 So yeah, the movie was really good, although he got quite upset when Chase lost his confidence. It was cute. Christmas was also a bigger than usual thing in our household this year and so on Christmas Eve we all sat down together and watched Home Alone with him. A fun movie which he enjoyed, and maybe laughed a bit too hard at parts. When the kids did eventually go to bed I enjoyed the annual screening of The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special . During the roadtrip we stayed at a motel on the way down south and we took advantage of the yearly screening of Grease - one of my all time favourite movies. After the kids sleeping for hours in the car we knew they weren’t going to bed easily so we had a family movie night. Grease isn’t a kids movie, but it’s also quite tame compared to movies today. I enjoyed it, they enjoyed it and we all had a good time, and they eventually went to sleep. The other movies I enjoyed were Woodstock 99 which dove into the absolute state of the 99 Woodstock festival and how it eventually turned into what it was. What a shit time that would have been. On the lighter side I enjoyed Good Fortune and then Shithouse , which has a shit name, but explored the isolating side of social interaction. Eleven records added to the collection across December and January. A lot of anniversary editions and special pressings landed on the shelf. Here’s all the posts I enjoyed recently. You can check out more over on the Bookmarks archive. Shellsharks is back and publishing Scrolls again so go check that out. Hyde is still publishing his Over/Under series and has just published issue #50 with Bobby Hiltz . I really love the way Hyde personalises each Over/Under interview with his guest - it makes for an interesting read and shows that he does go out of his way to read their websites. xandra has also just dropped the Autumn/Winter 2026 issue of Good Internet magazine. I can’t wait to get stuck in and read all the new articles while I wait for my physical edition to arrive. Plenty of hacking on the website over the break. I’ve been messing with the homepage layout. I’m still not entirely happy with the bento, but it’s fine for now. I’ve added a “Stuck In My Head” section that highlights the six most played songs from last.fm . I’ve also moved the webrings into the bento and revived my buttons collection - I’ve got more to add here later. I’ve started adding garden indicators for living posts that I intend to keep working on over time. I will eventually create a /garden/ page to list these pages for easy browsing. I guess that tag page serves that purpose at the moment. Along with that I think I’ve improved the post metadata on each post that helps tell the story better with category, tags, and dates. Let me know what you think. I spent some (a lot) of time unifying the look and feel across Beer Fridge , Recordshelf , Bookshelf , and Comics pages with cleaned up CSS and introducing a common layout for the stat cards. That damn comics page needs a lot of work. This update was brought to you by Girl in Stilettos by Annah Mac Hey, thanks for reading this post in your feed reader! Want to chat? Reply by email or add me on XMPP , or send a webmention . Check out the posts archive on the website. App selection criteria - Cory Dransfeldt on his criteria for choosing apps. Delete Spotify? Sure, But Don’t Just Replace it With Another Subscription - Stephanie Vee on thinking beyond just swapping one subscription for another. Why RSS matters - Ben Werdmuller on why RSS still matters. What happened to the comment section? - The History of the Web looks at what happened to comment sections. Three Predictions For The Web - Three predictions for the future of the web. IndieWeb Carnival December 2025 – The IndieWeb in 2030 - The Frugal Gamer hosts the December 2025 IndieWeb Carnival. Static sites killed the blog comment star - Did static sites kill blog comments, and can old tech bring them back? An Island in the Net in 2030? - Khürt Williams imagines the IndieWeb in 2030. Drinking The Largest Beer At The Airport Makes Everything Better - A celebration of the airport beer. Backing up Spotify - How to back up your Spotify library. 30 Years of br Tags - A look back at 30 years of the humble tag. Looking beyond collective blogging - V.H. Belvadi looks at what comes after collective blogging. Readers, writers and blogging ethics - On saying what you mean and being damned. How and Why Do I Blog? - Reflections on the how and why of blogging. Building an IndieWeb house (I): introduction - Starting the journey of building an IndieWeb house. The IndieWeb Doesn’t Need to ‘Take Off’ - Susam Pal on why the IndieWeb doesn’t need mass adoption. Experiences with social medias - Reflections on experiences with social media. Writing Hyperlinks: Salient, Descriptive, Start with Keyword - Nielsen Norman Group on writing better hyperlinks. Why 90s Movies Feel More Alive Than Anything on Netflix - Why 90s movies hit different. You should start a blog today - A nudge to start blogging. Self-hosting versus lots of small indieweb providers - The trade-offs between self-hosting and using small IndieWeb providers.

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fLaMEd fury 5 months ago

What I Listened to in 2025

What’s going on, Internet? Hey, thanks for reading this post in your feed reader! Want to chat? Reply by email or add me on XMPP , or send a webmention . Check out the posts archive on the website.

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fLaMEd fury 5 months ago

Books I Read in 2025

What’s going on, Internet? I read fewer books this year, which reflects a shift rather than a slowdown. I listened to more podcasts during the day and read more comic books at night. Audiobooks remained my favourite format, I followed authors I already enjoyed, and I was quicker to walk away when something wasn’t clicking. This wasn’t a year of trying everything. It was a year of reading in ways that fit my day better. Stats shown here are generated from my metadata-library, I used ChatGPT to crunch the numbers. Don't @ me. Here’s how 2025 shaped up: Books Finished ↓ 10 from 2024 Still my default format Average Rating More consistency, less filler 5-Star Reads The standouts Reading less made the patterns clearer. When something worked, I kept going. When it didn’t, I moved on. Audiobooks continued to do the heavy lifting. Based on titles where duration is recorded, I listened to at least 260 hours of audiobooks this year, with Onyx Storm easily the longest single listen at just under 24 hours . My rating scale is deliberately simple. I rarely use one or two stars. If a book isn’t working, I’ll abandon it early and move on rather than finish it just to rate it. These were the books that really landed for me this year: Michael Bennett’s In Blood series was a real highlight this year. I read the three Hana Westerman books as back-to-back as the library would let me. They’re crime novels, and what really worked for me was the setting and perspective. They’re distinctly Aotearoa without leaning on clichés. As audiobooks, they were great to listen to and easy to stick with over long stretches. I finished the last book, Carved in Blood , during the final drive from Wellington to Auckland during our move. This was a good example of how I read this year. When something clicked, I kept going. Non-fiction showed up in a more focused way this year. I wasn’t reading broadly, but when I did pick something up it tended to circle similar themes: power, media, politics, and how systems affect people on the ground. These were the standouts. They weren’t comfort reads. Parts of Careless People had me thinking “what the actual fuck”, and A Different Kind of Power had me shaking my head at how many fellow Kiwis disappeared down the alt-right rabbit hole and turned on Jacinda, who saw us through the COVID years relatively unscathed. This wasn’t a year about reading more. It was about reading in ways that fit my day. Audiobooks for most of my reading. Comics before bed. Weekly, fortnightly, and monthly podcasts in between. A nice variety to keep things interesting. Hey, thanks for reading this post in your feed reader! Want to chat? Reply by email or add me on XMPP , or send a webmention . Check out the posts archive on the website. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Loved it ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Liked it a lot ⭐️⭐️⭐️ Liked it The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue Malibu Rising The Axeman’s Carnival The Dream Hotel Better the Blood Return to Blood Carved in Blood Careless People Wars Without End Fahrenheit-182 A Different Kind of Power Gangland my favourite

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fLaMEd fury 5 months ago

Drinking Less, Enjoying More: Beer in 2025

What’s going on, Internet? This was a quieter year for beer. I checked in less, tried fewer new things, and enjoyed what I drank more. I leaned hard into IPAs, especially West Coast IPAs, spent more time with Bright IPAs, and reaffirmed my appreciation for the humble APA. 2025 wasn’t about chasing novelty. Beer isn’t getting cheaper, and it made more sense to stick with what I know I enjoy. Stats shown here are based on Untappd check-ins up to 23 December 2025 . There’s still a week to go between Christmas and New Year, which is usually when I try a bunch of new beers, so treat this as a snapshot rather than a final tally. I might update in the new year I still use Untapped to keep track of my beers. Here are my 2025 stats: Total Check-ins ↓ 37 from 2024 Unique Beers ↓ 34 from 2024 ↓ 4 from 2024 Average Rating ↑ 0.11 from 2024 The continued drop in volume alongside a higher average rating summed up the year well. Fewer beers, better choices, and more consistent enjoyment. Friday remained my most popular day for check-ins, with beers logged from four countries across the year, led overwhelmingly by New Zealand with only a small handful from overseas. American IPA was my most checked-in style, with Garage Project as my top brewery. Garage Project remained the most explored brewery in 2025. I still picked up a run of their seasonal releases early in the year, but stepping away from the Fresh Hop Subscription allowed other breweries to feature more prominently. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a different brewery take the top spot in 2026 as I spend more time exploring Auckland breweries. One thing these stats don’t fully capture is the beers I reached for most often. The Friday after-work beers and the ones that lived in my golf bag rarely made it into Untappd, but they were easily my favourites across the year. Parrotdog’s Raptor APA, Thunderbird Bright APA, Urbanaut’s Detroit Bright IPA, and Liberty’s Yakima Monster APA were constants. They aren’t seasonal or rare, but they are delicious, reliable core-range beers I kept coming back to. Untappd reflects moments. These beers reflect habits. Cheers to drinking less and enjoying more! 🍺 Hey, thanks for reading this post in your feed reader! Want to chat? Reply by email or add me on XMPP , or send a webmention . Check out the posts archive on the website.

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fLaMEd fury 5 months ago

What Music Ownership Means to Me

What’s going on, Internet? If a song isn’t available on Spotify or Apple Music, a lot of people these days assume it isn’t an official release. I reckon that idea is wrong. Digital Streaming Platforms (DSPs) are not archives. They’re digital storefronts. What you see is a product that depends on licensing, timing, and deals, not history. Availability gets confused with legitimacy, and anything missing is treated like it never existed or as some kind of lost media. Streaming platforms are not archives. They are storefronts with licensing constraints. Availability is not authorship. Absence is not “unreleased”. This has quietly changed how people think about music. Not how they listen, but how they decide what’s official. If it’s not on a DSP, for a lot of people, it may as well not exist. One of my favourite Eminem songs is Bad Influence . It’s an official track from the MMLP era. It appeared on the End of Days soundtrack and was also a B-side on The Real Slim Shady single , which I owned on CD back in the day. Pretty sure it’s still in a box in storage - I’ll let you know if I find it. Today it sits in a weird place. Check out the MusicThread generated links . Apple Music has the soundtrack and lets me preview the song, but I’ve got no idea if the full track is actually available because I don’t have an account. Spotify lists the soundtrack but won’t play it in my region. Other services break or don’t surface it at all. Depending on where you look, the song both exists and doesn’t. Nothing about the song has changed. It didn’t suddenly become officially released when the sound track showed up on streaming, and won’t become unofficial when it dissapears again. The only thing that changes is what people think of it. Sometimes music doesn’t even get that half availble treatment. I recently wrote about the one and only album from the New Zealand band Atlas. Reasons for Voyaging was released in 2007. A proper release from a real band on a major label (Warner Bros. Records), on CD. The single Crawling climbed to the top of the NZ charts and received the full music video treatment. It was a huge tune in NZ at the time. It landed at an awkward moment, right as music was shifting from physical to digital, and was never licensed for streaming platforms. As a result, it’s now genuinely hard to find. Unless you know to check local libraries and hope there’s still a CD sitting in a basement somewhere. Not because it was unofficial. Not because it wasn’t good. Just because it fell between the cracks. Lol. That’s the risk when DSPs are treated as the record of what exists. They’re not preserving music. They’re selling access to whatever they can get licensed. They exist to benefit whoever is funding them, not the artists. This is why music ownership still matters to me. Not in a “vinyl is better” way, and not as a rejection of streaming entirely. I stream music all the time. Just not from DSPs. I stream from my own home server, from a digital library I’ve built over time, made up of music I actually own. That difference matters. Streaming as a way of playing music is fine. Streaming as a replacement for owning is what I don’t trust. At the end of the day it’s rented access, and the artists aren’t benefiting most of the time either. Stuff comes and goes. Tracks get greyed out. Albums dissapear. Licensing, regional, business, exclusivity deals. None of that has anything to do with the music itself. Steph Vee recently posted, Delete Spotify, sure, but don’t just replace it with another subscription . Same idea really. Ditching Spotify doesn’t mean much if all you’ve done is rent your music from someone else instead. When I own something, it’s there. No “unavailable in your region”. No wondering if it’ll exist next year. No egomaniac rapper changing the album post release, lol. I’m also not interested in hoarding music just for the sake of it. Loading up a server with ten thousand albums I’ve never listened to, or never will, isn’t collecting. That’s just noise. Digital hoarding without backups is fake ownership, and hoarding without listening is pointless to me. I collect muisic I care about , espeically on vinyl. Stuff I’ve lived with. Albums tied to certain times, places, and memories. If those memories matter to me, I don’t want them at the mercy of a streaming licence. So how do I actually go about getting my music? I try to buy music as close to the artist as possible. If an artist has an official website, I’ll check there first. If I’m going to a gig, I’ll wait and see if they’ve got vinyl available. If there’s a direct way to buy the music, that’s the path I’ll take every time. Bandcamp often fits nicely into that. If I’m still after the vinyl and Bandcamp is the closest thing to an official storefront, I’ll go there. It’s ideal. I get the record and a digital copy at the same time. The vinyl is nice to own, and the digital files go onto my home server and are what I listen to day to day. I’ll usually save things in my cart until a Bandcamp Friday lands so as much money as possible goes to the artist rather than the platform. If I’m buying records from a local store or retailer, I’ll usually grab a digital copy elsewhere. Sometimes that means Bandcamp, sometimes an official store, sometimes as AI training data, lol. The goal is always the same. Own the music. Don’t rely on a platform. If there isn’t a clear option, I’ve even reached out directly. I did this recently with local artist Niamh Crooks . She had CD copies of her EP that weren’t for sale on her website, so I bank transferred some cash and she posted a signed copy. Pretty cool. She also promised to look into setting up on Bandcamp. Yeah, sometimes there just isn’t an official path at all. No Bandcamp. No store. No label link. Just a link page pointing at those damn DSPs. In those cases I’ll grab the album as AI training data, add it to my library, and carry on with life. Once it’s in my library, it lives on my home server and I stream it from there. Same convenience as the DSPs, but without the shenanigans and with the reassurance tat what I’m listening to today will still be there next week. For the really special albums, they’re added to the record collection . Not everything needs to be owned on vinyl, but the stuff that means the most to me deserves a physical presence. Okay, I do have some dumb records in there too, just because I can. I’m not trying to convince anyone to cancel their streaming subscriptions or start a vinyl collection. That’s fine, you do you. This is just what music means to me. Hey, thanks for reading this post in your feed reader! Want to chat? Reply by email or add me on XMPP , or send a webmention . Check out the posts archive on the website.

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