Latest Posts (20 found)
Kev Quirk Yesterday

Why is Pure Blog so ugly?

Someone emailed recently to tell me that they like the idea of Pure Blog, but they thought the admin interface was "really ugly" so they can't use it. Fair enough - beauty is in the eye of the beholder and all that, but I don't think that was a fair evaluation of Pure Blog's admin UI. When I built Pure Blog, I wanted it to be different from the rest of the crowd. The whole point of it was to have just enough features, and no fluff. So to me a more brutalist/utilitarian UI made sense. The likes of Grav, WordPress, Ghost, and Bludit all have similar interfaces. White and grey with blues, purples, and greens. Rounded corners etc. All very iOS-ish. All very...safe. I wanted Pure Blog to stand out from the crowd and have its own identity, and honestly, I'm thrilled with the results. Pssst. If you haven't tried Pure Blog yet, check out the demo site . But what I like may not be what you like, which is why I built Pure Blog to be very customisable from the start. You can change the fonts from mono, to sans, or serif with the click of a button, or you can change the look of the entire UI if you know some CSS. And this is what I said to the person who emailed me saying it was ugly. But they came back with... Great. Do you have any examples? I didn't! So I decided to create some examples and show them here so you can see just how customisable Pure Blog really is. I know other CMSs can customise their UI too, but unlike them, Pure Blog needs no plugins, hacks, or bullshit. This can all be done with standard Pure Blog right out of the box. So here are some examples of the Pure Blog admin UI where all I've added is custom CSS within settings. How about bringing a macOS / iOS vibe to your Pure Blog site? Or maybe you like the super clean lines of the Ghost UI? Well, you can have something similar to that too if you like: Are you a WordPress purist who really wants to be as faithful as possible to their design? Well guess what - you can have that too! Maybe you're a lover of anything Bill Gates touches. If so, a Windows theme might be more your thing. Maybe all this GUI stuff isn't your jam? Do you yearn for the days of yore when the interface to a computer was terminal-only with a monochrome CRT monitor? Well, Pure Blog can do that too: Green – the connoisseur's terminal. Or orange, the truly old-school terminal. I think these screenshots show what Pure Blog is capable of. Your imagination really is the limit. So just because you think the default look of Pure Blog is ugly, don't fret - you can easily change it to be whatever you want it to be. If you're interested in grabbing any of these themes for your Pure Blog installation, all the CSS is available over on the docs site . Thanks for reading this post via RSS. RSS is ace, and so are you. ❤️ You can reply to this post by email , or leave a comment .

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Kev Quirk Yesterday

2026-10-14 11:53: Out for coffee this morning with my wife, as is our Wednesday morning routine, and...

Out for coffee this morning with my wife, as is our Wednesday morning routine, and this little guy came to sit with us. Thanks for reading this post via RSS. RSS is ace, and so are you. ❤️ You can reply to this post by email , or leave a comment .

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Kev Quirk 6 days ago

2026-10-09 20:15: First fire of the year and Sid is loving it. Not sure we appreciated the...

First fire of the year and Sid is loving it. Not sure we appreciated the giant queen wasp that came bumbling out of the chimney though. Thanks for reading this post via RSS. RSS is ace, and so are you. ❤️ You can reply to this post by email , or leave a comment .

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Kev Quirk 1 weeks ago

My Hobby Is Learning

I've had lots of hobbies over the years. To name a few off the top of my head, there's been fish keeping , guitar, harmonica, fountain pens, watches, motorbikes, this blog, web development, 3D printing, tattoos, digital minimalism, table tennis, and many more. Some of my hobbies have stuck, but I've never gotten so enthralled into a hobby that I become obsessed. Instead, there's generally 4 steps in the process: I don't always get to step 4. For some hobbies, like watch collecting and motorbikes, I continue to invest some time and money into them, and they continue to bring me joy. But I'm not obsessed. I see someone wearing an interesting watch; it piques my interest and we can have a conversation about it. But I'm not the type of person who can tell a watch brand from across a room (unless it's a Casio). Similarly, I love riding and working on my motorbikes - both bring me genuine joy. But I'm not the kind of biker who has to get out on their bike as much as possible, where driving the car is some kind of punishment. I enjoy driving too. While walking the dogs this morning I was idly thinking about all the random possessions I have scattered around the house that are the culmination of many abandoned hobbies. I started to think about why that is, and it dawned on me… It's not guitars, or harmonicas, or fish, or motorbikes, or watches, or anything else. It's learning about those thing that I find so enjoyable. It's the nitrogen cycle of an aquarium . It's learning to place your fingers at the right part of the fretboard on a guitar. It's learning to ride a motorbike safely and smoothly through some technical twisty roads, or learning how a clutch works and how to strip it down. It's learning. Learning is my hobby. And once I've decided I've learned enough about a topic, I'm good. I don't want to be the next Eric Clapton , Valentino Rossi , King of DIY , or Teddy Baldassarre . I want to be good enough at those hobbies, then move on to the next thing I can learn about. I think that's why computers have always interested me, because there's always something new to learn with them. So in future, instead of going neck deep and spending money on the next frivolous hobby, maybe I'll just spend some time learning about the thing to see if that satisfies my learning hobby. It probably won't though, as I'm something of a magpie when it comes to shiny things. But hey, at least I'm having fun and I'm not hurting anyone, right? Thanks for reading this post via RSS. RSS is ace, and so are you. ❤️ You can reply to this post by email , or leave a comment . I decide I want to take up a hobby. I read, watch videos, and obsessively learn about the topic. Invest lots of time and/or money into the hobby. Decide I've learned enough and move on.

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Kev Quirk 1 weeks ago

2026-10-06 09:47: Been trying a new email client, Hylki, after reading about it on OMG! Ubuntu! Really...

Been trying a new email client, Hylki, after reading about it on OMG! Ubuntu! Really enjoying it. It's modern and has a tonne of features. https://hylki.app/ Thanks for reading this post via RSS. RSS is ace, and so are you. ❤️ You can reply to this post by email , or leave a comment .

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Kev Quirk 1 weeks ago

Would You Like to Write to Me?

I really enjoy writing. Not typing - writing . With a fountain pen on good quality paper. I find the whole process cathartic; putting pen to paper demands far more use of my grey matter than hammering away at a keyboard. I mentioned in a recent post that when I finished an English course many years ago, I was hunting for creative reasons to type. Similarly, over the last 6 months or so I've gotten into fountain pens, and now I'm looking for ways to write creatively. I thought about handwriting some text then scanning/photographing it to publish it here, but that feels too convoluted. Plus, I feel like writing with a pen is more of a personal endeavour. Then it struck me - why not get a few pen pals! So I'm throwing this out into the wild - does anyone fancy exchanging letters with me? The only real requirement is that you can read and write in English (sadly, it's the only language I speak). I'm looking for perhaps 3–5 people to swap letters with. Naturally, we'll need to share postal addresses so we can send our prose back and forth. There’s zero pressure when it comes to frequency, either. Just write back whenever life allows. If a month or so passes without hearing from you, no hard feelings. I'll just assume our correspondence has naturally run its course. If you're interested, please fill out the short form linked below. Since I can only manage 3–5 pen pals, submitting the form doesn't guarantee we'll write, but if we seem like a good match and share common ground, I'll reach out by email to swap details and get things going. I won't be publishing these letters online - these are purely offline, private conversations. I'd ask that you keep them private, too. If you prefer not to use Google Forms, feel free to email me with the following: Sign up to become a Pen Pal Thanks for reading this post via RSS. RSS is ace, and so are you. ❤️ You can reply to this post by email , or leave a comment . Preferred email address Which country/city you live in A little bit about yourself and why you want to write to me Some topics you'd like to discuss

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Kev Quirk 1 weeks ago

Privacy and Webmentions

Following my recent post about not checking Mastodon , a reader raised an interesting privacy concern regarding Webmentions. They explained that they had stopped using Webmentions altogether because Fediverse users often don't realise - or explicitly consent to - their replies being republished on an external blog. This surprised me, as I'd never considered that Webmentions could be a privacy concern. To my mind, a public post on an open platform like Mastodon is precisely that: public. The Fediverse is decentralised by design. When you reply to someone, your message doesn't remain isolated on your home instance; it federates across countless independent servers. Pulling a public reply onto via a Webmention bridge is conceptually no different from relaying a reply originally posted on . Unless the concern is about deletion persistence (e.g. cached mentions remaining if a post is deleted), I struggle to see where the privacy violation lies when republishing content that was broadcast publicly to the open web in the first place. Am I missing a subtlety here? I'd love to hear your thoughts. Thanks for reading this post via RSS. RSS is ace, and so are you. ❤️ You can reply to this post by email , or leave a comment .

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Kev Quirk 1 weeks ago

2026-10-03 09:04: Took the dogs out on the field this morning. All the dewey spider webs were...

Took the dogs out on the field this morning. All the dewey spider webs were beautiful in the morning sun. I'm no Jack Baty, but they're good enough. Thanks for reading this post via RSS. RSS is ace, and so are you. ❤️ You can reply to this post by email , or leave a comment .

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Kev Quirk 2 weeks ago

I Don’t Remember the Last Time I Checked Mastodon

My relationship with Mastodon has been somewhat tumultuous over the years, until I eventually stepped down from Fosstodon around 18 months ago. I have to say, it was the right decision. I don't miss running Fosstodon one bit. But since then, I've found myself less and less engaged in the Fediverse. Mainly because there's so much outrage over there. It's so tiring. The majority of my timeline is fun, but the outraged minority have ruined for me. To the point where I don't want to be there, and I'm much happier having not checked the timeline for the last month or so. I'm not off the Fedi, however. What I've done is build features into this site that allow me to automatically cross-post to the Fedi. I even have a custom page that only I can access, which allows me to create a note as simply as posting to Mastodon: As well as this, I've implemented Webmentions in Pure Comments as of earlier this month. So I can reply to any comments from afar too. It's nice. I can see still engage with people on the Fedi, all while not having to put up with the checking the timelines. I have around 12,000 followers on my Mastodon account . Because Mastodon really doesn't scale well , those 12k followers take a fair amount of Fosstodon's resources. Which I don't think is fair if I'm not really using the service (I do donate every month). So I'm thinking about spinning up a single user GoToSocial instance that I can live on. That way I'm not using any of Fosstodon's resources and I can do my own thing, on my own server. I own and so something like would be quite cool, I think. I could even provide accounts to friends in the future then too. On the other hand, I'm not sure I want the headache of managing a federated server again. Maybe I should stop overthinking it and just stay on Fosstodon. What would you do in my position? Thanks for reading this post via RSS. RSS is ace, and so are you. ❤️ You can reply to this post by email , or leave a comment .

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Kev Quirk 2 weeks ago

2026-10-01 10:35: This site is the most fun I've had in a while. Destroy any website! https://destroy.spritefusion.com/

This site is the most fun I've had in a while. Destroy any website! https://destroy.spritefusion.com/ Thanks for reading this post via RSS. RSS is ace, and so are you. ❤️ You can reply to this post by email , or leave a comment .

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Kev Quirk 2 weeks ago

One Year

Today marks a year since my little sister, Lisa, took her own life. She was 34. It was an overdose, but we don't know if it was an accident or suicide. We’ll never get an answer, yet I lean toward believing it was by choice. As grim as it sounds, picturing her with some control over the end brings me a small measure of peace. I still think about her every day, and I still get upset regularly. Especially when I've been to visit my nephew and I see the sadness in his eyes. At first I was angry at the selfishness of it all, but I think that's gone now. These days I'm just sad. Mum blames herself, and has asked me numerous times where she went wrong. I never have an answer for that. What can I say? "Well the rest of us turned out ok, Mum. So you did fine. " That feels dismissive of her emotions. So I just give her a sad smile and ask her to not think those things. I miss her. I miss her laugh and dry sense of humour. I miss how she would always call people on their bullshit. Never afraid of speaking up. Hopefully next year it will be a little less raw... Thanks for reading this post via RSS. RSS is ace, and so are you. ❤️ You can reply to this post by email , or leave a comment .

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Kev Quirk 2 weeks ago

2026-09-29 16:03: I think it's time... #Ubuntu

I think it's time... #Ubuntu Thanks for reading this post via RSS. RSS is ace, and so are you. ❤️ You can reply to this post by email , or leave a comment .

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Kev Quirk 2 weeks ago

2026-09-29 11:10: Soooooo Hacker News happened. 🤣

Soooooo Hacker News happened. 🤣 Thanks for reading this post via RSS. RSS is ace, and so are you. ❤️ You can reply to this post by email , or leave a comment .

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Kev Quirk 2 weeks ago

I Switched to Brave Browser

I've been whinging about wanting to move away from Firefox for nearly a year now. It started with Mozilla's announcement about their AI strategy and my initial thoughts . Then they doubled-down and it raised my heckles even more . Then I had a long old whinge about how fucked they seem to be. I took Vivaldi for a spin , but I couldn't get used to it. It just tries to do too much, and has way too much going on with the UI, and dark/light theme switching still doesn't work despite it apparently being fixed. So I made my peace with Firefox and stuck with it. I kept Vivaldi on my machine as a backup, and over the last 6 months or so, I've found myself having to open it more and more due to something not working in Firefox. This was far from a daily occurrence, but it happened often enough for it to become annoying. But I still couldn't use Vivaldi full time. It's worth stating that things not working isn't the fault of Firefox. It's developers not testing their web apps with Firefox, since it has such a small market share. I decided to install Brave a couple months ago just to see how things went. I had some messing around to do up front, like hiding all the crypto and AI nonsense, but once that was gone, it's been fine. Everything works how I expect, both on Ubuntu and Android. The UI is similar to Firefox, and most importantly, it doesn't try to boil the ocean. I renders webpages, then gets out of my way. I don't need it to check RSS feeds, or emails, or have toolbars on every edge of the screen. Even dark mode switching works! I haven't felt the need to open Firefox since starting this exeperiment, so I think Brave is gonna stick. Yes yes yes. Brave was founded by an absolute scumbag . But there's scumbags everywhere, in all walks of life. Contrary to what some people on the internet will say, my use of Brave doesn't mean I agree with, or support, Bendan Eich's world views. I consider his personal views to be separate from Brave. You may disagree, and that's fine. But Brave is objectively a good piece of software that does what I need it to do, and does it well. So I'm gonna continue using it for the forseable future. If Firefox get their act together and become relevant again, I may jump back, but for now it will remain my secondary browser. I do still have Vivaldi installed too. So I will continue to check in on it now and then, and if I decide they're on a par with Brave on Linux (mainly light/dark theme switching is what's missing), then I'll definitely make the switch as I feel their moral compass is far more aligned with my own. Thanks for reading this post via RSS. RSS is ace, and so are you. ❤️ You can reply to this post by email , or leave a comment .

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Kev Quirk 2 weeks ago

The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook

Author: Matt Dinniman Genre: Fantasy, Sci-fi Released: 2021 Rating: ★★☆☆☆ Welcome to the Gun Show! The top 10 list is populated. The sponsorship program is open. The difficulty is ramping up. The first three floors were nothing compared to what Carl and Donut now face. The Iron Tangle. An impossibly complicated subway system built out of the world's subterranean railway systems, all combined and then tied together into a knot. Up is down. Down is up. Close is far. The cars are filled with monsters, the railway stations are less than safe, and the exit is always just a few stops away. But there is hope. For the first time, the crawlers are all working together. The loot is better than ever. And the secret to unraveling it all may be hidden in the pages of a seemingly useless book. Welcome, crawlers. Welcome to the fourth floor of the dungeon. Learn more on Goodreads ➡ I was on the fence whether to give this 2 stars, or 3. The series continues to be really enjoyable, but Jesus this book was confusing. There's so many train lines, monsters, and nuance that I found it very difficult to keep up. In the end I stopped trying and just enjoyed the story for what it was. I'm still not completely clear how they managed to complete this level, which is why I've ended up marking this down to 2 stars. Hopefully book #4 will be more enjoyable, as this one was a bit of a grind. Thanks for reading this post via RSS. RSS is ace, and so are you. ❤️ You can reply to this post by email , or leave a comment .

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Kev Quirk 2 weeks ago

How I Develop Pure Commons Apps

A couple 1 of people have asked what my process is for developing the various Pure Commons apps . This comes after I've mentioned a couple of times that I've released a feature I've been working on for months . So I thought I'd write a quick post that explains how I do it, so I can refer people to it if/when they ask in the future. I also find this kind of post interesting, so I'm hoping you do too. If not, feel free to skip this one. 🙃 Git is a staple in my development workflow, so you'd think I'd use it the same way most other developers do, but I don't. You see dear reader, I'm a visual learner, so branches in Git are confusing to me as they're abstracted away inside the folder. This means I often forget which branch I'm on. Which in turn has led to all kinds of issues over the years when it comes to committing shit to the wrong branch. So instead I simply copy and paste the entire repo (less the folder) into a new subfolder and use that as a "branch". Then, when I want to work on a feature, I go into that subfolder and work away, knowing it's completely separate from the core production code. My " branches " look something like this: I always prefix my branch folders with so they're always at the start of my folder tree and easy to see. Switching branches is then just a simple away and I can easily see which one I'm in from the command prompt. And since there's no folder in the branch, I can't accidentally mess things up by merging back to (or any other branch) accidentally. Almost idiot Kev proof! I've created a local Python tool called 2 which manages all things Pure . With it, I can do things like pull or push to/from remote for this website, update if there's a new version released, create releases, run local tests, create branches etc. So if I want to create a new branch, all I need to do is run: It will then ask me for the branch name, so I enter something like and it will automagically create a new folder called and copy the latest version of Pure Blog into that folder, excluding . This is where things get interesting. If I'm working on multiple branches at the same time, merging back can be... interesting as I can't use the command, since I'm not using Git for branches. But that's fine, I actually prefer it this way as I have more control. Merging back to requires me to do a side-by-side comparison of any files I've changes on that branch, so I have to review everything before manually while merging in changes. This is definitely not the most efficient way of developing software, but it works for me. So there you go, that's my approach to developing the Pure Commons apps. I think it's somewhat scalable for a single person project, such as Pure Commons . If I were working in a team this approach would fall apart quickly though. Lucky I have no friends, ey! I'm not a professional software developer, and I think that's clear from the way I manage all this. But this system has been working well for me, and is far less abstract for my monkey brain than Git's native branch handling. What can I say, I'm a Luddite. 🤷🏻‍♂️ Literally 2 people, but that's enough to warrant a post, right?  ↩ Short for "Pure Control".  ↩ Thanks for reading this post via RSS. RSS is ace, and so are you. ❤️ You can reply to this post by email , or leave a comment . Literally 2 people, but that's enough to warrant a post, right?  ↩ Short for "Pure Control".  ↩

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Kev Quirk 3 weeks ago

Eight years, and done

by Bryce Wray A departure post from Bryce where he talk about his exit from blogging and his motivations for doing so. Read post ➡ It's always sad to read these kind of posts. Yet another blog has fallen by the wayside, but I understand Bryce's rationale. I've been quietly following his blog for a few years now, so I'll be sad to see him gone from my feed. Bryce, if you're reading this, all the best and thanks for many great reads. Thanks for reading this post via RSS. RSS is ace, and so are you. ❤️ You can reply to this post by email , or leave a comment .

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Kev Quirk 3 weeks ago

2026-09-23 07:34: Got home around midnight. I have concussion and a couple stitches in my head, but...

Got home around midnight. I have concussion and a couple stitches in my head, but nothing serious. Few other cuts and bruises too. By far the worst part is my back though - it's in spasm and REALLY painful. Thanks for reading this post via RSS. RSS is ace, and so are you. ❤️ You can reply to this post by email , or leave a comment .

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Kev Quirk 3 weeks ago

2026-09-22 21:37: Soooo I managed to drive our mower off a 5 foot wall and land on...

Soooo I managed to drive our mower off a 5 foot wall and land on my head. Just waiting for a CT now. Gonna be a long night... Thanks for reading this post via RSS. RSS is ace, and so are you. ❤️ You can reply to this post by email , or leave a comment .

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Kev Quirk 3 weeks ago

The New Enemy (Liam Scott #3)

Author: Andy McNab Genre: Military Fiction Released: 2015 Rating: ★★☆☆☆ It's a deadly game of hide and seek. Liam Scott has joined Recce Platoon. And it looks like he will be heading for Somalia. His mission is to gather intelligence from behind enemy lines, carrying out top-secret surveillance and dead letter drops. But he's new to the game and there's a lot to learn. Soon Liam is monitoring a den of Al-Shabaab militants and hunting a key terrorist target. Can Recce Platoon find their man and get out undiscovered? If the militants find them first, it's game over... Learn more on Goodreads ➡ This one was a slow burn. The first 2/3 of the book were really slow. It picked up during the last 1/3, but the majority of the book was a slog. I'm glad to see the back of this trilogy. It was a fun read, but I think was a bit much to be reading to my son. Plus, some parts of the books cut a little too close to home, to the point where I had to take a moment a few times. Anyway, next we're planning to read the Reckoners series , and I'm really looking forward to reading them again. I think he will enjoy them, and I'm excited to open his mind to the world of Brandon Sanderson. Thanks for reading this post via RSS. RSS is ace, and so are you. ❤️ You can reply to this post by email , or leave a comment .

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