Kev QuirkModify

2026-05-13 02:19:00

As many regular readers know, we live in the North Wales countryside, which means it can take time to get the latest and greatest when it comes to technology.

As a result, we were previously "limited" to FTTC (fibre to the cabinet) which had a max speed of 70Mbps. As a result, we got okay internet speeds:

But then I saw the ISP vans in the village, and I asked them what they were doing - "oh, we're upgrading the village to full fibre" she said.

I had to have it!

As soon as FTTP (fibre to the premises) was available, I placed the order with my ISP (who offered me a great deal that's only £5 per month more), and this is the result:

Is it worth it?

In all honesty, I haven't noticed the difference. We didn't have any buffering issues when watching things like Netflix or Apple TV, so I'm not really sure why I upgraded in hindsight.

I thought it would be this incredible difference where my internet would then be rapid, but the truth is, it's complete imperceptible. I remember when I upgraded from a 56k MODEM, to ~2Mbps broadband and it blew my mind. I was thinking this would be the same, but no.

I do think the increased upload speed is going to come in handy when it comes to things like syncing my private git repos back to my Synology, but aside from that, there's not much in it.

Had I paid full price (~£20 more per month) I don't think I'd have been too happy, but since I got a good deal, I'm not too bothered.

2026-05-11 16:25:00

Hard agree with David's comments here - he and I regularly exchange emails, actually. I try to reach out to authors whenever I read something that resonates with me. I'll also try to share their work via posts like this too.

For me, blogging is the original social network; just because we're on our own spaces doesn't mean we can't be socially connected. That's why I offer comments, and a reply by email link on all posts, including my RSS feed.

So yeah, start communicating! 🙃

2026-05-09 23:50:00

Ok, that's it. I'm officially off GitHub. First I moved all of my private repos to my Synology, which was extremely easy to do. I did that around a week or so ago and it's be working great.

Then I had to start sorting and moving all my public repos to Codeberg. Many were archived as I no longer maintained the projects, which left me with just 7 actual repos that I needed to move.

Pure Blog/Comments and Simple.css were the most challenging as they all had other people who relied on them, but I managed to get them moved with a little bit of messing around.

The others were super simply, I used Codeberg's migration tool to migrate the repos over, the ran a command locally to point my repos to a new target:

git remote set-url origin [email protected]:kevquirk/[new-repo].git

That's it! Repo migrated.

Thoughts on Codeberg

It's fine. And I don't mean that negatively - there's a lot less going on in the UI than on GitHub, but everything is still familiar and similarly laid out. There's been almost zero learning curve moving from GitHub to Codeberg, so props to the Codeberg team for that.

I've applied for a Coderberg membership as I think it's important to support the open source projects we use, so hopefully that will be approved soon.

Overall I'm very happy with the move. All the old GitHub repos have had their README.md files updated to point to Codeberg, and they too have been archived.

So that's one less piece of big tech I need to rely on.

2026-05-06 22:01:00

Yesterday I received an email from the Thunderbird team inviting me to join a preview of their new hosted email service, Thunderbird Pro. I love email, so was very keep to sign up and test it out.

Before we get into this, I want to say that Thunderbird Pro is still under active development, please bear that in mind. Also, these are just my opinions, please don't get butthurt.

What is Thunderbird Pro?

I hate it when people explain what things are in a blog post, but I think it's warranted here since Thunderbird Pro (TB Pro) is a new product, so people may not know what it is.

With that in mind, TB Pro is a hosted email service by the Thunderbird team that includes email, contacts, calendar, secure file sending, and an appointment system that lets people book time with you.

It costs $6/month (paid yearly) and for that you get:

• 30 GB of mail storage
• 60 GB of Send storage
• 15 Email aliases
• 3 custom domains

My initial thoughts

So here's my thoughts - of which I have many, so I'll just list them out, then pick a few to talk about in more detail. Otherwise this will be a very long post.

• No webmail, it's being worked on though.
• Was easy to setup on the Thunderbird app - just had to login (my Zoho mail account auto-detects server settings, so not much harder though).
• Doesn't configure aliases automatically in Thunderbird.
• Prompts to add calendar and contacts via a single click when setting up in Thunderbird. That was a nice touch.
• No way to export all DNS records as a zone file when adding a custom domain.
• I think the 15 alias/3 domain limit is arbitrary and pointless.
• If you setup a catch-all for a custom domain, you can send from [anything]@ which negates the 15 alias limitation.
• Appointments app is weird.
• Couldn't work out how to setup Send in Thunderbird.
• Admin UI is clunky and has a number of UI issues.
• No option to add additional mailboxes (understandable as this is a preview).
• 30GB is way too much storage for me. I'd like to see smaller, cheaper tiers.

I think the lack of webmail is a huge miss. Every email hosting service I can think of comes with webmail - many people access their mail on desktop via the browser, so I'd have liked to see that up front.

Having said that, maybe that's not the market Thunderbird are going for with this service. If so, maybe a lack of webmail is fine. I'd prefer to have the flexibility to check my mail from anywhere though.

I don't understand the 15 alias and 3 domain limitation. They cost nothing - they're just a line in a config file. Plus, adding a catch-all allows you to both send and receive email to/from [anything]@yourdomain.com, which renders the alias limit even more pointless.

I'd like to see these limitations removed.

Appointment service

The Appointment feature lets people book time with you directly. Think Calendly, baked into your email service. If you're a freelancer or consultant who lives and dies by booking links, that's probably a nice convenience. For everyone else, it's likely redundant.

Those who need it probably have a solution already, and those who don't will just ignore it. I'm in the latter camp, so there's no value for me.

Thundermail Appointments

Send service

Unfortunately I couldn't test the Send service. On the dashboard it says:

To use Send, you must enable it in Thunderbird Desktop. Download the app and sign in to Thunderbird Pro from the Thunderbird menu.

For the life of me I couldn't find an option for Send within Thunderbird, so I couldn't test. Shame.

I'm using the Flatpak, which is currently on v140.10.1, and I see v150 is out, so that may be why. But the Flatpak is maintained by the Thunderbird team, so I would have expected this to all be sorted before the allowed paying customers to get their hands on Pro.

There is a support card on the Send dashboard, with an option to get help. Clicking that opens the Thunderbird docs in a new tab, showing nothing but a notice box containing $ thunderbird --version=pro. So something is broken.

Speaking of broken things, there were a number of other ugly UI notices and warning elements that displayed while getting set up. It just lacks polish, which I would have expected to be ironed out by the time consumers are getting their hands on it.

Final thoughts

If I'm honest, my first impressions are underwhelming. I get that this is an early preview but for the price, services like Zoho and Fastmail are better services, and better value for money.

I don't regret signing up though - it's important to support open source services, and as Thunderbird Pro matures, it will hopefully evolve into a service that can contend with the OG's in this space.

If it does, I'll consider moving over fully. But for now, I'm considering my subscription a donation to Thunderbird, as I'm a very happy user of their email app.

2026-05-02 00:01:00

I've read a few posts about people leaving GitHub recently, and following my short note to the Fediverse a number of people have piped up saying they're not fans of GitHub, either.

From the reading I've done, these frustrations are usually threefold:

1. Microsoft ownership
2. Microsoft training Copilot on open source software
3. Large amounts of downtime

In all honesty, none of the factors above really bother me that much. I think that's because I don't rely on GitHub for anything significant. I'm not a professional software developer, so my livelihood doesn't depend on it.

As for Copilot being trained on open source software, and them repeatedly ignoring the GPL to do so, it does irk me, but I kind of expect shit like this from Microsoft at this point. I went into using GitHub assuming that any code I upload there can (and probably will) be used for shitty stuff.

But even that isn't enough in isolation to put me off GitHub. The way I see it is that public code is for the public, and if Microsoft want to use my code in that way, while not ideal, doesn't piss me off that much.

So why think about moving at all?

Well, for me it's about reliance on big tech. I'm trying to reduce it where possible, but the social and "centre of mass" aspects of GitHub are giving me pause.

For example, the Simple.css repo has a whopping 5,000 stars! Do I really want to lose that visibility?

Buuuuuuuuuut, I can always redirect any popular repos to another platform, just like I did with 512KB Club when I handed that to Brad.

Plus, let's be honest, it's all just popularity bullshit. It doesn't really mean anything. What's important is that the code is readily available for people to use.

It's like leaving Facebook - when I was thinking about it, I was worried if I'd miss my friends or be out the loop. It's been over a decade at this point and I don't miss it one bit - no regrets whatsoever. I think moving off of GitHub would be the same.

So what am I doing?

I plan to slowly start migrating public repositories over to Codeberg so that all my projects are hosted there. I'll also use it as an opportunity to archive off any old repos that I no longer need.

Codeberg also supports logging in with GitHub and Gitea, so anyone who contributes to my projects on GitHub, should be able to do so easily in Codeberg too.

Then, for my private repos (of which there are many that host personal projects) I've installed Synology's Git server on my Synology, and have been playing with that for a few days. It works extremely well, so all my private repos will live there, safe and sound, away from Microsoft's greasy mitts.

Final thoughts

Ultimately it's personal choice. For me it's about reducing my reliance on big tech, but also making my private repos more private.

I won't be deleting my GitHub account though, as I think it will be important to use as a marker for anyone who wants to find my source code when it moves.

Have you thought about leaving GitHub?

2026-05-01 16:56:00

I was recently reading The Long Ride Home by Nathan Millward and at one point in the book he talks about having to get on a plane, and his fear of flying:

This was something I would have loved to have avoided [getting on a plane], my fear of flying (I think) born out of the absence of control you have up there.

Everything in the hands of someone else, just sit there, hoping nothing bad happens because if it does I couldn't imagine anything worse than in that moment of free-fall thinking of all the things you should and could have done in life, as now it's too late to put things right or learn from your mistakes. Your time has come, and now it's gone. Though I suppose this is a fear of regret, as much as it is of flying.

-- Nathan Millward

This really resonated me, and for someone who flies semi-regularly for work, it often surprises people when I tell them I have a fear of flying.

I dunno, maybe fear is too strong of a word, but it definitely makes me feel very uncomfortable. Especially if there's turbulence.

Like Nathan, I think it's a loss of control. Yes yes, I know, I'm far more likely to hurt myself on my motorbikes, or in a car crash. But the difference is, if I have an accident in the car, or on a bike, I'm somewhat in control and there's a fair chance (especially in the car) that I will come out of it with only minor injuries.

On the other hand, if I'm in a plane crash, I'm very likely to die in the most horrific way possible, and that absolutely terrifies me. This is often compounded by the fact that a lot of the travel I do is transatlantic, so I'm over a huge body of water. Brilliant.

Overcoming it?

God knows I've tried! I've done the British Airways flying with confidence course, which gave me more knowledge, but hasn't really helped with my anxiety.

I've tried sleeping pills, but all the over-the-counter ones in the UK are shite and do absolutely nothing for me. They don't even make me drowsy. A couple of people have recommended sedatives, but that gives me the ick. Not only would it be illegal, I have no idea what they would do to me. No thanks.

I think I'm destined to be an uneasy flyer and just have to get on with it.

I'm due to go to the States again in a few weeks, and as per usual, the anxiety is starting to bubble in my gut.

If any of you have tips, I'd love to hear them!