Kev QuirkModify

2026-04-17 18:50:00

This post piqued my interest, and surprise suprise, I have opinions. 🙃

I've spoken about my opinions on AI and image generation before and my opinion hasn't changed on that. I have, however, switched from ChatGPT to Claude, for reasons.

Using AI for feature images?

Like I said in my previous post about AI, I don't think it creates art, but it can be useful for diagrams and some imagary. I listed some examples of my usage in that post, go take a look.

For feature images, I think it's fine, I suppose. I don't think it has a bearing on the writer's ability to write good content thought. I think most people can spot AI-generated prose these days. If my spider-sense starts tingling, I'll close the tab. But if I only see an AI-generated feature image, it's fine.

I think images creation and the ability to write nice words are two different skills. Using AI to create a feature image doesn't tell me that the person has a particular lack of creativity, as creativity comes in many forms. Ask Brandon Sanderson to create the cover art for one of his books, and I imagine he'd struggle. Does that make him any less creative? No. It just means he's a creative writer, not a creative artist.

For the record - I have no idea if Sanderson is good at drawing. It's just an example, okay. Please don't email saying "well ackchyually..."

Would I do it? Probably not. But I don't see the point in feature images anyway. I stopped using them many years ago, as generally they add nothing to the post, and are more for the writer to make the post look pretty than anything else.

So when I see these kinds of feature images, my first thought tends to be meh... and my assumption is that the writer probably didn't have the time, or lacked the skills, to create an image. I'd personally prefer they didn't add one at all if that's the case, but that's just me.

Maybe we should all be a little less judgmental. 🤷🏼‍♂️

2026-04-17 03:43:00

I was in my office today, working away, and I often have my personal laptop, a Framework 13 next to me so I do things like check notes and emails, listen to music, etc.

I reached over to grab something on the other side of my desk and managed to knock an entire fucking cup of coffee all over my beloved laptop. It immediately died, I assume because of some kind of safety net built into the device.

I cleaned my desk up, stripped it down, cleaned it up, and dried it out. My first pass at cleaning removed a load of coffee with a combination of contact cleaner (which is a solvent suitable for electronics) and my little air compressor to blow it all out.

I switched the laptop back on - it made a horrible noise, the screen flickered and it shut off.

FUCK!

Going further

Next thing was to remove the mainboard to get deeper into the guts of the laptop. Shock horror, there was more coffee behind there too! So I repeated the cleaning process again, only this time a lot more thoroughly.

Here's what it looks like now:

I then found a few little spots of corrosion on the board. I'm really worried it was a result of the spillage on live components, and have therefore ruined the mainboard.

So I took to DuckDuckGo to see what the best remedy is, and apparently it's isopropyl alcohol (IPA for short). I've ordered some for delivery tomorrow, and will continue cleaning it up to see if I can get this thing to live again. If not, I may have to buy a new mainboard (around £600).

In the meantime I'm back on my M1 MacBook Air and I'm hating it. The operating system feels almost user hostile. I know it isn't, because I used to love it, but now I'm so used to using Linux again, this feels horrible.

Hopefully I'll be able to get back to my Framework in the next couple days. Wish me luck!

2026-04-15 21:52:00

My best friend lost his Dad yesterday. Understandably he's extremely upset, and I feel awful for him. I never know what to do in these situations - "how are you doing?" just feels such a stupid thing to say. Like it's nowhere near enough. Of course he isn't doing well, you fucking idiot!

His loss has brought about feelings of loss following the death of my own Dad. Who we lost back in 2008 to cancer, when he was 47. Watching him just wither away was heartbreaking. Especially at the age of 23.

Now, nearly 20 years on, I rarely get upset about the loss. I still think about him all the time, but seeing what my friend has been going through has jumped it right to the front of my mind. Especially since the loss of my sister is still so raw.

I had a dream about my dad last night, the first I've had in a while. The dream was nothing special, I don't even fully remember what happened in it. But what I do vividly remember was that his voice wasn't right. And then I realised, I don't remember what my Dad's voice sounded like.

I have no videos of him, and no recordings on his voice. For a year or so after he died, I used to call his phone as it would go straight to voicemail and I'd get to hear his voice. Eventually the line was cut though. I wish I'd recorded it, just to have something.

I don't even have many photos of him. Most of them are from when I was a baby. I only have 1 photo of him and I as adults, which was taken on the day I passed out of basic training in the Army.

LTR: My dad, me, my dad's dad.

Just one conversation

Not being able to remember his voice isn't the only reason I'd love to talk to him again. He was funny, and always made me belly laugh. He loved to sing too - and was bloody good at it!

I'm also a very different person now than I was in 2008. I'd like for him to meet his grandsons, and I'd like to know what he thinks of the man I've turned into. He only met my (now) wife once or twice - he'd have loved her, and she'd have loved him.

All very narcissistic, I know. Be he was my dad!

Conversely, I'd love to know what kind of an old man he turned into. Would he still be as funny? Or would have turned into a grumpy old curmudgeon? Would we still go for a couple beers every Friday? Would he come here for barbecues in the summer? I'd have loved that.

There's no real point to this post, really. These thoughts have just been spinning around my grey matter for the last few days, and I wanted to work through them, which I think I've done a pretty poor job of.

So yeah, losing a loved one is shit. It never leaves you, and I feel horrendously sorry for my mate.

I'll try and make the next one more positive...

2026-04-12 21:08:00

Regular readers will know that I've been on quite the CMS journey over the years. WordPress, Grav, Jekyll, Kirby, my own little Hyde thing, and now Pure Blog. I won't bore you with the full history again, but the short version is: I kept chasing just the right amount of power and simplicity, and I think Pure Blog might actually be it.

But there was one nagging thing. I have a books page that's powered by a YAML data file, which creates a running list of everything I've read with ratings, summaries, and the occasional opinion. It worked great, but editing it meant cracking open a YAML file in my editor and being very careful not to mess up the indentation. Not ideal.

So I decided to build a proper admin UI for it. And in doing so, I've confirmed that Pure Blog is exactly what I wanted it to be - flexible and hackable.

The book editor

I added a new Books tab to the admin content page, and a dedicated edit-book.php editor page. It's got all the fields I need - title, author, genre, dates, a star rating dropdown, and a Goodreads URL. I also added CodeMirror editors for the summary and opinion fields, so I have all the markdown goodness they offer in the post and page editors.

The key thing is that none of this touched the Pure Blog core. Not a single line.

My new book list in Pure Blog

A book being edited

How it actually works

Pure Blog has a few mechanisms that make this kind of thing surprisingly clean:

content/functions.php is auto-loaded after core, so any custom functions I define there are available everywhere — including in admin pages. I put my save_books_yaml() function here, which takes the books data and writes it back to the books.yml data file, then clears the cache — exactly like saving a normal post does. Again, zero core changes.

config/update-ignore is the escape hatch for when I do need to override a core file. I added both admin/content.php (where I added the Books tab) and admin/edit-book.php (the new editor) to the ignore list, so future Pure Blog updates won't mess with them. It's a simple text file, one path per line. Patch what you need, ignore it, and move on.

content/includes/ is where it gets a bit SSG-ish. The books page is powered by content/includes/books.php — a PHP file that loads the YAML, sorts it by read date, and renders the whole page. It's essentially a template, not unlike a Liquid or Nunjucks layout in Jekyll or Eleventy. Same idea for the books RSS feed.

Using a YAML data file for books made more sense to me, rather than markdown files like a post or a page, as it's all metadata really. There's no real "content" for these entries.

Put those three things together and you've got something pretty nifty. A customisable admin UI, safe core patching, and template-driven data pages — all without a plugin system or any framework magic.

Bloody. Brilliant.

Why this matters to me

I spent years chasing the perfect CMS, and a big part of what I was looking for was this. The ability to build exactly what I need without having to fight the platform, or fork it, or bolt on a load of plugins.

With Kirby, I could do this kind of thing, but the learning curve was steep and the blueprint system took me ages to get my head around. With Jekyll/Hyde, I had the SSG flexibility, but no web-based CMS I could login to and create content - I needed my laptop. Pure Blog sits in a really nice middle ground — it's got a proper admin interface out of the box, but it gets out of the way when you want to extend it.

I'm chuffed with how the book editor turned out. It's a small thing, but it's exactly what I wanted, and the fact that it all lives outside of core means I can update Pure Blog without worrying about losing any of it.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some books to log. 📚

2026-04-12 20:05:00

Finding a new blog to read is one of my favourite things to do online. It genuinely brings me joy. Right now I have 230 sites that I follow in my RSS reader, Miniflux.

If I ever want to spend some time reading, I'll usually open Miniflux over my Mastodon client, Moshidon. There's no likes, boosts, hashtags etc. just interesting people sharing interesting opinions.

It's lovely.

So how do I discover these blogs? There's many ways to do it, but here's some that I've found most successful, ranked from most useful, to least.

1. Personal recommendations

When someone I already enjoy reading links to a post from another blogger, either just to share their posts, or to add their own commentary to the conversation.

This (to me at least) is the most useful way to discover new blogs to read. It's the entire premise of the Indieweb, so if you own a blog, please make sure you're linking to other blogs in your posts. 🙃

2. Aggregators

There are a number of great small/indie web aggregators out there, and there seems to be new ones popping up all the time. Here's a list of some of my favourites:

• Bear Blog Discover
• Blogosphere
• Blogroll
• Bubbles
• Kagi Small Web
• PowRSS

I tend to use these as a kind of extended RSS reader. So if I'm up to date on my RSS feeds, I'll use these as a way to continue hunting for new people to follow.

Truth is, I actually spend more time on these sites than I do on the fediverse. Speaking of which...

3. Social media

There's lots of cool people on the fediverse, and many of them have blogs. Even those who don't blog will regularly share links to posts they've enjoyed.

I also nose at hashtags of the topics that interest me, rather than just the timeline of people I follow.

So remember to add hashtags to your posts - they're a great way to aid discovery. 👍🏻

4. Natural discovery

This last bucket is just everything else; where I naturally find my way to a blog while surfing the net.

I've discovered some great blogs this way, but it's becoming harder and harder to find indie blogs this way, as discoverability on the web has been overtaken by AI summaries and SEO. 😏

It's still possible though.

Final thoughts

There's plenty of interesting people out there, creating great posts for us all to enjoy. The indie web is thriving, and if you're not taking advantage of it, you're missing out!

Why not take a look at a couple of the sites I've listed above and see what you discover? It's a tonne of fun.

2026-04-10 23:33:00

I just published my motorbike servicing rant and went over to my Pure Blog Dashboard to take a look at some stats, when I noticed this:

101 posts in the last year; which means I've complete 100 Days to Offload for a second time! 🎉

The whole point of the #100DaysToOffload is to challenge you to publish 100 posts on your personal blog in a year.

Mission accomplished! If you're interested in taking part in the challenge too, make sure you get yourself added to the hall of fame once you've completed it.