2026-03-21 02:40:00
So it turns out I didn't like the mustard yellow and steel blue design that I created a couple weeks ago. It just didn't sit well with me, and if I look back over my design history the designs that have stuck over the years are invariably grey with a splash of colour.
Problem was, I didn't really know how I was going to redesign the site. Then, one day, I was talking with Sven via email and I visited his blog (also running Pure Blog for the record 🎉), and I immediately knew that was the kind of design I was looking for. It's simplicity is just lovely, and so easy to read.
So I set about making my own version of Sven's lovely design. I didn't want it to be exactly the same as his, but I also didn't think my design would turn out quite as close to his as it did - I suppose that goes to show how much I like his site. :-)
I've spoken to Sven and he's good with me effectively copying his design.
For posterity (as I'm likely to change it again in the future) here's what the design currently looks like:
I'm still not 100% sold on the font (but it is growing on me), and I'm not sure about the yellow in the header, but blue everywhere else. So I may change a couple of things subtly. Having said all that, overall I'm the happiest with the design I've been since moving to Pure Blog.
Finally I'd like to thank Sven for allowing me to steal his wonderful design.
What do you guys think? Leave a comment below, or reply by email.
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2026-03-20 18:59:00
Spring is in the air here in North Wales, so I decided to take one of my motorbikes to the office yesterday. On the way home, not too far from where I live, I was sat at traffic lights when all of a sudden three men on off-road bikes surrounded me. One left, one right, one right up to my back wheel. And they were really close, like, inches from me kinda close.
I immediately felt uneasy, like something was about to happen. I think we as a species have a sense for this kinda thing. Anyway, seconds later the guy on my left reached over to, I assume, grab the keys for the bike, but I was on the BMW, which has a keyless ignition, luckily.
I clocked what the guy was trying to do, panicked, and kicked the side of his bike as hard as I could. Which, thankfully was enough to put him off balance, causing him to topple over. Then I clobbered the guy to the right around the head - he was wearing a helmet so it wouldn't have hurt him, but I suppose I figured it would be enough to shock him and buy me a couple seconds. I dunno, I was basically shitting my pants at this point.
As I soon as I'd hit the guy to my right, I took off like the absolutely clappers, running a red light in the process (thank goodness nothing was coming the other way). My BMW is a fast bike, at 1000cc and over 170BHP. They were on dirt bikes, which are nowhere near as quick as mine. I also had knowledge of the local roads, which I hoped they didn't. As I flew off, they gave chase but quickly dropped back. A brief glance of my speedo showed I was doing over 120MPH, but it was working.
In my panic I didn't know what to do - shall I go home? What if they see me pull in and find out where I live? Should I go somewhere else? But it's rush hour and if I get caught in traffic they could catch up to me again - my bike is a lot quick on the open road, but in traffic, they would have the advantage.
I decided to floor it and get home as quick as possible. There's a straight road that leads to my village, so I figured if I can't see them behind I'll quickly swing the bike in and hide behind the garage (which can't be seen from the road). If I could see them, I'd just carry on and continue trying to lose them.
I'm nearing my drive now, so I glance in the mirrors and see nothing; I decide to risk it and swing in, going up our gravel drive as quickly as I dare, while simultaneously hoping the kids aren't playing in the drive. They aren't. I dive in behind the garage and wait...5 seconds...10 seconds...I hear bikes getting closer. They fly right past my drive, going way too fast for our single track village road.
My wife later asked the owner of the village pub if he caught anything on his CCTV. Here's what he found for us:
It looks like only 1 of them had a number plate, and it's pretty much parallel with the road, so impossible to identify from the video. We've passed it onto the Police and we're waiting to hear back from their forensics dept. to see if they can pickup any prints from my bike. I don't remember if they had gloves on though, and I'm not very confident it will come to anything.
I'm fine now, but it shook me up. I just hope they were opportunist idiots, rather than something more sinister. I've already bought myself a camera for the garage.
Stay safe out there, folks.
The Police forensics unit have just been out. I showed them the video and they swabbed the bike for prints. As expected, nothing was found. They did say that they were called out to another attempted bike theft in the area yesterday, so it seems I wasn't the only one.
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2026-03-16 21:47:00
Back in 2024 I went through the process of losing weight, and was fairly successful. I went from ~111kg (244lbs) to ~103kg (226lbs). My target was 100kg (220lbs), so I got very close.
But then, in August 2024, I was promoted in work, ended up working way more hours, and my health suffered. I ended up burned out and ultimately I stepped down a few months ago. Which was honestly the right thing to do.
Anyway, for the year or so that I was in that role, my weight slowly crept back up and as of this morning, I'm back at 110.6kg (243lbs). So as of today I'm back on the wagon and trying hard to eradicate my chubbiness.
I found last time that writing about it really helped to motivate me, not to mention hold me to account. It's easy to eat that chocolate bar if no-one knows I'm going to gain an extra half kilo, but if I'm writing about it publicly, I'm less likely to do so. I dunno, my brain is weird. Anyway, expect monthly updates, just like before.
So we start again today and my hope is that I'll be down to my target weight by my birthday, which is in late August.
Wish me luck!
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2026-03-13 18:03:00
I saw this while perusing my RSS feeds last night, and thought it was interesting. In all honesty, I've completely moved away from WordPress since all the drama a while ago.
But this is quite cool - My WordPress is basically a version of WordPress that runs entirely in your browser. You visit my.wordpress.net it downloads some files to your machine, and you have WordPress - no install, no sign up. Just a private WordPress instance in your browser that only you can visit.
Obviously if you reset your browser, or switch to another browser, you will lose your instance, but there are backup/restore options available.
I think it might be good as a private journal or something, but I'm sure other people will find some interesting use cases for it. Either way, pretty cool.
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2026-03-10 19:50:00
I've just released v1.8.0 of Pure Blog, which was the final big feature I wanted to add1. At this point, Pure Blog does all the things I would want a useful CMS to do, such as:
The result is a tool that works exactly how I want it to work. It's very simple to customise through the admin GUI, but there are also lots of advanced options available to more tech-savvy folk.
Someone reached out to me recently and told me that their non-technical grandfather is running Pure Blog with no issues. Equally, I've had developers reach out to say that they're enjoying the flexibility of Pure Blog too. This is exactly why I created Pure Blog - to create a tool that can be used by anyone.
My original plan was to just make a simple blogging platform, but I've ended up creating a performant platform that can be used for all kinds of sites, not just a blog.
At this point I'm considering Pure Blog to be feature complete*. But there is an asterisk there, because you never know what the future holds. Right now it supports everything I want it to support, but my needs may change in the future. If they do, I'll develop more features.
In the meantime I'm going to enjoy what I've built by continuing to produce content in this lovely little CMS (even if I do say so myself). I know there's a few people using Pure Blog our there, so I hope you're enjoying it as much as I am.
If you want to try Pure Blog yourself, you can download the source code from here, and this post should get you up and running in just a few minutes.
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2026-03-07 17:17:00
All good things must come to an end, and today is that day for one of my projects, the 512kb Club.
I started the 512kb Club back in November 2020, so it's been around 5.5 years. It's become a drain and I'm ready to move on. As of today I won't be accepting any new submissions to the project. At the time of writing this, there are 25 PRs open for new submissions, I'll work through them, then will disable the ability to submit pull requests.
Over the years there have been nearly 2,000 pull requests, and there are currently around 950 sites listed on the 512kb Club. Pretty cool, but it's a lot of work to manage - there's reviewing new submissions (which is a steady stream of pull requests), cleaning up old sites, updating sites, etc. It's more than I have time to do.
I'm also trying to focus my time on other projects, like Pure Commons.
It's sad to see this kind of project fall by the wayside, but life moves on. Having said that, if you think you want to take over 512kb Club, let's have a chat, there are some pre-requisites though:
I'm probably going to get a lot of emails with offers to help (which is fantastic), but if we've never interacted before, I won't be moving forward with your kind offer.
After reading the above, if we know each other, and you're still interested, use the email button below and we can have a chat about you potentially taking over. By taking over, I will expect you to:
512kb.club domain, so you will be financially responsible for renewals.If you're just looking to take over and use it as a means to slap ads on it, and live off the land, I'd rather it go to landfill, and will just take the site down. That's why I only want someone I know and trust to take it over.
I think I've made my point now. 🙃
If there's no-one prepared to take over, I plan to do one final export of the source from Jekyll, then upload that to my web server, where it will live until I decide to no longer renew the domain.
I'll also update the site with a message stating that the project has been sunset and there will be no more submissions.
If you don't wanna see that happen, please get in touch.
Brad Taunt reached out, who, if you don't know, is the OG in all this "skinny sites" thing as I actually got the idea for 512kb Club from his 1MB Club.
Anyway, he's agreed to take over the 512kb Club, and I can't think of a better person to take it over. The domain transfer is happening as we speak, so Brad should be at the helm shortly.
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