2026-08-01 03:48:44
The first wave of CSS tweaks are complete.
I was getting a bit bored (no surprise there) so wanted to mix things up a little bit. Cue user selected colour themes:
Choosing an option from the menu simply sets a key-value pair in the browser's local storage. Before the page loads, a quick bit of JavaScript checks this value and sets a page level data value:
<html lang="en-GB" data-theme="blue">The CSS then loads the right colours:
:root[data-theme="blue"] {
...
}
The theme affects the title bar, bottom bar, icons, menu and comments panel. Nothing drastic, but adds a little personality.
2026-07-31 06:01:53
I'm in the middle of making some CSS changes to the site but it's time for bed.
I'll finish off tomorrow, but until then, excuse things looking a bit weird.
2026-07-29 22:36:15
After my recent dalliance with Vivaldi, the quest for a Brave replacement continues.
On a strange whim I installed the Ecosia browser for the first time since it came out.
It's improved!
Obviously, it's YACB (Yet Another Chromium Browser) but the ad-blocking seems more reliable than DuckDuckGo and it's not got all the bloat of Brave.
It also properly respects the viewport zoom unlike some others I could mention.
2026-07-27 22:26:54
Kev Quirk links to a couple of posts on the topic of using feed readers vs visiting the actual sites, the first of which has the rather inflammatory title "Your RSS Reader Is Robbing You".
The argument is that if you only read posts in a feed reader then you are not seeing the post as it was intended to be viewed.
I have written a number of posts about this over the past few years. I built /reader with the intent of having an integrated environment where I could reply and send webmentions straight from an item in a feed. Great if the author's site supports webmentions, a bit of a waste if not.
I wrote that "I was unhappy with the homogeneity of seeing everything displayed according to my own style preferences" so built /updates — a view that just gave links to unread items, forcing me to read them in situ. This became more of a notification system than a feed reader.
Previously, I had mentioned that a feed reader "reduces the cognitive load when consuming posts from multiple and varied sources" which echoes the counterpoint from Christian Cleberg that "using RSS allows us to consume many different sites with typography that we prefer".
I've lost count of the times I've debated this with myself, but I'm still using /updates over three years later so suppose that indicates which side of the fence I'm currently on. The good thing is, however, that both views still exist so I can switch between them as I see fit, or as needs dictate.
I was worried if removing the convenience of having everything in one place would mean I read less. I needn't have been. With /updates I have the option to follow individual post links or go to the site homepage where I can go through everything I might not have read.
While I understand that some sites might not be designed to everyone's taste, I feel that we ought to view them at least once in a while to appreciate the work authors are putting into them. Still, it's ultimately a preference thing and that is the beauty of the web.
2026-07-24 21:48:12
Got the colophon page updated with the latest details. I hadn't touched it for a while and it was sorely out of date. It's still called /specs.
I've deliberately kept the Hello page as /EHLO (Extended Hello - an SMTP command used by servers to request extended features). It's geeky but also cycles back to my old blog from 2003. The tech posts on that site focused on Microsoft Server products, especially SharePoint (which I used to host it, yes SharePoint) and Exchange, so EHLO is a fitting echo.
2026-07-23 20:41:36
I disappeared to the studio for about an hour-and-a-half last night. As is the way when I'm struggling,1 I started something new rather than returning to the couple of works in progress.
I kept to the approach of only having a few things connected at any one time. Last night it was the LM Drum (with the 505 kit), both TD-3s, and the Kobol Expander. I resisted the 'new shiny' temptation of hooking up the Spice and trying to force it into what I was doing. It will, no doubt, become a workhorse in certain situations, but I want to get more familiar with it first.
The Expander has rapidly become a mainstay, finding its way onto almost everything. Luckily, it is versatile enough for things to not get boring or sounding too samey. Maybe that's a little ironic considering everything I make (bar the odd ambient piece) is acid in one form or another.
and I have been stuck on a couple of tracks: one where the idea I had no longer seems to fit; another where I've just not felt like being back in the studio and lost the flow ↩