This email from my oldest son's school is a great demonstration of using AI for good.
https://kevquirk.com/a-good-use-of-ai
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Kev Quirk
@kev@fosstodon.org
mastodon 4.7.3Used to help run Fosstodon. These days, I just hang out here.
I work in InfoSec and live with two kids, one wife, two dogs, a blind cat, a flock of 25 chickens, 8 goats, and more fish than I can count.
Also into watches and motorbikes — both riding and wrenching.
This account isn't monitored often (I mostly engage with the Fedi via my Pure Comments instance) so responses may be delayed, especially if you're asking for help. Sorry.
I also run @purecommons@fosstodon.org.
0 Followers
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50 Posts
Joined August 01, 2017
Blog:
Pure Commons:
Always fun when your bike runs out of electricity on the way to work.
Note to self: connect the trickle charger TONIGHT!
(Wife is on the way with my jump box to save me)
https://kevquirk.com/2026-07-28-0916
Yup. Goat-proofing the chicken door really worked a treat. FML. 🤦🏼♂️
https://kevquirk.com/2026-07-20-0810
Brilliant. I'm such a "valued customer" that they couldn't even be arsed to put my name in the email.
Why is it even necessary to have a "business intelligence database" with a 3rd party? I ordered a fucking laptop. Can a tech company not create their own customer database?
Full email here - https://cdn.kevquirk.com/framework-breach-email.pdf
https://kevquirk.com/2026-08-07-0910
The poor buzzard was still there when I was walking the dogs this morning, so clearly something was wrong. Luckily my wife was able to get hold of a local falconer who was able to catch him and hopefully nurse him back to health. 🦅
https://kevquirk.com/2026-07-27-1754
Taking the dogs for a walk with our oldest and we came across this beautiful buzzard just sat there. Wasn't bothered by us really. I just hope it doesn't have a bust wing or anything.
https://kevquirk.com/2026-07-26-1044
Seriously considering a switch from #GitHub to #Codeberg after reading the post below, but I'm not sure I have the energy for it.
https://dbushell.com/2026/04/29/github-is-sinking/
https://kevquirk.com/2026-04-29-1655
Apparently left-handed people can't use a fountain pen as the left hand smudges the ink as they write. I call bullshit on that.
https://kevquirk.com/left-handed-people-cant-use-a-fountain-pen
It's a beautiful morning here in North Wales. My wife has taken our youngest to his cricket match, and our oldest is upstairs playing with his Lego out of the heat.
Me? I'm sitting in the sunroom, listening to the goats and chickens, with a coffee and book.
Perfect Sunday morning.
https://kevquirk.com/2026-07-12-1008
I'm sick of pissing about with #Codeberg. I've switched back to #GitHub.
https://kevquirk.com/ive-moved-back-to-github
Haven't worn this watch for months, but it's such a fun one to wear in summer. Beautiful dial and a Seiko movement that will probably outlive me.
https://kevquirk.com/2026-07-13-0812
A few of us were talking to one of the summer interns at work about age:
Someone: How old do you think Kev is?
Intern: [with all the confidence in the world] 50?
I turn 42 in August. FML. 🤣
https://kevquirk.com/2026-07-16-1147
It's been 8 months since I stepped down as a global exec. Here's how it's going.
https://kevquirk.com/career-update
I just realised I'm not financially supporting #Fosstodon I thought I was! Fixed that.
Support your instance, folks - it's a tonne of work (and money), trust me, I know first hand.
https://hub.fosstodon.org/support/
I've had my @frameworkcomputer@fosstodon.org 13 for a year now, but am I still enjoying it?
Why is everything proprietary these days? Let me tell you a little story...
https://kevquirk.com/why-is-everything-proprietary-these-days
So a fox came into the field and took a chicken from right in front of us at dinner time last night.
Unfortunately we couldn't get to it in time. Our rooster tried, but he wasn't successful either.
We have her last egg, so we're gonna try and hatch it. 😟
https://kevquirk.com/2026-06-12-0646
So @thinkroot99@linux.social has created a #PureBlog discovery page, which already had 30+ sites in it. I never knew so many people were running Pure Blog. ❤️
https://discover.thinkroot.xyz/
Had fibre to the premises (FTTP) installed this morning - big upgrade in speed, both up and down, and my provider kept my static IP in place. Very happy.
Just need to see how quick it gets to over the next few days now.
https://kevquirk.com/2026-05-05-1134
I've had the T480 for a couple of days now, so wanted to jot down a few initial thoughts.
https://kevquirk.com/thinkpad-t480-initial-thoughts
I hope that those cool black chassis and coloured keyboards will be available for the OG #framework 13 - I'll 100% swap them out!
Replying to
@mike I saw some of the shit that @fosstodon was getting when the initial announcement was made, and it 1 million % re-affirmed that I made the right decision to step away.
Godspeed!
I have to wear glasses for reading, screens etc. (long-sighted with astigmatism). Anyway, I'm finding I'm wearing them for more and more things as it's just comfier. I may have to just admit defeat and wear them all the time...
I was recently invited to try the #Thunderbird Pro beta program ahead of their general release. Here's my initial thoughts.
And this is why the plugin ecosystem for #WordPress is simultaneously it's strongest power, and biggest security concern.
https://anchor.host/someone-bought-30-wordpress-plugins-and-planted-a-backdoor-in-all-of-them/
Replying to
Some thoughts about my fear of flying and why it makes me uneasy.
Replying to
@matthartley@fosstodon.org the 13 Pro ones are really cool - especially the Tux and Apple ones.
Replying to
@dfgomes@mastodon.social yeah, Micro.blog is a really good service. I used it myself for a while.
I do think the perception that WordPress in inherently insecure is unfair though. Core WP is actually very secure - they have a really talented security team over there. It's the plugin ecosystem that add the vulnerabilities usually.
I've been invited to #Thunderbird Pro but the pricing is confusing. Is that 15 email address with one mailbox, or is the storage split across up to 15 mailboxes? I assume the former. If so, I'll probably go with #Fastmail.
Replying to
@alextheuxguy I'm thinking maybe my public projects go to Codeberg, but my private repos sit in a private instance. 🤷🏻♂️
Replying to
@matthartley@fosstodon.org do you have nay idea what the turnaround time would be on a support request please?
I'm having to use my old M1 Mac and it's making me feel ill 😆
Replying to
@royal@theres.life apparently it's a 20mm lug width - https://watchdirect.com.au/products/casio-quartz-analog-gold-dial-mtp-1183q-9a-mens-watch
Replying to
@arnan love the colours!
I've seen the issues you logged too, thanks. I'll look at them today.
Anyone here using mailbox.org for email, contacts and calendar? I've been having some issues with Zoho recently, so I'm thinking about a switch.
The service looks good, but it's not clear if I can host multiple domains with them? This is a requirement for me.
Replying to
@Gina that's the thing, my use case is SOOOO simple. I have no need for a CI/CD pipeline, so it would be simple to move. I'm just lazy. :-)
Was just saying to @alextheuxguy, if I do it, it will only be for my public repos, then I'll move all my private ones to my own instance. I dunno though.
Replying to
@alextheuxguy If I do it, I plan to just use the Git app that Synology offers. Should be easy enough.
Replying to
@chartonjeremiah I don't think there's anything wrong with GitHub, personally. I haven't noticed any of these outages people keep talking about, I just like to steer clear from big tech if I can help it.
Replying to
@arnan@mas.to right, that happened because you hadn't done an initial save then, so nothing has been written to disk yet. Had you saved initially, the autosave process would have prevented this.
I'll think about how the UX can be improved to help here.
Replying to
@arnan@mas.to I'm sorry this happened - this is an interesting one as auto-save should have kicked in after 10 seconds of not typing. The only time that wouldn't happen is if you hadn't saved the new post at all, thus writing a file and slug to the filesystem.
Is that what happened here? If you did at least 1 save, there should be an autosave from ~10 seconds before the session expired.
I'll add this to the list though, as I'm sure there more elegant solution to stop this from occurring.
Responding to a recent question to my AMA post. Sanjay asks about setting up your digital life with no subscriptions.
https://kevquirk.com/ama-can-one-setup-their-digital-life-to-be-subscription-free
@Wolf@social.incognoble.com I know, it's going so quick!