Now

What’s going on, Internet? February came and went fast, late summer in full swing, which I’m not mad about. The main highlight of the month was Carl Cox on Waiheke, a Saturday afternoon ferry ride, cold beers, and a few hundred people cutting loose on the dance floor under an overcast sky to a couple of world class DJs. Exactly what the doctor ordered.

On the site front it was a productive month. I built a glow-up Eleventy transform that automatically wraps every instance of fLaMEd fury across the site in the flame gradient. No manual markup needed anymore, which means there will be consistency across the site, rather than just times where I remembered. I’ve also brought the guestbook back, which has been on the to-do list forever, and knocked out a fresh set of 88x31 buttons using Ritual’s Button Creator.

My phone has been having trouble recently, but a $90 battery replacement means the iPhone 13 Pro gets another couple of years out of it. Feels good to not have to drop $2500 on a new phone. I still have to do the clean install. Maybe tomorrow?

Weekends have been full of kids activities as usual. The kids are now doing dance classes on Friday after school and Saturday mornings alongside swimming on Sunday mornings. Mr 4 is doing Athletics after school on Wednesdays but that’s about to wrap up for the winter season.

Speaking of Mr 5, it’s almost his birthday so we’ll be getting ready for the party, smaller than previous years as we haven’t got the same sized community up here yet but it will be a fun afternoon regardless. After his birthday we’re planning a trip back down to Martinborough for Easter and then it will be a week or two before he starts primary school.

I still can’t believe we’re getting to this stage of his life. Exciting and emotional times.

Reading

Three books done this month. Still working through the Vega Jane series on the Kobo. Baldacci writes these things to be read fast, which suits me. They’re an easy read and have been great during kids bed times. I picked up a hard copy of 1985 by Dominic Hoey, a local author, mid-last year from our local book store and have been putting off reading it. It finally popped up at my library on Libby as an audiobook so I demolished it over a couple of days. Such a good read. I love local stories like this.

• The Finisher by David Baldacci
• Vega Jane and the Maze of Monsters by David Baldacci
• 1985 by Dominic Hoey

The interesting thing here is that since December I’ve dusted off my Kobo Libra and have been reading ebooks again. After three years of almost exclusive audiobook listening I’m back into it. I’ll post about this soon.

On The Shelf

I didn’t pick up any new records this month. I had the latest Interscope Vinyl Club release in the post, but it didn’t arrive until March. We’ll check back at the end of the month for all the new record additions.

In Rotation

February was a bit of a genre shuffle. 5 Seconds of Summer somehow ended up as my most played artist of the month with 95 listens across three albums — EVERYONE’S A STAR!, 5SOS5, and Youngblood. Did a bit of a deep dive after reading a post about them and how their music changed from their first release. Youngblood remains a favourite track.

Alongside that, a heavy rotation of NZ drum & bass — Concord Dawn, Shapeshifter, and Sub Focus all got solid play — mixed in with ScHoolboy Q’s Oxymoron, MF DOOM’s Operation: Doomsday, and Bone Thugs-n-Harmony’s BTNHResurrection. J. Cole dropped a new album, The Fall-Off so I gave that a couple listens.

Most played track of Feb (thanks kids) was jxdn’s cover of “drivers license”. I really want to take singing lessons so I can nail this song.

On Screen

TV Shows

Finished Robin Hood — wrote up some thoughts on it. Also wrapped up A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms which delivered a solid ending to a short season. I Love LA was a pleasant surprise — watched all of S01 without meaning to.

Carried on with Industry and Shrinking. Industry is still a bit wtf, and I’m still loving Shrinking. Also dipped into a few new things: English Teacher, and The Girlfriend, and am watching episodes of Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage when I need something on in the background.

Movies

I watched Nobody and Nobody 2 back to back, which is exactly the right way to watch them and then carry on with life. The Housemaid was tense and worth it. Rounded things out with a run of easier watches — Which Brings Me to You, The Threesome, Splitsville, and People We Meet on Vacation. Easy to watch and didn’t require me to think.

Bookmarks

A solid link dump this month. Lots of thinking about personal websites, the open web, and what we’re all doing here in 2026.

• Understanding blogs – Tracy Durnell’s Mind Garden Tracey Durnell breaks down what personal blogs are.
• I Wish People Were More Public Borretti wants you to be more public online, share more things that you enjoy.
• SSI (Server-Side Includes) - nekoweb.org Nekoweb introduces SSI for static sites on their platform. Huge news for static site lovers. I could drop in a version of flamedfury.com from 1999 and it would render on Nekoweb. What a time to be alive.
• The lines that draw us together Reflections on the invisible lines that connect us through writing, linking and sharing ideas across personal websites.
• Some Thoughts on the Open Web Reflections on what the open web actually means today.
• Patrick - Fun with the web Small playful experiments built in a blog post.
• The art of the desk setup Arun shares his desk setup. How small choices shape daily work.
• Webspace Invaders · Matthias Ott Matthias Ott discovers the web is being attacked by invasive patterns and dark designs from AI crawlers. How can we build services that respect users instead of extracting every last pixel from them?
• In The Beginning There Was Slop Reflections on the flood of AI generated “slop”. Is it the AI or the Humans that create the slop?
• A Golden Era of Blogging Jim Nielsen questions the idea of a “golden era” of blogging.
• Blogging Before Blogs Taking a look back at early “blogs” and how they shaped a new kind of web culture.
• The IndieWeb and Small web What’s the overlap between the IndieWeb and the small web?
• Why I Don’t Think AI is the Devil Lou pushes back on the idea that AI is inherently evil. I agree that it’s mostly about how it’s used.
• The Death of Curating, the Rise of Curation - Stephanie Stimac’s Blog Reflections on how we’ve lost the habit of curating what we read and share, and why intentional curation made the web feel more personal. I hope my bookmarks help make the web feel more personal 😃
• citations.css Shellsharks experiments with styling citations in CSS, showing how small tweaks can make references to authors clearer and more readable.
• Phoenix’s Web Corner! - The Rise of Sanityware Shubham talks about where they stand with the web in 2026, writing about independence, ownership, and what he wants his site to be moving forward.

Check out the bookmarks page for even more.

This Website

• Added the glow-up Eleventy transform — automatically wraps every mention of fLaMEd and fLaMEd fury in rendered HTML with the flame gradient effect, with a CSS hover fire animation.
• Added indieweb.txt after seeing shellshark’s Extending indieweb.txt With Reference Information post.
• New Colophon page detailing how the site is built and how a post is made.
• Updated the About page.
• Added a new Guestbook powered by webweav.ing.

Sweeet, laters 🤙