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.

Update

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.

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.

It's been a little over a year since I bought my Framework 13 laptop and shared my initial thoughts, so I thought it would be a good time to provide you guys with an update on what I like, and dislike about this plucky little laptop.

Performance

I think this is a good place to start since my previous laptop was an M1 MacBook Air, which I loved, but the paltry 256GB of storage, and the fact that it would inevitably be killed off artificially by Apple, I decided to jump ship, and the Framework 13 beat the competition for me.

One of the things I loved about the M1 was the incredible battery life. I could work all day and still have a good chunk of battery left, and while the Framework 13 isn't quite as good as the M1, it's still excellent. I can work on this thing all day and still have around 30% of the battery left.

Similarly, the performance while using the Framework is great too. With a Ryzen 7 7840 (8 core, 16 threads @ 5.1GHz), a whopping 64GB RAM, 2TB NVMe, and a Radeon 780 integrated GPU, it's all the computer I'll need for the foreseeable future since I mostly browse the web, send emails, and write code. I also occasionally play Minecraft with the kids, so this is more than enough for me.

Operating System

I'm currently running Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, after Fedora quickly started to frustrate me. Previously I commented on how I wasn't sure if I'd even stick with Linux, saying:

I'm not sure I have the energy to go down the Linux route again. I don't care what anyone says, Linux is not as simple as other operating systems.

Since moving over to Ubuntu and getting things set up in a way that I like, I'm now very happy being back in Linux land. Ubuntu has been totally stable, and performance has been fantastic. Everything is just as snappy as it was on the M1.

Build quality

The Framework 13 is not a Mac, and never will be. I'm yet to see any manufacturer hold a torch to the quality of Apple's hardware. However, it's still very good - the aluminium case is robust and showing very few signs of wear, even after a year of hard labour.

Still looking great even after a year of hard work

I opted for the orange bezel, but didn't like it originally. I've since grown to love it and no longer find it distracting. People just don't have orange laptops, so it's a little different and fun.

The orange bezel has grown on me

I also complained about the poor accuracy of the fingerprint reader, but that the issue seemed to be Fedora, rather than hardware. Since switching to Ubuntu it's been fine.

The hardware switches for the mic and webcam are great. I continue to use them most days, and it's nice to know that my own laptop isn't listening, or watching, when I don't want it to.

Overall thoughts

All in all the Framework cost me just shy of £1,500 at this spec, and considering the runway I have with the hardware specs, and the incredible ability to repair this thing, I think overall it's better value than spending the same money on a MacBook Pro M4 at the time.

I'm currently using around 256GB of the available storage on my NVMe. The MacBook Pro at the price I wanted came with 512GB, so I'd have been around halfway through my storage already. Considering lack of storage was a big driver for me replacing the M1 in the first place, I'm glad I went this route.

Whilst the build quality isn't as good as a Mac, it's still excellent. I have no concerns about the longevity of this cool little laptop, and I trust it will continue to serve me for many years to come. My wife still runs a Gen 2 Lenovo X1 Carbon from 2014 (that's 12 years old) and it's still going strong. If I can get the same kind of longevity out of this, even if I do need to (easily) replace a battery or 2 along the way, I'll be very, very happy.

If you're thinking about jumping in and getting a Framework laptop, my advice would be do it. I have zero regrets.

I'm really proud of what Pure Blog has become, and honestly a little overwhelmed by the interest it's received since launch. The feedback and enthusiasm from the community has been genuinely lovely, so thank you.

That said, since announcing it a couple of months ago, I've spent pretty much every spare minute working on it, and most of that time building things I didn't personally need. I said a few weeks ago that Pure Blog was feature complete...ish. The "ish" turned out to be a mistake, because it left the door open and I smashed right though it. 🙃

So as of today, with the release of version 2.2.0, I'm dropping the asterisk. Pure Blog is feature complete. It does everything I want it to do, so it's time to actually use it.

I've worked through and closed the all open issues and PRs. From here, if you request a feature, thank you, but it's unlikely to be implemented. But there are some things I will continue to accept:

• Bug reports — if something's broken, I want to know.
• Translation improvements — some non-English translations are AI-generated and could use native speaker review.
• New translations — if you want to add a new language, submit a PR using /lang/en.php as a reference.

If there's a feature you want to implement, Pure Blog is open source, so fork it and build what you need - it's a tonne of fun!

As for me, I'm going to get back to actually writing on this lovely little platform I've built. That was the whole point, after all. 😊

Back in November I pre-ordered an Ollee Watch, which was delivered in February. After playing with the watch, I decided I didn't want it, so I posted it up on eBay - never worn, so brand new.

A week or so later it sold and I posted it off to its new owner. A day or 2 later, the buyer messaged me saying the backlight wasn't working. This immediately raised my suspicions as the watch was brand new and I had packaged it up well.

Anyway, I gave them the benefit of the doubt after they had sent a video of the apparent problem, accepted the return, and paid for them to return the watch to me.

Getting the watch back

I took delivery of the watch yesterday, opened the package and all of the Olle packaging has been removed, as well as the original Casio module. It came back like this, with only half of a Casio box:

I tested the backlight; low and behold, it's working fine! So now I have a new Ollee watch, with no packaging, and no Casio module. So it's worth a lot less than it was previously.

Fucking brilliant.

I've asked eBay to step in and help resolve the situation, so we will see what happens. But there's a lot of buyer protection on eBay (and rightly so) but there's very little in the way of seller protection, even though I'm not a business. So I have a feeling they will find in favour of the buyer and I'll be out a few quid.

Double fucking brilliant.

I messaged the buyer once I'd received the watch back, politely asking WTF? and they replied with:

I'm sorry I thought the original packaging was all there, there definitely was a problem with the backlight and I think the original Casio thing is in the little compartment on the stand.

The module is 100% not there.

What I think happened

Now, the buyer may be legit. The backlight may not have been functioning properly while they had it. They may have binned all the Ollee packaging¹, and the Casio module, but I find it hard to believe.

The backlight works flawlessly. It's not like it works occasionally or anything like that. You tap the light button and it lights up every single time. It's in perfect working condition.

My guess is that they've done this to get the Ollee packaging, then they're going to scam some other poor bastard by selling them a standard F-91W (which costs around £15) dressed up as an Ollee watch for around £100.

Final thoughts

Anyway, we will see what happens as eBay get involved. If you're in the UK and interested in getting yourself a fully working, brand new, Ollee watch (albeit with no Ollee packaging) for cheap, get in touch.