👋 Hi there!
My name is Kev Quirk and I own this website. That’s me, just up there ☝️. I’m the human with the funny eyes 👀. The awkward looking pooch is my best friend, Tia 🐶 and the bored looking cat is Lola 🐱.
Aside from my furry friends up there, I also have a beautiful wife and two lovely kids.
If you own a website, apparently it’s good manners to have an about page that talks all about yourself. So without further ado here is all you need to commit identify theft against me. Have fun. 🤠
📝 Writing
I obviously write here on my personal blog regularly, but I’ve also written for a number of other technology blogs over the years. Some of these are MakeUseOf, OMG! Ubuntu!, It’s FOSS and CSS Tricks.
I enjoy having a way of getting my thoughts and opinions out there in a long-form, but also because I find writing very relaxing.🧘
📚 Reading
The majority of what I read tends to be blogs, mostly about motorbikes and technology in various forms. You can see a list of what I read on my blogroll. When reading books, I enjoy non-fiction, technology and autobiographies.
📖 Recommended reading
- A Biker’s Life – Henry Cole
- Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup – John Carreyrou
- American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road – Nick Bilton
- Permanent Record – Edward Snowden
- The Cookoo’s Egg – Cliff Stoll
- Voices from Chernobyl – Svetlana Alexievich
- The Conqueror Series – Conn Iggulden
- Uneasy Rider – Mike Carter
🐧 Linux & open source
What can I say? I’m a nerd and I prefer to use Linux as my operating system of choice. 🤷♂️
My desktop does have a Windows partition on it, as I need Windows for certain things in work. But my main OS has been a Linux based one since 2010.
I’m currently running Ubuntu 20.04 on both my laptop and my desktop. I customise a little, but for the most part is pretty much stock:
💰 Open Source Contributions
I like to support open source projects that I regularly use. Being a busy guy, and not a developer, I would be pretty useless at submitting code. So I contribute with my wallet instead. Here’s a list of the open source contributions I’ve made recently:
| Project | Amount ($) | Date |
|---|---|---|
| Signal | $5/month | 25 Jan 21 |
| Ubuntu | $50 | 12 Nov 20 |
| Bitwarden | $30 | 24 Oct 20 |
| Wikimedia Foundation | $30 | 12 Oct 20 |
| Miniflux | $15 | 28 Sept 20 |
| Webmention | $55 | 23 Sept 20 |
| PiHole | £25 | 19 Aug 20 |
| Pop!_OS | $12 | 01 May 20 |
| Wikimedia Foundation | $15 | 04 Dec 19 |
I also support a few open source affiliated services on Patreon. While these aren’t open source projects as such, they are very closely aligned to open source and I enjoy consuming their content.
| Project | Amount ($/month) |
|---|---|
| Fosstodon | $5 |
| Late Night Linux | $5 |
| Ubuntu Podcast | $5 |
🕵️ Privacy
As well as being a Linux/Open Source fan, I’m also a privacy advocate. I have tried to de-Google wherever possible, I use a VPN most of the time I’m online and my email provider is separate from my search provider.
I also try to make your visit to this site as private as possible. You can read more about that here.
✅ Privacy recommendations
- DuckDuckGo is a privacy respecting alternative to Google search.
- Private Internet Access is a trustworthy VPN provider.
- Zoho and Fastmail are privacy respecting, ad free email providers.
- Finally, I would recommend keeping your search engine and email provider separate.
💩 Social media
To say that I’m not a fan of social media would be an understatement. I think mainstream social media does more harm than good for a number of reasons.
The most abhorrent of which are the numerous privacy concerns that come with using social media. I do however make use of a social network called Mastodon. I actually host my own instance on the network, called Fosstodon.
🌍 Online identities
This is a list of my online identities. It includes the online accounts and domain names I am associated with. If it isn’t listed here, it probably isn’t me.
🧾 Online accounts
- 👨💻 GitHub – Link
- 🗞️ Hacker News – Link
- 🗝️ Keybase – Link
- 🗞️ Lobsters – Link
- 🐘 Mastodon – Link
- 🗝️ Public PGP Key – Link
- 📰 Reddit – Link
- 🐦 Twitter – Link
🌍 Domain names
- 100daystooffload.com
- 512kb.club
- craves.coffee
- fosstodon.org
- kevq.uk
- kevquirk.com
- kq.md
- mylight.website
- quirk.cc
🏍️ Motorbikes
Motorbikes are a huge part of my life – I enjoy riding them, working on them, restoring them and talking about them. I currently ride a 2017 Yamaha MT-09 Tracer (I working on convincing my wife that it’s a good idea for me to have 2 bikes again).
I’m very lucky to live close to North Wales, which has some incredible riding roads ⛰️. I also try to get away on tour when time permits. A flask of coffee ☕, a sandwich ?, a full tank of petrol ⛽ and the open road ?️ is my idea of heaven.
