/reader

Why write JavaScript when a little CSS will do? So I craft this:

.entry:has(a:visited) {
  opacity: .5;
  filter: grayscale(1);
}

But it doesn’t work.

:has() is relatively new, and I’ve been known to muff it, so it’s probably just a syntax issue.

I start researching.

Wouldn’t you know it? We can’t have nice things. :visited doesn’t always work like you’d expect because we (not me, mind you) exploited it.

Here’s MDN:

You can style visited links, but there are limits to which styles you can use.

While :has() is not mentioned specifically, other tricks like sibling selectors are:

When using a sibling selector, such as :visited + span, the adjacent element (span in this example) is styled as though the link were unvisited.

Why? You guessed it. Security and privacy reasons.

If it were not so, somebody could come along with a little JavaScript and uncover a user’s browsing history (imagine, for example, setting styles for visited and unvisited links, then using window.getComputedStyle and checking style computations).

MDN says browsers tell little white lies:

To preserve users' privacy, browsers lie to web applications under certain circumstances

So, from what I can tell, when I write .entry:has(a:visited) the browser is telling the engine that handles styling that all .entry items have never been :visited (even if they have been).

So where does that leave me?

Now I will abandon CSS and go use JavaScript for something only JavaScript can do.

That’s a good reason for JS.

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This blog is by far the hobby I have sunk the most time into over the last 13-ish years, and I’d like to think I’ll continue as I head from middle age, to old age. Let’s say I live until I’m 80, I will have spent over 50 years of my time on this earth writing content here at kevquirk.com.

I don’t want all the hard work to disappear in a puff of smoke once I snuff it, so I’ve been thinking. Could this blog become a family heirloom?. Could I pass this site on to one (or both) of my sons and have them continue to write here?

They wouldn’t even need to continue to use kevquirk.com. They could write on their own domain(s), and just redirect this one.

I like to think that many of the other long-time bloggers out there might want the same. Maybe one day it’ll be normal to leave our blogs to our kids?

A question worth asking

I do think it’s something we should consider. I’m part of the first generation that grew up online, and most of us are still very much alive. But as time marches on, more of us are going to leave behind these digital epitaphs.

I’d love it if my sons took up blogging when they’re old enough to (that, and riding motorbikes!). But they’re their own people, and may not want to. If that’s the case, I just hope they’ll agree to keep my waffle online for a little while once I’m gone. 🤷🏻‍♂️

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The reasons are varied but overlapping. Streaming services have kept raising prices while the parts of their libraries I cared about shrank or became stagnant. Movies I wanted to watch would vanish without warning, or arrive in the UK months later. At various times my partner and I complained about catching ourselves scrolling endlessly through recommendations we didn’t want, looking for the handful of things we actually cared about. Often we’d spend more time trying to find something to watch than actually watching something.

I bought a UGREEN NASync DXP4200 Plus (affiliate link) in May 2025, partly as a general storage solution for the house, but I also started forming the makings of a plan to bring together all these changes into a better “media landscape” for our household. It’s taken effort, but it’s at a point where we’re starting to see the benefits.

Building Our Own Netflix

The first steps were simple enough, though it involved more outlay: I bought a Pioneer BDR-XD07TS external Blu-ray drive from eBay. It supports UHD discs and LibreDrive firmware, which matters if you want the least frustrating time backing up what you own. With MakeMKV for ripping and Handbrake for converting to something more space-efficient when needed, I had a workflow I could use basically anywhere. At times I setup an old laptop in the corner of my office and would swap out discs as necessary while I was working on other things.

I started with the DVD and Blu-rays we still owned, then gradually added more as we found things we wanted - a few were bought new from HMV, but the majority came from eBay or CEX as second-hand purchases. When one of the kids showed interest in 80’s/early 90’s movies, it was easy and relatively cheap to get several to add to the library.

The collection’s grown quite a bit over the last few months, all sitting on the NAS, which is running Jellyfin as a container. On Apple devices we use Infuse for playback - I tried Swiftfin first but it was too buggy. The Jellyfin web UI works fine for everything else.

My partner loves it. She described it as “her own personal Netflix” - just the stuff she actually wants to watch, without algorithms trying to convince her she needs to see whatever’s being promoted this week. That’s become the recurring theme: intentionality over abundance.

The main technical consideration was network access. I use a reverse proxy to handle TLS, and everything runs through a Tailscale Tailnet to keep it private and secure. I can - and have - streamed music and video from the NAS to my phone while on the bus, walking around town, or sitting in a cafe. The details probably warrant their own post, but the short version is: it works, and it works reliably^[1].

Discovery is the obvious trade-off. New films mean cinema trips (which is no bad thing, just rare for us) or waiting for physical releases. For TV shows, physical releases are becoming genuinely difficult to find. There’s no general UK release of Andor on Blu-ray, for example - just an expensive limited edition season 1 UHD box set that is hard to justify. I have a low-res copy of season 1 from a DVD purchased off eBay - one I now suspect was less than legit! Other Disney-owned shows are similar: my partner can’t get Scream Queens season 2 in the UK, for example. Only the first Knives Out film has a physical release for another example. If we can’t get something physically, or through iPlayer or other UK services, we often just… don’t watch it. Them’s the breaks.

The other challenge has been time, particularly for TV shows. Ripping discs isn’t difficult, but episodes aren’t always in order on the disc itself. I’ve found I need to manually verify once they’re extracted. I didn’t realise this at first and had to go back and fix about 160 episodes across several shows and seasons. Now I check as I go. It’s tedious but manageable. The upshot is that new stuff tends to get added “as and when” I have time. I still have a couple of box sets I need to work through to get caught up with everything.

Once I’ve backed up our discs I pop them into a large slip-case; it holds 400 discs, and I think I’ll need to get another before long. The original cases get chucked into the recycling. This is the best practical solution we have to storage space limitations while keeping the original copy.

Piecing Together a Music History

My music library was archaeology. I went all-in on music streaming years ago, as it seemed so much more convenient at the time. I had an old iTunes library scattered across multiple backups and old hard disks, fragments of history going back decades. I consolidated it all, cleaned up the metadata, reorganised the folder structure, then loaded everything into Jellyfin. It took a couple of weeks. In doing so I found I had many albums I knew I owned, but must’ve never ripped from my original CDs. While my CD library has had some attrition over the years, I still had a large chunk of it in a box in the loft. It’s on my todo list to bring the box down and fill in those gaps.

New purchases are coming from Qobuz if it’s a brand-new release, otherwise eBay and Music Magpie are OK for second-hand CDs.

On iOS I use Finer for playback; on Arch I use Tauon Music Box. Everything scrobbles to Last.fm through Jellyfin/the client, which once Last.fm catches up to what I listen to in 2026 might help with discovery^[2].

I have kept Apple Music. It’s included in a bundle we all use for other things, and I still like it for mood playlists when I don’t have something specific in mind - just a vibe I want that isn’t in my collection. Soundtracks and Classical, mostly. Marvis Pro handles that nicely on iOS, as does Cider on Linux.

The combination works: my library for intentional listening, Apple Music for when I just need something different in the background.

The Great DRM Escape

Books were more fraught. Amazon removed the ability to download your Kindle library, but I managed to get mine before the window closed. Removing the DRM was straightforward enough with the right tools. Apple Books was a different story - I could get the files, but couldn’t remove the DRM, and so they’re stuck in Apple’s ecosystem forever. This was only a small handful of titles though, and I can read them on my iPad, so while it’s inconvenient, it’s not a huge loss overall.

I switched to Calibre for library management and bought a Kobo Clara Colour for reading. The physical buttons were the deciding factor. I could never quite place why I fell out of love with eBooks and readers; it turns out I don’t want to tap a screen to turn pages - I want to press a button. It’s a small thing that matters enormously in practice. This is the first eReader I’ve owned since the 2nd-generation Kindle I’ve actually enjoyed using for any length of time.

Most ebooks I’ve bought since the switch now come DRM-free directly from publishers when the option exists. Occasionally I’ll buy physical if I know I’ll want to keep it.

I cancelled Audible at some point as I wasn’t using it anymore - there are a few audiobooks in my library but they’re basically incidental to everything else. Libation helped with these. I run AudioBookShelf on the NAS to manage and listen to my audiobooks. The web player suffices.

In terms of hands-on management vs size of collection, books have probably taken up an outsized slice of my time. Book metadata is rarely consistent it seems, with titles and series data being all over the place once loaded into Calibre. Correcting and organising it in a logical manner is an ongoing process.

Wrapping Up

We have a library that’s ours now, in a way that streaming catalogues never were. There’s privacy in not having viewing habits tracked and analysed. There’s ownership that feels genuinely different from renting access. Our library has grown to 101 movies, 20 TV shows, and nearly 6,000 tracks across almost a thousand albums - about 3 terabytes total^[3]. It’s a work in progress.

Mostly, though, I’m not scrolling through endless recommendations trying to find something worth watching or listening to. I’m choosing from things I’ve already decided matter. That sounds trivial, but it’s changed how I engage with media. I find I’m watching and listening more often despite having “less choice”, because I’m not wasting time hunting past what’s been chosen for me.

My partner feels the same way. The lack of algorithmic noise is its own kind of luxury.

I’ve noticed more people talking about similar approaches - fatigue with streaming, frustration with DRM, a desire to actually own things again. “Going analogue” with physical media is something I’ve seen a lot recently. So I wanted to write about what I’d done and what works for us. Recent posts from others helped inspire me to put words to blog after months of thinking about it:

• Taking back control of the music I listen to
• I’m back to building my own digital music collection
• Apple TV Movie Collection 2026

It does require an investment - both time and money. Ripping and organising takes (a lot) longer than clicking “subscribe”. There are technical considerations around storage and network access. Discovery is genuinely harder without recommendation engines, even if those engines were mostly noise anyway.

But this far in, we don’t miss the services. Our library grows slowly and deliberately. We enjoy what we choose to keep. The trade-offs feel worthwhile.

A song I’m loving:

1. — “Even a wounded world is feeding us. Even a wounded world holds us, giving us moments of wonder and joy. I choose joy over despair. Not because I have my head in the sand, but because joy is what the earth gives me daily and I must return the gift.” ―Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass

I must return the gift. These words swirl in my heart often, a budding urge to remember staying connected to joy, beauty, and aliveness is not a betrayal to the pain but is instead an outreached hand as we wade through the pain. Choosing to look for all that is still precious and good is not a distraction from what is urgent but is instead a guardrail to hold onto amid the urgency. Staying with sweetness is not a looking away from the ache but is instead a bolstering that allows you to stay with all of it.

Even a wounded world is feeding us. There are bright purple hyacinths bursting forth from the ground in my backyard. My daughter and I crouched down when we noticed them a few days ago: “look! The first hyacinths of the year! They’re here!” A miracle amid the crumbling. A nod to something new still taking root amid what is decaying. A reminder that it is vulnerable to practice loving this world while it feels so painful, and yet loving this world is what gives us courage to care for it, tend to it, and insist on something more beautiful. And in the midst of so much pain, that insistence feels like fuel, like a flame, like a dark sky being lit up by the moon, like a nudge to keep moving.

2 — I write in my upcoming book When the Ache Remains about how I did not always know how to love this world — how I long wanted to leave this world — how I’m still learning to fully allow my love for this world to take up space in my heart. It is hard to love a world you don’t feel belonging in. It is hard to love a world that holds pain. I so deeply understand this.

Yesterday, during a program I’m currently learning in, we paired up with a partner and each took a few minutes to answer the question, “what do you love about being alive during this particular time on earth?” Lingering in the question for longer than a blip, for more than a moment, brought tears to both of our eyes. Our answers felt like prayers, like rivers leading to the most essential and pulsing humanity. I want to make it a practice to meditation on this question, to let it brighten what often gets pushed to the shadows, to let it reignite the aliveness and devotion this moment is asking of all of us, to flow to that river of essential and pulsing humanity whenever I forget it’s still there, awaiting my visit.

Even when you don’t love the world as a whole, I imagine it could feel like medicine to remember what you do love about being alive during this particular time on earth. Maybe it’s slurping spaghetti with your toddler. Or maybe it’s the experience of hearing geese calling out just a few seconds before you see them flying overhead. Maybe it’s seeing the courage of one person being held by the courage of many people. Maybe it’s coffee in bed in the morning, or water droplets resting on grass after the rain, or that one song you loved as a teenager that transports you back. But there is something potent about circling around these loves and letting them widen within us, letting them show us we are still tethered to beauty, letting them soothe our hearts. There is so much to love, even now. There is so much to love, even now. There is so much to love, even now. And this love can become courage that allows us to act on behalf of all we love, which feels like the most potent place to move from.

3 — It is February 1st. Imbolc. A halfway point between Winter and Spring. A full snow moon. A nearing of a shift from year of the snake to year of the fire horse. A small marking of a turning point, of shifts being available, of change being inevitable. I’m soaking in any and all reminders that there is movement happening. Looking to nature as a teacher of this, of all the ways change can bring about more life, feels like comfort and solid ground to stand on while so much wobbles. May the shift of month, of season, of cycle, be something to turn to when you feel stuck or stagnant. May the remembrance of change being certain allow you to lean into what is asking to be moved, shedded, released, and watered. May you water what you long for instead of what is asking to die.

4 — Generosity is an antidote to overwhelm. I shared a little about this recently, and it grounds me when I remember looking outward and acting can be incredibly soothing if I find myself stuck while looking inward. Being of service is like a buoy when staying stuck in our own minds feels akin to drowning.

4 — “Hope is not a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch, feeling lucky. It is an axe you break down doors with in an emergency. Hope should shove you out the door, because it will take everything you have to steer the future away from endless war, from the annihilation of the earth’s treasures and the grinding down of the poor and marginal... To hope is to give yourself to the future - and that commitment to the future is what makes the present inhabitable.” Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark

What does it look like to practice hope when we hold it as an act of giving ourselves to the future — perhaps to a future we will never personally see or know? What does it look like to stay tethered to hope as a method of commitment, as a trust in what could be? What does it look like to use hope not as a fluffy, ignorant dream but as a choice to shatter what has never worked so something new could glimmer through? What does it look like to remember when we need to bow out of hope for a while, someone else is holding the flame — that none of us need to feel or practice it 100% of the time for our devotion to count? What does it look like to hope on behalf of children when hoping on behalf of our own broken hearts feels like too much? What does it look like to let a beautiful imagined future nourish us as we walk through the despair of what’s present? What does it look like to let hope be an axe? A shove? A giving of ourselves to something wider? These are questions I’m asking.

5 — When you look out at the world and see a swell of grief, know your body is seeing clearly. When you look out at the world and feel a surge of awe in your heart, know your body is seeing clearly. It is possible to hold both. It is human to hold both.

Thank you, as always, for being here.

No links today — another reminder (for those who need it) to look away from the screen, from the news, from the information, and tune into something wider for a moment: the moon, the trees and waters, the faces of your neighbors, a good book, an animal, a poem, some kind of spaciousness that allows you to remember all else that is still here, awaiting our attention, so as to bolster us when we return to everything that is also asking for our presence.

With care,
Lisa

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I like to travel light. Not as a statement or some minimalist trend. Simply because it’s easier, and I don’t need more stuff.

For the last twelve years, I’ve used the same backpack and pretty much the same type of luggage. Apart from what I’m wearing, including my phone and earbuds, this is what I bring when traveling to Thailand:

• Two pairs of shorts
• Two T-shirts
• Two pairs of underwear
• Medications
• One book
• Laptop
• Multi-charger
• Snus (with the intention to quit)

That’s it.

When I arrive, I buy the other things I need. Toiletries like a toothbrush, toothpaste, lotion, and so on. It’s basically the same products I use back home in Sweden, just at about half the price.

So far, it’s been more than enough.