Numeric Citizen Blog

Updated my n8n instance from v2.0.3 to v2.2.4. Super easy to do (I’m using the Docker Compose installation provided by the DigitalOcean 1-click install droplet. Took a droplet snapshot before, just in case something goes wrong. So far, so good. Of course, Claude helped me out on this. I’m not a Linux or Docker expert. 😅

Just finished reading “It’s hard to justify Tahoe icons”, which many UI design pundits and non-UI experts, as well as simple, passionate Mac users, have been referring to a lot recently. I appreciate the documentation effort. It’s really well done. Very convincing. But…

Designers age and are gradually replaced by a younger generation. Whether you like it or not, they bring new beliefs (justified or not), design principles (better or not), and values (questionable or not). Recently, there’s a trend where software appears much less crafted than it once was. Everything seems thrown together, flat. And still…

I like those macOS Tahoe menus with icons (🫣), but yes, there is an absolute lack of consistency.

I can confidently say I’ve learned at least one significant new concept every day over the past two to three weeks. It is not only satisfying but also quite stimulating. This will keep me from aging, that’s for sure.

Claude Code skills are probably the most intriguing aspect of Claude Code and Claude AI. I’m not so sure yet how to take advantage of them. My understanding from this excellent video is that you have to be an expert at something to create those skills.md file.

When I started my studies in computer science over 40 years ago, we learned to read functional specifications and then translate them into machine instructions (COBOL, FORTRAN, Pascal, etc.). It was the training of a programmer. I knew that one day I could become the person who writes functional specifications. I didn’t become a programmer, nor did I work in the development world.

Due to my recent experience with Claude AI, Claude Code, and Vercel to create custom applications, I realize that I have become the one who writes functional specifications, but for processing by artificial intelligence. What does this tell me about the profession of a software developer? The need to write specifications remains essential, if not more so, even with powerful tools like AI. I think it’s a valuable lesson.

Added a new and much-needed feature to my micro.blog front end. See my prompt below.

I just finished reading about the service openrouter.ai. I was curious to understand the purpose of this service as well as its business model. I saw several instances of this service being used in n8n workflows. The problem I see with this service is that it makes the consistency of the quality of responses from the requested LLMs even more unpredictable. Each request could be handled by LLMs with different characteristics and performance from one time to another. I’ll pass on this, but I still learned something tonight.

Another update to my blog: the blog post categories are no longer listed on the main page header. Categories are shown on each blog post. I think that’s enough. Categories are available in the Archive page. This makes the home page less busy.

My latest n8n workflow automates summarizing my Micro.blog timeline (via its private RSS feed) and sends the results to my Discord server every hour. Pretty cool, right?

Today, I created a new blog post category. Now, all blog posts related to automation (usually n8n-based) or AI will be assigned the “Automation & AI” category. I went back to my blog posts and updated a few of them to reflect this change. You can follow the blog posts with this dedicated RSS feed, which is automagically created and maintained by Micro.blog.

I am currently testing the Ubiquiti Travel Router in a café near my home. The setup operation is simple, and I have full access to my home wifi network, which is one of the goals of this purchase. The only small drawback for now is the slow startup of the device.

I’m discovering this powerful n8n node this morning. This means I could trigger that workflow from an external source, such as a Telegram message, and receive a response with some RSS content.

Today, I’m excited to share my latest idea and creation: a website collecting my Micro.blog posts, monthly digests. What, another website? Yup.

In case you didn’t know, Micro.blog has a newsletter capability. My blog offers readers the opportunity to subscribe to a monthly blog post digest delivered to their inboxes. Plus, each digest is also available as a webpage (here’s the index page if you are curious). It’s a great way to get a quick overview of everything I published for a specific month. Of course, the whole thing is searchable.

But one day, I tried feeding one digest into ChatGPT and started asking questions about it. It was a revelation. Eventually, I asked for a structured summary, and ChatGPT promptly complied, returning a beautifully formatted summary. I spent quite some time reading the output, and I was blown away by how accurate and complete it was. This is where the idea of creating a new website to store and share those summarized digests. I think it’s a great way to get up to speed with my blog for newcomers or for people who might have missed a few months.

So, here we are, digests.numericcitizen.me is born. For now, you’ll find the summary of last month, but each month will be added as a single article. An AI-generated summary (by Micro.blog) describes the current month, and you need to click the title to get all the content. I plan to add some other highlights to this site. Stay tuned and enjoy.

“Start a blog. Start one because the practice of writing at length, for an audience you respect, about things that matter to you, is itself valuable. Start one because owning your own platform is a form of independence that becomes more important as centralized platforms become less trustworthy. Start one because the format shapes the thought, and this format is good for thinking.” - JA Westenberg in The Case for Blogging in the Ruins

Beyond feeling independent, having a blog helps active thinking.

“We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country.”

There you go. That’s the real reason for the invasion, just like Iraq. WMD? Drugs? These are just excuses to get the oil. Only a month ago, the POTUS pardoned the former President of Honduras for trafficking cocaine into the US. As usual, the lies are blatant.

The more it changes…

Kagi News is really cool and well done. Here’s an example of Apple Vision Pro news.

I cannot stress enough how flabbergasted I am by the value Tinylytics is offering. Just finished configuring recently added options. What you see is my Blips analytics dashboard. Hat down to Vincent.

Putting up a new website on Micro.blog is way too… easy. 🫣🤫🫢

My next project with n8n automation is to build a replacement for Mailbrew. 🫣 I’m facing many architectural decisions:

• How do I fetch content (web or RSS feeds)?
• How do I extract articles for more efficient summarization?
• How do I combine the results?
• How do I control the size of the summary?
• Do I need some form of temporary data persistence within the workflow?
• How do I minimize LLM credits usage?
• Should I use an n8n data table for storing data sources and loop through them one by one?
• Where do I send the summary and how (Telegram, Discord, Email)?

…and probably a few more decisions to ponder!

My Microblog Poster web front end now supports Markdown files, drag-and-drop, and preview mode, all in a simple (but less simple than initially built) web interface! 😅

My updated profile description for 2026:

“I’m a compulsive creator and contributor, a digital nomad, a light painter. Aspiring peace supremacist and democracy propagandist. Proud member of the Secret Internet Curators (SIC) brigade.”

I’ve been working on a new workflow that would let me skip using Ulysses when sharing new content from Craft to Ghost. To that end, Claude came to the rescue as always, but I’m not done yet. Here are a few details.

Claude needs an n8n workflow (exposed via the n8n MCP server) to retrieve the content of a specific document using Craft APIs. Using an n8n workflow keeps credentials secure, as I don’t need to provide them directly in Claude prompts. Next, Claude converts Craft blocks to well-formatted HTML, the format Ghost expects from its APIs. Next, Claude depends on another small n8n workflow to securely push the HTML content to Ghost. Those two n8n workflows use webhooks (triggers) and HTTP requests (GET, POST) to transfer information between Craft and Ghost via their respective API endpoints.

The publishing workflow is done and handled by Claude AI, but posts are always in draft mode so I can review them in the Ghost Admin management interface before publishing. I need more work to finish this because now I have to make sure that on the next occasion, in a new Claude conversation, Claude will remember to use my n8n workflows and how I want the content converted. Another issue seems to be about the size of the request being sent to Ghost to create the draft post.

If I go back a few weeks, I barely knew how to use Claude Code or leverage webhooks and MCP servers meaningfully. Now I do, thanks to AI. I feel empowered by AI.

When I get this from Claude AI, it’s time for either a break or to work on something else until the reset.

I’m making quite a bit of progress with my Micro.blog UI frontend to the point where I’m wondering how much of the whole experience I could rebuild using Vercel and Claude Code. Challenge?

I decided to try building a small website on GitHub Pages. I have no idea if I’ll ever make something useful out of it. Since I’m spending some time with GitHub, I have found some interesting side features.