Numeric Citizen Blog

One of the best activity-tracking apps focused on steps tracking is StepsApp. I always find something new each time I use it. It is such a well-crafted piece of software. A vast array of widgets come with the app too. I paid for it. That being said, I’m not proud of my activity trend for the last two years. 😒

Should I care if my content is used to train AI models? How is it different than someone who uses part of my content in a citation to write a linkpost, for example? Is it ok for a portion of my content to be used elsewhere as opposed to the full content? Should I be able to opt out of any AI training, just like we can opt out of search engines when posting content online?

Now there are 42 members (Micro.bloggers) on Wavelength! Keep joining if you want! Invite link.

I had a discussion about AI yesterday with my wife. She came back from a two-day conference in Toronto. One of the sessions was about the place of AI in society and how it is time to engage in promoting and organizing some AI regulations.

The more I read and learn about AI capabilities as exposed in tools like ChatGPT, the more I think we will eventually need some regulation. For example, one thing we discussed (and on which we couldn’t agree) is the introduction of a delay in AI training. What I’d like to see is that AI companies are imposed a 2 or 3 years delay for their model training. And why would this be necessary? How would it change the game?

Remember that current training is lagging simply because we lack the processing power to digest all the digital information produced daily. But, eventually, it will come, just like Google replaced Yahoo when index content was initially entered manually by a group of people and then by a community. Sooner or later, ChatGPT or similar tools will digest the web in near real-time. And this is where this is going to be even more scary and could really get out of control.

Imposing delay on models training would help public knowledge and content to settle down and let consensus emerge in any research field, for example. Short-term noise would be reduced. In my opinion, it would be more challenging for ChatGPT to be infected by bad actors who will eventually try to influence results with toxic data.

My wife and I couldn’t agree on the effectiveness of this simple measure. She thinks that it would make ChatGPT useless or less relevant. My take goes the opposite side where, like in real life, things like encyclopedias are still helpful even though they were written and got frozen as soon as they were printed. So there is a need for them, like there is a need for more dynamic knowledge content like Wikipedia.

More than ever, we need to define what makes us unique, how we protect how uniqueness and consider slowing things down a bit, so we can have more time to understand what is going on and where things could go if we let things go without proper framing.

My goal when I started doing YouTube videos about Craft (and now Micro.blog) was to reach a thousand subscribers during the first year. At the current rate, I won’t make it. Am I sad about this? No. Is it nagging me? Yes. Why?

I think there are a lot of Craft users out there, and I think they could benefit from watching a few of my videos. That’s the whole purpose and “raison d’être” for my YouTube channel which was (and still is) to help users get better at using Craft or learning about Craft if they are not currently using it. Is my absence from Twitter to promote my content making any difference? Maybe. Maybe not. Who knows.

I still have some time left before June 6th, but I’m being realistic here.

I’ve been following Apple since 1982. At that time, Apple was selling the highly successful Apple ][+ line, the much less successful Apple ///. The Lisa was still a project. The Mac was not even on the drawing board. I find it cool to see the young generation of tech guys today who are fervent admirers of Apple. These people weren’t even born in 1982.

What is it like to use the migration assistant on a Mac to move content & settings from one machine to another? Is it as good as moving from one iPhone to another?

Today’s thought: by accepting the idea that blogging is writing for myself, I would probably write more often.

I’m fascinated by the lack of visual updates to Gruber’s Daring Fireball website. I mean, he has been using the same design like forever! And then I look at Micro.blog users here constantly trying themes or even building their own and tweaking it often. I’m not particularly fond of his design choices but hey, who am I to judge! Content wins over form?

Some housekeeping this morning: I made some changes to the navigation bar on my website so that FeedPress feeds are more prominent. Removed is the link to the monthly newsletter tag as I’m no longer publishing them.

As a fan of meteorology, I was fascinated today by this visible satellite imagery sequence of east North America. We can observe clouds at different levels in the atmosphere for the same geo area that travel in different directions. Just look at the cursor for where to observe the phenomena. This is not exceptional but it is fascinating nonetheless.

For the first time in a long time, I’m satisfied with my online publishing setup. I don’t see changes in the future. This is relieving. This mean I can focus a writing projects. The only moving part around Mastodon/Bluesky clients. Nothing to call my (late) mother.

Follow up to my previous post. I’ll probably keep Ivory and buy the bundle subscription: one app, for all Apple platforms. Also, It’s a way to show support for their journey out of Twitter. I’ll scrap Ice Cubes and Mammoth. Micro.blog, Ivory, Bluesky it will be. 😊 For now. 🫢

Eventually I’ll have to make a few decisions … 🤔🤦🏻‍♂️

If they are serious about supporting the federated web, @ivory@tapbots.social could add support for Micro.blog…

Following the announcement of the tweaked Micro.blog newsletter functionality, I’m switching to a monthly digest instead with a specific category as the sole source for its content. Three reasons for this change: first, the digest will become a more intentional set of creative gestures instead of being the result of a weekly and automatic content spit out without any distinction. Second, monthly means less noisy than weekly. Third, less is more. Let’s try that. 🙂

Just finished watching a few videos about FinalCut Pro for iPad. One thing came to my mind: the iPad will probably continue to get bigger to accommodate the vision for FCP on the iPad. Even on the 12.9-inch iPad, FCP looked a bit cramped. I still don’t know if I’ll ever use it for my needs (when I upgrade my current and unsupported 11-inch 2018 iPad Pro. 🤨

Exposure asks me to upgrade to the business tier subscription to support Plausible analytics via custom HTML headers. Thanks but no thanks. My current subscription is already expensive enough, and I am barely able to justify the price. I’m not going to support something that I think should be builtin, like Google Analytics. Plausible is an external service and would require minimal changes on Exposure part to implement. They are being greedy here.

I’m more inclined and attracted by the idea of testing (and actually using) FCP on iPad than the Mac version. Without being an iMovie on steroids (something that I don’t want), I wish FCP for iPad to be a simpler (but not simplistic) version of FCP on the Mac.

The problem: all my videos are all done with Screenflow for Mac because It’s all about Mac screen recording. What value would bring another app like FCP for the iPad? I see a more complex workflow because I would need to “export” from Mac then import into FCP on iPad then do the actual montage on a less capable device (two different device paradigms, little added value).

Thoughts?

PS: My 2018 iPad Pro isn’t capable enough for my 4K screen recordings. But let’s imagine that I’m on an M1 or M2 iPad Pro.

From my experience (today I shared a visual story named “Cemeteries"), I don’t get much exposure with Exposure, which I find highly ironic.

Mimestream, a native Gmail email client, is out of beta and looks quite good if this video, by Matt Birchler, is any indication. As a subscriber to HEY, I can only salivate when I see such great Mac apps being launched for such a mature category. The guys behind HEY brag a lot about having a unique take on email, but they seriously lack in their take on being native because their software is not and is one of their biggest problems IMHO. If only they had the guts to rebuild their client like Mimestream, it would be a real killer for me.

Quick follow-up to my blog post earlier today about using Craft to create photo journals. Sometimes, I look too far to find the perfect solution when there is one in front of my eyes: Exposure. I’m already paying for a subscription! My next photo journal will be created on Exposure.

I bought a Hookmark license recently, thinking it would play a big role in my creative workflow. It isn’t so far. Sure, it works great but use cases are scarce.

Last year, I went to Italy for my three-week summer vacation. What a trip it was. I built this travel journal with Craft to test Craft’s limitations. I concluded that Craft is great for building beautiful documents (and small websites), but for serious photography work: it’s far from perfect and needs big improvements. Can you imagine that nine months later, after so many releases, no single Craft release addressed any of my feedback? None!!! I’m going to Morocco in June. I guess I’ll look elsewhere for sharing a travel journal.

Time for another blog post category: Travels. Vacations are getting closer by the day.