Numeric Citizen Space

numericcitizen shared a post

A storm that came too early.

pixelfed

Another busy week, my dear readers! I had less time this week, preferring to spend more time practicing and working on my music selection and DJ abilities. Nonetheless, I could still be creatively active! Let’s see what’s in store for this week!

👨🏻‍💻 3 articles posted on my blog posts & 1 article shared on my main website 🙂
🏞️ 17 photos shared 😃
🎙️ No podcast episode published 😔
📺 1 YouTube video published 😃, 1 video rejected!

📖 Reading

1️⃣ This week, I tried something different for my readings: I used Omnivore’s text-to-speech feature to read some longer articles aloud. The voices are stunning, but how can we highlight text while listening? It's also harder to stay focused than reading the text myself.
“Technology won’t fix human behaviour.” — Manuel M on Mastodon

🗺️ Discoveries

1️⃣ This week's discoveries were mostly about the world of DJing, as my four-week course is ongoing. I learned how and where DJs are getting their music. If my teacher is any indication, DJs aren't too concerned about "stealing” music from others without paying a dime in royalties, and they don't expect too much in return when sharing their creations. This might not be the case, but I find this surprising nonetheless. It's a world of creative abundance, and musicians are seeking exposure.

👨🏻‍💻 Writing

1️⃣ I’ve been spending some time completing my year in review posts about my creative journey and about Craft. I love to write summaries like these, especially the personal ones. Revisiting them near the end of the year helps me get a sense of all my creative accomplishments for the year. This year was a biggy! I can't wait to share this summary with my readers! 2️⃣ As I'm writing this, I plan to release three articles on my main blog and that will conclude the year.

🌄 Photography

1️⃣ The last camera my late father was able to use was a digital Canon PowerShot point-and-shoot. He never owned a smartphone. As a young adult, he quickly bought a film camera in his late forties. His father, too, loved photography. I wonder how different photos would have been if my father had an iPhone. Having a camera with us always makes us the best camera and helps us document our daily lives. My sons will get access to my everyday life when I’m gone. I wish I had this from my father. 2️⃣ This week, I started digging into old boxes of photo slides shot in the nineties, before digital cameras. Among those were a few slides coming from late parents. They contain fond memories of them and find the process of opening the album, flipping through pages and deciding what's worth keeping and what should be put away hard. The whole process makes me rather sad and depressed. I'll continue the whole thing, but only in small doses. 😔 3️⃣ On the more positive side, I see so much familiarity between my current photographic style and my father’s. It's somewhat surprising that I couldn’t figure out a different style that is unique to me. The similarity is that strong.

🍎 Apple

1️⃣ There are rumors that Apple is close to releasing updated MacBook Air with the M3 chip. The M2 MacBook Air that I'm currently using to write this newsletter was bought last August. Even if I'm not fully utilizing this device's power, I would be annoyed to see an M3-based MacBook Air coming out so fast. But I would probably not upgrade, preferring to see a redesign instead in the future.

🚧 Special projects

1️⃣ For Christmas, I will create Christmas cards using ChatGPT and Dall-E. The idea is to make the front page image using Dall-E with prompts that relate to the person to whom the card is destined. Next, I'll simulate a short conversation with ChatGPT about asking questions like “What is the most important thing to say for Christmas”? I'm still thinking about the best way to involve ChatGPT for this. Overall, I want this to be funny for those who will get the Christmas card. 2️⃣ With a few hours of work, I put together a feature request board for Craft using the popular Canny.io web service. It's free for me and for users to use. I explain why I made this in the public announcement. So far, many people have already entered their requests, more than I expected. It's a good sign.

📱 Apps & Services

1️⃣ DJay 5.0 was released, and I didn't expect that, right in the middle of my four-week DJing course! Lots of improvements and quality-of-life additions. There is a YouTube video tour of the new features. 2️⃣ I'm a big user and fan of Craft, but I always keep an eye on Capacities, a similar app closer to Notion than Craft in its philosophy. I don't have any use cases for it, but it's fun to watch it evolve. I do keep a free account, just in case. 3️⃣ I've been testing Play 2.0 to gather YouTube videos from my channel subscriptions. I find this app very useful, and I see myself spending less and less time on the YouTube website and more time on Play. Here is a review here. Since the release, there have already been three sub-releases to add features and tweaks.

👨‍👩‍👦‍👦 Personal

1️⃣ We're two weeks away from Christmas, and I'm not really into it now. I find this time of the year more stressful than anything else. It's probably the case for a silent majority of people anyway. The good thing is that I'll be on vacation for two weeks and ready to spend time with family members. I should probably be more free to spend time on my hobbies.

📺 YouTube

1️⃣ There is a running controversy surrounding Google's policy blocking ad blockers for non-subscribers on YouTube. I guess the logic goes like this: if you don't want to be a premium subscriber, fine, but then you must see those pesky ads; it is what it is. As a paying premium subscriber to YouTube, I don't have a clear opinion on Google's stance because I wouldn't say I like ads. I do use ad blockers. When visiting a website which will detect that I'm running ad blockers, if the website only warns me but lets me in, I'm fine; otherwise, I move on elsewhere. The website loses, and I probably lose, too. I think the web needs to strike a new balance in the future. We're not there yet. 2️⃣ I shared a new video this week about Craft: a public announcement for The Craft Feature Request Board. I got some positive feedback both on Micro.blog and Slack. I hope this video triggers some more thoughts from the team behind Craft. 3️⃣ I created a video tour guide of Play 2.0 and posted it on my YouTube channel, but Google immediately took it down for content policy violation. I made this video for nothing. You can find the video thumbnail in the exhibits section below. Too bad. More details here "Strike One".

🔮 Looking ahead

1️⃣ There are three weeks left to 2023. I know that my creative work for the year is coming to an end. I do have three articles mostly ready to share that will conclude my year of writing. They are a retrospective look at specific areas of my digital life. Stay tuned.

💎 Miscellaneous

1️⃣ I'm wondering what the future of the Apple Rumors Hub will be. It's a website about Apple rumors that I’m maintaining using Craft. It rarely gets visitors. I think I'll keep it for me, not for other people. I'll probably need to make a decision early next year.

I wish you a great week!

One more thing: do you know how much time it takes to write these weekly summaries? About three hours a week.

Exhibits 👀

Play 2.0 Adds YouTube Channel Support, Folders, and a New Premium Subscription

Marcos Tanaka’s Play has become the way I watch YouTube, which isn’t something I expected would happen as much as I’ve enjoyed the app since its launch early last year. The app, available on the iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple TV, started as a way to save YouTube links to watch later. That made Play

MacStoriesJohn Voorhees

This is edition #13 of my weekly creative summary. Lots of different things this week. I’m still loving putting these weekly summaries together. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do. 🙂

numericcitizen shared a post

The Kiki Queer Bar in Iceland. What a great place! #iceland #streetart

pixelfed

👨🏻‍💻 9 articles posted on my blog posts & 1 article shared on my main website 🙂
🏞️ 7 photos shared 🙂
🎙️ No podcast episode published 😔
📺 1 YouTube video published 😃

📖 Reading

1️⃣ I've saved several articles in my Omnivore queue but failed to read them during the week! I should spend more time reading on a regular basis.

🗺️ Discoveries

1️⃣ I'm learning to use the Serato Pro DJ app. As a user of Algoriddim DJay, I find Serato awful for my eyes. But the design consideration doesn't seem to be a thing in the DJ world. Maybe I'm wrong. 2️⃣ I'm also new to Google Classroom. The teacher in the DJing course uses this platform to share notes and tasks with other students. As for Serato Pro, Google Classroom is minimalistic and doesn't shine. I wish we had used Apple Classroom instead. Yet, both app reviews are awful. 3️⃣ If you like wallpapers for your iPhone, don’t miss the latest from Basic Apple Guy. If you want to see the internals of your shiny new iPhone 15 Pro Max, get it! It's free and shows the amount of work and details that goes into producing those wallpapers. Simply incredible.

👨🏻‍💻 Writing

1️⃣ I've been putting the final touches to the year in review for Craft. At the beginning of each year, I start a new document to write down changes to this note-taking app. Near the end of the year, I put up a summary and wrote my thoughts. The article should be published right after the last update, somewhere in the first half of December. It's been a strange streak of updates this year. More details soon. 2️⃣ I still have a hard time writing articles in a single stretch. I'm more iterative. I've been working on many articles during the year and rarely could write one from start to finish in a single day. I'm not sure this is a bad thing. For example, writing in a timely matter following an event is a big challenge for me.

🌄 Photography

1️⃣ The annual Unsplash photo awards are out; you can find gorgeous images on their website. This is my favourite image. 2️⃣ The Art of Photography YouTube channel published a video about a photo cataloging service called Mylio. What makes this service apart from the crowd is the fact that the service is based on a device-to-device network to synchronize images. There is no cloud backend. Think of it as a decentralized synchronization service. I wonder if this could be a replacement for my Adobe Cloud storage. I could probably download all my images on a master Mac and have it synced to my other devices. I'll keep an eye on that one. 3️⃣ I ordered a slide scanner from Kodak. I have a few hundred of them to scan. Stay tuned for a review of the device and the scan quality.

🎙️ Podcasting

1️⃣ I still wish I had enough time to sit down and prepare a new podcast episode, but it is what it is. When I started this podcast, I wanted to publish at least once a month. I'm barely able to achieve that. 😔 2️⃣ PocketCast, my go-to app for listening to podcasts, released the year-in-review summary within the app. It's something similar to what Apple releases each year with Apple Music. According to this summary, my podcast consumption increased greatly this year (2x), mainly due to consuming more electronic music and CoreIntuition podcasts.

🍎 Apple

1️⃣ Ubiquiti, the networking equipment maker, recently launched the Unified Express, a small router with bundled Wi-Fi. It reminds me of a small Apple TV but in white. Reviews are very positive, and tech pundits are enthusiastic about it. I wish Apple stayed in this market because there is a massive demand for well-designed and very focused products like this for the home and small business networking markets. Too bad. I used a Ubiquiti Dream Machine before being a satisfied Apple AirPort user. Read my experience of migrating to Ubiquiti.

🚧 Special projects

1️⃣ I had my first DJing course this week. Of all 11 students, there are as many girls as boys. I'm the oldest. I'm learning with Serato Pro. It's not the best-looking application on earth, but it seems good for what it needs to accomplish. I still prefer DJay, though. The teacher reminds me of myself and many others when he says he likes to buy new DJ gear, test it, and resell it. And the same goes for applications and utilities in the DJ world. I could say the same with apps and computers in my creative journey. Now I need to practice what I learned this week.

📱 Apps & Services

1️⃣ I came across a new service and app named “Cosmos". His goal is to be a Pinterest replacement. It's available on the iPhone and the web. It's not free, with a pretty steep monthly price (another subscription, you might say). 2️⃣ Photomator introduced complete HDR editing. I love Photomator, and it could become the Lightroom replacement if I ever quit the Adobe ecosystem. Editing HDR on the Mac or the iPad, provided the display supports HDR, is mandatory to experience the colours and the contrasts precisely like they’re coming from the iPhone (which supports HDR photos). Read the press release here. Oh, one last thing: Photomator was named Mac app of the year! 3️⃣ The YouTube videos management app, Play, released version 2.0, which adds the capability to subscribe to a YouTube channel. This makes Play 2.0 a serious content management tool. I started the 7-day subscription trial to see if I keep it. So far, I really like what I'm seeing. 4️⃣ I discovered a new app that I’ll be using for my YouTube recordings: Bezel. This Mac utility enables the display of the iPhone or iPad screen on the Mac. It's useful to record a video on the iPad to demonstrate something. I'll probably buy it. 5️⃣ I’ve been using Djay this week and found out somewhere that they are close to releasing version 5.0. I think this DJ app is an underdog and should be more popular than it is in the DJ world. I can't wait to see what they are coming with this next major release.

👨‍👩‍👦‍👦 Personal

1️⃣ I was sick 🤮 on Tuesday morning, and my life was miserable all day, but I could attend my DJing course. It took me a few days to fully recover from that bug. Gosh. 😵‍💫 This might explain why I couldn't do everything I had planned for the week. 😔

📺 YouTube

1️⃣ I came across a video about Omnivore by Matt Birchler. It's a little bit less than 10 minutes long. He steals my intention of doing a similar video. I've been wanting to do a 60-minute video with Omnivore. I could still do it, but I feel slightly less inclined now. If you are curious about this read-later service, watch the video! 2️⃣ YouTube is full of potentially interesting content. Sometimes, when I find a potentially exciting video, I don't have the time to listen to it. This week, I created a workflow to fix this problem, thanks to generative AI tools like ChatGPT. You can read more details in this blog post. It's well worth your time, I guarantee you. 3️⃣ I created and shared a video about how users on Micro.blog can be more efficient at consuming their Micro.blog timeline with simple tips and tricks. I never expected that many people would watch these videos because not many people are on Micro.blog, but I like to put them together.

🔮 Looking ahead

1️⃣ This week is my DJing session #2. After learning the basics and with some practice this week-end, I'm ready to learn the next things!

I wish you a great week!

Exhibits 👀

Welcome to Cosmos

A Pinterest alternative for creatives.

CosmosA Pinterest alternative for photographers creatives designers curators artists

Photomator introduces full HDR support with advanced features for editing HDR photos captured with iPhone - Pixelmator Blog

Unlock all-new creative workflows with full support for opening, editing, and sharing HDR images.

Pixelmator BlogPixelmator Team

Unsplash Awards

Celebrating the best of Unsplash

Unsplash

Mylio Photos | Best Free Photo Manager for a Lifetime of Memories

Find photos fast! Bring every photo and video together into a single library. Download free for Windows, Mac, iPhone, iPad, and Android.

Mylio

👨🏻‍💻 10 articles posted on my blog posts & 2 articles shared on my main website 🙂
🏞️ 8 photos shared 🙂
🎙️ No podcast episode published 😔
📺 1 YouTube video published 😃

📖 Reading

1️⃣ I spent some time reading about the OpenAI woes of the past few days. I felt it was essential to better understand the possible disruption of one of the most well-regarded companies in a very hot field: AI.

🗺️ Discoveries

1️⃣ I started using Clop, an image processing utility for the Mac that works in conjunction with Dropshare or separately. More details are below. 2️⃣ I started using Backblaze for storing files. More details are below. 3️⃣ I experimented with a somewhat unknown RSS reader called “Lire” because it recently introduced a feature to save articles into Omnivore.

👨🏻‍💻 Writing

1️⃣ A recent update to Micro.blog added support to import blog posts from Write.as. I tested the import feature on my test blog on Micro.blog, and it works great. I would need to clean up a few things here and there, but that’s expected. I've been writing on Write.as at about the same time the war in Ukraine started. I wanted a dedicated space for covering this historic event simply because I didn't want to bother my followers on Micro.blog about this delicate subject. Today, I wonder if this is a good strategy. Now that I know I can migrate my content, I added a task to reconsider my use of Write.as and see if I should consolidate. That's probably for early 2024. 2️⃣ While revisiting my content on Write.as, I decided to re-publish an article that I published early 2023 that explains the Write.freely ecosystem.

🌄 Photography

1️⃣ Since using Dall-E and Midjourney, my usage of Unsplash has greatly diminished. I used to go there to grab a new image that would illustrate a newsletter edition or an article subject. I'm better served with AI in that respect. But, more importantly, my work is unique in that I don't risk using an image already used by thousands of other creators. 2️⃣ Speaking of Unsplash Awards 2023 finalists are now publicly known. This is my favourite image, by far. 3️⃣ Here is a great conversation on Micro.blog about street photography, where photos depict people doing all sorts of things or in different social contexts. Is it okay to take a picture of people on the street? Should we ask permission at the risk of ruining the moment? What is okay and not okay? I'm not really into street photography, and when I'm taking photos with people in the frame, I try to be far from the subjects. I'm not at ease doing this, never. 4️⃣ In this article about Write.freely platform, I tried to use Dall-E to generate an image of a scene with a person typing on an old typewriter. After many iterations, I abandoned Dall-E and remembered that I had an image of an old typewriter without anyone using it, but it perfectly fit the article's purpose.

🍎 Apple

1️⃣ Don't miss this year's holiday ad. 2️⃣ It's a quiet time of the year for Apple. My attention is already directed to the first half of 2024 when the iPad should receive meaningful upgrades.

📱 Apps & Services

1️⃣ Craft v2.6.0 is out this week with more smart link types (four more added to the long list) and better support for shared document URLs. This release is also the first to be scrutinized to produce an analysis report only available to the subscribers of The Craft Bible on Gumroad. The experience of writing the analysis report in Craft and then exporting via copy & paste operations in Gumroad emails editor is not perfect. Still, it is far more accessible than I thought. 2️⃣ As with each release, there are some heated discussions on Slack, mainly about using Slack for community discussions instead of less ephemeral platforms like Circle, Canny or Discord. 3️⃣ I started looking into an image processing app called Retrobatch from the makers of the image editing app, Acorn. It's a pretty clever design and more powerful than Squash. Now, do I need this app in my creative workflow? How often do I need to batch-process images? 4️⃣ Dropshare will drop their cloud offering, based on which my file-sharing space is based. I reconsidered my Dropshare + Short.io and selected a different cloud storage solution, Backblaze, because I could also use it as a backup destination for my Synology NAS. The transition was easy, but I had issues with my connection configuration in Dropshare. All is good now. 5️⃣ While working to fix my Dropshare issue, I discovered Clop, a free image optimization utility for Mac. It's very powerful and drastically reduces image file size without affecting quality. It works by watching a folder for new image files. As soon as some are dropped in the folder, Clop starts its magic. I typically see screenshot files from 4 MB to a few hundred KB. Even with fast internet connections, having a lightweight website improves the user experience and Google's pagespeed metrics.

👨‍👩‍👦‍👦 Personal

1️⃣ This week, I thought about people following me on all my sharing spaces (Micro.blog, Mastodon, Bluesky, etc.) The vast majority of them are silent and never engage in conversation. A minority will engage by giving their feedback or asking questions about my creative work. I like this a lot, and I reply most of the time. I don't have many followers compared to other creators and the potential of the whole internet jungle. The scale of the potential is mind-blowing. Comparing to that potential is not the best way to look at it and see if I'm successful or not. Consider my subscribers on YouTube. As I write this, I’ve got 978 people who, at some point, tune in to my channel to watch a video. What if those people were physically in one room? That would be a big room, for sure. Transposing those numbers into the physical world helps me better appreciate that, even if I'm not a big star on the net, I do have many people who are there to read or watch what I'm doing. And I'm ok with this.

📺 YouTube

1️⃣ This week, while working on documenting my updated creative workflow, I thought it was a good time to create a YouTube video where I could share all the sites where I publish content. Now, it's done.

🔮 Looking ahead

1️⃣ I'm starting my DJing course this week, a first three-hour session, using Serato DJ Pro. I’m more acquainted with Algorithm Djay, which is relatively simple and much more beautiful than Serato. Per the instructors’ requests, I proceeded with the Serato Pro installation on my M2 MacBook Air to get ready for my course. I wasn't sure it would work, as Sonoma is still not officially supported by Serato. The installation took quite some time but was eventually completed successfully. My first run of Serato was met with deception. The default graphic resolution is not optimized for Retina displays. I went on Reddit to express my surprise about Serato Pro not being compiled for Apple Silicon, which I find a shame since these chips have been around for over three years. It didn't take long before some people started to patronize me. Reddit can be toxic. As for the display resolution, there is an option to enable high-res mode to fix the issue. More comments to come next week!

💎 Miscellaneous

1️⃣ I spent some time this week reworking and updating my creative workflow. I shared this announcement post about it on Micro.blog. You can find the details right here. I'm more and more satisfied with the foundations of my creative journey. I see less and less need to change major portions or components of it.

I wish you a great week!

Exhibits 👀

Clop - Image, video, PDF and clipboard optimiser

Image, video, PDF and clipboard optimiser. Copy large, paste small, send fast

Clop - Image, video, PDF and clipboard optimiser

Dropshare Apps - for macOS and iOS

Upload Screen Shots, Screen Recordings, Files, Folders, just anything with Dropshare.

Dropshare

Short.io — White label URL Shortener. Create your own short branded URLs

Short.io (formerly short.cm) makes short links (vanity urls) on your own domain. Free signup, analytics and API. Chrome, slack, zapier and segment integrations.

About us

My Complete Content Creator Toolset And Some More

The time has come for the return of a more open web. I’m embracing this movement by joining platforms or services built on open standards and promoting the open web as a byproduct.

Write.as is an instantiation version of the WriteFreely writing platform, available as an open-source project. Think of WriteFreely as the open-source version of WordPress. Anyone can get the source and install their own instance.

In May 2022, I took advantage of five-year special pricing to subscribe to the Write.as platform. Without knowing what my use case would be for it, I decided to support the platform, just like I’ve been supporting Micro.blog since 2018. After a while, I discovered the many facets of this writing ecosystem and found it to be a bit confusing. In this article, I cover all the parts of the open and dedicated blogging platform.

First, let’s see what ChatGPT says about Write.as (edited responses from ChatGPT):

Aaron Taylor is the founder & CEO of Cosmic.org and a team of remote employees who work on the Write.as and Remark.asplatforms. He is passionate about creating secure, anonymous spaces where people can express themselves without judgement or censorship. He has worked to create tools and features that make anonymous publishing easier and more secure for users. He is also the creator of the Remark.as platform, which gives users more control over how and when they share their thoughts.
Write.as is a small team project led by the founder & CEO, Aaron Taylor, at Cosmic.org. They are a remote team based all over the world, from Portland to Berlin to Mexico City.

Write.as is a platform designed to help people express themselves freely and anonymously. It allows everyone to post their thoughts without worry of judgment or censorship. All posts are public and open to comments; however, the posters’ identities can remain anonymous. The project offers a suite of applications and services to make anonymous publishing easier, more secure, and more secure for users. It also allows people to follow topics, publications, or users, engaging in thoughtful dialogue and idea exchange.

Remark.as is a project that is a part of the Write.as platform. It is designed to help users to have conversations with each other in an anonymous, secure, and censorship-free environment. Remark.as has features like tagging topics and publications, creating polls, and engaging in private forums. It also gives users more control over how and when they share their thoughts. Remark.asalso allows users to create polls, surveys, and other interactive features to encourage public participation.

All in all, Write.as and Remark.as are projects by Aaron Taylor and the team at Cosmic.org that provide users with an anonymous, censorship-free space in which to express themselves freely and engage with others. They are both designed to make anonymous publishing easier, more secure, and to give users more control over how and when they share their thoughts.

Write.as is a simple, privacy-focused writing platform. It allows users to create and publish anonymous blog posts, journal entries, and other types of writing without needing an account or personal information. The platform also includes a built-in editor and the ability to customize the appearance of your writing with different fonts and themes. Additionally, Write.as supports markdown formatting and has a feature called “focuses,” which allows users to group related posts together. The platform is designed for those who value privacy and simplicity.

More seriously, here’s a brief description of each component, starting with an overview.

An Overview of the WriteFreely Ecosystem

The following diagram shows all the parts making up the Write.as service, which is part of the WriteFreely ecosystem.

• The Write.as service is where all the writing experience happens. Since this article isn’t a review, suffice it to say the editor offers a minimalistic and distraction-free environment. Write.as supports adding tags to any blog posts. Cross-posting content in Write.as is available for other platforms like Tumblr, Ghost and Twitter. I connected my account to Ghost but rarely cross-post over there. It’s nice to have, though.
• The writer can attach photos at the end of each post by dragging them on the bottom bar. Photos attachments go to the “snap.as” minimalistic photo sharing add-on, tied to Write.as. All photo attachments are shown in one place, on snap.as. Photo galleries are available, albeit with a 10$ one-time purchase. Some features are marked as coming soon, but I suspect they are long in coming. I'm unsure if I would invest in this as I prefer dedicated services like Glass.
• Submit.as is another add-on to Write.as. As the name suggests, it is a way for an author to accept submissions from other writers. No registration is required from the submitter, helping a frictionless experience. This service is not cheap and comes with a 12$ per month minimal fee. It’s not cheap and I don’t know why. Again, integration with other platforms is marked as coming.
• Remark.as is yet another add-on closely tied to Write.as and offers to comment on any of the writer’s blog posts. Commenting is enabled on a per-post basis by adding a special <—discuss—> line anywhere within the post.
• Read.write.as is like a content feed coming from other writers. Content published on Write.as gets published on this feed. It comes from the hosted version of Write.as. According to this website, content is cross-posted to an RSS feed, Mastodon and Twitter, but I fear this has been abandoned as the content is somewhat old.
• The Mail add-on is where you’ll receive comments from other writers. Those comments are grouped in one place and are public.
• Café is a place for discussion, but I don’t know how posts get promoted there. Those discussions are conversations happening on the Read.write.as section.
• Other add-ons like a post signature are available for a one-time purchase of 10$ and eBooks export is also available for another one-time purchase of 10$.

Still with me? I know it’s not simple. Write.as certainly feels like a bunch of add-ons tied together.

• The Write.as experience is minimalistic and needs some polishing. I haven’t seen improvements since I’m subscribing to the platform. This annoys me.
• Overall, the Write.as ecosystem feels minimalistic and unfinished. I don’t expect many improvements to come to the platform. Yet, Matt, the founder of Write.as, is active on discuss.write.as discussion forum, so it’s a good sign.
• There’s a Mac app for the Write.freely ecosystem, which should support Write.as but it has been in beta for more than a year. iOS and iPadOS are also available. All apps are available here. I didn't test these, preferring the web experience.
• All these services are part of a suite called the Musing Studio. It’s more of a branding thing. The site hasn’t been updated for a while.

With this article, I hope I shed some light on this open-source project dedicated to writers and bloggers. Overall I like Write.as, even with some rough edges or unfinished integration. If I failed to explain something correctly, let me know in the comments!

Update #1: Some references to subscription fees for add-ons have been corrected to one-time purchases, as required. It was an error based on the documentation’s misinterpretation.

Update #2: This article was first posted on Write.as on January 20th, 2023.

numericcitizen shared a post

The sunset is near where I’m living. That one was great back a few years ago, during summer. Can you feel the heat? #sunset #colorfulsunset #clouds #iloveclouds

pixelfed

I could call this week: the week of AI experimentation with ChatGPT. I played a lot with ChatGPT, Dall-E during the week.

👨🏻‍💻 11 articles posted on my blog posts & 2 articles shared on my main website 🙂
🏞️ 12 photos shared 🙂
🎙️ No podcast episode published 😔
📺 2 YouTube videos published 😃

📖 Reading

1️⃣ “Some things don’t change and won’t change. Only the tools used to convey those lies change – from high priests and mass media to social networks and artificial intelligence.” — Om Malik 2️⃣ “ChatGPT is the most important consumer-facing product since the iPhone” — Ben Thompson

🗺️ Discoveries

1️⃣ I made my first GPT: Describe this photo. I use it to create the ALT description of a photo when posting on Pixelfed. It's super handy and generally 100x better and much faster than what I would do. Making a GPT is easy and requires a paid subscription to ChatGPT. 2️⃣ I'm also learning more about ChatGPT query formulation for text and image generation. 3️⃣ OpenAI CEO Sam Altman Is Out, apparently.

👨🏻‍💻 Writing

1️⃣ This weekly newsletter is another creative project similar to another monthly newsletter I published a while ago (The Numeric Citizen Introspection Newsletter — what a weird name!). The last issue (edition #24) can be found here and was published about a year ago. Looking at this weekly newsletter, I can see a few points in common with my previous project. I’m more confident in this weekly version because of its nature: writing about my creative journey instead of sharing my discoveries made during the month.

🌄 Photography

1️⃣ In the exhibit section below, you'll find one of my photos of a guy walking in a park by night. It's very dark, but lights along the walking path light up the scene. This image was uploaded to test Dall-E, an image generation engine from OpenAI, as input to my query, and Dall-E created a beautiful black-and-white illustration. I find the results impressive and beautiful. What's more amazing is that a machine or set of machines could produce such a result based on learning a massive amount of data. I mean, that's something that any capable artist would have created in days if not weeks. I'm still trying to wrap my head around what Dall-E (and Midjourney) can come up with. 2️⃣ Now, one question: is the resulting image still one of mine with copyrights? 🤔

🎙️ Podcasting

1️⃣ I’m often thinking of publicly, while on Micro.blog, to ask for volunteers for an interview for recording a podcast. I’m pretty sure I would be good at this. Interviews generally make great podcast episodes! Who's in? 🤔

🍎 Apple

1️⃣ Apple software is generally stable and without too many issues for me. But I would say that things are not so bug-free since this year’s releases (iPadOS 17, iOS 17, etc.). Like for the wine, there are good years and bad years. I wouldn't consider this year as a good one for Apple. A recent report by Bloomberg states that Apple, for a week, paused all new development so that the developers could focus on fixing bugs. What? This is not how software development at scale works. And this link post from 9to5Mac is good at stating the possible reasons. However, the article fails to mention the possible work related to adding the required change to enable third-party App Store support for next year. I think this isn't necessarily easy to tweak. 2️⃣ Similarly, fixing software requires much effort, especially for operating systems. Apple has a lot on its plate. A somewhat well-known developer started asking other developers to boycott one crucial tool that Apple depend on: The Feedback Assistant. Why this boycott? Because he thinks that Apple doesn't care enough to process them and pay attention to fixing bugs reported within the tool. If you use Feedback Assistant, consider reading this article. I remember using Feedback Assistant in two scenarios: when I was an indie iOS developer (2009-2013) and as a regular user testing their beta releases. I would say that I got replies from the engineer in many cases. My experience might be representative, though.

🚧 Special projects

1️⃣ Since releasing the subscription for The Craft Bible on Gumroad, I spent quite some time working on its content. I want this thing to expand because it fills a big void in the Craft community. People like to go to one place and find all related information curated by a Craft enthusiast and experienced user. I find this project to be exciting and gratifying. Eventually, the intensity of my contribution will stabilize when Craft gets to a certain level of maturity. But for now, there is much to be done for the Craft company or myself.

📱 Apps & Services

1️⃣ As you might know already, I've been testing Midjourney and Dall-E for a while now. I'm trying to figure out which of the two I prefer. Both are impressive, but their interaction mode with the end-user differs. I find Midjourney to be easier to grasp as a beginner. I feel in control of the outcome. Dall-E's simplicity makes it harder to master because everything happens in a written conversation. I'm getting started to write an article about this; I'm gathering all my thoughts and observations. At some point, I'll probably need to drop one of them because of money! 2️⃣ I encountered a severe bug in Craft the very same day I was about to record my YouTube video introducing the Craft Bible v2.0: all images weren't displaying on the website, affecting my subscribers! I couldn't record without using Craft, the app, to demo the website, which was awkward. I'm not sure if people who watched the video noticed this. I involved the Craft team to help me on this early morning, and I got a dedicated guy who helped me out... 3️⃣ Still no Craft update this week. The last one was on October 16th. It's been over a month. The team behind Craft might be working on something more significant to close the year. 4️⃣ Notion is out with another update: “Ask AI" to search through your Notion workspace. As you might expect from the feature name, you can search inside your workspace by asking questions and getting all the places where the content is available. Very interesting. This is something that I’d like to see coming to Craft, for sure. *️⃣ I often mention Raycast, a Mac utility for helping with a gazillion different things. They started an affiliate program for paying subscribers like me. If you subscribe using this link, you get one month free; I get one month free. It's a win-win deal! Get it!

👨‍👩‍👦‍👦 Personal

1️⃣ I got two vaccine shots this week: COVID and the flu. They hit me hard. 🤒

📺 YouTube

1️⃣ Early in the week, I produced the video announcing the release of The Craft Bible 2.0. It's a shorter than usual video, less than 10 minutes, and I'm okay with the end results. I felt the need to create this video to explain in more detail what's new with version 2 and how potential subscribers can subscribe. 2️⃣ It didn't take long before a user complained about subscription fatigue. In return, I asked if he would be willing to make a one-time purchase instead. I think I already know the answer. 🤔 3️⃣ I had enough time Saturday to create a second YouTube video about Craft and task management. A guy on Reddit found my approach to be a bit "trollish”. 🤔

🔮 Looking ahead

1️⃣ I’m really looking forward to my DJing course (four weeks) next week. It's a twelve-hour course. I’ve always been fascinated by music, and electronic music is the closest to what I'm willing to explore for music mixing. 2️⃣ A Craft update is planned for next week, and I’m looking forward to it. It's been more than a month since the previous release.

I wish you a great week!

Exhibits 👀

I want to share something with you, dear readers. I’m obsessed with numbers, statistics and dashboards. I have always paid attention to my website visitor analytics trends. One of the first things I did when my blog was hosted on WordPress was to create a Google Analytics account and link it to my website to measure its popularity or attraction. I remember constantly looking for iPhone apps that could connect to my Google Analytics account and display the numbers in a beautiful way. There weren’t a lot of apps, but I remember one called GAget, where the presentation was absolutely beautiful (this was eventually discontinued).

Today, many things have changed. I no longer use Google Analytics (here is why); instead, I use Plausible Analytics. However, one thing remains constant: every morning, I first check my Plausible analytics dashboard (which is public, by the way). While I don't mind not having a million visitors per day, I obsess over the trends, where visitors are coming from, what page they visit the most, etc. It's fun. That's why I'm subscribing to Plausible. The issue with this service is the absence of native iPhone apps. It would be great to have visually appealing dashboard graphics on my iPhone.

When Apple announced widgets for the iPhone, one of the things I wanted was to be able to display my Plausible analytics within a big widget on my Home Screen. The required components were a way to query Plausible’s APIs through an Apple Shortcut and display the data in the widget. For this, there is a super and powerful app: Charty for iPhone. All the pieces were there, but they lacked the glue between them.

This summer, I started looking into this. After some research, I saw the following challenges:

• How do I query the APIs from a Shortcut?
• How do I process the response from the API request?
• How do I pass that processed information to Charty to generate a beautiful graph?

Once the data is in Charty, the rest would be easy because Charty supports widgets where you select which graph to display as the widget’s data source.

Sending an API request through Shortcut is relatively simple but requires some googling to learn authentication methods with an API. The more challenging part is the processing of the query reply. Plausible APIs return JSON responses. That was my main roadblock. After much reading about processing dictionaries in Shortcut, I gave up because I couldn’t figure out how.

If you don’t know what a dictionary is in JSON terminology, let’s ask ChatGPT for an explanation: A dictionary in JSON format is a collection of key-value pairs enclosed in curly braces { }. It is a way to organize and represent data. Keys must be strings, and values can be strings, numbers, booleans, arrays, or nested dictionaries.

For example:

{
  "name": "Alice",
  "age": 30,
  "isStudent": false,
  "hobbies": ["reading", "painting"],
  "address": {
    "city": "New York",
    "country": "USA"
  }
}

In this example, "name", "age", "isStudent", "hobbies", and "address" are the keys. Their respective values are "Alice", 30, false, ["reading", "painting"], and another nested dictionary with "city" and "country" as keys and their corresponding values.

I was facing a programming challenge while working with Apple Shortcuts. Although I have experience in computer programming and successfully developed an iPhone app in Objective-C from 2009 to 2013, I struggled with Apple Shortcuts. The shortcut editor is difficult to use, and debugging is nearly impossible. I felt stuck and unable to make progress. Plus, processing nested dictionaries was also a big challenge. It wasn’t and still isn’t obvious to me.

In July, I came across a post on Micro.blog from Jarrod Blundy, who was enthusiastic about creating shortcuts. Jarrod is the author of the excellent HeyDingus website. I asked him if he would like to build a shortcut for me. He agreed immediately, and I gave him all the necessary details to start the project without specifying a deadline.

Jarrod returned to me in early November with several versions of the Shortcut. After downloading them from the provided iCloud links and upon the first execution, I was impressed and enthusiastic with the outcome. The shortcut not only retrieved the data from Plausible efficiently, but Charty also presented the results in a visually appealing line graph. I returned to Jarrod with my appreciative comments and sent him some money as a big thank you.

Two remaining things were needed to finalize the desired solution: setting up a widget on the iPhone and assigning the programmatically created graph as the widget’s data source.

Since receiving the shortcuts, not only have I examined the shortcut’s logic, but I have also made some tweaks to the graph formatting. This is where I discovered how powerful Charty is. The current version of Charty is 1.4 and hasn’t been updated in a while. I checked to see if there were any plans for a new version, and sure enough, it seems the developer is working in Charty 2.0, which would take advantage of new data charting capabilities in Swift, which were announced in WWDC 2022 if I remember correctly. I can’t wait to get my hands on this update.

I added my widgets to my iPhone and on my iPad, even on my Mac mini desktop, thanks to macOS Sonoma. It’s cool! The one last thing was to set an automation on my iPhone to execute the shortcut regularly. The daily stats widget gets updated every morning, and the weekly stats widget once a week, every Sunday. That was pretty easy. But there is another way: with Charty’s widget, you can set an action to execute if the widget is tapped. I could set it up to run the corresponding shortcut. Isn’t this cool enough?

Jarrod’s work on this small project is exemplary. The shortcut logic is straightforward; comments accompany each logical construct of the shortcut to describe what is being accomplished. And the shortcut works! If you have ideas for some projects like this one but are afraid of programming, get in touch with him, and you never know; he might be willing to accept the challenge. Ask him to share the Shortcut to get started if you are on Plausible, too.

I’m a happy camper. 🙂 Now, I should spend some time trying to understand JSON dictionary processing using Shortcuts 🤓

numericcitizen shared a post

Can you believe this church was abandoned? So great architectural masterpieces are being left behind because… money. #architecture #architecturephotography #church #abandoned #abandonedbuilding #abandonedplaces

pixelfed

With this week’s edition, you’ll find a new section called “Discoveries”. This week, I didn’t publish much and worked instead on a project involving The Craft Bible and Gumroad. All the details are below. It’s funny how the domains I’m working on change one week after the other.

👨🏻‍💻 7 articles posted on my blog posts & 2 articles shared on my main website 🙂
🏞️ 9 photos shared 🙂
🎙️ 0 podcast episodes published 😔
📺 1 YouTube video published 😃

📖 Reading

1️⃣ I’ve read a few articles about Hu.ma.ne and their new (and first) product. It's certainly fascinating. The tech world was eager to come out with all sorts of analysis and take on this first gen product. It would be easy to call them doomed or DOA because of the concept novelty. They have something really unique on their hands. I'm curious to see where it's going. Beyond that, I don't have a firm opinion yet. While reading these articles about the "experience” delivery of the AI pin, I thought about the concept of the App Store that we've been enjoying since the iPhone, and I feel the concept is becoming tiring. We are really at the end of the App Store line. Is Apple aware of it? 🤔

🗺️ Discoveries

1️⃣ For the first edition of this new section, I want to share my excitement for a great new app for the Mac: Keyboard Maestro. It replaces an app I used to automate some tasks on the Mac named Keysmith. It wasn’t updated in a long time and doesn't work well with macOS Sonoma. I had to find an alternative. This is where Keyboard Maestro comes into play. With other apps, Keyboard Maestro shines and helps me be more efficient and productive. I worked on many macros for use in conjunction with Craft, which in some areas lacks keyboard shortcuts. I made a video about this on my YouTube channel, see the link below.

👨🏻‍💻 Writing

1️⃣ Writing is a significant portion of my creative journey. Since the explosion of AI in our digital life, it was a matter of time before it made its appearance in one way or another in my creative journey. Because of that, it is now time to share my guiding principles for using AI-based tools and services. You can find them here

🌄 Photography

1️⃣ “John Morris, a professional photographer from Prince Edward Island, Canada, was trying to get a shot of Quebec City’s iconic Chateau Frontenac hotel on Tuesday when he was accosted by a guard from the nearby U.S. consulate.” - from a story reported by Petapixel. The story says the photographer was sitting near the U.S. consulate to shoot photos of the Chateau Frontenac in Old Quebec, Canada. He was waiting for the perfect composition with clouds in the sky. He was arrested for loitering. I bring up this story because I can see myself doing the same as he did: requesting why he should move since he was in a public place, doing nothing wrong. He will have to pay the fine but plans to challenge this in court. That's an abuse of power, plain and simple.

Photographer Waiting for Cloud Cover is Handcuffed and Fined for Loitering

He’s contesting the fine.

PetaPixelMatt Growcoot

🎙️ Podcasting

1️⃣ It's been a while since I published a podcast episode. I do have many ideas but I lack the required time to push one new episode out. I feel sad about this. 😔

🍎 Apple

1️⃣ Apparently, Apple is ready to let go of its walled garden in Europe by allowing third-party App Store on the iPhone. I bring this up here because it has profound implications for Apple users. I bet this will eventually come worldwide once it’s been available in Europe for a while. I guess Europe will be a test bed for Apple. 2️⃣ I'm still in awe with my MacBook Air and Mac mini, both using Apple Silicon. Apple has been on a roll in CPU development since 2020. They recently introduced the M3 iteration, which provides substantial performance gain, depending on which Mac you are upgrading. Please look at the exhibit section below for a complete chart of all versions of Apple Silicon chips.

🚧 Special projects

1️⃣ My Gumroad account was finally verified, making my digital products available for search and in the Discovery section (see the exhibits section below). I'm anxious to see if it will make a difference. Fingers crossed! 2️⃣ I've been working on my next project: making The Craft Bible available as a paid subscription. My reasoning is simple: I put so much effort into maintaining this website; I think it offers genuine added value to the Craft users community, and asking for a small compensation feels reasonable. The new subscription is available here on Gumroad. 3️⃣ Earlier this year, I had the idea of building a widget for the iPhone with Charty (link) to display my website visitors’ analytics provided with Plausible (link). I started doing some exploratory work only to realize this was a much more complex project than I initially thought. I eventually encountered a guy on Micro.blog who shared his desire to build Apple's Shortcuts. I got in touch with him, and a few months later, I got my first version of the Shortcut, fully functional and doing precisely what I wanted. I sent him some money for his support. Charty is a fantastic app. It's been a while since the last release, but according to the developer, he is working on a new version, 2.0. I can't wait!

📱 Apps & Services

1️⃣ I spend quite some quality time experimenting with Keyboard Maestro. My first use case is automating some portions of my weekly newsletter process. My second is automating portions of Craft interactions. In the latter case, this automation helps circumvent Craft's limited use of keyboard shortcuts. It's fun to be a power user! 2️⃣ I was expecting an update to Craft this week, but it didn't come. Next week, maybe. Meanwhile, I decided to reduce my implication in Slack channels regarding Craft. I'll spend my precious time on other things than playing a fake community manager. Sorry for venting some frustration here. 3️⃣ I'm still pondering if I should subscribe to ChatGPT and leave behind Midjourney. The problem is that Raycast offers GPT-4 for an additional 8$ a month, but it won't recognize my ChatGPT subscription. I would end up paying twice for the same.

👨‍👩‍👦‍👦 Personal

1️⃣ Did you know that I’m celebrating thirty years in information technology? Probably not. It all began in 1993 as a professional IT technician. I started writing an article on this personal milestone. More to come soon. Time flies and I think I still have another decade in front of me. After, I'll be done.

📺 YouTube

1️⃣ Fun fact: did you know that before being on YouTube to share my videos about Craft or Micro.blog? I tried Vimeo, but It wasn't very successful. I prefer the Vimeo publishing experience, but compared to YouTube, it felt like a ghost town. 2️⃣ I made a new video about using Keyboard Maestro with Craft for my YouTube channel. It has been a long time since my last video. I was a bit in a hurry and lacked the usual preparation time. I'm not super happy with the video quality from an execution perspective.

🔮 Looking ahead

1️⃣ I’ve been investing more and more of my time into ChatGPT derivative tools recently. My interest in these next-generation services is increasing significantly. I'm a light user of ChatGPT, but I'm blown away each time I use it. I'm considering augmenting my use of these tools in my creative journey. Because of this, I think it is also time to reflect on the values underlying my creative work. This is why I want to continue working on my "My Personal Guiding Principles for AI Tools and Services Use”. 2️⃣ I'm also considering increasing my subscription and accessing the more performant model, GPT-4. I'm thinking about the best tool to use for this. Raycast is probably the one I'll go ahead with.

I wish you a great week!

Exhibits 👀

In today’s world, do we refrain from using a spell checker in a word processor? No. Do we hesitate to use built-in filters in a photo-processing app like Lightroom or Photomator? I would argue that we rarely do. Do we mind using the automatic outline generator feature of a word processor? Nope. What about using PowerPoint templates where most of the presentation’s content is automatically formatted using many visual attributes? Because AI offers powerful accelerators for our digital work and because of its power, for me, it seems that some guiding rules are in order to frame my AI usage. I expect they will evolve over time. By sharing them publicly, I implicitly reveal that I occasionally use AI for my creative work.

1. Never directly use AI responses in a document unless quoted and marked as coming from AI.
   As AI is seen as a complementary tool, query results must be reworked, contextualized and used to create new content.
2. Always add a disclaimer when AI is used and divulge which tools were used.
   Something like: Source: ChatGPT via Raycast.
3. Use AI as a complementary tool to accomplish something not at the center of a specific project.
   AI should be considered like another tool in a more extensive toolset, like a Word Processor or a To-do manager. I must not forget about the creative goal and desired end product.
4. Consider each AI query as non-private; never use private information in queries.
   Some AI clients could potentially gather data to help feed future training processes. It’s not a good idea to send queries with personal or sensitive data in them. Anonymize everything if such a thing makes sense when formulating queries.
5. Never trust AI responses, stay critical and do spot checks.
   One of the biggest mistakes when using AI is considering responses as the truth. It would be a recipe for a disaster from a credibility perspective. Trust but check applies here.
6. Use AI on well-documented and established domains or bodies of knowledge.
   Current AI models are trained on knowledge until the fall of 2021. Knowledge credibility takes time and generally comes with more credibility.
7. Use AI only on topics where I wouldn't mind talking about them in public.
   I am not interested in trying controversial requests against ChatGPT or Midjourney.
8. Use AI only if meaningful added value is expected.
   Using AI for the sake of using AI doesn’t bring value. It needs to help add value to the creative process.
9. Use AI on non-controversial subjects.
   AI is about using knowledge, and in scientific communities, consensus is the basis for knowledge validation. Let the dust settle on controversies before making use of still-questionable knowledge.
10. Use AI to create something I don’t have enough abilities to produce similar results myself.
    I am using AI as a complement to my current abilities. Life is short; I cannot learn everything. I need help sometimes.
11. When using AI for content summarization, If the content is determined of high value, it must be read in full.
    When trying shortcuts like summarization, don’t forget the value of doing the real thing.
12. Keeping the human touch must be a top priority when using AI.
    Using too much AI-created content can render the content too generic.
13. Use AI as a last resort.
    It’s too easy to rely on AI all the time. Remember that AI is not an end by itself, it’s a complementary tool, and I already had great human abilities before AI came to be.

These rules are now officially part of my creative ethos. Do you have any?

Finally, AI is used within my creative workflows through these front-end conduits:

• ChatGPT website
• Raycast AI Chat
• MidJourney
• Whisper
• Micro.blog podcast transcription
• Audio Hijack Transcription block
• Kagi Summarize Results, Summary Document, Ask Questions
• Craft Assistant
• Grammarly

You can find this page on Numeric Citizen I/O.

Numeric Citizen I/O — A Blog About Blogging

numericcitizen shared a post

Somewhere in Colorado

pixelfed

Last week I was too busy at work to be creative at home. I’m back from this business trip, so my creative activities have resumed. In this edition, something new from Apple, lots of new apps and services news, and some news about my Craft template sales.

🗞️ 22 articles posted on my blog posts & 2 articles shared on my main website 👨🏻‍💻
🏞️ 22 photos shared 😃
🎙️ No podcast episode published 😔
📺 No YouTube videos published ☹️

📖 Reading

1️⃣ I did some reading of saved articles in Omnivore. Since I’ve been using Omnivore, my reading time increased a bit. I'm more intentional about reading. I don't know exactly why because before Omnivore, I was using Matter and before, I used Pocket. Something about Omnivore might make me want to return to it and read, which is a good thing. 2️⃣ I'm not the only one who creates weekly summaries like this one. I recently started paying attention to this one from Maique. It's quite different than mine. It is more family matters oriented with touches of professional life tidbits. I like it.

👨🏻‍💻 Writing

1️⃣ I published a long list of Mac utilities that I find hyper-useful and depend on all the time. That article was quite easy to put together, for once. It gained some traction among my readers. Some people told me they discovered a few apps. I’m grateful for that. 2️⃣ My monthly posting summary on my blog went out to subscribers on November 1. It's always surprising how much writing I can achieve in a month. Don't miss the next issue, if you prefer emails, read my posts right here.

🌄 Photography

1️⃣ Unsplash introduced a new and revamped homepage. All the announcement details can be found here. It's subtle, but it’s interesting. The homepage should adjust according to the user usage (frequent users, occasional, etc.). One notable change is the removal of the photo of the day. One quick note: my use of Unsplash with my content could potentially decrease since I started using Midjourney to generate the article's header images. It is fun and more creative than picking an image from a random photographer. 2️⃣ I received a reminder to renew my subscription to Exposure, a photo-sharing service. Exposure is quite expensive at 319 CAN$ per year. In the last twelve months, I created and shared six visual stories. I got three subscribers. And I only got a few likes for my stories. It's not worth my time. With my current migration to Pixelfed, I can no longer justify my subscription to Exposure. So, I cancelled my subscription. The sad part is that Exposure doesn't offer an export feature. The next subscription to be cancelled is SmugMug next year. As I wrote in the past, in 2024, Pixelfed will be my only place online for sharing my photos. 3️⃣ As I'm migrating my photos to Pixelfed, I wonder what it would take to run my own Pixelfed instance. Setting up my instance wouldn't create an isolated silo because Pixelfed is based on Fediverse. I would expect to have my instanced federate across other instances. It could be a project for next year; who knows? I would need to consider how to migrate my photos from one instance to another.

🍎 Apple

1️⃣ Scary Fast event took place on Monday, late at night, a first, to my knowledge. As I wrote, I wasn't too excited about it the days before. The event lasted 30 minutes. It's probably the shortest Apple Event of all time. Apple set a spooky look to the production, which was more or less convincing. The focus was the Mac, as the invite animation hinted at it. The third-generation Apple Silicon was introduced. Welcome to the M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max variations. The first Macs to take advantage of them are the MacBook Pro and the iMac. The latter was a bit of a surprise, but it was long overdue for a processor upgrade. I'm still impressed by Apple’s execution in the micro-processors field. The pace of iterations is steady, and the M3 seems a hyper-powerful chip. Kudos to them. I just got an M2 MacBook Air and don't plan to upgrade anytime soon. The space black colour is gorgeous.

🚧 Special projects

1️⃣ Started working on a third Craft template for sale on Gumroad. This one was a biggy: the 2024 Calendar! My Gumroad account is still in the queue for official review. Until then, the exposure I get is minimal. I did sell a few of my templates without much exposure, except for my promotional posts on Slack and Mastodon. When publishing this weekly summary, I sold three times the calendar template! Not bad. 😀

📱 Apps & Services

1️⃣ I had a twenty-minute feedback interview with Rewind's community manager. We went through some of the concerns exposed in my written review. She seemed happy to have me for a few moments. 2️⃣ Pixelfed's third-party client, Vernissage, was updated to version 2.0. What I find strange is how fast this app is being updated while we wait for version 1.0 of the official Pixelfed app. This app has been in beta forever. 3️⃣ Flipboard was a novel idea back then, and I wanted to take advantage of it and share my content on the platform. But nobody is noticing. I’m not going to do anything with this. 4️⃣ Don't miss this list of Mac apps I like. 5️⃣ I recently started testing Kagi, a paid search engine. I'm still exploring while using my free search requests. I like what I'm seeing. More comments in the future. 6️⃣ Glass updated its app to add more widgets and support for Stand By mode and macOS Sonoma widgets. I like it when apps get updated to support the latest technologies. 7️⃣ Ghost launched (in beta) a new recommendation feature, and I’m ready to see how it will move the needle for me. I don't expect much, but I like this idea of showing my recommendations for other websites I like when people subscribe to my blog. 8️⃣ Audio Hijack 4.3.0 came out with the support of audio transcription, thanks to AI (again)! I can see myself using it while recording a podcast! Phew, that was a busy week. 9️⃣ If you want an automation app on the Mac, don't buy Keysmith. I explain the reasons right here. An automation app lets you record repetitive steps to create a macro or process you invoke using a key combination. I decided to try Keyboard Maestro, and I'm super excited. It works great and is not subject to a software subscription but a one-time purchase.

👨‍👩‍👦‍👦 Personal

1️⃣ My business trip to Las Vegas was intense and prevented me from doing meaningful creative activities. As expected, stepping back from my creative hobby and taking a distant look at what I was doing was okay. I came back exhausted but also willing to return to my usual activities. 2️⃣ I started thinking about my career in IT this week because I've been in this field for three decades! I learned so many things (I still do) and underwent many changes and technological waves. I must start to write about this journey. There are so many things to talk about.

📺 YouTube

1️⃣ It's been a while since I posted a new video on YouTube. The lack of meaningful new features in Craft is probably one of the reasons. While people like Matt Birchler expand their subscriber base, mine is stagnant. I still get some new subscribers, though.

🔮 Looking ahead

1️⃣ I want to produce a new YouTube video or a Podcast episode in the coming weeks. With my current exploration with Keyboard Maestro, I might have found my next YouTube video idea: automating Craft using Keyboard Maestro. Stay tuned.

💎 Miscellaneous

1️⃣ I started gathering AI use cases in my day-to-day creative life. On what occasion do I go to ChapGPT to ask something? About what? How often? It's an exciting and valuable introspection. I'm already at half a dozen use cases. Stay tuned for all the details about each. 2️⃣ I'm considering subscribing to a paid version of ChatGPT. Many apps would benefit from this because they require an API token from ChatGPT to enable AI-related tasks. 3️⃣ Speaking of AI, I read Om Malik's article where he refers to Augmented Intelligence instead of Artificial Intelligence this week. I prefer this appellation. The idea is to convey the idea that AI augments human capabilities instead of replacing them with a pale copy of their capabilities. 4️⃣ Without really knowing it, I'm part of the POSSE movement: write and publish on one open platform and cross-post to other open platforms. If I get replies on those platforms, I try to respond to them, like on Bluesky. All ActivityPub platforms get a reply from Micro.blog, the closest to the content's origin.

I wish you a great week!

Exhibits 👀

Apple-Morphing-into-Mac-loop.mp4

Apple-Morphing-into-Mac-loop.mp4

I read this linkpost from Gruber about the beauty of finished software. Gruber was linking to this piece. As a passionate user of software, this article triggered a few thoughts.

I wonder if the idea of a finished software is even possible in today’s world. It’s a fascinating subject.

Consider how modern software and services are built using continuous integration and continuous delivery pipelines (CI/CD) in an agile development organization. The whole concept of CI/CD was partially put together to deliver bug fixes and new features faster, in an iterative matter. Continuously updated software is systematized under the umbrella of DevOps.

What is CI/CD in Software Development?

CI/CD (Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery) is a software development practice that enables developers to integrate code changes into a code repository, build the code, test it, and deploy it quickly and reliably. It is a key part of DevOps, a set of practices that combines software development and operations to improve the speed and quality of software delivery. CI/CD helps to automate the process of software development and delivery, allowing teams to deploy faster and more frequently.

When Apple releases a new version of macOS, new features are available to the end-users and new APIs to the developers. Because of this relentless effort by Apple to move the software needle and support new hardware features, third-party software has to evolve, too. In this dynamic landscape, apps or software are never done. And I’m okay with it as long as we don’t take too many steps backwards with each release. I hate using an app that fails to embrace recently introduced operating system-level features, like Shortcuts or something even more basic like Share Sheets. I’m looking at you, Craft 👀.

We could try to elaborate a list of reasons for software updates:

• Add, update or remove functionality;
• Update the application’s internal third-party libraries and dependencies;
• Adopt a new operating system feature (Apple Pay, Metal, Passcode);
• Support a new hardware feature or a new device (Halide for iPhone 15);
• Adopt new UI paradigms (iOS 7);
• Update application non-executable assets (correct translations);
• Adopt new platforms within an ecosystem (Catalyst);
• Fix a security issue;
• Conform to external rules and legislations (App Store’s new rule, GDPR, etc.);
• Conform to a legal issue (cease to desist order, etc.);
• Adopt a new or updated back-end service in the cloud;
• Enable connection to a new app in the same app ecosystem (Photomator + Pixelmator);
• For some optimization (app size, CPU consumption, memory consumption, network bandwidth, etc.);

As you can see, updates are mandatory in today’s complex and dynamic world. Otherwise, there might be something wrong with the developer.

When looking to add an app for any of my workflows, One of the first things I’ll consider is the history of updates. Unless it’s a straightforward and highly focused app, an app without recent updates is a red flag for me.

Oh, and one last note: did you know that Microsoft Word turned 40? Yet, it is still being updated after all these years. I find it funny bringing Microsoft Word here, as the original article referred to WordStar 4.0 as a good example of finished software.

As tools, software can’t always be compared to a hammer or a screwdriver. Software stands in a unique category of tools made by humans for humans, but a tool mostly in constant mutation.

The following list of Mac-only utilities is at the censor of everything I do on the Mac. They are essentials. I couldn’t live without them. Maybe not. But they are super useful. In no particular order, let’s dive into the list.

1. Raycast — A powerful utility assistant full of possibilities, thanks to its ever-expanding plugin collection. Everything is accessible from a Spotlight-line command line.
2. CleanShot X — Push screenshot capabilities to new levels. Don’t settle for the built-in screenshot feature of macOS because CleanShot X offers so much more.
3. NextDNS — Stay secure and block those trackers while surfing the web. Don't forget these two honourable mentions if security and privacy are something you cherish: 1Blocker and StopTheMadness Safari extensions.
4. Little Snitch Mini — You’re never protected enough. This little firewall will tell you what’s going on on your Mac and enable blocking some traffic you don’t like going out.
5. NetNewsWire + RSS Button for Safari — RSS feeds aren’t dead, far from it. This free and venerable RSS reader is very capable and macOS native. Combined with RSS Button Safari, you’ll be all set to search for new RSS feeds while browsing the web and being well-equipped to read RSS feed content.
6. Downie — Download any video files from the internet, including from YouTube!
7. Permute — The ultimate media converter for macOS.
8. Tot — Jot down some notes from the menu bar when needed.
9. Hazel — Don't be crazy with automation. This file management utility covers a lot of use cases. Simple to master.
10. Bartender 5 — Supercharge the menu bar with this powerful utility to help you organize and tweak menubar items.
11. PopClip — Text utilities right at the cursor reach. Extensible via free plugins. I can't live without it.
12. Default Folder X — Quick access to your files and folders while saving or opening documents, no need to go to the Finder. This one is a venerable utility, available since the early days of Mac OS.
13. HazeOver — Add more visual focus to your work with this visual tweak to any Mac app.
14. Mapper — Divert any Google Maps links to Apple Maps for believers and Apple fanboys only!
15. SF Symbols — Go Beyond basic emojis, go for Apple’s Symbols.
16. Stats — Take a peak at your Mac performance from the menu bar for free!
17. Vinegar — Clean up YouTube and bring it closer to the Mac visual style!
18. Unclutter — Keep frequently used information tidbits at your fingertips, including notes, clipboard history and files. Just scroll down from the top of the screen and, voilà! Can also be replaced by those two utility (it’s a matter of preference):
    – Paste for Clipboard history + Text snippets. Paste offers a richer clipboard management feature, though.– Default Folder X for easy access to files.
19. Latest — keep all of your installed apps up to date with this free and open-source utility. No need to buy MacUpdater.
20. CheatSheet — Get a global view of all keyboard shortcuts for any app displayed on one big panel!
21. Unsplash Wallpaper — Get an infinite stream of beautiful wallpapers for your Mac desktop!

I run more utilities than those listed here, but those utilities are really helping me be more efficient and productive. Don’t miss my documented content creator toolset page.

My Complete Content Creator Toolset And Some More

These apps and utilities are part of my many micro-workflows, as documented here.

My Micro-Workflows Explained

numericcitizen shared a post

This room was empty and usually was used for concerts of classic music. I feel lucky that I was able to come across this place when’re there was nobody. #blackandwhite #blackandwhitephotography

pixelfed

Another busy and creative week for me! Enjoy this detailed summary of all the things I did. Next week I’ll be out of the country for a business trip. I don’t think I’ll be able to create next week’s edition. Enjoy this one, meanwhile.

👨🏻‍💻 16 articles posted on my blog posts & 1 article shared on my main website
🏞️ 17 photos shared
🎙️ 1 podcast episode published
📺 0 YouTube videos published

📖 Reading

1️⃣ I discovered this blog from the co-founder of Rewind, Paul Stamatiou. I'm sharing this here and now because it's a prime example of creative expression. His recent post describes an application, Stocketa, that he designed and programmed but never shipped for different reasons. Software development is a prime example of craftsmanship and creativity expression. It's just too bad! These subjects are the focus of this weekly newsletter. Moreover, this blog inspires great web design, creativity and focus. You should visit this website and look at the photos section. There are many gorgeous photos in there. This guy is doing awe-inspiring work.

👨🏻‍💻 Writing

1️⃣ After four weeks of work and gestation, my iPhone 15 Pro Max review is finally out. If you are curious or thinking of replacing your aging iPhone, you can read it right here! It's my third review of a new iPhone. Looking back, I conclude that none of them are alike. I like how my latest review came out. It uses a different style than the others. The iPhone 15 Pro Max was undoubtedly a great device to write about.

From iPhone 7 to iPhone 11 Pro: The Return of Delights

This year, Apple brings back delights to the iPhone in so many ways. Here is my iPhone 11 Pro review from a photography enthusiast perspective.

Numeric Citizen SpaceJF Martin

Upgrading From the iPhone 11 Pro to iPhone 13 Pro — the Love Story Continues

After skipping the iPhone 12 last year, this year I made the jump from the iPhone 11 Pro and upgraded to the iPhone 13 Pro. A few observations.

Numeric Citizen SpaceJF Martin

Upgrading from the iPhone 13 Pro to the iPhone 15 Pro Max — Bigger, Faster, Even More Possibilities

The iPhone 15 Pro Max is not a revolution but a meaningful step forward—a simple and lucid review from a previous owner of an iPhone 13 Pro.

Numeric Citizen SpaceJF Martin

🌄 Photography

1️⃣ One of my SSDs where Adobe Lightroom images are being synced to and saved was getting full. I needed to revisit my photo management workflow. Older images I don't expect to process leave the SSD and are moved elsewhere on my Synology NAS. 2️⃣ This is precisely what I did by moving about 150 GB of photos to my NAS. Later, I created a backup task to back up the photos to the cloud on Synology C2. I feel better now. 3️⃣ While working on my digital garden, I started thinking about my goals for the next year, and I decided to spend more time doing photography. You can see the goals in my About Page, in the “Five goals for 2023 and beyond” section. 4️⃣ I posted more photos on Pixelfed this week. One of them stood out quite nicely (see the header image of this article).

🎙️ Podcasting

1️⃣ This week, I'm back with a new short podcast episode. After fixing my audio recording issues, I'm talking about deciding against doing some new creative projects. Don't miss the episode! The sound quality is, I think, one of the best I came up with, thanks to a combination of my old Blue Yeti microphone, Audio Hijack audio processing workflow and Adobe Podcast Voice Enhancer. I'll stop complaining about this and be happy to move on to more positive notes! 2️⃣ A recent episode (#572) of the Core Intuition podcast talks about the introduction of Fediverse support by WordPress.com. It's an exciting development that validates one of the foundations of a more open web. Even if you can follow a WordPress blog using RSS, having the possibility to interact with such a blog using a Micro.blog account is a fantastic possibility for bloggers.

🍎 Apple

1️⃣ After deciding to cut down on creative projects and focus on the most important things, I shared my thoughts in a podcast episode. But I also made some significant changes to the Apple Rumors Hub, which will continue to live for now. I decided to scale it down to a consolidated summary of Apple rumors. Gone are the long lists of links to past rumors. I won't do the Apple Vision Pro Hub either. This year was about focusing, and those decisions align with that goal. 2️⃣ No new iPad was announced this week while rumors pointed to the contrary, but we got a cheaper Apple Pencil. Yet, look at the exhibit section below to see why buying an iPad is complicated. And Apple is rumored to be working on a bigger iPad Air... and a foldable one, too! How many iPad models can the world get? You tell me. Now, we have three Apple Pencil models.

🚧 Special projects

1️⃣ I'm still waiting for Gumroad to verify my account so that my digital product (two Craft templates) can be made discoverable in the Discovery section. This should help boost my sales. It could take another week or two. 2️⃣ I'm thinking about another Craft template I'll sell on Gumroad. One thing to consider is adding meta content to a template so it becomes more valuable to the buyers, like a methodology description supporting the use of the template. 3️⃣ While working on my next template for Gumroad, a personal landing page, I started to think that I should merge the content of my personal landing page with my digital garden, a long-running experiment. This is another way to reduce my digital footprint and focus on the essentials. More details here. Speaking of digital gardens, I'm not alone in those who want to cope with their maintenance. 4️⃣ It's funny that all that Gumroad thing wasn't even planned or on my radar just a few weeks ago.

📱 Apps & Services

1️⃣ A new Craft release came out, version 2.5.18. Nothing too fancy came with this version, nothing changing what type of content I can create in Craft. This has been the case for quite a while. Someone made this remark when talking about this release: it's been quite a while since Craft made a change significant enough to enable new types of content to be created. I must agree with this statement. It's a bit sad. 2️⃣ I'm considering buying iA Writer for the Mac. It's not cheap, but it's not a subscription, either. iAWriter Version 6 supports Ghost and Micro.blog. I’m already using Ulysses; why should I look elsewhere? Am I in need of new sensations? I should focus on what already works. I'm moving on.

👨‍👩‍👦‍👦 Personal

1️⃣ Not a good week to be a Craft power-user. I’ve been heavily dependent on apps like Craft for my creative journey. I’ve found my niche where I can act as a subject expert. I've produced nearly 60 videos on YouTube, most of which are about Craft. I spend quite some time in online communities about Craft, on Slack and Circle. I recently started to get some pushback with my presence on the Craft community on Slack. The most perplexing one was from one of the engineers at Craft. He or a few team members don't like some of my critical views that I share on Slack and my YouTube channels.

📺 YouTube

1️⃣ Following the release of a new Craft version, I often create a new video to talk about the new features. It's been quite a long time since I made one, simply because there is nothing worth discussing in recent releases. For version 2.5.18, I decided to skip again and wait for the next update. 2️⃣ I created a quick poll on my YouTube channel asking where users spend most of their time in a Craft users community among Reddit, Circle, and Slack.

🔮 Looking ahead

1️⃣ I'll be out of the country for an IT conference in Las Vegas for my job this coming week (2023-43). I expect to be quite busy and won't have much time for my creative hobby. I might manage to post a few things here and there, but I'm not making any promises. And you know what? It's ok. Taking a break and stepping back from all this will be beneficial for inspiration.

💎 Miscellaneous

1️⃣ I removed my publishing timeline from my Digital Garden and rebuilt it in Things 3, the world's best to-do management app. This way, I'll have fewer places to update when managing my to-do. I would argue that Craft is not the best place to manage a list of tasks besides basic ones. I briefly experimented in Notion to build a Kanban board to manage my publishing pipeline but decided against going in that direction. Focus, focus, focus on fewer tools but the best one for the right task. 2️⃣ I made some other changes to my Digital Garden, too, as explained here, in more detail.

I wish you a great week!

Exhibits 👀

Here’s another iPhone 15 review, an iPhone 15 Pro Max review, to be more specific. I should rather say: a commentary article about the iPhone 15 Pro Max from an ex-owner of the iPhone 13 Pro. Plus, as a bonus, a surprising revelation about using ProRAW. Let’s start.

I’m coming from an iPhone 13 Pro. This is my baseline. Most reviews compare this year’s iPhone with last year’s models. This is not what the review is all about. While many people upgrade their phones every year, I suspect that a majority aren’t doing that. These people are the perfect target for this article. My intention with this review is not to provide a detailed review of image capabilities. I’m not good at this; others are much better than me. This review aims to provide the best description of the newfound photo opportunities that this new iPhone gives me and the most discerning differences.

Why upgrade?

My iPhone 13 Pro screen was lightly scratched in three different places. The battery health was at 86%, barely holding a charge after half a day of work. I wanted to get a bigger phone. Thanks to a softer contour design, I was looking to the camera’s improvements and a better in-hand experience. None of these reasons, taken individually, justified upgrading, but taken together, it was a good decision. And I have no regrets. I enjoy the bigger screen, which shows a little more information. Battery life is enough to last comfortably all day with the Always On display enabled. The screen quality is gorgeous; it is the best camera viewfinder you can buy. And finally, the cameras produce solid results when used in the right conditions, like any camera. Finally, regarding the device speed, the iPhone 13 Pro always felt like a fast device, but we always like to get faster, especially if it enables new photographic possibilities.

The iPhone is clearly on a multi-decade trajectory toward becoming a thin, featureless slab of glass. — Jason Snell

Compared to the iPhone 13 Pro — what are the most notable (and less notable) improvements?

We rarely see comments or review pointing to improvements from older generations devices. I wish there was more of that. In that spirit, I try to fill this void here. Upgrading from the iPhone 13 Pro brings this list of changes by order of importance of significance (many items on the list are confirmed by this 9to5Mac article):

• 48 Megapixels main camera, which brings better image resolution and a 2x zoom;
• A17 Pro is a powerful CPU (link);
• The improved photographic engine make the iPhone 15 Pro Max a worthy upgrade;
• Better FaceTime front camera;
• The system RAM going is going from 6GB GB to 8 GB;
• Dynamic Island is a novel addition;
• The screen is brighter screen outside, best screen overall on the market (link, link);
• The iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max are 19 grams lighter than their predecessors;
• Up to 38% faster 5G speeds (link, link, link);
• USB-C connector with support for USB 3 standard (20x faster than before at 10Gbps);
• Bluetooth 5.3 (Link);
• Better GPS accuracy (link);
• Support Wi-Fi 6E;
• The iPhone can connect to an external display without any dongle, just with the right capable (UBC-C to USB-C). It works great as one would expect;
• Better speaker quality (louder) and better microphone quality, too.

Am I missing something? Probably. Here’s a nice summary put together by Matt Birchler in his review:

• Zoom levels 1-1.9x are 24MP
• Zoom levels 2-2.9x are 12MP
• 1x portraits are 24MP
• 2x and 3x portraits are 12MP
• Night mode photos are 12 MP
• Panoramas as 12MP
• HEIF Max are 48MP
• ProRAW are your choice, 12MP or 48MP

To complement his summary, here is one of mine.

“Due to the scale and breadth of these improvements, most ‌iPhone 13‌ Pro will be able to justify upgrading to the ‌iPhone 15 Pro‌, especially if they value the new design, USB-C port, Action button, and camera improvements.” — Hartley Charlton

Here is a Q&A following my experience with the iPhone 15 Pro Max

1. Is it noticeably faster? Absolutely.
2. What are my thoughts about Dynamic Island? Are my favourite apps taking advantage of it? Yes, it’s a genuinely joyful and useful addition to the base iPhone experience.
3. This is my first time with the Max, how is it like using it with one hand? At first, yes, it felt big, but after a few days, I wouldn’t go back. I recently looked at a dead iPhone 5, this phone was so small.
4. Am I using the always-on display? Yes.
5. Does USB-C make a difference in my workflows? Yes. I had to replace my Finch Lavalier microphone with one with a USB-C plug.
6. What is battery life like? It’s good but it not a two-day battery life.
7. How do I like the fit and finish of the titanium material? Probably the best iPhone yet.
8. How is the 5G speed compared to my iPhone 13 Pro? Hard to tell for my use cases.
9. What is it like to use the 5x / 120mm lens? Very stable, I’m mind blown. I must be honest, quality is good but in best conditions (lots of light).
10. Are the photo improvements significant? Yes, when using the 24MP images of the 1x lens, when closing up. Colours feel more natural and post-processing feel less harsh.
11. Why did I decide to go with the Max this time? Bigger screen. Longer battery life. Telephoto lens.
12. Which case did I buy? How about doing a mini review of the Peak Design Case? I bought the Peak Design one with a bar mount for my ebike. I also bought a mount for the car. I also bought a Nomad leather case.
13. Does the iPhone 15 Pro Max finally kills my Nikon D750? It too early to tell. The type of trip will also be a factor in the decision. Photos with the Nikon are probably better, when I can bring the camera with me!
14. Am I content with my choice of colour? How does the black compares to the iPhone 11 Pro, which was black too? I love the dark, black matte finish. I prefer the black finish; the lenses better fit with a dark finish instead of having three big black circles on a light finish. My wife has a black iPhone 14 Pro, and the colour is very close to the iPhone 15 Pro Max.

(...) what Apple really succeeds in with this major camera update is to bring much-needed depth to the photographic experience for average users — not just pros." — Sebastiaan de With

Notes, comments and observations

And now, more or less random comments and observations. I’m sharing my observations as someone who needed an upgrade, and in that context, the iPhone 13 Pro is my reference against which I’ll look at the iPhone 15 Pro Max—coming from the iPhone 13 Pro with a scratch screen and battery health at 86%.

• I prefer the Dynamic Island over the Notch. I feel it’s more organic visually. It’s really useful, especially with Flightry and Timery.
• The most useful Dynamic Island usage is with the excellent Timery application. It’s hard to forget about a running timer when it is displayed in the Dynamic Island.
• Dynamic island: it’s a stupid name only Apple can come up with, but it’s a brilliantly executed idea.
• The battery provides a full day of autonomy but not two or three days when the iPhone 12 Max came out. The Always On display might be one of the causes. The A17 processor is the other one.
• In the pocket, I do feel a difference in size. In my hand, I’m still able to do most of the navigation with one hand, but I do hold the phone with my two hands more than before. I do have big hands with relatively long fingers. That helps.
• The rounded contours make the device much more comfortable to hold or slide into a pocket. I love this! I do use my iPhone without a case quite often.
• The slightly curved glass where it meets the phone’s edge reminds me of the infamous iPhone 6. Even if it was one of the worst devices Apple ever designed, the curved glass was a great design aspect. I’m happy to see it come back, albeit not as pronounced as before.
• After four weeks with it, I no longer feel the iPhone as being “big”. It’s the new normal to me, and anything else feels small. I made the right choice by going with the Max.
• I cannot use the Action button easily with my Peak Design case on my iPhone. The case contour thickness makes the button harder to reach and push. The company runs a program for those who want this issue resolved.
• The action button location is problematic for me. I wish it were lower, more centrally located. I understand that since I’m not using it as a camera shutter, it doesn’t matter. But for those who do, this could be problematic. Many reviews mention this issue, too.
• I use the Action Button to execute a shortcut to present me with a menu of choices. At first, I wanted a single action to be triggered, but then I changed my mind.
• The new Portrait mode is transparent; it is a joy to use as we no longer need to overthink it. It’s such an improvement that it makes me smile when I use it.
• When first starting the iPhone’s Camera app, I wished there was an onboarding questionnaire to determine my profile as a photographer: an amateur-type, a semi-pro, or a pro photographer should lead to different default configurations.
• Shooting with the iPhone 15 Pro Max is not as simple as with a previous iPhone. There are many more options (HEIC, ProRAW, each applying to different lenses, lending different resolutions).
• Images are less over-processed / over-sharpened than with my 13 Pro.
• Sometimes, the portrait mode will be available for photos where there is nobody, in architecture photography, for example.
• As a webcam using Continuity Camera, it’s a solid improvement, too, compared to my previous iPhone. The sound is good enough to record a few podcasts or YouTube videos, even as a microphone.
• The telephoto lens is a welcome addition for someone like me who travels with a 70-200mm zoom. Image stabilization is impressive and makes me wish they added something like this to the ultra-wide camera for macro photography if this makes sense.
• The screen is bigger than my iPhone 13 Pro, for sure. The bezels are thinner, and I like this. There is more room to display content, but not by much. I knew that in advance, having visited the Apple Store many times in the past year to compare both sizes. Overall, It’s a solid improvement compared to the 13 Pro.
• The iPhone 15 Pro Max not only improves image quality, but the screen acting as a deluxe viewfinder is absolutely gorgeous. But overall, this iteration of the iPhone brings more options than ever when shooting photos. This and excellent image quality form an undeniably powerful modern camera.
• Some reviews will mention the limited improvements of the primary camera and super wide camera compared to last year’s iPhone 14 Pro. These remarks fail to acknowledge that many people like me will come from older iPhone generations. And this is the key to enjoying the improvements to this year’s iteration.
• On a lunch break while at the office, I went outside for a quick photo break and spent some time in a park. I took a few dozen photos using Halide. While the phone doesn’t get too hot (the device was running iOS 17.0.3), the battery power level dropped more than I would have liked. This means during a trip while walking in cities and looking for photo opportunities, battery life could be similar, at best, to what it was with my aging iPhone 13 Pro. It’s a bit of a deception. This year, I was expecting a longer battery life by going with the Max.
• One of my Apple Watch had to be unpaired and re-paired following the data migration. I wasn’t wearing it then, and it’s probably the cause. Also, many apps needed re-authentication (Microsoft Authenticator, Slack, Craft, etc.). It’s a bit frustrating and tedious. After all these years, replacing an iPhone or an Apple Watch is finicky.

"I went into the 15 Pro Max expecting a little discomfort with a giant slab of glass and metal in my hand, but to my surprise, it felt manageable." — Sebastiaan de With

Surprising confessions regarding ProRAW

Apple’s introduced ProRAW with the iPhone 12 Pro in 2020. I must confess something: I’m still unsure how to understand ProRAW. I know the RAW format concept: the iPhone takes a snapshot of the light getting to the sensor (a CCD). The RAW format dictates that the resulting file contains the sensor data without advanced processing, hence the “RAW” moniker. On the iPhone, when editing a photo in RAW format, there is this moment where the selected image will lack contrast and look dull upon entering in edit more until the iPhone generates a JPEG version of it acting as the photo preview after leaving edit mode. That, I get it.

Back to ProRAW, is the following explanation enough?

“Apple’s ProRAW actually retains a couple of the brand’s imaging techniques, including Deep Fusion and SmartHDR, so that these images still keep hold of Apple’s trademark detail and punchiness even though they haven’t gone through the usual range of other post-processing changes.” - Peter Phelps of Trusted Reviews

In other words, ProRAW does some more processing than RAW but not enough to lose the sensor’s RAW data when the image is taken. Is that it? With a ProRAW image, how does the app interpret the richer data? Why is it better if the processing probably ends up at the same place: contrast, saturation, definition, etc? I’m lost.

Josh Ginter writes:

“ProRAW skips out on Deep Fusion and provides more control for clarity, texture, and sharpness in post.”

That is exactly my point, starting from a RAW image and applying a clarity, texture and sharpness filter, you could end up in with similar visual results.

Does a query to ChatGPT through Raycast help get a better understanding? Here is what ChatGPT had to say about Apple’s ProRAW:

“Apple ProRAW is a proprietary raw image format introduced by Apple. It is available on certain iPhone models and combines the benefits of the raw file format with Apple's computational photography capabilities. ProRAW files contain significantly more data and provide greater flexibility for post-processing compared to standard JPEG or HEIC formats. They preserve more detail and offer a wider dynamic range, allowing photographers to have more control over aspects like exposure, color, and noise reduction during editing.”

I’m still unsatisfied with this explanation and how it makes a difference with RAW + manual post-processing. If you know of a better explanation, use the comment section below!

Concluding remarks

The iPhone 15 Pro Max is a solid stepping stone in iPhone history. It brings me more possibilities, mainly in creativity, especially in photography. I like the improvements to the look of photos coming out of this year’s iPhone. Like for the Canon vs Nikon, the iPhone has its look and personality when it comes to photography, and I prefer this year’s version. With the addition of the 5x telephoto lens, we get more addressable use cases that align with my style. I’ll probably keep this iPhone for the next two years. I’ll undoubtedly enjoy every moment of it.

Photo section showcasing the possibilities of the iPhone 15 Pro Max

This article was written on my 2023 M2 MacBook Air using Craft and Ulysses.

numericcitizen shared a post

In 2020 we rented a country house, and in the forest nearby, there was this abandoned cabined. It was really a spooky place. #spooky #spookyvibes #spookymood #darkness #dark #blackandwhite #blackandwhitephotography #abandoned #abandonedbuilding

pixelfed

Fall is taking over now; after a beautiful and summer-like weather streak, the wind, the rain, and the cold temperatures now come. It’s the best type of weather for staying inside for reading, writing and creating. Let’s see what I’ve done this past week.

👨🏻‍💻 Blog posts posted 8 & articles shared 4
🏞️ Photos shared: 10
🎙️ Podcast published: 0
📺 YouTube videos published: 1

📖 Reading

1️⃣ I read some more articles related to the iPhone 15 Pro line. This week is probably where my reading on this subject started to wind down quite a bit. I'm preparing to finish my review and publish it sometime next week! 2️⃣ Reminder: you can see all my reading in the logbook in the exhibits section below.

👨🏻‍💻 Writing

1️⃣ I rarely write on my small website on Write.as, but when I do, it’s often about war. This time, it was about the 9-11-style attack by Hammas that struck Israel. So sad. So infuriating. I can't take sides, only share my ominous thoughts. 2️⃣ I decided to convert all my current research projects to the new Craft template I started selling recently on Gumroad. It's a bit of manual work, but it is well worth it because it helps forge a similar workflow from one research project to another.

🌄 Photography

1️⃣ I'm migrating most of my photos to Pixelfed, but I'm still an enthusiastic subscriber of Glass. They recently launched a new way to explore photos on their platform. We can now ask something like “Paris at night” to see pictures of Paris at night. I tried it with “Montreal at night" and got some photos from... Boston. Other requests were more on-target. 2️⃣ My photos feed on Pixelfed is diluted with many images; many aren't photos. It contrasts with Glass, which is focused on photography art. This might be enough for me to keep using Glass in the future. 3️⃣ I'm now at 310 followers on Pixelfed. I never reached that level of followers on any photo-sharing platforms in my entire digital life. I think it comes from the fact that Pixelfed is a Fediverse member and allows people from Mastodon to interact with my posts quite easily. 4️⃣ I posted half the images I wanted to post this week.

🎙️ Podcasting

1️⃣ I finally got my new microphone, the same Lavalier Finch microphone, but this time with a USB-C plug. It works with my new iPhone and on the Mac, anywhere with a USB-C port. My initial tests with it were a disaster because of a persistent white noise from the microphone. To fix that, I now use Audio Hijack with the following workflow to improve sound quality and volume and tweak my voice. To record, I start the workflow, enable voice isolation mode in the macOS Control Center, and then set ScreenFlow to record the computer audio instead of recording from the microphone source. It works great. 2️⃣ I'll continue to watch for a better audio recording solution because I’m not entirely satisfied with this setup. One thing I like about a Lavalier microphone is that I feel free with my head movements and at ease while recording instead of staying close to the microphone in front of my face. 3️⃣ I remembered Adobe Podcast audio enhancer and decided to try it again. The best results come from processing the iPhone 15 Pro Max recording with voice isolation turned on. 4️⃣ In conclusion, the Finch microphone is terrible, and I still have to find a permanent solution for my audio recordings.

🚧 Special projects

1️⃣ I've started working on a short article about some old Apple promotional materials I recently found when cleaning up box content in my home office. I have included one photo in the exhibits section showing a portion of this material. 2️⃣ Will have a chance to talk to the community manager and user experience manager from Rewind in two weeks. She wants to have more feedback following my published review of Rewind. 3️⃣ I finally decided not to create a dedicated website on Apple Vision Pro. Until this week, it was something I considered doing, something similar to the Apple Rumors Hub, a website I keep updating with the latest rumours about Apple products. The website is not popular and rarely gets visitors. This contributed to my decision not to go ahead with the other website. It's a matter of better focus as a creator. Not everything needs to be created.

📱 Apps & Services

1️⃣ Adobe released new versions of Lightroom. The iPhone app is easier to use and offers an end-to-end HDR editing experience, provided your iPhone is HDR-capable. Recent iPhone models are. On the Mac, Lightroom brings support for local storage capabilities. You no longer depend on Adobe Cloud storage to work with your photos. That's a significant change if you ask me. Does it change my intention of leaving Adobe behind? I don't know. It's too early. 2️⃣ Anybox 2.1 was a surprise update introducing folders to help organize the bookmarks collection. Coupled with tags, Anybox is a solid app to help manage hundreds of bookmarks.

👨‍👩‍👦‍👦 Personal

1️⃣ This week was socially busy, having dinner or get-togethers with friends and my family nearly every day. I had much less time to work on this newsletter or to be creative. It shows in the number of cancelled to-do items from my weekly planning. Oh well... striking a balance between work, personal life, and hobbies is often a challenge for any passionate creator like me. Overall, I was able to find some time to meet my goals.

📺 YouTube

1️⃣ I created and shared a video on my YouTube channel explaining the use of my recently released Craft Template for researchers & writers on Gumroad. It took me about three to four hours of preparation, production and upload to YouTube for a video that is less than 27 minutes. Feel free to take your own conclusions. On the same day this video was released, I got my first template sale on Gumroad. The next day, another sale. That's cool and unexpected. 2️⃣ I've been tracking my follower count, currently at 939 subscribers. The pace of new subscribers has slowed down considerably. It's hard to get traction on YouTube. My average watch time per video is very low; I don’t know how to change that. It's a challenging space, for sure.

🔮 Looking ahead

1️⃣ Next week, another Craft update is expected. It's always fun to see what's new, but I’m often a bit disappointed by the lack of improvements I wish for. Maybe things will be a bit different this time. 2️⃣ Since I'm using Omnivore more and more, I'm considering doing a “60 minutes with Omnivore” video shortly.

💎 Miscellaneous

1️⃣ Here is a thought I often have when using an app: the more I can take advantage of all the features and capabilities of an app, the better I feel. I don't like it when my app usage is too narrow, not too deep; I prefer to master every aspect of an app to reach some level of expertise and ultimate mastery. This might explain, in part, why I spend so much time with Craft, the app that is at the center of everything that I create and share online. See my visual workflow summary in the exhibits section below.

I wish you a great week!

Exhibits 👀

I recently spent some time cleaning up old boxes sitting in a closet in my home office. I rediscovered old promotional materials from Apple from 1985 and 1986. Back then, I was working at an authorized Apple dealer as a pre-sales and post-sales technician. One of the business owners probably gave me a copy of the Macintosh Dealer Guide you see in these photos. Here is a selection of what are the best parts.

The following black & white Macintosh illustrations were for use in newspaper advertisements. We had to cut out the needed illustration and send it to the newspaper with promotional text for processing and to create an ad. It was way before Google AdSense!

Special mention goes to the following black & white photo of the Macintosh. It’s an original printed on a Kodak paper. It’s an 8x10 studio photo of the Mac. It is now in its frame in my home office. You can see it in my YouTube video.

Next up is the well-known traditional promotional flyer. I remember having it with me all the time, at home, at school, and even at the dentist’s waiting room. The comparison between the Mac and an IBM PC struck my imagination and was a clever way of showing the Macintosh’s unique proposition. It was a graphical user interface for the masses.

In the series “Remembering The Story Behind Every Apple Computer I Ever Owned”, you can read stories of some of my memories of Apple’s computers.

Remembering The Story Behind Every Apple Computers I Ever Owned

Welcome to the start of a new series: the story behind every Apple computers I ever personally owned. There are twelve in total. Buckle up for the ride!

Numeric Citizen SpaceJF Martin