Pixelfed is rolling out Stories. 😒🤦🏻‍♂️ I’m not a fan at all. I’m not sure that I want PixelFed to take that direction. I decided to unfollow anyone who shares one of these.¹

I got an Ember coffee mug¹ for my birthday, yesterday. The first thing the Ember app detected after pairing the mug with my iPhone was that an update to the mug’s firmware. It took 5 minutes to complete. Software is everywhere now guys. 😳

I played with Apple’s Maps Places feature, as shown in the following video. It’s nice, but it’s not exactly intuitive. There are many missing features, like setting a path between places and adding photos to a place within the guide, from the Photos.app for example to name a few. Also, it’s not clear if a shared guide gets updated if new places are added, or places are removed.

I updated my toolset website today¹ with three additions under consideration: Digest², Lazy³ and Heptabase⁴. The statuses of my current projects were also updated. Thanks for paying a visit.

I always subscribe to my own content distribution channels for quality control purposes 1. I’m using Overcast, Pocket Cast and Apple Podcast to display my latest podcast episode. In these screenshots, I selected the info button to display the episode details. I’m a paid subscriber of Pocket Cast. I prefer the Pocket Cast display, but it has a caching issue as it doesn’t get the latest podcast artwork, but the other two do2. Continue reading →

Bad weather 🌧️ means time to the coffee shop for creative work ☕ 👨🏻‍💻 on my next YouTube video about Craft YouTube Integration. I paid a visit to the Apple Store to get my iPhone screen replaced 🛠️. I came out without a replacement; learn why in this episode available on Apple’s Podcast. 👀 Transcript Continue reading →

A Eulogy for Dark Sky, a Data Visualization Masterpiece The design of Dark Sky was so wonderful that I could understand the shape of the weather at a glance, even from a zoomed out view of the app. Great analysis of the now-defunct Dark Sky weather app. I’m a bit late on that one. I don’t remember using Dark Sky because I think it wasn’t working in Canada. I’m not sure about this. Continue reading →

We’re truly honoured to be able to announce that we have taken over development of Toolbox Pro, Logger for Shortcuts, and Nautomate. Source: Toolbox Pro, Logger for Shortcuts, and Nautomate | Snailed It Development Ltd

It is good to know that there is a future for this nifty utility. I plan to use it for a project involving Plausible analytics API consumption to display graphs using Chartyon my iPhone.

I’m a big fan of AnyBox (YouTube video) and in the latest update (v1.27), information density increased a bit. I love it. 😍

Today, while reading this blog post, I found out that we could have a “popup” note inline in a blog post. I was curious and asked the author, who gladly responded with all the required information to do the same on my blog. A plugin is required, which I gladly installed in a snap1. This blog post is a test of that feature2. The day I learn something which in turn helps me improve one of my things, is a great day. Continue reading →

Craft Docs vs CleanShot: two different apps in different categories and two philosophies of asking for user feedback. Craft is closed, and opaque while CleanShot is outgoing and openly asks for “what we should work on next”. I’m a subscriber of CleanShot Cloud, and yes, I want a few improvements. If only Craft would change their mind…

This is the second pilot episode of my brand-new podcast (“Thoughts & Tribulations of a compulsive creator”). I made many changes to the recording setup. I like the results. 😊 My support templates are ready (one in Screenflow, Things and Craft) for the first real episode that should be coming soon. One last note: I discovered yesterday that Microblog will automatically generate a transcript of each episode. This is so cool! Continue reading →

As a subscriber to Pocket Cast, I would love to be able to use the iPad version on my Apple Silicon Mac. It’s currently not possible. Yes, there is a web version, but an app is much better. Overcast, a very popular alternative, is available for the Mac but is not native. But I’m ok with that; it’s better than nothing. How much effort does it require to make an iPad app available on the Mac without having to depend on Catalyst? 🤔

Glass questions at 2 years

There are effectively no success stories for Glass’s current business model. Small clones of Instagram and Twitter usually fail. To break out, there has to be something fundamentally different. For Micro.blog, the answer is simple: we are a social network but our business is blog hosting, a proven model. For Glass, the answer is less clear: they care deeply about photography, community, and design. I think the founders deserve a lot of credit for creating something beautiful. Is that enough?

My recent enthusiasm for Pixelfed comes down to being a good alternative to Instagram, open and not afflicted by a toxic business model. It might become a good alternative to Glass too if the latter doesn’t open up a little bit more to the modern world, post Meta-as-we-know-it.

I’m back with a new video about Micro.blog. This time, I explore the use of Categories and Tags. I hope you find it useful to better make use of Micro.blog features. Enjoy. Comments welcome, here or on my YouTube channel. Next up, something about… podcasts 👀. Stay tuned. 😀

A commentary video about Craft updates while waiting for the next wow moments for Craft. An update is supposedly coming out this week. My expectations are low.

Today marks the day I’m returning to the regular schedule for YouTube video production. Next videos in the pipeline: an update about the lack of meaningful updates to Craft in recent months and what this could possibly mean for Craft users. Then, working with Categories and Tags in Micro.blog. Busy week-end. 😅

I made many updates to my Complete Content Creator Toolset to reflect recent additions and removals. If you are curious about the apps and services that I’m using, this is the place to watch!

Creating a Custom Branded File Sharing Service for Free mattlangford.com

Reader: mattlangford.com

Thanks to @Mtt, I completed my version in about an hour.

I decided to add a small collection of mini reviews that I read from time to time to my digital garden. The first two to make it to the collection: Matt Birchler’s comments about Ulysses and possible free and similar alternatives. The second is Manton’s comments on text editors for developers or other text manipulation.