Today, from WordPress:

Your favorite Jetpack-powered features from the WordPress app – including Stats, Notifications, and the Reader – have a new home: the Jetpack app! These features will soon be removed from the WordPress app so that its focus will be on essential user and publishing tools. With the Jetpack app, you can expect the same attention to core features like managing and editing content, as well as next-level tools to grow your audience on a trusted platform.

The JetPack app is now officially being pushed out, and WP asks site owners like me to consider transitioning to JetPack for managing the website and viewing stats. I’m not sure why the one-app-fits-all" is considered in need of a rework. I’ve read the blog post and couldn’t find a real reason worth forking these apps into two. Even more strange, when you run both WordPress and JetPack on the same device, the latter suggests removing the former from the device. Anyways…

I’m not sure if I want to spend too much energy trying to understand what’s going on. The reason is that I’m in the early stage of planning my migration off the WordPress.com platform. It will require some serious planning and some tedious work, but I’ll move out, before the end of the present year.

On October 13, 2018, I wrote:

This morning I found out about the existence of a blogging platform called Micro.blog. Something very special. Very lean. Very light. Without ads. Leaner than WordPress. Yet capable. Close to Twitter but with less clutter. I’m on a 10 days trial period. Tested the web posting interface. Tested the native macOS (light) client. Tested the iPad version too. Now, testing cross-posting from WordPress via an IFTTT applet. I’m loving it so far. Stay tuned for more discoveries about Micro.blog.Source: The Return of Micro Blogging? - Numeric Citizen Blog

This is the oldest post on my main website. I still love this platform, more than ever.

The yearly renewal of my WordPress.com business plan is a reminder that I need to go elsewhere. This thing no longer makes sense to me. Hard to justify. Where (and how) to move my data? Ghost?

Up until now, the Mastodon ecosystem felt like some sort of black magic to me. Today I spent a few minutes explaining to my wife what Mastodon is. As someone who already knows about Twitter and its subtleties, she got it pretty quickly. I couldn’t have done it a few weeks ago, but now, I could. I always thought that when you can explain something to someone, it is probably because you know enough about the subject. I think my explanation made sense to her, and for me! It was only then that the magic and the profound nature of the social and decentralized network became so clear to me. It was an enlightening moment, for sure. Better late than never. I instantly felt convinced that my awakening to the open web and Mastodon, a form of open web instantiation, would be a game-changer for me.

Today, for some reason, I decided to delve into the Write.as “ecosystem”. I’ve been subscribing to this writing service for nearly a year, I post from time to time like I did yesterday. I’m not so sure to grasp all of it. To get started, I went into Craft, and through the Craft Assistant, I asked a few questions (since ChatGPT seems overloaded). I got surprisingly good results, enough to get some context around the write.freely project. Then, I started a diagram illustrating all the components of the platform. This will become a blog post for sure. Today, I have a better understanding of this project.

What I want to emphasize here is the help that a service like ChatGPT (through an app) can bring to kick-start a small project like this. I’m blown away. But I’m staying critical too. More on that eventually.

This blog post was written by me.

👉🏻 Well, that was fast: @numericcitizen@techhub.social 😎

Reasons why I joined this Mastodon instance. 1) I like the name “techhub.social”. 2) It’s operated by a Canadian. 3) He speaks french and has a Ukrainian flag on his profile.. 4) I’ll be able to see the interaction between Micro.blog and a Mastodon instance.

Micro.blog will stay my home, but I’ll experiment with Mastodon, even though I said and wrote that I would focus this year. Damn.