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From A to B ā Another Digital Journey Completed
From the Numeric Citizen Blog
to the Numeric Citizen Space.
The former was my WordPress site, now on Ghost and merged with what used to be the Numeric Citizen Introspection, the home for my Friday Notes Series newsletter. It took me a while, but here I am. Iām so relieved from not having to use WordPress anymore. I have learned quite a bit about WordPress since 2015, but my desire to simplify my digital life was pressing me to make some changes.
From now on, in Ulysses, I got two places to push my articles, here or Ghost. Thatās it.
Both are under the same domain name, which is something that I wanted for a while. Now, I hope to spend more time writing than moving things around. I will publish my migration process in the upcoming days on my Numeric Citizen I/O, my metablog.
From a design perspective, Iām using Ghostās Casper default theme, which is relatively close to what I was using on WordPress. Iām ok with this for the moment. I may hunt for alternatives in the future, but for now, that will be it.
Now, returning to normal programming.
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Yesterday, I got my first ever paid subscriber to Ghost website, even though it is basically a free website. Thanks to Ghost newsletters feature, I’m offering a way for users to pay anyway as a way for showing their support toward my writing efforts.
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Spending Most of Your Life Running a Blog
Kottke.org turns 25. Itās quite a remarkable journey. I didnāt know about this website until recently. Iām not a frequent reader of it, although I spent quite some time today on it to better get the gist of it. Yet, Iām barely sure how to pronounce it. But Iām quite impressed to see someoneās life spent running a blog and getting paid for it.
Iāve been into computer tech since I was a teenager. Iām 55 now. I learned quite a lot from writing software, doing digital photography, followed Appleās story with avid attention. My creativity is at its best with computers. I even found my career by simply being exposed to computers.
For some reason, I didnāt know much about website hosting back then, even less about blogs. I didnāt pay attention, I guess. Itās like being a writer who didnāt know we could write books. This sounds strange.
I wish I had a blog for this long. Itās not the first time that I have written this thought. But Kottke.org turning 25 reminds me that I wish I were this guy. Can you imagine having written 40 000 posts? I donāt know if we can still read them all (it appears we can). You wonāt find all my posted content since I first wrote my first post. And I keep deleting stuff while moving from one place to another because I think it makes no sense to keep all that.
Bravo to Kottke.org.
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21 years ago today, my first blog post. A bunch of promising social networks have come and gone in that time. Often feels like very little is permanent, so make sure to have your own space on the web.
I can barely remember what I was doing in 2002. I didn’t have a website. I didn’t know about website hosting. I didn’t really care about blogs, for that matter. I started blogging in 2009 when I started doing iPhone application development. I wanted to share my discoveries while learning Objective-C and publishing apps on the App Store. At some point, writing took more of my time than actually writing lines of Objective-C code.
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@numericcitizen@me.dm is my new Mastodon address on Mediumās newly launched Mastodon instance. Itās without enthusiasm that I created this address when Medium opened the door to all Medium members today. I left the Paid Partner Program earlier this year. First, because I was no longer publishing articles over there. Second, because Iām not at ease supporting a closed platform like Medium. Iām not sure where Iāll go from here. That being said, I find it interesting that a closed and proprietary platform like Medium opens up to Mastodon, a distributed and open source network. Call it opportunistic, it will be interesting to see where this will lead in the future. Iāll certainly watch from afar.
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āSocial networks can be a great way to connect with friends and family, but they can also be toxic. Unfortunately, these networks can lead to cyberbullying, trolling, and other forms of online harassment. People can be cruel and insensitive in their comments, even if they don’t mean to be. Additionally, social networks can lead to feelings of envy and inadequacy, as users compare their lives to those they see on their timeline. It is important to remember to take a break from social media and step away whenever necessary to protect your mental health.ā ā ChapGPT
This text was used for the purpose of demonstrating the posting feature of Micro.blog. Please consider replying to this post so I can show how replies work. Thanks.
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Will be spending the rest if the weekend trying to advance my (many) projects. One being to produce my next YouTube video about using Craft as a website publishing tool.
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šā I’m running a quick poll on my YouTube Channel, in the community section! I’m curious about your interest in “how-to” videos about Micro.blog. Thanks for taking the time to vote! šš»
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The funny thing about posting ideas on Friday nights, writing out loud ideas, it goes out unnoticed; nobody is paying attention. Everyone is too busy enjoying their weekend!
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Since last June Iāve been producing YouTube videos about Craft (the note taking app, not the game! š). Iām closing in to having fifty videos done. I like doing this quite a lot actually.
Now Iām looking for the next product or service to talk about. š§
It seems there is a lot to talk about with Micro.blog, donāt you think? š¤
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š It’s Friday, and it is time for another quick experiment. For the next few days, I will cross-post from the Micro.blog to my Mastodon account and see how it goes. I’m unsure if I will add more confusion than anything else.
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šš» Day One, now available on the web. Woah! This is cool.
Iām a big fan of Day One. I use it 99% of time for documenting my numeric life (details here if you are curious). When Automattic bought them a while back, I was curious to see how it would influence its future. Now we get a much better idea. The web access maybe was an obvious ānext stepā, but they did a superb job of transposing most of the Day One experience on the web.
What could be the next step for Day One? Well, what about being able to blog from Day One? A dedicated āpublicā journal could be created and any entry saved into that journal would go online. Boom.
Now, if only I could spend more time writing personal thoughts in it.š
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Nothing more to add.Micro.blog things I like:
- No ads
- No likes
- No brands
- No metrics
- No algorithms
- No influencers
- No follower count
- No suggested/sponsored posts
- Reverse chrono social timeline
- Bookshelves feature
- Simple, clean, UI
- Customizability
- Photos feature
- Friendly folks
- Blog hosting
- iPhone app
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A few people here probably already know that I’m a big fan and power user of Craft, the document creation app. Over the years, I created and shared many documents online for different purposes. Today, I’m sharing an index of all the published documents. My goal is to showcase many of Craft’s capabilities. If you are curious, you can ask me questions about these. I’ll be more than happy to respond.
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I donāt have many subscribers to my Ghost-hosted website. I always find it sad when someone unsubscribes the very same day I send out a new edition of my newsletter. If I had hundreds of thousands of subscribers, I wouldnāt notice.
What did I do wrong? Was the content not worth reading? These are the questions that come to my mind every time.
I shouldnāt pay attention to that. š
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Sometimes Iām reminded that I wish I had picked out āDigital Citizenā instead of āNumeric Citizenā as my ānom de plumeā. In English, Digital has a better significance than Numeric. Am I correct? š§
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Thanks for Paying Attention
Thereās this question that keeps popping up in my mind all the time since Iām being more active on Micro.blog. Why am I getting way more interactions with others on Micro.blog compared to Twitter? What am I doing differently? I write about the same subjects, albeit maybe more frequently. I think I have a few possible explanations.
First, Twitter is full of bots. Twitter is a dumpster. I suspect many people or organizations are simply cross-posting stuff on Twitter without real human beings behind the content. I did exactly that myself via Buffer for a few years. Optimizing exposure by scheduling posts at the ārightā time was the idea. A bot worked for me.
Second, and this is probably the most probable reason: algorithmic timeline. The Twitter engine is tuned to generate higher engagement. The more you engage, the higher the probability that your content will appear on peopleās timelines. If youāre well-known, again, the higher the likelihood that you will make it to the timeline of others.
Iām not well-known. I didnāt engage that much with others. Both made me a near-nobody on Twitter. So I didnāt get exposure, hence the lack of engagement with my content.
Third, there is just too much noise on Twitter to get noticed. My content competes against the rest of the Twittosphere. My context was noise for others, hence the lack of feedback, comments, and interactions.
Here on Micro.blog? Night and day. Iām not a star, far from it. But I get a sense that some people are paying attention.
Thanks for that anyway. š¤
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So, I started the cleanup of numericcitizen.me. Each day, on WordPress.com, I look at my past posts and select the ones that won’t make the cut. Most of them are simply deleted. However, some posts get exported in markdown files before being deleted. Those exported posts, in turn, are imported in Craft for archival purposes. It’s a tedious process.
Before moving to Ghost, I want to bring the most valuable content. But, what is valuable content, actually? I realize that I have put a lot of time and effort into writing in the past several years. Some posts are short and very time or context-specific. Today, they no longer sport any value except for giving a glimpse of what was. Then what? Nothing. It’s probably more of a value to me than to my readers. I probably should be writing in a personal journal instead, right?
Anyhow, it’s time to move on. I know what I want numericcitizen.me to become. But, in its current form and content, it’s off. There is too much noise, I want it to be more focused. Deleted old, insignificant posts will help, but at the cost of time and losing some of my memories.
