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After skipping a week, here is the latest edition of the Ephemeral Scrapbook newsletter. This edition is the one shared from Craft as a published document. The Ghost web-hosted version is coming later today.
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I’m not too fond of text quotes shared as beautiful pictures (coming from Readwise, for example), especially if they don’t come with ALT text description. They look pretty, though. Here’s an example. I don’t like them because they hinder content indexing in some ways.
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In my latest edition of The Ephemeral Scrapbook: “Got a keyboard. I took a break because of work. I’m skipping DeepSeek. The iPhone 16 Pro Max vs Samsung Galaxy 25 Ultra. Who wins? Marking the start of a dark era.”
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Today, I decided to let go a few writing ideas from my “idea pipeline.” I realized that sometimes, the words we choose not to write are just as significant as the ones we do.
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No one will ever control our own identities on third-party platforms. You relinquish control over your identity when you choose to present yourself on one of these platforms. You can be rate-limited for posting too much. You can be suspended by a bot that determines your behavior is bot-like. The platform can pivot at any time from one thing to another. The entire platform could shut down. You have no control, and jumping from one to another will only mean that you have to do it all again later.
Or, instead of all this, you could learn how to make a damn website.
But, asking for my wife here1, once you’ve got your little HTML island right in the middle of the digital ocean, how do you get noticed? How do you build a business, even the smallest one, from this island?
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For real, i had a serious debate about all this today with her. ↩︎
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I initially thought Micro.one would be a suitable platform for my new French blog, but after spending the entire weekend experimenting with it, I’ve already realized that I miss two essential features from the full Micro.blog experience: personal notes and support for newsletters. 🤦🏻♂️
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“Blogging or not? A game caught my attention. A personal letter to Zuck. I like poems. Pixelfed, Pixelfed, Pixelfed! Apple is clever about Severance. I bought a keyboard. And so much more.” - The Ephemeral Scrapbook — Edition 2025-02 is out! The email version coming later today.
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Dear, Will You Read My Blog?
Me: “My new French blog is nearly ready to go live. Will you read it?"
Her: “Well, yeah, sure, but how will I know there is something new to read?"
Me: “Well, you just have to go to the website, just like you read the news."
Her: “Mmm, but it’s not the same. I have to remember the website’s address. Can you send notifications instead?"
Me: “Well, I’m not sure this would fit the idea of a blog, but you just need to save it as a bookmark. Also, I can show you a great RSS reader?"
Her: “🤔”
Me: “It’s an app where you can read blog posts. There are many great ones for your iPhone or iPad."
Her: “Well, yeah, but I must remember to open it just to see if something is new?"
Me: “Yes, exactly, just like when you open up your favourite news website or when you just tap on the Facebook icon on your iPad…"
Her: “🤨”
Me: “If there was a weekly newsletter, would it be ok for you to read it?"
Her: “That would be better, for sure, but… you know… I already get so many emails!"
Me: “M’ok, but my hosting service doesn’t provide a newsletter feature. Maybe I could just tell you: there is something new on my blog that you might find interesting because I wrote a story about you."
Her: “👩🏻💻”
The challenges a blogger may face can be unpredictable.
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Micro.one is the seed for something bigger
Today, I think I finally found a real use case for Micro.one. I bought my domain and set up my account. It was rather quick and easy. If I had let Micro.one set up my domain name for me, it would have been even easier.
I think the ingredients of Micro.one are all there for an accessible solution for those who want to get out of Meta or other silos and start owning their little space on the web, free of tracking, free of ads, and built on open software technologies. Of course, Micro.one isn’t the only service of its kind. But it does offer the right feature set to be an open and federated web citizen.
I feel an overwhelming desire to explore and savor this type of web content even further. I believe that sharing my passion for this subject matter could potentially ignite a similar level of enthusiasm in those around me. Even if it doesn’t, if people are genuinely curious enough to inquire about the reasons behind my enthusiasm, it’s a positive development, potentially marking the beginning of something more substantial. After all, who knows what the future holds?
I’ll share more in the near future.
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The Medium Mirage
Medium seems to suffer from another problem: AI-generated content and fake account for fake engagement to generate revenues. According to their recent article (Paywall might be enforced to read this), many accounts under the Partner Program were suspended recently to stop this fraud.
I’ve returned to Medium last fall (read my comments about the reading and writing experience over there) and found that content quality has gone down compared to what we used to read there. The revenue program is much less generous than it used to be. I published 18 stories since my return and earned less than a dollar! We don’t know how these revenues are calculated, but it is a bit insulting or at least discouraging. At this rate, I won’t recover the Partner Program subscription cost in the first year which makes my presence there questionable. This should have been a no-cost journey which it’s not. Still seven months to go…
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The first edition of 2025 of the Ephemeral Scrapbook newsletter is out. I’m curious if some of you look into these. Let me know.
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I have twice as many followers on Bluesky than on Mastodon. Don’t know how many followers on Micro.blog… because… Micro.blog. 🙃
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I love this panel that Ghost presents after hitting “Publish and share”. That was the last edition for 2024.
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I still have three more articles to publish before the end of the year: one about Medium, the final edition of the Ephemeral Scrapbook, and a review of my creative year.
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On Header Images and Creative Liberty
Manuel Moreale link posting on the subject of header images on blog posts:
“I’ll go one step further Nelson, I have a growing hatred towards pointless images in blog posts in general, I don’t even care if they’re AI-generated or not. If they’re there as part of the content then by all means use them but if you’re just adding a stock image from unsplash to make the page “feel” more interesting then you’re just part of the broader problem that’s plaguing the web.”
Header images do add to the page load times, yes I do use AI-generated images from time to time, like in this post where I wanted to make a point, and I use many of my personal photos… like in this edition of the Ephemeral Scrapbook newsletter. Yes, I prefer header images on that specific blog because it is part of its visual theme. So then what? That’s MY corner of the web. I do what I find cool and creative and whatever.
I’m guessing he’s reading none of my blogs because of this, among other reasons?
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I am not the biggest fan of meta blog posts, also called blogging about blogging. I do think they’re sometimes useful but they’re also quite uninspiring for me to read. And that’s why I try to stay away from the topic for the most part.
I find this statement surprising coming from the author behind the popular “People & Blog” series. Maybe I’m missing something here.
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Photo Sharing, The Web and Museums
Here is a thought about recent tweaks to RSS importer on Micro.blog. For example, now it’s possible to import photos in the RSS feed published by Glass. With this, when I publish a photo on Glass, it gets posted on my blog too. The same photo on two platforms. As much as I like the POSSE principle for writing, it doesn’t fit well with my desire to share photos on special places, like a photo-dedicated service. Glass is such a special place, just like Pixelfed. What would be the point of having a single photo spread out on other platforms? I see places like Glass like museums. Pieces of art hanged on the wall of a museum are unique to this place. It makes the place unique. I’m still thinking about all this.
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Here’s the latest edition of the Ephemeral Scrapbook newsletter! I hope you enjoy! Email version coming out soon! For those asking: it is entirely built using Craft Docs.
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It’s been a while since the last edition of The Ephemeral Scrapbook edition. Here’s the latest one where I talk about Glass, Realmac Software Elements, Apple Intelligence, the iPad, Apple a many more digital tidbits. Coming up by email to subscribers later today. Hope you enjoy!
