I had such a busy creative weekend, to the point where I wonder if I did too much. I mean, I didn’t see most of the weekend. It was raining most of the time, and I had those videos and articles that I wanted to move forward. On the positive side, I feel that my ideas backlog is more than ever in control.

I’m still wondering where I’ll spend my Sunday afternoon for my creative activities. Should I go out to a coffee shop near my house or should I stay home, make myself a coffee and go in my home office? 🤔🙄

I like the ambiance of the coffee shops, looking around me and furtively watching some people in their own bubble, in front of their screen, with their AirPods on, typing, pausing, etc. It’s a stimulating environment.

I started writing my 2023 year summary, and I must candidly admit that I’m proud of my digital accomplishment so far. 😊 You won’t notice, but a lot is going on… you know, this iceberg 🧊 image where most of it is underwater, only to see a small portion on the surface?

Major Updates Coming to WriteFreely And WriteAs

Matt, the founder of the WriteFreely ecosystem, recently wrote a promising post:

It’s become clear over time that in order to make WriteFreely (and Write.as) as useful as it can be, it needs to have a much more unified experience.

…

I don’t think it makes sense for our self-hosted product to be chopped up into multiple components like our hosted tools are. Instead, I want to bring all those tools into a single application in WriteFreely.

Earlier this year, I wrote an article (“The Write.freely Ecosystem Explained”) trying to explain the WriteFreely ecosystem because I thought that, in its current form, it was a bit hard to grasp. It’s one of my most popular posts on Write.as. I think there is a need for unification and consolidation into a seamless experience. I’m glad the see that it’s coming.

BasicAppleGuy writes about his website turning three:

Today marks the third anniversary of basicappleguy.com. A challenging but also very successful year; I want to continue the tradition of recapping the year and thanking you all for the tremendous support.

I worked from home for the first two years of the site because of the pandemic. That meant 19,200 minutes saved on commuting each year alone, which afforded me hundreds of hours to write and work on new wallpapers. This also meant I had around-the-clock access to a Mac (and a good internet connection), giving me abundant opportunities to work on projects with much more freedom. Source: 3 — Basic Apple Guy

His blog post resonates with me a lot. Since March 13, 2020, I have worked from home, and I also save a lot of commute time. I couldn’t do all that content creation that I did since then if I was returning to the office downtown. I’m super appreciative of that, and I hope that it will stay that way. I don’t see why it would change.

When AI Failed to Inspire Me

A retro-style robot holding a sheet of paper sits next to a vintage typewriter, surrounded by colored folders.

I was looking for inspiration all week to write my next Friday Notes edition. Early morning yesterday, I was still unsure if I could make it, but at lunchtime, I tried ChatGPT with “Give me some blog post ideas about the positive effects on creativity of going on vacation for a week”. It came back with phrases that looked taken from a travel agency ad. I tried again with different variations of my question. It failed to impress and to inspire me. I’ll pass this week’s edition.

A digital document outlines the process and considerations for self-hosting a Hugo-based micro.blog, including learning resources, hosting challenges, and reasons for leaving micro.blog hosting.

Still in my spring cleanup phase, I’m archiving all my bookmarks and references to build a Hugo-based static website. I’m happy to keep my focus on content instead of trying to understand and configure a web site built on Hugo tech.