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On My Writing Style As a Traveler
As you probably know, I’ve been writing and sharing my travel notes since the beginning of my trip to Croatia. I’m proud of maintaining the regularity to post each day, but not as proud of my writing itself. I can’t quite describe the quality of my writing, but when I read it back, it feels rather superficial. Why do I feel this way?
Well, my writing tends to list the places I visited and whether I liked them. But I almost always fail to explain why I loved visiting them. Take yesterday’s travel update, for example: I wrote that I fell in love with Sibenik and shared a photo of banners adorned with children’s drawings. What exactly resonated with me in this place? What were my emotions when I entered the narrow streets of the village and first saw the banners everywhere? It was surprising—the children’s drawings added a contrast to the old buildings’ walls, giving the city a sense of humanity. And you know what? It was the children’s festival! It’s a great way to celebrate humanity.
Part of my problem is that I’m not a native English speaker, but a French speaker. I don’t have the same level of vocabulary to describe feelings or physical places. I’m wondering if I could first write a version of my travel update in French and then ask ChatGPT to translate it into English. For today’s travel update, that’s what I’m going to do. We’ll see how it comes out this time. Let me know if you notice a difference.
Disclaimer: this text was first written in English (yes, in English!) and I asked ChatGPT to improve to the writing. It made a big difference, trust me, but I still have this feeling of owning the ideas and the final results.
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Is it me, or Automattic is missing a big opportunity by not enabling users to publish their journal entries to a custom blog or website directly from Day One? I think they do.
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My /nope page is up.
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It Sunday time and so my weekly creative summary is out! This is the Craft hosted version. The email version is coming out later today. Enjoy. By the way, the Craft version, this week, contains a sub-page that won’t make it in the newsletter edition, thanks to Craft.
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Pondering
In a week, I’ll be preparing to fly to Croatia for a three-week vacation with my wife. I’m still considering several aspects of the trip. How much blogging should I do during this time? Should I stay quiet and focus entirely on my vacation and photography? What camera equipment should I bring? Should I bring my MacBook Air in addition to my iPad Pro?
I need to decide the right balance between being present in the moment and documenting the journey through my blog. While I enjoy sharing my experiences, I also want to fully immerse myself in the trip without the constant pressure of content creation. As for the camera gear, I’ll need to carefully assess what I’ll actually use versus what I might pack just in case. The MacBook Air could be helpful for editing photos on the go, but the iPad Pro is a more compact and convenient option. Ultimately, I want to travel light and focus on making the most of this vacation with my wife.
I still have a week to figure this out.
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It’s Sunday, and it’s time for the new edition of My Creative Summary newsletter! I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I love putting it together!
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In case you didn’t know me, I’m on this week’s People & Blog edition. It was fun to answer Manuel Moreale’s questions.
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This is an Audiocast — A Narrated Blog Post
This is my second narrated blog post on Micro.blog. It seems to me that writing for sharing as a text-only post triggers different strings for me than writing for a narrated text post. It feels strange because this isn’t a podcast episode. There is no introduction, no conclusion. No background music either. Yet, I find this cool because this is going to be available also to my podcast subscribers. Because of that, I call this an audiocast since the textual transcription (the writing) is done before the audio recording. Audiocast: this word doesn’t exist, isn’t it? Remember that you read it, and heard it here first.
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The new narrated posts feature of Micro.blog has an unexpected twist. Since my blog also hosts a podcast, any narrated blog posts will end up on Apple’s Podcast directory. I’m unsure if this is what I want, but I appreciate the possibility for those who prefer to consume my content as an audio file.
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When I launched my weekly creative summary newsletter, I wanted its structure and format to remain consistent for a long time. However, after 17 editions, I’ve decided to refine the newsletter’s structure. I’m never fully satisfied with my tools, workflows, and past decisions about how to do things.
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I really have to finish my weekly newsletter edition… but I just came back from a 60KM bike ride! 😅 Now, back at it! Coming out soon.
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First Narrated Blog Post Experiment
Hi everyone. I might be late to the party, but I finally sat down for a few minutes to test Micro.blog’s new feature: narrated blog posts. It is strange because this is my first use and I cannot write a full review because as I’m writing this, my audio recording is still not done, and I don’t know how is the audio attachment and processing will actually work. It might be similar to when I post a new podcast episode. In any case, I think this is a clever addition to an already useful and enjoyable blogging service. Thanks to @Manton for this. Now, should I say, “have a great day and see you for another blog post?” Probably not.
[Update #1]: It seems the play button doesn’t show up. Probably a bug with the Cards theme. Investigation started. [Update #2]: I found out that narrated blog posts come out as podcast episodes on Podcasts. I’m not sure this is what I want.
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I still have my Medium account and content. I’m not sure what to do with it. I still get trafic to my posts. I updated my profile page this morning to remove a reference to my Linktr.ee page that I’m phasing out later this year.
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⚠️ It’s time for the 2024-20 edition of my weekly creative summary! Not my best week, but good enough to share! 👨🏻💻😅 Index to past editions can be reached here. Newsletter going out by email later today. 📬
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Just downloaded three YouTube videos on my Mac, ran MacWhisper1 to generate the transcripts, then uploaded the resulting files into ChatGPT for a summarization and to get a few answers to my numerous questions. I saved about an hour of work. What a wonderful time to be alive!2
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🚨Hey, it’s Sunday! And you know what happens on each Sunday? It’s time for the new edition of the weekly creative summary newsletter! Here you go, ladies and gentlemen! Enjoy. Made with care and love. 😌
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Having to authenticate with Wordpress just to like a blog post is so “tired”.
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Posted a photo on my Ko-fi page this morning. It’s for supporters only. I shared some thoughts about street photography. I decided to use that page to share more personal stories that I don’t share elsewhere. It’s only the beginning. It will take time to open up more. It’s a journey.
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I find it hard to save time for blogging while traveling. There is always so much to do that I kind of forget about writing. This post is an exception, though. 😂 we’re visiting Nice today. Been there once but it’s always fun to revisit great cities.
