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Doing Some Cleanup in My Home Office
After spending some time cleanup my office this today, I found these in my drawers and other places. I no longer use these. Do you? I know some people here on Micro.blog do. I donāt which I find fascinating because I did a lot in my younger times. Before the computers.
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Wondering About Returning to Podcasting
Now that Iām finally having my dedicated room in the house for working, Iām wondering about returning to podcasting (I used to have a podcast, in French) or even testing the YouTuber world (even though I wrote in the past that Iāll never be a YouTuber). Why is that?
First, a dedicated room is mandatory to be able to record without being disrupted too much. Second, sound quality would probably be much better than recording in an open space. Third, I could create a better background because my room is decorated to my personal tastes.
But is this enough to convince myself to seriously consider getting back to audio or video content creation? I have all the tools: a great MacBook Air, a Mac mini, an Apple Studio Display, a good microphone, a NAS for archiving purposes, etc. Yet, Iām not really good at audio or video production, and itās very time-consuming for me. I would certainly learn a lot while working hard at this. Moreover, should I do this in my native language which is French or do it in English, which Iām not perfectly fluent with? Maybe I could try to do it together with other podcasters (I know a few of them). Too many questions, not many answers.
Photo credit: Will Francis on Unsplash.
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Taking a break of many things
If you are wondering whatās up with me, Iām on vacation for a week. Iām not only taking a break from work, my office, but also from blogging. Expect a return to normal programming next week.
Written on my iPad, somewhere on a sandy beach in Mexico šš
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When Apple Pivoted
Thanks to MacRumors, as reported today, I didnāt know today was the fifth anniversary of a special meeting between Appleās top brass and select journalists to talk about Appleās plans with the pro users and their commitment to the Mac.
At the time, we didnāt know how serious Appleās upcoming pivot would be. In retrospective, Apple delivered and then some. It is simply a tour-de-force to flip the Mac product line upside down and bring power efficient, mighty and beautiful Mac designs. The Mac transition to Apple Silicon is probably the most important change to come to the Mac line since its inception in 1984.
I canāt wait to see what the next ten years will be made of.
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Itās Was So Fun
This weekend I did some cleanup in my old papers and documents. I found an old bank account statement where I can see a withdraw transaction to help me pay for my Macintosh 128K in 1985: 3460.75 CAN$. š¤ Ouch. I did some research to better document the time when I had a Macintosh SE while studying at the university and remembered about using Think Pascal, Prototyper and ResEdit to build a floppy disks indexer. That was before the Internet. It was so much fun. Itās gives you an idea how old I am. š
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Venting My Frustration About Microsoft Teams
Itās March 2022. Spring is finally here. Moreover, among us, Apple Silicon, first announced in June 2020 and massively available since November 2020. Furthermore, also available is Center Stage, a new feature introduced with the 2021 iPad Pro and now available on the MacBook Pro and more recently the Apple Studio display.
Hereās the thing. Microsoft Teams, currently at version 1.5 still isnāt supporting Center Stage and worst, Apple Silicon. Running Teams on any recent Mac is an execrable experience: slow, bad image quality (compared to Zoom for example) and consume far too much memory. How is it possible for a company the size of Microsoft whoās so slow to move and fix Teams? I donāt buy the argument about Teams being built with the Electron framework. The latter already supports the M1 chip. Microsoft is supposedly working on Teams version 2.0 which will be presumably built on WebView2. Theyāve been working on this since June of last year.
Itās highly frustrating. Sorry for the bad mood, but Teams is one of the most used application for work giving me the right to vent my frustration.
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Dear Mobile Apps Developers
Dear iOS developers, dear @Substack, when building screenshots for the App Store, show us your software, not the device on which it is running. Thank you. With love. The Direction.
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Pausing My Apple Studio Display Buying Decision
Well, after a promising start, following reviews of the Apple Studio display, it seems that Iāll put my buying decision on hold. As I wrote, one of the reasons why Iām considering this display is the integrated camera and speakers for a better video conference experience. It appears image quality is not good at all, judging by the examples posted online. Itās close to being a deal breaker.
Apparently, the Apple Studio display is running a version of iOS 15.4. Yep, sounds overkill, and yet, itās the case, according to Gruber. Apple is promising a software update to fix the problem and bring image quality on par with the iPad Pro equipped with the same camera and essentially using th same software to enable Center Stage.
Hereās something: when we look at preview integrated cameras in MacBook Pro or the iMac and find the image quality to be bad, we try to excuse Apple of fitting a camera in a too-thin enclosure. But we know itās not enough to explain the issue of image quality. Software is the problem. Look no further than the iPhone for an example.
As soon as:
- I can go to an Apple Store to see the Apple Studio display for myself;
- Normal people are publishing their reviews and comment on their experience with the display;
- Apple fixes the camera image quality with an update to the display operating system;
Then, Iāll make a final decision. Now, I canāt wait to see in action the software upgrade process on this thing.
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āThe Mac Studio contains radical innards in a plain exteriorā
Benjamin Mayo in Apple Introduces MacĀ Studio:
āā¦the introduction of a brand new model of Mac is precisely the best time to do something entirely new.ā
And
āThe Mac Studio is a boring box with rounded corners, and has no party tricks to speak of. The trashcan was a truly wild, out-there, design.ā
I share the same sentiment. A new form-factor is a rare thing from Apple. An elongated Mac mini doesnāt do justice the Mac Studio interior, even less to its name. Another missed opportunity. I guess āreal prosā doesnāt give a damn about all of this.
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Two Years Agoā¦
On March 13th, in 2020, the world flipped, my world flipped. So many things are different now. This short blog post is about reflecting on the last two years and how they became the foundation for what is to come in my life.
Time flies and making judicious decisions is more important than ever. Working from home is important. Iāll never return full time at the office. Even if I move to another job, working from home is now a requirement. Visiting customers for the sake of shaking hands no longer make sense to me. There has to be more than this. The price is too high to pay: wasted time.
Traveling is more important than ever too; thatās the only way for me to do more photography. Something that I didnāt do much in the last two years. This visual work posted in April of 2020 was the trigger to write this blog post. Iām sad about this because photography is my most important source of inspiration and my biggest creativity playground after writing. Still on the travel subject, I can envision traveling abroad for more than two weeks now and splitting my time between leisure and remote work. Leaving for a month or more is now possible.
Speaking of writing, Iāll probably continue to write but probably not as much as in the last two years. A more balanced life is taking place and will take away some of my writing time. Itās ok. Itās also part of making better choices.
The last two years of COVID-19, the more and more frequent climate disturbances and the recent events in Europe are telling me this: the world is more than ever in a constant state of emergency. I better learn how to cope with this otherwise Iām not finished at being in constant consternation mood while reading the news.
Thanks for reading this. I know your time is precious too and you made the decision to read this short piece.
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Peek Performance, Low Interest
Itās now official. Apple will host another virtual event next week, on March 8th. Itās the first Apple event of 2022, but itās far from being the first real event of 2022. Current events happening in Ukraine are troubling and make me pause on a lot of things. Apple-related stuff is one of these. Iām not in the mood for that. My thoughts and energy are diverted, seized. I donāt care if itās a new iPhone SE, a beefed up Mac mini or whatever else. These look so irrelevant in this incredible and terrible era. Low interest indeed.
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Apple is Finally Showing Courage
I asked for this since the beginning of the Ukrainian war (on Twitter: first here, then here, then here), and today Apple delivered. Appleās products are no longer being sold through its online store. While the App Store is still working apparently, Iām ok with their decision. On top of that, Apple will donate money, twice the amount that employees will give to help Ukrainians. Itās a good move, the only move, without using real arms, to make an impact. Itās even more powerful when many companies are doing exactly the same.
Yep, finally.
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Going Downwards
I don’t know about you but I find current events in Ukraine very disturbing and distracting. As much as Iām happy to see Russia being more and more isolated every hour, I can see its leader being more and more pissed off and willing to commit the worst. The world seems to go in a spiralling direction toward even more violence and hard to resolve situations.
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A Message for Ukrainians
The news of the Russian criminal invasion of its sovereign neighbour, Ukraine, is appalling. Putin and his regime is committing an aggression that shall be punished, at the right time, at the right place with the right means. I cannot believe that weāre seeing such an invasion in Europe, in 2022. Whatās next? Whoās next? Weāre all going to suffer at various degrees from this utterly criminal invasion. I pay no respect to Putin, his government, his propaganda machine and every single Russian who support this aggression. This is an act of war against democracy.
No wonder why Ukraine wanted to stay in NATO camp, because Russia is simply an antidemocratic land. Democratic governments and systems are far from perfect, but they are the least imperfect solution.
For now, Iām sending my positive waves of support to the Ukrainians community of Montreal, Canada. I cannot wait for the next demonstration, so I can show my full support of the Ukrainians.
Hitler must be so proud.
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On Time Machine Backups Over Network
If you own a desktop Mac, you probably use an external drive for Time Machine. If you use a portable Mac, most likely not, and according to the Tidbits article, youāre not alone. The portability of the Mac is hindered by having an external drive hooked permanently. I, personally, have a different strategy: I use a Synology NAS DS720+ with Time Machine enabled to do my backups over the wireless network. It works perfectly, but I donāt do a full backup of my MacBook Air. Files that are part of iCloud Drive are excluded (read more here, youāll find out why itās a good idea). In fact, most of the files are excluded, except a few critical folders, outside the scope of any cloud syncing services. Applications arenāt backed up either (easy to recover in case of lost). Backups are small but are just what I need to protect my work.
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Still Mystified by ProRAW
Even after reading this excellent article by the guy behind Halide, Iām still mystified by Appleās ProRAW format. The question that keeps popping up in my mind is: if computational photography processing is involved in creating the ProRAW file (in DNG format), how can we still call this a variant of a RAW image?
Photo credit: Jason Strull on Unsplash
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Dune Movie - Woah!
Today, I finally saw the Dune movie, by the Canadian director, Denis Villeneuve. As a Canadian myself Iām so proud of him! Itās not a movie review, far from it. Let me just say that when I think about this movie, the word āequilibriumā comes to my mind. The movie is well balanced: storyline, intrigue, visual effects (visual effects serving the story), music, Duneās world imaginary world. But the best for me were those āornithoptersā. Wow, they were sooooo cool! Canāt wait for the next part.
Have you seen the movie? What do you think of it?
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Old Computer-Related Memories
From 1993 to 1994, I owned a PowerBook Duo 210 sporting a trackball, a low-profile keyboard and a grayscale screen. I didnāt like the trackball as the pointing device. The keyboard wasnāt that great either. But, it was small, highly portable. Coupled with the Duo Dock and an external monitor, it was a cool and novel setup. Itās been a long time ago. This article was written using a M1 MacBook Air, in a coffee shop.
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On Carrot Weather ā Is It That Cool?
Why is Carrot Weather so popular? Iām a weather enthusiast and I like trying new weather-related applications. I use many all year long, but Carrot Weather is not part of my application arsenal. They recently introduced updated weather maps, but to get a sense of them, I would need to subscribe for a year subscription. Most of the interesting features are available in the premium tier. I like the maps feature, but I wonder how better they will get compared to the ones that Iām already using in MyRadar. iOS 15 brought a significant update to the weather too, but I find the maps lacking radar resolution.
If there are users of Carrot Weather subscription, tell me more, tell my why it is so nice?
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My Oldest Post
Going back in time on previously published content can be the source of a few smiles. My oldest post on my main blog is about Micro.blog. Here is an excerpt:
This morning I found out 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.
Itās funny. Itās not about introducing my blog or something like āhelloā world.
