He says "Hi!"

For no apparent reason, I started a photo series of this little guy in all sorts of visual contexts. I’m using an album to store them all. I’m currently at 23 photos of him. He’s so cute, isn’t he? I got my inspiration from someone here on Micro.blog who did the same in recent months. I can’t remember who, though. So who knows where this is headed. It’s the time of the year for frivolous projects. 😂

Completed The Servant Season 2 - At Long Last!

Finally was able to finish season 2 of The Servant on Apple TV+ yesterday, just in time for the third season. What a weird story. The only occasion I can spend time watching TV series is during the holidays. Using AirPods Max for the listening experience is pure magic; nobody in the living gets distracted by the TV, and the sound quality is impressive. Now, I should finish For All Mankind Season 2.

A Message for Christmas

To all of you, even though I don’t know you personally, since I spend quite some time here all year long reading your posts, I kind of feel familiarity. It’s like being part of a small community. I like this a lot. It’s something not possible on Twitter. So, I want to wish you a merry Christmas to all of you. Take care of you, of your family and your friends. 🎄

Doing Nothing Useful and Feeling Guilty About It

First day of holiday vacations. I’m not into Christmas at all this year. It’s the kind of day where I should work on my many writing projects or even do some photo processing! Yet, I feel in a lethargic state. I’m barely able to finish my newsletter. I’m unable to organize myself. Reading seems the best option. Or Netflix. I feel guilty for doing nothing useful. At least, I was able to express myself on this. 🤷🏻‍♂️

Phasing Out My Vimeo Account

Well, I’m not a video guy. I prefer photography. My experience with Vimeo is coming to an end. I won’t renew my subscription. I’ll keep my account but returning to the free tier will remove many of my previously published content. This prompts me to remove some content from my main blog too. Deleting content is something that I don’t like to do. It’s like putting hard work, countless hours of work down the drain. 😔

You can have a look at my Vimeo profile if you are curious.

Glass — Maybe We Need to Be Patient?

Matt Birchler blog post about his interest for Glass’s fading out:

I was very high on Glass, a new photo sharing app this summer, but my enthusiasm for it has dropped in perfect sync with the temperature dropping here in the Midwest since then.

Lee Peterson blog post about his interest is so low that he canceled his Glass subscription:

I still feel it was a bad slope to start down by adding appreciation and I’ve cancelled my subscription.

Finally, Andy Nicolaides on Twitter thinking out loud about the introduction of “appreciation” (a term used instead of “likes”):

I’m not one of the folks that wasn’t a big fit of Glass adding the likes / appreciation function, but I’ll tell you this much, in my small case study of one, it’s completely killed off any comments I used to receive.

Let’s be honest: Glass has been alive for less than four months. They kept updating the service since the beginning to improve the experience and discoverability. They didn’t fall in the “me too” trap yet. Aren’t we expecting too much too soon from such a small organization? Should we expect them to come out with the right recipe on day one? Could this be much more difficult to be different and yet familiar in the crowded space of on-line photo sharing? I would argue that your feed is as good as the people you follow. Sure, Glass needs to attract great photographers. I suspect they are working on it as I write this. People are busy. Living in a pandemic put a lot of stress on everybody and cancelled so many opportunities for doing photography, but it created others too. It wasn’t the best moment to launch such a service, and yet, they’ve done a great job so far.

I do have a subscription to Glass (my profile page here) and I’m willing to be patient here. I have a goal of posting at least one picture a week, even though I have another place to do so, on Smugmug (my profile page here).

The Enigmatic Snapseed from Google

Surprising to see Snapseed being updated since it is owned by Google. I use this photo processing application to create the posts in the Perfect Imperfection Series on my Smugmug account. If Google was to kill this app, it would probably put an end to my photo series. I tried to find other apps to replace Snapseed but failed to find something that comes close. Now, why is Google even bother maintaining Snapseed? How does it fit their business model?

Is The iPad Still Exciting — It Depends

I want to chime in on a series of posts by Matt Birchler (on his YouTube channel) and Andy Nicolaides (on his The Dent website) regarding the iPad. The question is clear: is the iPad still exciting?

It all depends on the use case. I came to realize in 2021 that the iPad (even in its Pro incarnation) cannot be as powerful and effective in my workflow as the MacBook Air. Besides creating content, is the iPad Pro still relevant? You bet! There is nothing beating the feeling of tearing the iPad from its Magic Keyboard and sitting on the couch for reading or browsing the web. Every single time, I enjoy the experience in all its glory, if such a thing can be said. The other use case that I came to appreciate is Sidecar. The iPad Pro, even in its 11” size, proves to be a superb and useful second screen to my Mac mini. And using the iPad with its Magic Keyboard, when I’m on the go, is still a superb experience, as long as I set my expectations accordingly.

With iPadOS 15, Apple did address a few more low-hanging fruits from a software perspective. There is still a lot to accomplish, but more than ever I feel Apple is giving the iPad the attention it deserves.

In summary, the iPad can be super exciting, it all comes down to its use case. For me, it still is, when I use it.