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Security Is Hard for Everyone
This morning, my wife picked up her iPhone and tried to unlock it1. She couldn’t after a few try2. She tried a few times with a slight variation, but the iPhone refused to unlock itself, now showing a 15-minute delay on the lock screen. Her passcode is a complex one as per corporate security rules. She knows it by heart, she told me. She doesn’t know what to do, and she is in deep doubt now. Eventually, she asked me for help, but I told her I cannot do much about it3.
At first, I thought it was the infamous Apple ID being locked out, but it’s not the case. As a reminder: the passcode used to unlock your iPhone has little to do with your Apple ID. But, when using 2FA, the iPhone is required to get access to the Apple ID and must be unlocked for this to work. Maybe this is why people think they are both linked together. It’s not the case.
As I finish writing this up, my wife tried again to unlock her iPhone and it worked. All is good now. But it’s a reminder that, for most people, security is hard. It’s hard to experience. It’s hard to explain. It’s hard to get over it.
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Overrated x 1000
Microsoft 365 or Office 365, if you prefer, is so overrated. Microsoft is the master of selling licenses but when it comes down to doing real serious collaborative work with Teams and the rest of the software suite it falls apart really quickly. For example: trying to collaborated on a Word document, creating comments and assigning a task toi someone… nobody knows really where the task is actually saved! And no one seems to get a notification… or nobody cares to look at the activity tab in Teams because it is so overwhelming! Oh and don’t get me started with Microsoft Loop, a pale copycat of Notion. And should we talk about Visio? I prefer not.
I’m so fed up of working in an IT field where everyone is short sighted with Microsoft. I mean, there are so much more powerful collaborative apps out there.
/rantoff
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Ghost and ActivityPub Support - We All Win
I’m a bit late to the game but I just read the announcement by Ghost about their ActivityPub support that is coming to their platform. I find this development super exciting; one of my site is on Ghost. Having people subscribe to my content via their favorite Mastodon client is super cool. But what is cooler is that people will be able to reply to my articles right from here on Micro.blog and get their reply published right under my articles, just like on Micro.blog. I think this is a good way to offer a reduced friction experience compared to having to log in to post a reply, which is the standard way to interact with a Ghost blog post. Can’t wait to see this coming this year.
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On Comfort Zones
Today, I’ll bring my camera to the office1, as I’m declaring myself as the official photographer for the two-day yearly sales kickoff event. I’ll take photos of humans, which is not my cup of tea, but I need to try it more and get out of my comfort zone. Usually my problem while photographing humans is anticipation and timing. Some people are very good at it, but I’m not. So, I need to practice. Comfort zones are killing creativity and learning.
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My iPhone will stay in my pocket, I’ll use my Nikon Zf with the 40mm F2 lens. ↩︎
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Design Is Hard
I’ve been discussing a lot about design in general with my wife recently regarding our home improvement project. Design is hard. The process of redesigning a 3D space (a room, a bathroom) is not trivial but I think we should always try to start from a minimalistic concept from which we can build on step by step later. Also, not everyone has the same ability to visualize something in 3D without first seeing it for real, even with 3D computer assisted design. It will be a long journey.
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Now ☀️9 °C - 🌡️2 °C - 🌧️29%
- Today, I wanted to try something different and write this post on Micro.blog instead of Scribbles. Since the Micro.blog editor is so far behind Scribbles’, I’m using Ulysses for this experiment. Sadly, people won’t be able to reply using a contact form because my blog on Micro.blog doesn’t offer one. In any case, say hello@numericcitizen.me!
- Today is a special day—video recording day! I’m excited to share more about my creator dashboard, a project I’ve been passionately building in Craft.
- I’ve been editing photos with Photomator recently and discovered that for some photos, Photomator would create a sidecar file which is more than 100 MB in size, while for other photos, the sidecar file is only around a hundred kilobytes, under similar editing workflows.
- I find Grammarly to be overly iterative when suggesting corrections. After applying a suggestion, it will iterate and suggest something else that it could have figured out in the first place. They are transitioning to AI, and I think it will help. Oh, and Grammarly considers markdown formatting marks to be corrected.
- Yesterday, after watching this video, I wondered if I should switch to FinalCut Pro for my video production. There are things that I find super cool and useful in FCP that I don’t have in Screenflow like Gling.ai.
- It took me 22 minutes to write this post.
- Maybe I could alternate between Scribbles and Micro.blog for this /Now post. What do you think? Don’t miss previous /Now posts on Scribbles.
- This is a photo that I processed yesterday night. A better version will soon be available on my Glass page, though.
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In Search of a New and Optimized Photo Processing Workflow
Now that I’m no longer in Adobe’s ecosystem for my photo processing needs, I depend on Photomator and Synology Photos. I need to create an optimized workflow: upload photos to Synology1, browse and tag the pictures I want to process using Synology Photos tags, then edit them in Photomator. This is the last is a challenge: RAW images need to be converted to a DNG format2, and then edited in Photomator before exporting the end results in JPEG. I need to download RAW images manually out of Synology Photos then import them in Photomator for processing. Processed images should then be imported into Apple Photos for easy access.
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Feeling Undecided — Thinking Out Loud
Believe it or not, I’m still undecided about what to use for my summer travel journal. My options are 1) A new dedicated blog with Micro.blog, 2) Scribbles, 3) Pixelfed, 4) None of the above. I’m also undecided about how much effort I want to put into this. Micro.blog’s image handling concerns me1. Scribbles is in a similar position2. This leaves me with Pixelfed. Yet, this question is fundamental to my decision: it is more about images or words. It’s the former. I might end up with Pixelfed. Or with a bit of everything3. Decision. Decision. Decision.
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Logging My Intentional Actions
I log quite a lot of things I do online using Things 3 Logbook feature to use this in my weekly creative summaries. I log what I do intentionally, of course, otherwise this would be way too noisy. One example is watching this video about Siegfried Hansen, a respected street photographer1. Reading an article in Omnivore is another intentional action that I want to log.
The process is simple: I have many pending tasks in Things 3, in a project called “To Read, Watch, Listen & Process.” I do select a task, do it, then mark it as completed. It then goes into Things 3 Logbook. It’s cool.23
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DOS vs Apple - Am I Getting Too Old?
I’m unsure if I’m getting too old, but topics like DOJ vs Apple and everything preceding it are too complex for me to dive into. It may be a vital part of Apple’s current history, but I struggle to grasp it. I appreciate the efforts of non-professional tech pundits and Apple enthusiasts who delve deep into this and share their perspectives tirelessly. I’m not reading all the comments and takes on this, again because there as way too many. I do understand too that the course of the iPhone experience might see an inflection point in the coming years, if what is currently happening in the EU is any indication. I think it’s sad because the bases for this aren’t forming a consensus; something probably unachievable.
This all explain my indecision about who’s right, who’s wrong. I don’t trust governments’ capabilities in understanding our tech world, that’s for sure, which means I’m not optimistic about the future of this particular case. Apple is big. So is Google. Facebook. And the like. They are the fruit of the “American way”. I guess that at some point, we prefer mediocrity in the name of “open markets” and to give an “equal” chance to all who wold like to compete.
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On Writing Inline Links
Each time I write a sentence with an inline link to something else, I’m hesitating. Here are two examples.
V1: When I read this article I simply couldn’t believe it.
V2: When I read Gurman: No iPad Announcement Planned for March 26, I simply couldn’t believe it.
Which version makes better sense? Which version will trigger a click to visit the link? Linking from within sentences (inline) gives great explanations on how to do the latter1. Right now, I’m 99% of the time using the version 1 but I consider changing my writing style to go with version 2 as often as possible.
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It’s a great use of inline link right there! And I think it works great. ↩︎
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On Stage Manager - Again
So, I don’t miss Stage Manager on macOS and my M2 15-inch MacBook Air, apparently. I realized today that I disabled Stage Manager a while ago and forgot to reenable it. Speaking of Stage Manager, it is permanently turned off on my 2018 iPad Pro because it isn’t usable, but this is something that I’m looking forward to reenabling on the new iPad Pro and plugging my iPad into my LG UltraFine 4K display, and see, maybe, a new iPad experience since a long time1. I can’t wait to try that.
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That was a long one, I know. Some thoughts are better shared in one long stretch! ↩︎
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Not Everything Should Be "Timeless"
Today, I came across a blog via someone’s else blogroll, and to my surprise, while browsing the blog’s content, I couldn’t find a single post with a publication date. So, let me be clear: I’m not feeling at ease when visiting a blog that don’t display publication date for each post. I can of understand the idea of “timeless” content, but I feel at lost with the author’s decision. I need time references in my digital life so I can better understand the content and the context. Call me old school if you want. I’m ok with this.
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On Presenting
Just completed a one hour customer presentation this morning. It was the culmination of a six-week project that shoud lead to bigger opportunities. I love doing presentations and I’m really comfortable doing so in front of people, especially when it is directly related to my field of expertise.
Each time I prepare such presentations, I always think about Steve Jobs keynotes. Always. He was a model for me. And still is. There is a little bit of his way into my presentation delivery: setting the stage, telling a story, and a « one more thing » whenever possible.
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On Craft for iPhone
Craft on iPhone is so much different than on the iPad. It feels like a totally different app. If I were an iPhone-only user I wouldn’t buy a Craft subscription because the iPhone version is so bad. Thankfully the iPad version is much more workable and the Mac version is probably the best Catalyst-based app out there. It wasn’t always like that btw. Was much better before version 2.7. I don’t know when that situation will change.
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Never Tamper Someone's Desire for Creative Tools
My wife gave me a surprisingly mildly negative reaction this morning when I shared with her my intention of getting a Nikon Zf mirrorless camera before going to Croatia this summer. Not because it’s not the best camera for this situation, no, because I already own an iPhone 15 Pro Max and a Nikon D750. 😩 But, I could get rid of my D750 or keep it but bring the Zf with me instead. I find it a bit sad that someone can put a break on someone else’s desire for creative tools. I’ll talk to her tonight after work.
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The Fascinating Game of Moving Between Hosting Platforms
I find those stories always fascinating when I read about a blogger moving from one platform to another. It is as if every hosting solution cannot have it all. There is always too much friction, or something is simply lacking, which prompts us, content creators, to drop one service and search for something else. One service can have a great visual design1yet lacking from the analytics side. One platform can be well-designed but very hard to keep up and running2. Another solution that can be dead simple to publish lacks visual design flexibility3. Can we have it all? I sense a business opportunity here.
I’m permanently questioning my current options. Right now, I’m fine with my hosting solutions, but one never knows when something no longer fits my needs.
Note: this article is a modified version of the original text published elsewhere on 2021-03-05 under my other metablog website using Craft.
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AI Training: Ethics or Coverage?
Some authors on the internet are against using their content without permission to train the models behind generative AI. As a blogger, this question often comes to my mind. On one hand, I believe that training without permission poses an ethical issue. I am unsure if we have genuinely addressed this question as a society. On the other hand, I question the danger of many authors wanting to silence their voices by blocking the training process to access their online content. Now more than ever, I feel that all voices are essential in ensuring that model training reflects our diversity as much as possible. I don’t want bots and haters to win the race. We, as authors, need to offer resistance. I’m not sure how this challenge will be solved, if ever.
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One Big Regret of My Digital Life
One of the things I regret the most is not having had the idea of creating a blog in the 90s (and keeping it until today). Surprisingly, I learned about HTML, web servers like Apache and Netscape when it became popular1. I didn’t click with the idea of owning a small portion of the Internet to share what I was becoming at that time. What a missed opportunity.
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It’s not exactly true. I used to have and maintain a website about a subject that I still find fascinating: meteorology, circa 1994. ↩︎
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On Single-Purpose Device Attractiveness
This week during a work meeting with my office colleagues, one of them was using a “remarkable” tablet to take notes. I was sitting right next to him and could see the tablet in action. I must say I was impressed. It’s certain that a “remarkable” tablet offers very limited functionality compared to an iPad, but it raises the following question: Should Apple consider going back to creating single-purpose devices? For example, the iPhone killed the iPod, but I think if Apple re-entered the market with a new line of iPods, it would be very popular. And I think the same would be true for a note-taking tablet.
