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  • If I had enough time on hand, I would build a one-pager website comparing all Mastodon clients. Then, I would update it as new app releases come out. I can see the feature-by-feature comparison table with an overall score at the bottom. I think it could be helpful for new Mastodon users and developers to better understand their app’s position in the client landscape.

    → 7:24 AM, Feb 2
  • Well, expect a change of mood for the next couple of days. It’s seems that my mother, 89, is at the very end of her road. Not only that was expected but also I’m relieved somehow. 😔

    → 11:50 AM, Jan 28
  • Is there something like Shortcuts on Windows? I’m asking because, with the release of Things 3.17, I made a few tweaks to my blogger workflow, thanks to the addition of many Shortcuts actions. This new Shortcut can run on the iPad, the iPhone and the Mac. That’s so cool.

    → 9:57 PM, Jan 26
  • Well well well, 15-25cm approaching. Winds should be under 60 KM/h. Some blowing snow is expected, more expected along the river. Very mild but snowy winter so far. I’m a weather enthusiast, as you can tell. The map is from Ventusky.

    → 10:42 AM, Jan 25
  • OK, I’m mind blown. I went to see the latest Avatar movie today. I was blown away. It’s probably the most beautiful, entertaining, touching, impressive and well-balanced movie I have ever seen. I’m just in awe of the ingenuity and craftsmanship that went into this movie. Wow.

    → 9:42 PM, Jan 22
  • Spent most of the day in front of a computer. Thankfully, I learned quite a bit about video production. I saved 400$ by not buying Final Cut Pro. I produced my first video of 2023.

    → 6:11 PM, Jan 21
  • I’ve been watching a few beginner videos about Final Cut Pro just because I’m searching for ways to improve my video production workflow. The new problem now is this: how do I export recording segments out of Screenflow so I can import them in Final Cut Pro? There is currently no easy way to do this automatically. The process is manual but documented in a Telestream forum. I’m not so sure the use of Final Cur Pro would be a boon to my workflow. Back to square one, but I learned a few things about Final Cut Pro and Screenflow export options. It’s a good thing in the end, as I won’t find a reason to upgrade to an M2 Pro Mac mini. 🤣

    → 3:00 PM, Jan 21
  • I’ve been testing Continuity Camera mode with my iPhone 13 Pro as the video and audio sources for recording with Screenflow. I must say that I was very impressed and positively surprised.

    First, the video quality is excellent, and I get Center Stage as a bonus. Screenflow sees this as a standard camera source. Second, using the Voice Isolation option, I no longer hear background noises in the house, which is cool because I’ll stop asking people to be less noisy neighbours. Now, If only I could integrate Adobe Enhance Voice into my workflow… 🙏

    Solution found (link)!

    I may have a Blue Yeti microphone for sale soon!

    → 12:22 PM, Jan 21
  • Listening to Leo Laporte’s voice of Twit.tv in my AirPods Pro 2… wow, what a great voice this man has.

    → 6:50 PM, Jan 19
  • Following recent changes in my digital landscape, I needed to spend some time tonight updating my About page, built using Craft. I hope you pay a visit and learn a few things about me. 🙂

    → 9:44 PM, Jan 17
  • I just finished recording my MacBook Air screen with my face using Screenflow & iPhone 13 Pro as the webcam, thanks to macOS Ventura and Continuity. The end results are pretty good. I didn’t expect it to work. For Screenflow, the iPhone is just like a plugged-in standard webcam. No lag whatsoever. Consider me impressed.

    → 2:33 PM, Jan 14
  • Thought of the moment: on any platform, porn is never very far. #mastodon 🫣

    → 11:43 AM, Jan 14
  • I just updated my Numeric Citizen I/O website to summarize the last few weeks of change to my blogging setup if you are curious to know more.

    This post is required because Craft’s shared documents don’t support RSS feeds, sadly. 😔

    → 11:38 AM, Jan 14
  • Mast

    While on Twitter, I was a fan of Tweetbot. Now that I'm on Mastodon (I have an account but don't plan to be very active for now), I feel at home with Ivory, their new client, still in beta. I wish they were doing a Micro.blog client. I would pay more to get it than I paid for Tweetbot.

    cc ivory@tapbots.social

    → 9:43 AM, Jan 14
  • blog.numericcitizen.me should point here on Micro.blog hosted website, while numericcitizen.me should point there to my main website on WordPress.com. I hope I didn’t mess up too many things. 🙃

    Please, would you check for me? 🙏🏻

    → 6:34 PM, Jan 13
  • 👉🏻 Getting ready for: numericcitizen.micro.blog 🔜 blog.numericitizen.me 😎

    → 1:32 PM, Jan 13
  • During my trip to South America, I started to experience RSS feeds sync issues in News Explorer. None of the feeds would update, even after resetting the sync status for all feeds. It lasted a few days. It was very inconvenient. I couldn’t get my news and instead had to visit websites individually, which implied getting content I didn’t care about (ad placements, other promotional stuff, etc.) After a while, the issue fixed itself. It was due to very slow network connectivity.

    Long story short, RSS feeds are central to my content reading workflow. Without them, I’m lost. The convenience of having all the feeds converge in one app, without the noise, is unbeatable. Long live RSS!

    → 7:03 AM, Jan 10
  • Now, I’m wondering if I should keep a “Replies” page on my microblog website. I don’t think people care to see what and to whom I’m replying. Your thoughts?

    → 4:16 PM, Jan 8
  • Dear @manton, How can I get the “reply with Micro.blog” on my post details?

    → 11:27 AM, Jan 8
  • I would rather buy a Micro.blog client from Tapbots than a Mastodon client. There. I said it.

    → 12:25 PM, Dec 28
  • AirTags can be quite useful and… stressful to track. Here we are in the plane quite ready to depart and yet my main luggage is still in the airport. 😵‍💫🫣

    Technology shouldn’t create anxiety like this.

    → 7:59 AM, Dec 28
  • Thought of the day: airports are probably the most user hostile commercial environment that we can think of. Bad UX. Wrong expectations management in general. Badly designed physical areas. The list goes on and on. Convince me of the opposite. 🫤

    → 11:47 PM, Dec 26
  • Flighty is such a great iPhone app. Here Flighty is showing in a shiny and clever way that one of my flight is 2h20m late at destination. 😳🤦🏻‍♂️

    → 3:25 PM, Dec 26
  • Merry Christmas 🎅

    → 1:58 PM, Dec 24
  • Digital cleanup night. Medium Partner Program: Cancelled. Buffer: Cancelled. WP for Buffer Plug-in: Cancelled. Typefully subscription: Cancelled.

    Feels much better now.

    Twitter: you’re the next.

    → 10:08 PM, Dec 23
  • That is a hell of a low pressure. Very windy now. Lots of rain earlier. Getting way colder by tomorrow.

    → 5:21 PM, Dec 23
  • Getting Ready for the Holidays and my Next Trip

    Closing out my working session with my office for the holidays. What a year it was. Now is the time to finally get ready for Christmas and everything that comes with it. Next, on December 26th, we’re leaving Canada for Brasil and our first cruise trip in five years! 😅

    → 11:24 AM, Dec 23
  • Found a great place for my Tidbyt.

    → 7:08 PM, Dec 21
  • Installing Windows in 2022

    I just spent part of my morning installing Windows 10 version 22H2 on a virtual machine with VMware Fusion 12 on my recently acquired 2013 Mac Pro. God, it’s been a long time since I experienced the Windows installation process. It is so freaking slow (way faster to install a Linux machine, BTW) and with so many reboots. I still prefer Apple’s macOS in that respect.Screens MacPro 2022 12 21 10 35 23 2x

    → 9:44 AM, Dec 21
  • My Experience With Tidbyt LED-Based Display

    IMG 4361

    After six weeks of waiting, I finally got this little LED-based display called “Tidbyt”, a reference, I guess, to the old Lite-Brite game which came out in 1967 (I had one when I was a child).

    Tidbyt is an intelligent wireless LED-based panel that displays content configured from the Tidbyt app available on a smartphone. Physically, the device feels high quality and well-designed and is framed with real wood, reminiscent of mid-century furniture.

    Content is configured using applets that you put together on a canvas. The display content will switch from one applet to another in the order defined on the canvas. Applets can be set to display only on a specific schedule, but the scheduling options are rather limited. It’s very simple to set this up.

    Tuesday 20 Dec 2022 06 37 07

    Once the display is plugged into power via its USB-C cable, it will wait for the configuration to be done from the smartphone, a six-step process. Bluetooth is required to detect the display, and a Wifi network is required for the display to get its data from the Internet. Tuesday 20 Dec 2022 06 49 36

    The applets catalogue is growing but still is relatively limited. Thanks to an SDK and open APIs, developers constantly add new ones. The display is bright and can be adjusted according to a manual setting or time of the day. There is a night mode, too, if you want to put the device in one bedroom.

    The screen resolution seemed low at first, but from a distance, it is surprisingly good, enough to display small images.

    All in all, the Tidbyt makes a great addition to my home office, and people at work have already noticed it during Teams meetings and are asking questions about this little thing sitting on the shelf behind me.

    → 7:02 AM, Dec 20
  • So what do have here… quick and dirty review coming soon. 🤓🤗

    → 9:22 PM, Dec 19
  • The Stars of the Show for 2022 Are...

    Raycast 2022 12 16 08 19 49 2xIf I look back at my software usage in 2022, three stars stand out:

    1. Raycast
    2. Things 3
    3. Screenflow
    Raycast was a revelation. It is so pervasive in my workflow that I feel lost when returning to my iPad for serious work. I underutilize Raycast for sure. It's free and constantly evolving.

    Things 3 returned after more than a year of trying Apple Reminders and Craft Daily notes. It was a futile exercise. Things 3 is beautifully supporting my content creator workflow. Managing to-dos has never been so enjoyable.

    Screenflow is essential to my YouTube video creation workflow. I don’t use FinalCut Pro, Luma Fusion or anything that sophisticated. I could use Screenshot screen recording too, but Screenflow is really the simplest and most focused video creation app out there that clicks with me.

    I love using great software.

    → 9:15 PM, Dec 16
  • Raycast 2022 12 16 08 21 18 2x Raycast year in review. Wow. I love this thing so much!
    → 8:24 AM, Dec 16
  • Hands Down to Hand Mirror Plus

    Just got my notice for the Hand Mirror update today. The latest release offers a paid version, for which I gladly paid. Why? Hand Mirror is a great example of useful software with attributes of the work of great craftsmanship. It was an instant buy because of this. The onboarding screen is simply gorgeous. 

    Hand Mirror Settings 2022 12 15 21 24 36 2x

    HazeOver 2022 12 16 09 28 07 2x
    → 9:31 PM, Dec 15
  • I just realized that to see the list of people I follow on Micro.blog, I need to visit my own profile page, right? Am I missing something @manton? If so, may I suggest having a link somewhere else, like in the Account section or the Discovery section?

    → 7:22 AM, Dec 14
  • When Ukraine Is Home of Great Software Makers

    I recently wrote my satisfaction about Readdle’s Documents.app on-boarding experience on the iPad. Now I’m reading about Spark’s cleverness take on emails. Without being as opinionated as Hey.com, Spark is a serious professional email client. Readdle’s home is Ukraine 🇺🇦 too. I’m considering integrating both software in my toolset. All good reasons to show some support to them.

    → 8:10 PM, Dec 12
  • Sorry for your timeline flooding about this Mac Pro thing… probably a big in MarsEdit 5.0. Returning to normal programming now.

    → 3:22 PM, Dec 10
  • Twitter’s Essentials

    I read about so many people flocking to Mastodon, leaving Twitter behind. I actually started to see a definitive decline in my followers number. Something is really going on. I myself started to think about the possibility of leaving the platform too. Just like I did with Facebook, Flickr, and Tumblr, only to leave a place where my content is simply cross-posted from another source without a real and active presence of mine. Twitter could be next. Really. I could live without the traffic influx from Twitter, which represents about 15% of all my visitors.

    There is one thing that it would be hard for me to leave behind, though. If it wasn’t about the war in Ukraine, it would be an easy decision. The problem is that I follow a few people and news sources that diffuse their content on Twitter. Is there a Twitter equivalent for this type of small blips of nano content? I don’t see that in Mastodon yet. RSS feeds are not a platform but transport. The next Twitter has yet to emerge.

    → 7:00 AM, Nov 30
  • If you read my Friday Notes series, then it’s a good way to learn about me. Just sayin. Happy Saturday night!

    → 5:20 PM, Nov 12
  • I don’t know what will happen with Musk at the helm of Twitter. It’s probably going to turn really bad before turning potentially better (no guarantee here) but I have a backup plan: Micro.blog.

    → 5:53 PM, Oct 28
  • On This AI-Generated Podcast Interview Between Joe Rogan and Steve Jobs

    What. The. Fuck.

    This podcast example about a fake interview between Joe Rogan and Steve Jobs is a blatant example of where some more thoughts should take place before putting high tech to work. What is the purpose of this? Is this a tech demo or some bad-taste proof-of-concept? It’s not hard to imagine how it could derail in the future when used in politically-heated contexts. Oh, and no, I didn’t waste my time listening to this garbage, and I won’t share the link to this podcast, either.

    Image credits: generated using Dall-E with the following phrase: “an hand drawn Mac computer that never existed digital art”

    → 6:08 AM, Oct 18
  • On Software Subscriptions

    Tweetbot hasn’t been updated for over 6 months, I thought a subscription was going to mean more frequent updates? Source: Letting my Glass and Tweetbot subscriptions expire – LJPUK:

    This blog post triggered the following thoughts.

    The movement to subscriptions in the software landscape is MASSIVE but is far from being a guarantee of more frequent updates from the developers. I’m utterly infuriated when I see a yearly subscription for a small utility with a limited scope when no “lifetime” options are offered with reasonable pricing. Many devs are lazy, and greedy and send you a big middle finger.

    → 6:30 AM, Sep 23
  • AirTags Can Make a Difference

    I want to chime in here, following the publication of this article from Om Malik about AirTags. I’m leaving for Italy in a few days. Knowing how bad the airport experience can get and reading those stories about airline companies' inability to keep up and keep losing track of customers’ luggage, AirTags can make a big difference. I’m going to double-down on AirTags. I already own four, and I’ll buy another four before leaving, so I get my base covered. AirTags already saved me a lot of trouble in the past on more than one occasion by reminding me that I left something behind. It’s well worth the money.

    → 6:54 AM, Aug 16
  • No, no, no, and no.

    I’m sorry, Dropzone, you’re good but not that useful. I mean, for such a narrow-usage utility, I’m not going to pay that much monthly. I’m the one who buys and rent software but come on. It’s becoming ridiculous. Provide a lifetime contribution, and I’ll make the deal. You’re a feature, not a product. Delete. 😞

    → 6:15 AM, Aug 13
  • The Disconnected Country

    We’re currently experiencing a major and nationwide cellular network outage here in Canada 🇨🇦, thanks to Rogers telecommunication company. It’s been going on since early this morning. Everything seems affected in one way or another: phone calls, internet access, emergency calls via 911, travellers, banking services via Interac, and lots of public non-urgent services, just to name a few. We will need a few days to comprehend the ramifications of what happened. It’s a major event illustrating that big telco companies concentration like we endure here in Canada isn’t a good thing. Also a good (and sad) example of how badly we’re dependent on technologies for everything.

    → 3:15 PM, Jul 8
  • Is there any user of Craft in here? In any case, may I suggest that you take a look at my YouTube channel for videos about Craft? The latest is my take on the latest release, version 2.2.3.

    → 5:18 AM, Jun 24
  • There’s no such thing as time elasticity

    Since early June, I’ve been quite busy working and producing YouTube videos about Craft which left me no time for posting here. As seen in the following graph, YouTube videos production is now the lion share of my spare time schedule. 👀

    I expect things to return to normal in the coming weeks as my recording and producing setup is complete. Creating videos takes about 2-3 hours of my time. Subjects that I want to tackle will eventually dry out. If you are wondering what’s those videos are really about, feel free to pay a visit to my YouTube Channel. Tell me what you think here or over there in the comments!

    → 7:17 AM, Jun 18
  • Special pre-announcement: I’m mostly done with my preparation for creating YouTube videos. Publishing videos isn’t new for me, but I’m working differently and on different hardware this time. Oh, and I’ll be touching on a different subject matter. I hope it will take off.

    → 9:10 PM, Jun 2
  • A Week of Software Releases in Review

    Some weeks are busier than others for software or service updates. This week saw meaningful updates to many applications that I used daily.

    • Craft version got bumped to 2.2, a controversial update. Using the updated Share Page feature, my Craft wish list was completely reworked. According to the Craft community channels on Slack, people would rather prefer to see the core experience to be refined and straighten up. I’m one of them. It seems to me that there are many unfinished core features within Craft that are in need of attention. For example, the Share Page is super useful but we still miss the use of custom domain names or notifications from people who post comments. It’s not a deal-breaker but it is annoying and frustrating.
    • Matter, the new kid on the block in the read-later service space was updated too. The team behind Matter made a decision to focus more the product by dropping the social portion of it. Good move. The new update makes a lot of sense and is a joy to use on all Apple platforms.
    • Microsoft updated the beta version of Teams for Apple Silicon, latest public build May, 19th. Previous release provided a very buggy in-conference experience. According to people on Reddit, it seems to be fixed. I didn’t try it yet.
    • Apple’s platforms received a slew of updates. I was eagerly awaiting the Studio Display 15.5 firmware. I did a comparison of the image quality that I posted on Twitter. It’s not perfect but it’s a noticeable upgrade. Some more detailed video on the update.
    • Finally, I wanted to mention something about Glass. It wasn’t updated this week, but I had a chance to sit with the team behind Glass in a Zoom Q&A session. It was a nice talk. We had a chance to voice our delights or wishes for where the product should go next.
    → 5:58 AM, May 20
  • My Reading Workflow Is in a State of Flux

    First, I got back to Pocket and paid for the subscription. Then I added Readwise. Then I found Matter, and fell in love with it. I’m not sure why. I’m still waiting for Readwise Reader application. While waiting for it, what’s the point of Readwise, again? News Explorer is my go-to application for most of my readings via RSS feeds; I can save links as favourites, but I never do so. My reading workflow is in a total state of flux.

    Which application or service should I use to bookmark articles that I want to read later? What should I prioritize in such application: organization of links or the reading experience? How is that fact that I collect more than I read should change my application selection? Comparing applications like Matter, Pocket, and Raindrop.io, I find many common features, which brings confusion to me. Matter seems better for reading, but Raindrop.io more complete at organizing links collections. Why can’t I have both in the same application? Craft is my goto application for drafting and writing my articles, but can save links with nice previews. Craft is lacking tags to organize objects and doesn’t offer a reading experience as it doesn’t save content from a link. Craft is of no help here in my reading workflow. And what about highlights, how do I create them and make use of them later? Matter is good at creating highlights, Raindrop.io recently added highlight support too, but that’s it. Oh, and RSS readers like Reeder or News Explorer can save links and add tags too. Finally, I wish I could find a great text highlighting extension for Safari, after all, it’s my goto browser.

    To some degree, read later applications or services are still maturing, no solution is complete. This explains that, I guess.

    Help, please. 😫

    Photo by Javier Esteban on Unsplash

    → 6:25 AM, May 7
  • Two quick questions: how do you cope with what’s happening in Ukraine? Are you watching the news?

    → 8:42 PM, Apr 4
  • Venting My Frustration About Microsoft Teams

    It’s 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.

    Here’s the thing. Microsoft Teams, currently at version 1.5 still isn’t 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 who’s so slow to move and fix Teams? I don’t 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. They’ve been working on this since June of last year.

    It’s 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.

    → 5:46 AM, Mar 23
  • 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.

    → 7:28 PM, Mar 21
  • 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 we’re seeing such an invasion in Europe, in 2022. What’s next? Who’s next? We’re 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, I’m 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.

    → 6:48 AM, Feb 24
  • Dune Movie - Woah!

    Today, I finally saw the Dune movie, by the Canadian director, Denis Villeneuve. As a Canadian myself I’m so proud of him! It’s not a movie review, far from it. Let me just say that when I think about this movie, the word “equilibrium” comes to my mind. The movie is well balanced: storyline, intrigue, visual effects (visual effects serving the story), music, Dune’s world imaginary world. But the best for me were those “ornithopters”. Wow, they were sooooo cool! Can’t wait for the next part.

    Have you seen the movie? What do you think of it?

    → 9:23 PM, Feb 19
  • Challenge of the day: exporting posts from WordPress to Ghost

    Well, well, well, it seems that data portability among CMS is an issue. Who knew! I’m trying to find an easy way to move a few posts from my WordPress blog into my Ghost website. Exporting data from WordPress seems like an all-or-nothing situation. There are a few plugins available for this. The problem is that the content isn’t easily imported into Ghost. The latter does have a plugin, but it doesn’t support selecting posts. I don’t want to do this manually.

    Any idea or suggestions?

    Update 2022-02-16: There is a follow-up to my quest, read all the details here

    → 7:51 AM, Feb 13
  • Write.as. Why am I looking at Write.as now? Aren’t WordPress, Micro.blog, Ghost and Blot enough already? Is this a disease? I like the concept of Write.as, but the lack of any native apps bugs me a lot. There is a deal right now running through Feb 16th. Gosh.

    → 6:32 PM, Feb 8
  • For (more) personal stories of mine, here is the place to go.

    Friday Notes #61 — Knowing Our Parents numericcitizen-introspection.blog
    Numeric Citizen https://numericcitizen-introspection.blog/friday-notes-61-knowing-our-parents/
    → 10:07 AM, Feb 4
  • From Apple’s AirPort Exterme to Ubiquiti’s Amplify HD

    As reported in my previous blog post, I had a chance to perform a “tech refresh” of my sister’s WiFi installation at her house. As a satisfied user of Ubiquiti product, the Dream Machine, I suggested to go with a lower end model, the Amplify HD. She has a big two levels home, with numerous rooms that poses a challenge for good wireless connectivity. It was a delightful experience, from the unpacking to final configuration. It’s a beautiful device with an informative display.

    The setup was simple. Turning off the AirPort Express after taking note of the SSID, so I could reuse it with the same password. This prevents the reconfiguration of every device connecting to the WiFi with an already known SSID-password combination. After the initial power up sequence, the router will ask the user to download the configuration application from the App Store. An account has to be created with Ubiquity. Thankfully, Sign In with Apple is available.

    The next phase happens on the iPhone with an initial discovery over Bluetooth. The setup process is quick and flawless. As expected, a firmware update was waiting to be applied. During the update process, it was the right rime to deploy the two WiFi extenders, in strategic places where the WiFi signals used to be weak. Once completed, I could name each devices with a more meaningful name, to represent where were each device. All in all, the process took less than 30 minutes. It’s a very Apple-like experience. The following table shows the situation before and after the new router. Numbers speaks for themselves.

    Mission accomplished. Another happy customer. I came back with the old AirPort Extreme. No idea what to do with it.

    → 8:01 PM, Jan 30
  • MP3 Files and the iPhone — Harder Than Necessary

    I find it surprisingly hard to find a simple MP3 player for an iPhone these days. I mean, just a simple application capable of downloading an MP3 file locally on the device with good playback controls, simple library management, nothing fancy. Readdle’s Documents (which I know very well) and EverMusic seem to be popular options. Documents offers a good user experience, albeit its multipurpose mission with documents management.

    (I’m a moderate consumer of Soundcloud (paid subscription) and use Downie to download files from the service. Those files are stored on my DS720+ Synology NAS.)

    What’s your experience in playing MP3 files on your iPhone? I’m curious.

    → 3:02 PM, Jan 23
  • Yep, Notion is Bad

    I’m nearly done with my Notion to Craft migration. I know I’ve been lazy; I’ve been using Craft for many months while my old content was still sitting there in Notion. While doing the migration, I realized, again, that I don’t really like Notion’s handling of a document. It just feels unnatural and quirky. Export options are very limited, which makes my job much harder. I’m also losing some metadata along the way (and database content too). I don’t have high hopes for a Craft eXtension to support Notion’s API to help users do this kind of rich content migration. I expect to finish the migration in the coming days.

    → 9:53 PM, Jan 22
  • Give Me Some Time...

    …and I’ll move out of 1Password. It’s on my to-do list for 2022. Gruber’s article is a reminder that time is ticking. I’m just being too lazy to move my stuff out of 1Password and put that in Apple’s Keychain. It takes time, which is a rare resource for me.

    I don’t like 1Password’s direction. It seems to me that going the enterprise way is counterproductive for the average users. Corporations and individuals don’t share the same objectives. Why do you think Microsoft is making Teams for personal use?

    → 9:33 AM, Jan 22
  • Taking Advantage of the iPad Screen

    Consider the previous annotated screenshot from Matter. Way too many applications have the same design issue. Why, in 2022, developers cannot fix these wasted space? I see that the content is of the same width if the iPad is used in portrait or landscape orientation. Why not adjust width dynamically? Is it that hard?

    → 8:05 AM, Jan 22
  • I’m a Big Fan of Craft But…

    As you probably know, I’m a big fan of Craft. This application is really at the center of everything I do online, as thoroughly documented in my blogger workflow. That being said, I always keep an eye open for competing services, thanks to my Twitter list “Apps & Services”. Notion is one of them. Before Craft, there was Notion, which I loved too. But it felt too complicated or overkill for my needs. Craft is nowhere near Notion in terms of features. There is no comparison, even though I wrote one. Really. Yet, according to their recent tweets, Notion has been on a roll lately, adding features, tweaking things or rewriting a portion of the user experience like the text editing engine. So, where am I going with this?

    It is tempting to think: what if I came back to Notion? I still have my account, after all. Things always look better on the other side of the fence, right? The thing is the speed of evolution of Craft, while being considered at a fast pace by some, I’m realistic, and I would argue the contrary. The team behind Craft is surely a fraction of Notion’s. Basic things are hard to come by. Said another way, my expectations aren’t met as fast as I wished. Take this week’s update, which was released earlier this week. While I’m happy to see improvements, there is not much to talk about. The release notes starts by the possibility to “star” a document, so it is easier to find in the navigation bar on the left. The second thing on the list is some improvements to the display of backlinks at the end of a page. While being welcomed by many, it’s not exactly mind-blowing. Sure it is a dot dot release (v2.0.3), but I was expecting so much more, as documented in my Craft wish list. Craft eXtensions, announced with the 2.0 release at the end of 2021 sure looks full of potential, but my expectations lean toward Craft’s core experience, which I find somewhat lacking.

    I think I’m being overly demanding. Patience is a virtue.

    → 9:22 PM, Jan 19
  • Exploring the World of DJing

    I always liked electronic music, but I’m not a musician. In recent moths, I’ve been exploring the world of DJing. It’s a way for me to feel that I can do music without deep knowledge of musical theory. It’s a fascinating world.

    Last year I bought a Pioneer DDJ-400 controller for use with my Mac mini. There is two major roadblocks in my experience so far: finding good quality tracks to mix and selecting the best DJ app. I want to draw your attention to the software side of my story.

    Some well known DJ apps are Rekordbox, Serato and DJay. My understanding is that in recent years, software makers all switched to subscription models. Application like Rekordbox will “unlock” some of its features while being used with certain DJ controller models, but to get the whole thing, you have to subscribe to some plan. It’s irritating for someone like me who’s just trying to learn and experiment. But there is another problem: applications design sucks. Rekordbox and Serato are visually terrible. On the Mac, these apps really feels like aliens coming from… I don’t know… even on Windows they probably look aliens. The best looking application is Algoriddim’s Djay, by far. Problem is, the application is lacking many features. For now, my conclusion is that It appears that we cannot have both fully featured applications with a great design.

    → 7:31 AM, Jan 19
  • Working from home since March 2020. Over the months, I made quite a few tweaks to my home office. I’m so much more at ease at home than at the office with a desk, a chair, a lamp, and devices that I chose, instead of being imposed on me.

    → 7:42 PM, Jan 10
  • Surprise Me!

    The Surprise Me! plugin for Micro.blog is undoubtedly a lot of fun to play with. It will pick a random post from this blog out of 1578 posts published since 2018. It’s a fun way to resurface old yet still relevant content. Try it! I wonder how many hours of my life were used to write and publish all that stuff?

    → 8:00 AM, Jan 6
  • On NFTs: What Am I Missing?

    First, consider this announcement from Samsung:

    “In 2022, Samsung is introducing the world’s first TV screen-based NFT explorer and marketplace aggregator, a groundbreaking platform that lets you browse, purchase, and display your favorite art — all in one place.”

    What? Why is there so much talk around NFTs these days? What problems do they solve? What am I missing? This short Twitter thread makes me think that I’m not missing a lot, and that I should probably move on. Nothing to see here. Yet, how long before platforms like Unsplash steps in? 🤦🏻‍♂️

    → 7:20 PM, Jan 4
  • 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. 😂

    → 9:46 AM, Dec 26
  • 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.

    → 9:19 AM, Dec 26
  • 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. 🎄

    → 8:17 AM, Dec 24
  • 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.

    → 8:23 AM, Dec 23
  • Hey guys, the first microblog posts digest newsletter coming out tomorrow morning, 9EST. If you didn’t subscribe, it still is time to do so. numericcitizen.micro.blog/subscribe…

    → 5:21 PM, Dec 10
  • 💥So, you’re an #Apple fan, like #photography, care about #privacy, #privacyprotection and #climatechange? We do have many things in common. Why not take a look at my #free newsletter and subscribe? Not sure, visit the link below to see it all in action!🙏🏻 numericcitizen-introspection.blog

    → 8:00 AM, Dec 8
  • My Current Status

    My current status — spending quality time on vacations in Tulum, Mexico. It’s the first trip for more than 22 months. After so many sacrifices, time has come to say: enough, let’s enjoy life. 😎🌅

    → 8:45 AM, Nov 20
  • A New Home, Same Purposes

    I’m done putting the final touches to my new home, a place where I continue sharing my newsletter and publish new posts under the Friday Notes and Photo Legend Series. Instead of using Substack, I’m now on Ghost(Pro). And I love it! I hope you stay with me in this transition.

    Considering bookmarking this link: https://numericcitizen-introspection.blog or adding it to your favourite RSS reader: https://numericcitizen-introspection.blog/rss/.

    → 7:46 AM, Nov 17
  • RTFM (Read The Fuckin Manual They Say!)

    When I got my first AirTags, I was anxious to get this wallet from this KickStarter project: “Snapback Slim Air - A Wallet for AirTags”. This is my Snapback Slim Air. With the AirTag inserted.

    Can you see the problem? The AirTag hardly stays in place and has the tendency to pop out of its place. Not great at all. I always found the fitting to be so so. Then, today I got an email from KickStarter with the following promotional photo. Can you see what I’m doing wrong?

    I happen to insert my AirTag the wrong side. Duh! The white side (the best looking one IMHO) must be inside and the silver side exposed outside. Ooops. Here’s the result.

    As you can see, the fitting is a bit better but not that much better. I’m already looking for alternatives. Any suggestions?

    → 8:14 PM, Nov 15
  • Some of my heroes over the years. Do you have any?

    → 2:33 PM, Nov 13
  • Revisiting My Craft Content Organization

    Even though I’m using Ulysses for most of my writings, after reading the “A Complete Ulysses Writing Workflow”, it gave me the idea of revisiting the way I organize my content in Craft. As shown in the previous screenshot, my content is now organized following a similar flow often seen on Kansan boards. As you might expect, everything start in the Inbox folder then eventually get “promoted” to the next folder, according to the content’s maturity. I like this a lot—it’s much cleaner than before. I should have known better, as I experienced the Kanban method a few years ago at work.

    → 9:05 PM, Nov 8
  • Comparing Notion and Craft running on an M1 MacBook Air. Notion takes 382 MB of RAM while Craft uses less than half of this. Both are native, but Notion is based on Electron. Well, Craft is based on Catalyst, it’s not pure AppKit. Yet…

    → 8:04 AM, Nov 6
  • Time to relax, it’s Friday after all. Who’s playing?

    → 4:27 PM, Nov 5
  • Google, Are You Kidding Me?

    Google, recently on Twitter, announcing their adoption of Apple’s UIKit design language instead of using their Material design:

    “Does a switch really need to be built custom in alignment with a generic design system? Or might it be sufficient to simply use the system solution and move on?”

    I don’t buy Google’s explanation. Google is trying to say that UIKit wasn’t good enough for them, so they went their own way. Bullshit. The other way to look at this: building native apps is a better way to go than trying to build apps on unifying frameworks.

    → 7:06 PM, Oct 12
  • E-Bikes: #VanmoofV — What Is Going on Here?

    Today, Vanmoof announced their latest e-bike, the Vanmoof V model. The announcement video, reminiscent of Apple’s product reveals, is light on details. The singular design, in white, is both intriguing and looks heavy on the look. Some specs are impressive, on paper. But, there is something absolutely troubling: the V model is going to ship near the end of 2022. Yep, in more than a year. What is going on here? What this premature announcement could mean for Vanmoof? Well, obviously they are trying to gain mind share among potential e-bike buyers, and they are afraid to lose market share.

    We’ll be developing the VanMoof V over the upcoming year, and will keep you updated with news and features as the bike comes to life.

    Can you imagine if Apple were to announce a new flagship product iteration, the next iPhone, more than a year in advance? I wonder if Vanmoof is aware of the Osborne effect. 🧐

    → 6:47 PM, Oct 12
  • Dear @AppleInsider STOP THIS!

    I don’t know who got the idea at AppleInsider of putting video auto-play right in the middle of every articles, but this doesn’t enable a great reading experience. Even worst, scrolling the page to the bottom while reading will put the video in the bottom right corner on top of the content. It makes me wonder if I should stop reading their content altogether. Ads are bad but this is even worst. It’s not a good reading experience at all. Please, reconsider. Thanks. A long time reader.

    → 8:00 AM, Sep 18
  • E-Bike and the Apple Watch — a Quick Question

    So, you’ve got an e-Bike. Good for you. I’m jealous. You’ve got an Apple Watch too. Good for you, just like me. Now you want to go for a ride and record this activity with your Apple Watch. Which activity type will you select? Selecting Bike will probably record wrong data as you can move much faster than a regular bike and getting lower than normal heartbeat rate. Should Apple provide another type of biking activity?

    Photo by Wolfram Bölte on Unsplash

    → 12:15 PM, Sep 11
  • Can’t wait to try this

    This is the Opal webcam. For the Mac. Made by Apple people. Can’t wait to try this out. Not cheap, though. Not ready yet either.

    → 8:13 PM, Sep 9
  • Quick Ranting On Medium App Updates

    Can Medium stop reimagining their app and fix it?

    Consider this screenshot of the Medium.app updates streak. It’s not a joke. At least one update a week for reimagining their app. I used to like Medium but their app, probably a major conduit to their content, is broken on the iPad and it never gets fixed (mainly layout issues).

    How are we supposed to take online publishers seriously when for months they let bugs hinder the user experience of… reading their content? I greatly reduced my use of Medium for reading content, partly because of this.

    → 6:19 AM, Sep 9
  • I’m mostly done with my next issue of The Numeric Citizen Introspection newsletter. Get ready to get it in your inbox, subscribe, it’s FREE. It’s the best way for you to show support! Even better, share the word about it if you already are subscribed! Thanks! 👍🏻

    → 9:16 AM, Aug 29
  • Gosh, importing my stuff from Notion into Craft is not funny. There has to be a better way. 😵‍💫

    → 5:53 AM, Aug 23
  • Documenting past home screen arrangements

    Matt Birchler had an interesting blog post this week about a screenshot of his 2013 iPhone home screen. There are a few interesting things to note. In 2013, it was the arrival of the controversial iOS 7 redesign. It’s interesting to look at the Camera+ icon design which was still not updated for the new style. The dock design style was pretty basic and felt out of place. A few apps are not longer among us these days: Path (which was really a great design example) but most of the third-party apps are still available today.

    I wish I had kept screen shots of previous home screen arrangements in the past. Something that I have kept is many screen shots of my password manager user interface dating back pre-iOS 7 era. Here is an example below. When I saw iOS 7, I didn’t have the courage to rework my design. The development of my app stopped right there. I made five thousands dollars with this adventure, between 2009 and 2013. Now I’m using a combinaison of 1Password and Apple’s passwords vault.

    → 8:07 PM, Jul 27
  • Four days week day? We can only dream it seems

    Again, Matt Birchler:

    technology and improved general productivity always had the promise of letting us work less, and yet today we work more than ever and have less than before Source: A Four Day Work Week? Yes, Please!

    I sure wish we had this four days work week. I cannot see the day it will become reality. The problem in IT where I work, there is a worsening trend of a lack of qualified people for many IT fields. This trend puts pressure on those who are qualified to do more working hours.

    → 8:49 PM, Jul 26
  • Hey, @Medium, what are these updates all about? Are you counting weeks, days? Meanwhile, on my iPad, using splitview… this has been an ongoing bug since forever… If you want to be taken seriously as a reading platform, get your act together and fix your app, once and for all. ❤️

    → 8:35 PM, Jul 26
  • Thought of the day: you know that you are entering a post-COVID world when you’ve had your two vaccin doses for a while and when you get your first cold in nearly two years. 😳🤧

    → 4:45 PM, Jul 21
  • Weird.

    → 3:22 PM, Jul 17
  • First deception with Pocket Cast: no support for widgets. 😒

    → 9:06 AM, Jul 17
  • Moving from Castro to Pocket Cast: 100% completed. 👨🏻‍💻⌛️👍🏻😁

    I waited for close to a year for Castro to bring its podcasts app to the iPad. Today, with the announcement of Automattic buying Pocket Cast, it came back on my radar. It didn’t take too long to make the switch. Pocket Cast is a real multi-platform player, feature rich and has an as good design as the other players. After Tumblr, DayOne, now Pocket Cast, I want to give it a try and see how Automattic will build on it. Meanwhile, I’m really enjoying it.

    → 8:50 AM, Jul 17
  • On PC in the cloud

    Microsoft announced their PC in the cloud offerings this week. While it is probably based on their previous offering, Windows Virtual Desktop service, it does look like a milestone to me. I’ve been in IT for more than 25 years. I saw the migration from the mainframe to the client-server applications architecture. After that, it was about virtualization taking over with the popular VMware hypervisor. In the last five years, I saw the cloud taking over the IT world. The latter has a much more profound impact than any trend I witnessed or was part of in my career.

    PC in the cloud is only offered to business customers, for now. I can see Microsoft offering the service to the general public in a not too distant future. I’ll probably subscribe to an instance for my personal needs. Being able to run the PC in a browser means being able to use it on any of my current Apple devices, from the M1 Mac mini to my iPad Pro. This is something Apple will never enable itself, certainly not within Safari. The future looks interesting.

    → 5:43 AM, Jul 15
  • Going to space… to watch a burning planet.

    So Richard Branson went to space. Next, Jeff Bezos. And then, what? Is there any scientific purposes in these flights to space? Nope, not directly at least. Is this a publicity stunt? Yes and no. I’m not at ease seeing billionnaires spending their pretty money on something that don’t bring value to a community except for themselve. Oh, they want to start a new commercial flight in space business apparently, for billionaires:

    Branson’s flight — which came just nine days before Amazon bilionaire Jeff Bezos is slated to rocket into suborbital space aboard his own company’s spacecraft — is a landmark moment for the commercial space industry. The up-and-coming sector has for years been seeking to make suborbital space tourism (a relatively simple straight-up-and-down flight, as opposed to orbiting the Earth for longer periods) a viable business with the aim of allowing thousands of people to experience the adrenaline rush and sweeping views of our home planet that such flights can offer.

    Is there a better way to spend our resources to see the burning planet from space? Gosh.

    → 6:38 PM, Jul 11
  • Instagram Plans to Take on TikTok With Full-Screen Video Content

    Ridiculous. Facebook: the Instagram destructor. www.macrumors.com

    → 7:48 AM, Jul 1
  • Another coat of paint to Windows UI mess? (#windows11)

    So Windows 11 is a thing. Is it a revolution to Windows? Maybe, maybe not. It depends if you can install it on your PC, which is far from certain. But let’s say you can, how deep goes the UI refresh? Is it like it was for Windows 10 which was supposedly a redesign of Windows 8 which was tweaks to Windows 7 UI that came before it. Here is a simple question: Did Microsoft really clean up the Windows UI mess that it has become over the years? I don’t care too much about windows transparency level, toolbars, icons. Getting rid of UI legacy feels a more useful and laudable endeavour.

    → 1:16 PM, Jun 28
  • 💉✖️2️⃣. 😎 Let’s go and put all this behind us: get vaccinated.

    → 11:34 AM, Jun 27
  • When hackers strikes personal NAS-type devices

    Pool Western Digital My Book Live NAS owners… many of them woke up to find out that their content was gone from their devices. Apparently, hackers came in by using an unpatched vulnerability on devices where the last update was issued in 2015 by Western Digital. This brings me to ask the following questions: were those devices directly connected on the internet? If yes, that dumb. If this was a known vulnerability, why WD didn’t issue a patch? Companies should be required to publish security-only fixes for far longer than they do right now. I’m sorry but 2015 isn’t that old for such a type of devices. Finally, I personally own a Synology NAS, obviously not directly connected on the Internet, yet, I have to wonder if it is still secure. I’m planning on enabling 2FA to add another layer of protection, though.

    → 3:04 PM, Jun 25
  • Currently entering vacation area. Enjoy. I’m going to be much more active. Be warned.

    → 6:00 PM, Jun 18
  • A few words to help you get a peek on what I’m working on right now: Toggl. Focused Work.

    → 6:00 AM, Jun 14
  • Count me OUT then - Twitter Blue #twitterblue

    Here is why I won’t subscribe anytime soon (another reason on top of many, btw):

    But what is interesting is one thing that you won’t get with Twitter Blue: an ad-free experience. Advertising is still the biggest chunk of Twitter’s revenue, and they’re not going to replace that with direct subscriptions anytime soon. Source: Twitter Blue subscription launches in Australia, Canada – Six Colors

    Paying to be a beta-tester and give feedback? Can you imagine paying to get beta releases of Apple’s OSes? No way.

    → 11:02 AM, Jun 3
  • Another solid update to Craft!

    Another solid update to Craft released today. This time, Calendar view was added for those who would like to take daily notes or write meeting notes as this update integrates with Apple’s calendars.

    If you pay attention to the Craft’s update page, you’ll see Craft rapidly evolving over time. Who knows what’s next for this essential tool in my blogger and writer workflow.

    Oh, and Craft has made it to the Apple Design Awards finalist! Congrats to them!

    → 5:31 AM, Jun 2
  • I’ve completed my first release of my Digital Garden. Entirely made with @Craftdocsapp which makes a great job of building a website with integrated navigation. It’s really cool. The only missing thing is support for custom domains, which will probably be coming in the future.

    → 8:46 AM, May 16
  • I’m ready for Google’s May 2021 algorithm update. Are you? #SEO #google https://numericcitizen.io/2021/04/17/getting-ready-for-google-s-may-2021-algorithm-update

    → 11:21 AM, Apr 17
  • HEY World missing button

    I wish there would be a “Reply to the author” button on HEY World user website. As it is now, I cannot find an easy and quick way to respond to a past post. I prefer to consume HEY World content through RSS feeds, not by subscribing via email.

    I’m on HEY World, by the way. https://world.hey.com/jf.m. ☝🏻👋🏻

    → 8:16 AM, Apr 17
  • Feature blog post (more than 1700 words) coming up to Numeric Citizen I/O talking about my main blog optimization in preparation for Google’s May 2021 algorithm update. Stay tuned.

    → 8:08 AM, Apr 17
  • > numericcitizen [numericcitizen.io](https://numericcitizen.io/)
    → 4:59 PM, Apr 5
  • My trick to read more (#reading #writing #tips #tricks)

    In a word: Pocket. I’ve been rediscovering this application in recent days, and I’m loving it a lot. I no longer read articles within Safari or News Explorer. As soon as I think the article is interesting, I save it to Pocket and continue from there. The reading experience is simple and is frictionless. Being able to tag and highlight each article helps me organize and add value to my readings. Above all, Pocket will become a repository of all my past readings. The recommend feature creates some exposure for the authors. Each of my recommendation is accompanied by some text. I love it.

    You can have a look at my Pocket profile here. Enjoy.

    → 2:58 PM, Apr 4
  • Remembering... (#techmemories)

    Today, I’m remembering things like Turbo Pascal, TRS-80, ResEdit, 6502, LDA #$69, Inside Macintosh, Z-80, TI 99-4A, Logo, Commodore 64, Apple //c, ATZ modem command, eWorld, POKE 63280,0, COBOL 85, PDP-11, Choplifter, Broderbund, Multiplan, 4th Dimension, Sprites, Omni Database, Think Thank, Mac Draw, PageMaker.

    These are some of the most significant souvenirs of numeric artifacts of my past numeric life. What are yours?

    → 10:07 AM, Apr 4
  • Curiously Entering the World of DJing (#music #dj #mixing #electronicmusic)

    I’m no musicien. I know barely nothing about music theory. Yet, I always wanted to do some form of music. Synthesizer would be my instrument if I was to do music. Yet, I’ve been fascinated by music, especially electronic music since I was a teenager. I’m a big listener of techno and house music. Recently, I started to use my iPad while exercising on the treadmill to play video on YouTube of DJ doing mixes. This got me curious about the equipments and software DJs are relying on. I downloaded Algoriddim’s Djay app and stared to play with it on my iPad. I was really excited. I started to read more about the world of music mixing. So, I learned about DJ mixer, controllers, DJ software, music sources, digital record pools, file formats, MIDI, etc. Then, yesterday, unexpectedly, while visiting a music instruments store to see these equipments in person, I bought a Pioneer DDJ-400, a pair of small speakers, went home, enabled a trial of Djay Pro AI on my iPad Pro and started to plug all the pieces together. I feel like it’s Christmas time. Will see where it goes from here. Expect more details on my endeavour soon.

    → 8:40 AM, Apr 3
  • So, Pocket + Readwise for one year it will be. Expect a blog post about why I chose Pocket over Instapaper.

    → 5:40 PM, Apr 1
  • 👉🏻 The next issue of the Numeric Citizen Introspection newsletter is coming out tomorrow, while waiting for it, why not give a look at the previous issue! Please, don’t miss it! It’s something really different. 👀

    → 12:45 PM, Mar 30
  • Good morning. There was a time, a long long time ago, I used to say « Good morning » on Twitter. I don’t know really why I did that. Oh well. Anyways, good morning. 😎

    → 6:06 AM, Mar 25
  • Anyone using @Readwiseio here? My trial expired. A few thoughts: their app feels “strange”; like a big “webview”. Workflow not yet clear to me. No Safari Extension support. Not cheap. Seems popular. You’re thoughts?

    → 6:59 AM, Mar 19
  • Anyone here using Mastodon? If yes, why? Should I cross-post from here? Which one should I join? Tell me more. I’m not really aquainted with this platform.

    → 7:35 AM, Mar 4
  • Calling for @help here @manton : can you point me to a simple guide or instructions sequence for adding a complete h-card to my microb.blog? Thanks a lot!

    → 7:44 AM, Mar 2
  • Hey, World (#hey #newsletters)

    Each day, it seems there is always something new happening in the world of newsletters. When it’s not someone famous who joins Substack, a company out of nowhere offers a brilliant idea built around supporting newsletters in one way or the other. I’m thinking of Hey in particular.

    “Email is the internet’s oldest instant self-publishing platform. Except you have to define a small audience every time you write. But what if you didn’t? What if you could just email the web to reach the world? Introducing the HEY World experiment” - Jason Fried from HEY

    Yesterday, the company behind the popular HEY email client tentatively announced a new service for their customers. The idea behind is to allow any HEY users to create newsletters and publish them just by sending them to world@hey.com. The service would then post these newsletters on the web, complete with the author’s name. A simple static page, no tracking, no nothing more. I call this: simply brilliant.

    The service is not currently available, only in some form of alpha-stage for internal use only. They announced it to read the room and see if there is some interest in something like this that could become some soft of hyper-distributed publishing platform.

    I’m personally interested in this kind of service simply because it removes friction in the publishing process. What could be simpler than just writing the newsletter like we do with emails and then hit “send”!? Simply brilliant. For the reader, they can subscribe by email or by using the available RSS feed.

    You can read the announcement here. I like the simplicity of this implementation. Very clean. Very lean. I’m in love. Too bad this isn’t available — yet.

    → 5:43 PM, Feb 23
  • HEY, Hey just got updated (#hey)

    My go-to email client got an update today. Hey version 1.2 brings a few tweaks in the compose mode. In recent weeks, updates are more frequent as they finally delivered support for corporate email. Now, the other thing I’d like to see is a collapsible view in the feed view. I don’t see how pinch-to-zoom can be added without implementing the opposite to bring a collapsed view.

    → 8:56 PM, Feb 22
  • Learning Blot.im the hard way (#blot #selfhosting)

    So I started another experiment involving Blot.im. For those who don’t know Blot.im, it is a static web site generator that seems popular among the crowd here. On paper, the process of publishing is very simple: you drag and drop files on a specific folder on your computer and they get instantly published on the web. Sound great, right? That’s what I thought.

    My goal with Blot.im is to do some “meta blogging”; a place where I could write about the tools, services and my blogger workflow. So I registered a new domain with GoDaddy: numericcitizen.io. Then, I opened my Blot.im account and stated experimenting. The initial setup is pretty simple. And then challenges pretty quickly started to emerge.

    First, I wanted my new domain to point my Blot.im domain. Tried to follow the Blot.im instructions to make it work but all attempts failed. GoDaddy doesn’t support ALIAS DNS records as Blot.im ask me to create. I asked for help from Blot.im support. Still a work in progress.

    Second, I chose to use Git as the “client” to push content on the service because I don’t want to use Dropbox, a service I despise. By using Git, I need a Git client on my Mac. I’m tentatively settled on Nova. So far so good. After cloning the Git repo from Blot.im to my local machine, I can then use Ulysses to write my posts and push them with Nova. The workflow is very geeky: create .MD file in Ulysses, “commit” within Nova then hit “push” to publish. Not as seamless as I would like. But here another issue: inserting images with a Markdown file is not as easy as it seems. Again, trying to figure out instructions on Blot.im site doesn’t work. The other thing is that if you drop an image within a folder, it will trigger Blot.im to create its own blog post, something that I don’t want. Not cool. Again, I’m asking support to help me here with this supposedly trivial task.

    Third, I would like to use Github as the source of truth. Setting up a new repo is simple and cloning it to my local machine too. But, now, how do I make Blot.im to use the Github repo as the source of content? Again, trying to figure out Blot.im instructions but failing to make it work. Still trying to figure that out.

    Fourth, tweaking the visual appearance is not as easy as I would have liked. There is a theme editor and I still need to be pretty knowledgeable in HTML and CSS. I did fork one of the theme to make it mine and started to do some tweak but it is a painful trial-and-error process.

    All in all, I’m far from positive about Blot.im right now. I spent way too much time on these issues. I’m not sure where this is all going. If you are using Blot.im, please, do me a favour and chime in!

    → 8:13 AM, Feb 21
  • Testing, testing, 1.2.3. (#webmention #indieweb #openweb)

    I’m still new to the Indieweb world. Today, I’m learning about webmentions. I like the idea of linking reactions back to the origin. So, after enabling a plugin on my main blog, I’m trying to link back to one of my recent post and see what happens. One day, I wrote “The Journey is the Reward”. I don’t post personal things very often. Thanks for your feedback.

    → 8:28 AM, Feb 20
  • Dear Micro.blog, where do you plan to go next? (#microblogging #microblog)

    Thought of the day for @manton and @jean: there is something that could be improved regarding micro.blog: opening up the evolution and improvement roadmap of the platform. I do appreciate when a service do put out their roadmaps so the community get a better look at where things will be going in the future. Mailbrew, Plausible and Craft are very vocal about their future plans, you just have to find the place where they talk about it.

    So, where is Micro.blog heading? In particular, how do you plan to expand on themes support and customizability? Why the web editor doesn’t allow support for Grammarly? Do you plan an opt-in option to see how many followers a user have? Those are just a few questions that I have regarding Micro.blog future plans. Thanks in advance.

    → 7:17 AM, Feb 17
  • Bye Bye Spend Stack - I barely knew you (#apps)

    Spend Stack Screen Shots

    It is a bit of a sad day: I decided to delete the excellent expense tracking app Spend Stack from my devices and revert to using a simple Numbers spreadsheet to track my subscriptions. Why did I delete this app?

    First, the developer sold the app to somebody else. Since last September, no more updates. Second, there is no clear roadmap announcements by the new owner. Nothing. I can’t rely on ephemeral applications even for simple things.

    Sadly, this is something that happens all the time these days. Some developers are building great stuff but on the wrong business model. Others are just finding new priorities in their life which have side effects on their personal development projects.

    I’m back to Apple’s Numbers and a simple spreadsheet. Sometimes, the best is still in the most basic form and function.

    → 3:10 PM, Feb 14
  • Quick question to @jack : Is “baty.net” a micro.blog? If so, what’s your theme?

    → 9:20 AM, Feb 14
  • Looking for Micro.blog friends (#microblog #socialnetwork)

    Yes, the title says it all: I’m looking for new friends to follow on Micro.blog. After my big Twitter cleanup, the noise in my numeric life has dramatically decreased. I feel zen and I think this is what Micro.blog is all about: a zen place to meet virtual friends sharing the same passions.

    So, I’m looking for friend suggestions. Let’s call this “the community-fed referrals day!”. To help you make such referrals, please do remember about my passions: Apple, photography, privacy protection and climate change.

    This brings me to something that I’d like to see improved about Micro.blog: discoverability. When looking to discover new people to follow, we do see a posts count on each user profile, but we don’t know « how recent » the last post is. We know about stale accounts on Twitter, I don’t want to follow stale accounts here. Next, I’d like to see some kind of « behind the scene » analysis of how someone could be interesting for me. I do understand that this is entering a dangerous territory of « algorithm fed reality ». I guess it is har to strike a balance in that respect. Finally, the categories are lacking a bit of breath. Where is “Tech” or “Privacy” or “Climate”?

    So, I’m waiting for your referrals. Thanks for taking some of your time to do so. 🙂

    → 8:17 AM, Feb 14
  • What happened to my Twitter usage? (#twitter)

    I don’t know what happened to my Twitter usage. It fell off the cliff recently. Since I’ve completed my Twitter experience transformation as fully documented here, I barely open Twitter once a day. Do I miss it? Nope. Why? Probably because I’m getting a distant view by using Mailbrew which draws the most relevant tweets for me on a daily basis.

    → 8:56 AM, Feb 13
  • As far as I’m concerned, PopClip is part of macOS.

    Jack Baty https://micro.baty.net/2021/02/13/as-far-as.html
    I think he meant that PopClip should be part of macOS! Instant buy for me!
    → 7:33 AM, Feb 13
  • Woah, I didn’t know we could have a test blog on Micro.blog. It’s free! Thanks to https://custom.micro.blog, I’m starting to learn more about CSS and how MB works to make its magic!

    → 7:25 AM, Feb 9
  • I could play with this forever (#snowflakegenerator)

    Please, do yourself a favour and go to this website, a snowflake generator. If you like winter, it will make you smile a bit.

    → 7:52 PM, Jan 27
  • On Tweetbot 6 update (@tweetbot #update #subscription)

    Tweetbot 6 for iOS

    Really nice update (and unexpected) to my preferred Twitter client. Tweetbot version 6 received a refreshed design, full support for Twitter APIs v2 and cleans up unsupported features with latest APIs. Tweetbot startup is much faster than Twitter’s client and exposes a few features that aren’t available otherwise. Design-wise, Tweetbot contains a lot of nice touches throughout the app. Compared to that, Twitter’s own client feels uninspired.

    Like a growing number of apps recently introduced or updated, Tweetbot 6 now is subscription-based. I expect a few angry users but I’m not one of them. I find the pricing quite reasonable. I chose to go with the yearly subscription at 50% price reduction, a no brainer to me.

    Tweetbot has recently returned as my go to Twitter client during my recent Twitter reset and I’m very happy with it.

    → 8:12 PM, Jan 26
  • @numericcitizen on Clubhouse (#clubhouse)

    I’m always curious to try new things, especially in the numeric world. In the case of Clubhouse, I don’t know if it’s a good idea. I’m curious to try it out, anyway. I wonder how it will compare to Twitter’s Spaces, currently in limited beta. Now, waiting for an invite.

    → 8:25 PM, Jan 22
  • My daytime job reality (#IT #computerscience #tech)

    Countless meetings

    First, do me a favour, watch this YouTube video (less than 8 minutes of your time), then come back. You probably know that I’m working in IT as my official day jobs. I’ve been working on a project in the last 18 months to assist and direct one of our customer to implement a disaster recovery plan. This is not a trivial thing, generally speaking. In that particular case, it was an exercise of extreme frustration all along. If you did watch this YouTube video, this is me, the expert. So spot on. No wonder IT projects can’t be finished on time with so many bozos around the table.

    → 8:02 PM, Jan 19
  • Another Massive Update to @CraftDocsApp (#craft #writer #writing #blogging #tools)

    New export options in Craft 1.2.2

    What a pleasant surprise today: a big update to Craft was released. Version 1.2.2 brings a lot of improvements on the table. This release should have been numbered version 1.3, not 1.2.2! All platforms (iPad and macOS) received attention and improvements. One of the most important thing for me being the addition of direct export to Ulysses, DayOne, OmniFocus among others. We could already export in TextBundle or PDF and Word but these exports options, I feel my data can freely move out of the platform. My blogger workflow is simplified.

    I’m still working on my review of Craft by the way. It takes longer than I would have liked. Stay tuned.

    → 7:38 PM, Jan 18
  • Improving my Apple Watch Heartbeat Readings (#applewatch)

    A different way to wear the Apple Watch

    Since getting my Apple Series 6 last fall (see my review here), my heart readings aren’t working as expected. I’m not alone who is experiencing this problem (just google it!). During a workout, heartbeats readings are not available for the first 5 to 10 minutes into the workout. On a 30-minute workout, it can make a big difference.

    I think I found a way to greatly improve the heartbeats readings. Simply by wearing my Apple Watch as shown on the picture above. I must say that it is not perfect. As shown below, I do get a few minutes of lost readings, though, but not as much as before. The problem could be related to the presence on some fur on my front arm. Also, always making sure the Apple Watch band is tied close enough to the wrist is a must.

    A few minutes of lost heartbeat readings

    Are you experiencing the same issue? Let me know if you permanently fixed it.

    → 4:29 PM, Jan 17
  • Mailbrew is getter better and better (#mailbrew #newsletters)

    My Mailbrew profile page

    Mailbrew received a big update this week. The change log is pretty extensive. The most important change is that the home page and the whole user experience for that matter is now more about reading your digests than the brews edit view. I like this change a lot. Digests are presented in the order they were received. You can go from one issue to another easily for a specific brew. You can also select a specific brew to see associated digests. The reading experience is better overall compared to HEY’s Feed view. The only missing thing is a “save clip” option.

    Beside links to external content, within a digest, when it is appropriate, there is a button for entering a reader view. In this view, a minimalist browser will let the reader immerse himself to limit distractions. It reminds me of the Safari reader view. There is always the save button available to put aside an article in case you don’t have time to read it at the moment. Mailbrew provides a separate list for those saved items.

    There are a ton of other small change and improvements. Sharing our brews is easier. Sharing a digest also is closer at hand. All in all, this is a solid update to an already excellent service. You can read my initial review of Mailbrew here. If you want to subscribe, please do me a favour and use this link.

    → 7:18 AM, Jan 13
  • Programming, mathematics and brain activities (#research #computers #computerscience)

    Florian olivo Ek9Znm8lQ1U unsplash

    What does it take to be a hood programmer? Or better yet, what does it take to like programming hence writing or reading algorithms? Math? Language? Arts? A combination? When I started in computer science at the University, my friends thought that I was good at maths. It wasn’t the case. Before deciding which field I would like to study, I was afraid of computer science, thinking myself that we had to be really good with mathematics. My experience shows that it is not the case. I’m average at maths but good at programming and in computer science in general. Is it surprising? According to this article, no. In fact, computer programming isn’t the same thing as doing maths from a brain activity perspective. It is more like something very demanding where a totally different part of the brain is solicited. Fascinating. It may (or may not) explain why you can be good in computer science but not as good in mathematics. Who knows.

    By having a better understanding of what parts of the brain are solicited, we may find common ground with other disciplines. It is really hard to attract people in computer science and knowing what it takes from a brain perspective could help direct efforts of recruiting the right people who will like to read and write algorythms but are not good at maths!

    → 6:47 PM, Jan 11
  • Ten Reasons to love RSS feeds (#rss #openstandard)

    Piotr bene P3w6VgaRaFI unsplash

    Alan Ralph, in a blog post, exposes ten reasons why he loves RSS feeds. I agree on all accounts. When I look closer, it all comes down to: control. Control is something we don’t have these days on social networks and social media. We live in a numeric world full of algorithmically-generated feeds and content. We lose control of our feeds. George Orwell was right.

    RSS feed, a simple and open standard, is the key, within an RSS reader, of a more open and user-centered and mostly ads-free Internet. RSS feeds are important.

    → 8:09 PM, Jan 10
  • How to turn me off big time (#signin #services #facebooklogin)

    Signin with Facebook

    What’s out for 2021? These “Connect with Facebook” screen. Please, stop doing that. It’s 2021. If a service, in order to create a new account, offers a “Connect with Facebook”, it is a no go for me, no mather if alternatives are provided. Facebook is like cancer. Period.

    → 9:53 PM, Jan 9
  • Next week - back to a "normal" day job (#blogging #writing #personalnews)

    Annie spratt DnbWWWTclSM unsplash

    Next week marks the end of a three-week vacation. I’m lucky. Three weeks where I forgot about my work and became a full-time blogger, writer, content creator. Time flies. There is a need for normality, I guess, and this means returning to work.

    Expect a less frequent publishing schedule. Don’t worry; I won’t go very far, thanks to our new confinement and curfew starting this very Saturday. Oh well.

    → 5:21 PM, Jan 7
  • Another wild Microsoft rumour about Outlook (#microsoft #rumours #outlook #office365)

    Microsoft converts Outlook website into a progressive web app

    Here is another wild one: Microsoft is reportedly working on making Outlook a progressive web application for all platforms. Progressive web application isn’t new and Microsoft already makes a version of Outlook in this format. What is new is that it would replace all native versions of the Outlook client: no more are native versions of Outlook for Windows or the Mac.

    I’m not sure if this is good or bad news. I’m always wary about cross-platform tech. There is always something lost in translation. The other question that comes to my mind, why is Microsoft moving way from native applications in its ecosystem?

    Yet, not all is lost, a good side effect of this move would be to reduce memory consumption on the client. As use can see in this tweet, the native version of Outlook can use large chunk of your computer memory.

    → 1:54 PM, Jan 6
  • About this rumoured big Windows visual overhaul (#microsoft #windows)

    Newwindows10startmenu png

    If only Microsoft could finish the job started with Windows 7. Windows 10 user interface is a bunch of previously used visual elements that Microsoft doesn’t care to clean up. For example, consider the computer settings area. On the surface, the iconography speaks the recent visual langague defined by Microsoft. But, as you try to go deeper to change a less frequently used setting, you’re back to a pre-Windows 10 era. I don’t believe Microsoft will do this “major” refresh as recently reported by Windows Central, not in a way they refused to do in the last ten years, anyway.

    As a side note, colour me Apple fanboy if you want, but many pundits will grumble when Apple is actually refreshing the user interface like they did with macOS Big Sur (or iOS 7, remember?). At least, it is either consistently clean or consistently ugly, depending of your aestheticism tastes. You won’t as easily find a macOS Yosemite visual asset in macOS Big Sur or even macOS Catalina. Inconsistencies do exist in macOS but they are usually limited to very specific visual tweaks (like to trafic lights placements).

    → 3:52 PM, Jan 5
  • I'm afraid your maths are right, @brentsimmons (#covid19 #vaccination #usa)

    COVID-19 Virus Rendering

    Brent Simmons trying to determine where the US should get back to normal. After some maths, he asks:

    “(Is any of my math wrong? There’s no point in being overly-precise here — but please tell me if I’ve made some error that changes things significantly.)”

    I’m afraid his maths are right, even if they aren’t precise. Things could change, though, after Biden is officially in his Office. Even though, change of government takes a lot of time in the US.

    I said it in the past: COVID-19 shows how weak the US is as a country to fight this non military war.

    → 1:36 PM, Jan 3
  • Documenting our numeric life (#journaling #tools)

    My DayOne Journal for blogs

    Basic Apple Guy on DayOne, a popular journaling app:

    “My current journaling habit is to make one entry per day, typically at night. However, I may add multiple timestamps to the entry throughout the day to capture a specific occurrence or thought. This daily journal is currently on a 2,668-day streak, with 4,325 total entries, and 3,297 photos.”

    A streak of 2,668-day to capture thoughts, events, etc., manually? Consider me impressed. I used to write my thoughts too in DayOne, but eventually I stopped as I couldn’t keep up because of all my writing projects. Yet, I found a way to keep using DayOne, by automatically documenting my numeric life. I wrote a piece about it in 2018 that is still absolutely valid today: “Documenting my Numeric Life”. I’m using IFTTT as the engine to push updates into my many journals, inside DayOne. Works like a charm.

    → 8:26 AM, Jan 2
  • Not the best way to build brand loyalty, @LGUS (#smarttv #airplay2)

    LG 4K OLED Smart TV

    According to an article from MacRumors, LG is rolling out a software update to its 2018 Smart TVs to enable AirPlay 2 and HomeKit support. I personally own a 2016 model and I don’t expect to receive such update anytime soon. As a software-only solution, I don’t see why they couldn’t make it happen for 2016 models too. When you think about Apple supporting iPhone models dating back to 2015 with iOS 14, we have to wonder who’s playing programmed obsolescence here. As someone who’s looking to upgrade its 2016 LG Smart TV to a 2020 model, which will support HDR, Dolby Atmos, AirPlay 2, HomeKit and have a 120 Hz refresh rate, I don’t appreciate LG approach to brand loyalty building.

    → 8:47 AM, Dec 30
  • Thinking of closing my Google Analytics account − who knew (#googleanalytics #privacy @mailbrew @plausiblehq)

    Micro.blog stats on Google Analytics

    Mailbrew shared a blog post about the services they use internally for their needs. As a die hard fan of Mailbrew (see my profile here), it’s interesting to see what SaaS they use for their internal use. Especially interesting to me, Plausible, a privacy-friendly analytics. I’m currently using Google Analytics which is free but, you know, it’s Google and it’s too complex for my needs. On the eve of a new year, it would be a nice time to start fresh in that regards. I’m currently testing the service as I write this! I never thought closing my Google analytics account could be a thing. Every new year is the occasion to do things differently, don’t you think?

    → 1:58 PM, Dec 29
  • Thoughts on my first contact with Disney+ on Apple TV (#appletv #disneyplus #streaming)

    Disney Plus App 2

    Yesterday I had my first real experience with the Disney+ streaming service on my Apple TV 4K. In a word: wow! I wanted to see the latest movie from Pixal: Soul. I decided to try Disney+ for the occasion. It’s the best streaming experience I ever had. From the mandatory signup process to browsing content and watching movies, I’m sold. Rightfully, Apple named the Disney+ Apple TV app the best of 2020. Not only Disney knows how to create great movies, they also know how to create great user experience for the Apple TV. Apple should take some notes here. Google, with its crappy YouTube app should just start over. Now the 9$ a month question: will I keep the Disney+ subscription?

    → 10:50 AM, Dec 28
  • Best wishes to all my followers and readers

    Best wishes 2020

    Original image from Unsplash, the wishes are from me. LOL. Done with Adobe Spark Post.

    → 3:31 PM, Dec 24
  • I don’t buy commercial Christmas cards. (#adobe #sparkpost #creativity)

    Adobe Spark Post

    Every year, a few days before Christmas, I spend some time to create all my own and original Christmas cards for my beloved ones. It’s a pretty simple process involving two different apps. One is Unsplash and the other is Adobe Spark Post. I usually start by browsing Unsplash for finding the right photo for inspiration. Once I settle on one picture, I download it and launch Adobe Spark to create the initial montage. I make sure to reserve some space for the best wishes text. This year, I’ll do things a bit differently as my cards will be digital-only. I’ll send them via iMessage. Some people would prefer to have a printed version, but 2020 being… well… 2020, I’ll go ahead with a digital version only.

    I’m a big fan of Adobe Spark Post. For some reason, I don’t see a lot of noise around it on the web. I use it for many other things than creating Christmas cards, as the picture above can show. You can read my review of Adobe Spark Post here on my main blog.

    → 11:08 AM, Dec 24
  • Tempted by Vimeo, again. (#vimeo #YouTube #experiment)

    My Main Vimeo page

    I have too many projects on my plate to complete and experiments that I want to try. Today, I’m thinking about subscribing to Vimeo, again. I used to have an active account where I would publish photo processing session recordings with voice over. These sessions are still available by the way (one example here). I stopped doing those because they were time consuming to create and publish.

    Subscribing to Vimeo’s first paying tier is not cheap. I know what you’re thinking, why not use YouTube which is free!? First, I don’t like YouTube and the business model behind it. I don’t like to depend on Google for my stuff. Vimeo is better in my opinion as a video content platform, for what I want to do. I prefer their embedded video player compared to YouTube’s. I don’t want ads on my feed and on my content. For all these reasons, Vimeo > YouTube.

    My Vimeo page: https://vimeo.com/numericcitizen

    Now you know. 😎

    → 9:55 AM, Dec 22
  • Time for something. Again. (#me #avatar)

    My 2021 Avatar 1000x1000 72DPI

    Introducing my new avatar for 2021. It was made by hyxcreations, available on Fivrr. I wanted something along the lines of this one. I’m very happy of the end results. It is a blend of the previous avatar and the other one I use for @numericcitizen, my official Twitter account.

    Expect a slow rollout over the next few weeks. ☺️

    → 3:18 PM, Dec 18
  • Uniformity across diversity (#youtubers #YouTube #design)

    YouTubers Channels

    Recently I spent more time than usual on YouTube for different reasons: to look at AirPods Max first impressions, to learn more about Synology DSM 7.0 beta, etc. After a while, it’s easy to see a trend that bugs me: design uniformity across the board. See the previous image gathers a few popular YouTubers channel content pages. They all look about the same or at least designed by the same designer. On top of that, there seems to be a trend where the weider you look, the better. When did that trend start?

    → 7:37 AM, Dec 14
  • What came before the diagram (#blogging #tips)

    I use Apple’s Notes app to jot some ideas, all the time. When the concept is clear in my head, I go ahead and select my tool for the next phase. In this case, it was Apple’s Keynote which proves to provide a quite capable environment for diagramming. The subject: how I process information that eventually will enable me to write blog posts. More details here.

    → 9:57 PM, Dec 10
  • A Substack reader, really? (#substack #mailbrew #hey #newsletters)

    From Chris Best, Substack CEO: “Something that we think about a lot is readers tell us, ‘Hey, I’m subscribed to six different Substacks now, and I want to read them all, and it sucks that they’re in my email inbox along with all my other stuff,’" 😳🤦🏻‍♂️

    A reader app from Substack would certainly be a good idea. I’m already on the private beta. I wonder if Mr. Best knows about Mailbrew? Or Hey? While waiting for such a reader app, Mailbrew is certainly capable of doing just that: consolidating newsletters in one place. Read my review of Mailbrew on my blog. https://linktr.ee/numericcitizen

    → 8:26 AM, Dec 9
  • How Synology NAS can improve my blogger workflow (#synology #nas #storage #blogger #tools)

    As an IT guy, looking at what Synology has in store for 2021 makes me pretty excited. I wrote about that yesterday but I took a deeper look at what is coming in DSM 7.0, their NAS operating system. I didn’t pay too much attention to their photo management software that comes with a Synology NAS, but that might change. In my blogger workflow, there is something I can optimize is the use of a photo management to store all my screen shots, stock photos, visual assets, etc. Synology Photos could be the tool I was looking for for a long time. I don’t want to use Apple’s Photos application as I don’t really like to see screenshots intermixed with family pictures. If Synology Photos is as solid as it looks, if their mobile application is much improved to their current version, I’ll certainly give it a serious try. On top of that, this photo feature also enable remote access to the photo library. Very interesting.

    I’ve been shopping around for a home NAS for a long time and only made the plunge this year. After much thinking and reading, I settled on Synology because I saw a mature company offering mature products with a solid reputation. Again, DSM 7.0 brings a lot of new features and improvements which makes me feel happy about my choice of going with them. Can’t wait to try what’s new.

    → 7:40 AM, Dec 8
  • Massive update coming to Synology NAS users 😍 (#synology #dsm #update #nas)

    I’ve been using a Synology DS720+ NAS for a few months now and boy do I like it! On my blogger to do list is a review of this device. The breath of features never stop to impress me. I’m a big fan. I use it for archiving, space reclamation on my Mac and much more. It’s fast and reliable as I had a chance to test the repair feature after losing a hard drive (yes, already!). It worked flawlessly.

    This week, Synology will make DSM 7.0 available for beta testers, the braves. Looking at the announcement web page, it looks like a massive update. Refreshed screens, more cloud integration, admin rights delegation and added feature like Active Insight will certainly be exciting additions. One question: I think Synology is about to add a subscription for this, which I’m not sure I’ll pay for, depending of its usefulness in its final form. We’ll see.

    → 12:32 PM, Dec 7
  • The Unifi Dream Machine gets a major update! (@ubnt #udm #update)

    My home router got an update this week, version 1.8.3. I’ve been running the Unifi Dream Machine since spring without any issues. This update was long in the works and highly expected. Among the changes, a redesigned and simplified controller dashboard with real-time statistics which are really helpful. The device management UI also received a redesign. Some of the previously available information has been removed or moved around. CPU, Memory consumption and internal temperature are higher than before (around +10%-30%), though. Overall, its’a solid update. Oh, and it is running an 4 cores ARM processor.

    Remember, this router replaced an aging Apple AirPort Extreme. If you are still looking for a great home router, please, do yourself a favor and buy this one. This post is not sponsored.

    → 1:08 PM, Dec 5
  • Using Twitter Fleet, why not! (#twitter #creativity)

    As you know, Twitter came out with « Fleets », its clone of Snapshat’s Stories. People don’t really like it. Or do they? My timeline is constantly filled with my followers posting fleets. I guess some do like them. I decided to give it a serious try. I think they add another dimension to Twitter that I happen to find interesting for highlighting purposes. It’s simple to use, just enough design flexibility. There are is one drawback: they only show up on the iPhone (not the iPad or the web), which I find strange and somewhat arbitrary.

    Following are screenshots of my experiment. Let’s see where it goes from here.

    → 12:38 PM, Dec 4
  • Let's meet! Here is a free idea for calendaring app makers (talking to you guys! @macguitar @flexibits)

    Let’s play a game. One of your customer calls you and ask for a meeting (virtual or in person). Before answering this request, you have to look at your calendar to see your free/busy time. It’s a time consuming and error prone process. What if your favorite calendaring app could generate a map of your weekly schedule with all sensible information masked out, like in the following example (made with Fantastical). This could be sent as a PDF file to the customer, would save a lot of time. It’s surprising that, to my knowledge, no calendaring app offer this option. I would pay to get this.

    → 5:14 PM, Dec 3
  • For Icons lovers (#macos #ios #apple #design #ui #ux #visualarts)

    I’m a user of Timing for Mac, and recently the app got updated in order to support macOS Big Sur. The update brings a fresh and entirely new app icon to better fit the visual style of Big Sur, and I love it 😍. The icon has been designed by Matthew Skiles. Looking on his Twitter profile, I discovered two interesting web sites: https://www.macosicongallery.com/ and https://www.iosicongallery.com/. These are catalogs of the best icons for macOS and iOS of well known apps. Check them out. These sites made me realize how much we lost in design quality over the years, great icons are hard to come by these days.

    → 6:56 AM, Nov 20
  • I can breath. (#bidenharis2020) 😀🇨🇦

    Well, I can breath a little bit better now that this clown is on the way out. Good riddance. As a Canadian, I’m so happy to see this clown go. If there was a way to start fixing 2020, it would be it. Yeah, I know, he won’t concede victory, he probably won’t do a concession speech. Who cares.. we knew all that, already. Now, let’s hope Americans start to unite a little bit and fix their shit, because, it’s pretty ugly out there.

    → 12:54 PM, Nov 7
  • Pray. (#vote2020 #electionnight)

    I rarely if ever post political stuff here. As a Canadian, my sincere hope is that the American people make the furst step in order to put an end to this endless nightmare.

    On a side note: I’m using  News to follow election night. So far, I like what Apple is doing here. Results are quick to be reflected on the maps, which can be drilled down up to the state level.

    → 8:09 PM, Nov 3
  • Widget Radar (#widgets #ios14 #weatherapps @rjonesy)

    Another wonderful and really useful widget is finally available for iOS 14 and iPadOS 14: a precipitation radar. I’m a big fan of MyRadar but the app wasn’t yet updated to support widgets. Widget Radar, which is free by the way, is simple and minimalist yet effective. It is proudly sitting on my homes creen now, on the weather page.

    Side note: Weatherline is another useful weather app, but it doesn’t allow the placement of the radar image as a widget, yet.

    → 6:52 AM, Nov 3
  • Third edition is out! (#newsletter #blogger #writing #apple)

    After much writing and compositing, the third edition of the Numeric Citizen Introspection newsletter is out! I’m quite happy with the end results. It’s getting better with each release. It’s still free. Can’t wait to build the next edition!

    Please, read, share and like! 👈🏻 🙏🏻

    Comments are welcomed!

    → 6:28 PM, Oct 28
  • A wild dream (#apple #macpro #vmware #virtualization #lab)

    I’ve been thinking of something really wild recently, for me at least: replacing my 2017 21.5 inches iMac with a Mac Pro. Here is why.

    I work in IT (information technologies) as a data center related technology architect. Server virtualization, storage area networks, networking technologies are at the center of my professional universe. In the coming months, I’ll have to invest in self-training and experimentations a lot around VMware-related products and services. How can I do that efficiently while working from home? Here comes the Mac Pro idea.

    In order to be able to run many virtual machines, a powerful physical computer is required: lots of memory, powerful CPU (more than 6 cores) and fast storage. My current iMac doesn’t meet these basic requirements (it is maxed out at 32 GB of RAM and it has a relatively modest CPU). A Mac Pro with the following specs would easily meet the challenge: at least 128 GB of fast memory, 8 cores CPU, builtin SSD and expandability.

    Virtualization will required VMware Fusion Pro running on top of macOS. Then, the sky is the limit as I can then install ESXi hypervisor which will allow me to branch into more complex setup. This type of environment do require a lot of memory (a typical VM is about 4-16 GB each) and multi-cores CPU. Installing ESXi directly on the Mac Pro is not an option as I will need to have macOS running for all other tasks (I’m not even sure if it is att all possible).

    How do I get there? Well, I’m still thinking about how I’ll buy that machine and get the additional RAM (I won’t go with Apple’s because $$$). Stay tuned.

    Technical datasheet can be found on Apple’s website, right here in PDF format. I don’t want to switch to a Windows machine BTW, I’m too much invested in Apple’s ecosystem for that to happen.

    → 8:48 AM, Oct 18
  • Look who’s in town (#rssreader #rss #reading @reederapp)

    The venerable RSS reader app « Reeder » turned to version 5 yesterday. I don’t know how I missed that one. Maybe because I moved from Reeder to News Explorer. I pay a lot of respect to the developer of Reeder. I’ve been using it for a long time. I wanted to have a look at version 5 so I bought it. Here is why.

    Widgets. News Explorer hasn’t been updated to support them yet. Reeder now does. I love them. Read Later. Sending URLs to Reeder Read later is interesting and provides a better experience than in Safari Read Later. Tracking my own RSS feed for quality control. Oh and Shortcuts are also supported, something News Explorer don’t.

    I think I’ll have to update my blogger workflow. 🤔

    → 10:02 AM, Oct 17
  • Software is art (@airbuddyapp, #macOS)

    If you have a Mac, many battery-powered Apple devices, you need AirBuddy. Version has been in the works for a very long time and it is a major update. I’m so anxious to get my AirBuddy updated!

    We don’t get to see this level of craft on computers these days. This reminds me how dire the macOS native application landscape has become over the years. With macOS Big, Catalyst, Apple Silicon Macs and universal binaries, one can hope for a brighter future.

    Am I alone who think the AirBuddy logo is upside down?

    → 5:44 AM, Oct 16
  • Deliveries 9.0 - Does it deliver?

    Here are a few quick comments on Deliveries 9.0 that came out recently. Deliveries 9 helped me track my Apple Watch Series 6 (read me review here).

    As you know, Junecloud, the maker of Deliveries, switched to a subscription model with this release. I don’t really like this model but what can I do? Their pricing is fair and they give to previously paid users a six months break.

    Version 9 brings refined visuals and more details tracking history among other things. The importation workflow has been updated and simplified too. Once delivered, package tracking can be archived forever. iOS 13’s dark mode is now supported but iOS 14 widgets aren’t yet. I think Deliveries is the perfect candidate to support widgets and I can’t wait to see what Junecloud will come up with in that regard.

    All in all, as a long time user of Deliveries, I’m ok with this update albeit the switch to the subcription model. If it get’s more frequent feature additions, I’m ok with it, I guess.

    → 7:30 AM, Oct 10
  • HEY, here is an important update!

    Today is Christmas! Basecamp just released version 1.1 of their email client for HEY which supports WIDGETS among other things! I played with it and I LOVE the way they added the feature. Nicely designed and useful! Congrats to them!

    Now, I have to get back to work on my article on widgets and remove HEY as an app without widgets support!

    → 4:08 PM, Oct 5
  • I think this is a great move! Everyone (?) can now test this feature. The highlighting feature works across devices which is really useful. Manton Reece

    we’ve enabled the new bookmark archiving and highlights feature for everyone to try out

    → 6:36 PM, Sep 29
  • Micro.blog 2.0 - Testing, 1-2-3, Testing...

    I really like what I’m seeing here on macOS. Only request is the default view of a New Post window should show the Title and Categories by default. On the web, the improvements are massive. I’m surprised the Bookmarking feature is available in a new Premium tier only. I want this feature but not the others (podcasting, richer media support). I’ll give it a try while it is free and I’ll see. On iOS and iPadOS, the workflow of selecting a photo from the library is still broken, otherwise, I love the changes. There seems to be speed improvements too. In other words, it is snappier!

    All in all, I like where Micro.blog is going with these updates.

    Testing an embedded bookmark here.

    For the Micro.blog 2.0 launch week, we’ve enabled the new bookmark archiving and highlights feature for everyone to try out. You can upgrade to Micro.blog Premium at any time and also get podcast and video hosting.

    Read: www.manton.org

    Manton Reece https://www.manton.org/2020/09/29/for-the-microblog.html
    → 4:51 PM, Sep 29
  • Deliveries: what’s in for me?

    I’ve been a long time satisfied user of Deliveries. They are now switching to a subscription model which isn’t a surprise. I do think the pricing is just about right for the type of app. But, looking more closely to what’s new in the upcoming release, I see support for darkmode which is fine but please, don’t try to sell us this upgrade because you support basic OS features that are available for more than a year. Those should be a given. You may disagree.

    → 11:51 AM, Sep 29
  • A message to attention seekers

    Here is something for attention seekers: GTFU. I don’t understand. What do you expect from me by liking 10 photos in a row on my 500px profile page. The same goes for this case (see screen shot) of someone clapping for all my stories on my Medium page. Do you have something to sell? Probably, but I don’t care. You are making noise all around the web, just because you seek my attention.

    Software has never been more powerful. The web is a big tracking machine, yet websites can’t figure out a way to recognize such behaviors in order to stop them. Baffling.

    → 5:53 AM, Sep 24
  • On increasing COVID-19 cases...

    Quick question: when you say “oh my, COVID-19 cases are on the rise!” and you get the following response “well, sure, they do more testing!!”. Is this a valid response? If not, what is the counter argument?

    I have the feeling there is something wrong with this statement but I cannot put the finger on it. Ideas?

    → 11:56 AM, Sep 20
  • I'm falling in love, again.

    I’m falling back in love with Tweetbot 🥰. For a reason that I don’t remember, I was no longer using since a while ago. I think it was related to the fact that the official Twitter client was getting all the new features while Tweetbot couldn’t keep up (thanks to highly guarded APIs by Twitter. I’m kind of frustrated by the non-chronological timeline. It’s exhausting. I want to focus on a clean UI providing me a clear view on my timeline. That is all.

    → 6:56 PM, Sep 14
  • From Overcast to Castro — Quick Observations

    Re-discovering Castro podcast player 🎧. Much better than Apple’s Podcast app 👍🏻. Better design than Overcast 👌🏻. Super nice Watch app 😍. Impressive Shortcuts support. 👨🏻‍💻 No iPad version, though 😕. Looking forward for iOS 14 widgets support and maybe a universal version with support for all platforms (is this even in the cards? 🧐). Proudly supporting the developer by being a yearly subscriber now.

    castro.fm

    → 1:12 PM, Sep 12
  • On IFTTT Pro

    IFTTT Pro. I’ve been a long time user of this service. I decided to subscribe @ 2.99$ per month. Started to play with the new features. I’m still not sure how I will take advantage of the multi-steps applet capabilities. Maybe something like: following a new blog post, create a DayOne entry AND create a Buffer “In case you missed it" AND … then what?

    → 7:29 AM, Sep 11
  • Sad but true in a sense. #climatechange

    twitter.com/pjux/stat…

    → 7:11 PM, Sep 9
  • I second that. Instagram is going down the drain. Fast. Thank you Facebook.

    twitter.com/morrick/s…

    → 6:47 PM, Sep 7
  • I would pay a lot of money for this kind of table.

    → 3:51 PM, Sep 5
  • After much thinking, I think I’l go ahead with Stratechery newsletter (was competing against Techpinions and Benedict Evans Newsletter). Why? it comes with Dithering podcast with @Gruber. #newsletter #tech #podcast

    → 6:26 PM, Sep 4
  • This is my Twitter family. I wonder what my Micro.blog family would look like.

    → 3:47 PM, Sep 4
  • Thinking of becoming a paying subscriber to very notable newsletters. Hard to choose from Benedict Evans, Stratechery and Techpinions newsletters. All good content, interesting and very different subjects from different angles. Any advice?

    → 7:21 PM, Aug 26
  • Master piece from Ben Thompson of Stratechery looking at ways of rethinking the App Store. Because of this article quality, I’m considering becoming a subscriber. Rethinking the App Store – Stratechery by Ben Thompson

    → 7:08 AM, Aug 26
  • Yes, I do remember Windows 95 launch. Windows on top of DOS.

    → 7:49 PM, Aug 24
  • I’m flabbergasted to see soooo many new To Do or expanse tracking apps coming in crowded app categories.

    → 9:41 AM, Aug 24
  • What a downgrade. Dull just like the president’s wife. twitter.com

    → 8:10 AM, Aug 23
  • BREAKING: Adobe Lightroom CC 5.4 Users - Data Loss

    Major issue affecting Adobe Lightroom CC users at version 5.4: the cloud-based photo procesing software. Users affected by the bug lost portion or all their photo library (I’m not one of those, thanks god!). According to an Adobe statement: We know that some customers have photos and presets that are not recoverable. We sincerely apologize to any customers who have been affected by this issue.

    Ouch. In other words: Adobe says: fuck you. That’s the price of cloud-based storage services (on top of the monthly payment). No service is immute to this. We should be pressuring companies like Adobe, Apple, etc. to stop this non-sense. https://www.macrumors.com/2020/08/20/adobe-lightroom-ios-update-photos-deleted

    → 1:33 PM, Aug 20
  • I’d like to find a cool use of Charty, especially with the upcoming support of iOS 14 widgets. apps.apple.com/ca/app/ch…

    → 9:48 AM, Aug 17
  • I’m getting there. Where? No idea. Entirely random city design and building. That is what playing is all about. #townscraper

    → 1:16 PM, Jul 24
  • To me, it is becoming clear every day that, it’s the virus who will bring down this clown in chief, stars are slowly aligning. apple.news

    → 7:15 AM, Jul 24
  • I love this game. Spent a few hours building this unknown city. 😍 #townscraper

    → 7:23 PM, Jul 21
  • Application visual design is such a fascinating field. Marco Arment is certainly one of the best app developer but this redesign of Overcast by Paul Sahner is quite an improvement. A fresh look at Overcast’s Now Playing Screen — Paul Sahner

    → 9:28 AM, Jul 5
  • For the next two months. Life is good to me, even in 2020. #bloggerlife #blogger

    → 8:43 AM, Jul 5
  • No more Microsoft physical stores. End of an (short, insignificant) era. #microsoft #microsoftstores

    → 11:26 AM, Jun 26
  • The previous tweeted quote about Basecamp/HEY founders attitude was a clip from a newsletter that I have created and that I’m receiving each day. The quote is not from Mailbrew themselves but from Benedict Evans. I should have been more precise.

    → 8:28 AM, Jun 20
  • About HEY/Basecamp founders. Found on the Internet.  😳

    → 8:08 AM, Jun 20
  • HEY, Micro.blog and web standards

    It is fun to compare HEY and Micro.blog. They both depend on open web standards on the backend. HEY depends on SMTP while Micro.blog depends on HTTPS/HTML. HEY wants to re-invent the end-user experience while Micro.blog provides a pretty much generic end-user experience. By turning the end-user experience upside down, HEY doesn’t rely on IMAP. This is where some people turns their back to HEY (there may be other reasons, though).

    Why Micro.blog. Why Hey.

    → 3:31 PM, Jun 19
  • Woah. So. Nice. twitter.com/andrewapr…

    → 2:29 PM, Jun 18
  • First day with Hey. Love it so far. A bit disorienting at first. Old habits don’t die easily. Forwarded five email accounts. A few email source already screened out. A few clips created from Mailbrew’s Newsletter that I receive. A few tags too. Stay tuned for more comments. #hey

    → 11:15 AM, Jun 18
  • Waiting for Hey.com invite is killing me. That is all.

    → 3:13 PM, Jun 17
  • When I explained to my 17 years old boy how Hey.com is trying to re-invent email service and how cool some features are, he was un-impressed. Young generations don’t use email at all. He has 14K emails in his inbox. 😳🤦🏻‍♂️

    → 6:30 AM, Jun 17
  • I do have a good feeling with Hey, a new email service based on my experiments with Basecamp. twitter.com

    → 9:41 AM, Jun 13
  • Been playing with this guy for 12 hours now… I’m… ecstatic. Expect a full review soon. @ubnt twitter.com/ubnt/stat…

    → 6:06 AM, Jun 11
  • In a world full of subscriptions, this app not only looks great but could prove to be useful. Outgoings apps.apple.com

    → 6:15 AM, Jun 3
  • I’m not in the market for bookmarking apps but this one certainly looks really nice, well designed and focused. Readit apps.apple.com

    → 6:09 AM, Jun 3
  • This guy can read? Really? Who knew.

    twitter.com/mboorstei…

    → 8:27 PM, Jun 1
  • This looks like summer to me.

    → 4:51 PM, May 30
  • Ubiquiti Unifi Dream Machine it will be. This is not an ad. #notgoogle #notamazon #fuckmasssurveillance

    twitter.com/ubnt/stat…

    → 6:52 PM, May 29
  • Currently participating in VMware Empower virtual conference. Wondering if this format is any indication of what Apple will use for its WWDC conference coming in June. Currently listening to the keynote from CEO, seems being at home.

    → 10:12 AM, May 27
  • Poor little boy… [Update: Trump responds] Twitter puts a fake news tag on Trump tweets for the first time - 9to5Mac

    → 7:32 AM, May 27
  • Is this a movie? twitter.com/SpaceX/st…

    → 4:37 PM, May 25
  • Oh. my. god. 😍 Hyperdeck.io twitter.com/terhechte…

    → 4:31 PM, May 25
  • Today, I saw someone enter a phone booth to make a phone call. 😳

    → 3:39 PM, May 24
  • I rarely post pictures here. Taking a quick break from bike ride. Great weather; dry, sunchine, windy. Loving every seconds of it. 🚲😷

    → 1:56 PM, May 23
  • Ok, this one is for geeky people. So funny. twitter.com/scottreuw…

    → 3:06 PM, May 22
  • Is it me of every single Google apps look like a web page? www.macrumors.com/2020/05/2…

    → 9:42 AM, May 21
  • Microsoft Office Fluid looks nice and refreshing. www.theverge.com/2020/5/19…

    → 6:02 AM, May 20
  • Ethical question: I produce a weekly newsletter with my content powered by Mailchimp. I want to move to Mailbrew and so informed my subscribers to make the switch. But my subscribers are not updating. Is it ok to make the switch for them?

    → 8:14 AM, May 17
  • I’m testing something really intriguing, different, unexpected. Built #onuniverse. the-perfect-imperfections-series.onuniverse.com

    → 7:02 AM, May 17
  • In case you didn’t know, I’m on Telegram: t.me/numericci… Get all the latest updates from my main blog.

    → 9:11 PM, May 16
  • Today, I’m putting the final touches to something very special. I’m very happy with the end results. I can’t wait to share it with the world. Warning: not exactly the most happy piece of writing but something offering some relief in the current crisis. Stay tuned.

    → 6:51 AM, May 15
  • I’m kind of tired of all this. #covid19 #coronavirus

    → 7:13 PM, May 10
  • COVID-19 by the Numbers

    Great post. My sister is a nurse working with seniors. She got COVID-19. She ok now. But she knows how bad the situation is. We're not done yet, ladies and gentlemen.

    COVID-19 by the Numbers

    → 11:17 AM, May 10
  • Noto - A Wonderful app

    Please, help me find a use case for this wonderfully designed note taking application. As an avid user of Notion, I don't see much use for Noto, but is looks so great!

    Noto · Noto:

    → 3:09 PM, May 9
  • As the confinement end is not near yet, some improvements are needed in my home office. First thing, getting a better chair. Done today. Next up, lighting. Still waiting for my delivery of Elgato’s Key Light to arrive.. still no delivery date… 

    → 2:18 PM, May 1
  • Just Made an Unexpected Discovery

    Oh. My. God. 😳😍 How on earth I wasn’t aware about this great utility for macOS: CleanShot X? Fully featured, cleanly designed, with a lot of use cases for me. A cross between Apple’s builtin screen capture and Screencast. Instant buy.

    Side note: I never bought that many apps since the beginning of the great confinement. Second side note: it isn’t an ad. 🤷🏻‍♂️ CleanShot X for Mac

    → 7:26 PM, Apr 28
  • Interesting. When an application is not multithreading but scales by adding instances, using an Hypervisor like VMware ESXi helps make it look like “multithreaded” on one computer. twitter.com

    A condemnation of every programmer who faced multi-threaded programming and said OMG

    → 8:45 AM, Apr 25
  • Every update to Notion app is welcomed. Welcome to release 1.5.

    → 8:44 PM, Apr 23
  • Again, as I shared yesterday, the following data visualization site (https://rt.live/) is great. But, one question as it seems to be based on coronavirus testing only, how much results are skewed knowing for fact that testing is lacking in many places, especially in the US? https://rt.live/

    → 8:21 AM, Apr 19
  • We aren’t out of the woods in the US and neither in Canada. 2020 is going down the drain. Fast. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/arc…

    → 8:11 AM, Apr 19
  • 👉🏻 Don’t forget that you can stream music from your Apple Watch to your AirPods. Very handy when your wife is gone with to do errands with your iPhone. 😳

    → 11:53 AM, Apr 18
  • Testing MarsEdit 4.4a2… just having the categories shown on the right of my post being edited is enough to be an instant buy for me. Even in alpha.

    → 4:00 PM, Apr 17
  • I hope their predictions become reality and sooner the better. I don’t like open-space offices. Period. How coronavirus could change your office space - Vox

    → 8:16 PM, Apr 14
  • Walked for more than two hours in my city’s empty streets. Took many pictures. Stay tuned.

    → 4:56 PM, Apr 12
  • Maybe he was talking to a group of 4 years old? twitter.com

    RT @JoyceWhiteVance

    → 8:12 AM, Apr 11
  • Welcome to the future, now. 😳😂😂😂 twitter.com

    → 7:25 AM, Apr 8
  • Competition will heat up in the Mail business apparently… This: hey.com That: 9to5mac.com/2020/04/0… 🤔

    → 12:48 PM, Apr 7
  • People are dumb. 🤷🏻‍♂️ twitter.com/tomwarren…

    → 4:12 PM, Apr 5
  • Remember these clicky keyboards? I do.

    These were the best keyboards. I remember their touch, the feeling and… the clicky sound. twitter.com

    Tim Sweeney (@TimSweeneyEpic) Tweeted: So I busted out my IBM PC keyboard model M. I wrote ZZT and Unreal Engine 1 on this thing. With apologies to Moore’s Law, I gotta say - 1984 was peak keyboard. The code just types out better with these keys. t.co/3j0V3eujq…

    → 7:08 PM, Apr 4
  • Wearing a face mask is now fashionable. #coronaviris #covid19 😔

    → 5:02 PM, Apr 4
  • I’m losing memories of how the world was before the coronavirus. Not a good sign. #coronavirus #covid-19 😟

    → 9:51 AM, Apr 3
  • For the first time in more than a year, I chose to work with dark mode turned off on my iMac. Just for a change. Maybe the confinement is having a toll on me after all. #coronavirus #covid19

    → 7:37 AM, Apr 3
  • Is Microsoft missing the Covid-19 wave...?

    While Microsoft was busy trying to build a clone of Slack (MS Teams), they forgot to pay attention to Skype. Having a personal and business edition after all these years makes no sense. But I wouldn’t count Microsoft out yet.

    twitter.com/tomwarren…

    → 7:29 AM, Apr 2
  • I expect to see many of these photo reporting in the coming weeks, months and maybe years on the effects in our lives the coronavirus crisis has. www.nytimes.com/interacti…

    → 8:24 PM, Mar 31
  • It is disgusting.

    We are in a constant state of crisis. One crisis after the other. Is this the new normal? There are so many things that I find revolting right now in the US. It started a few years ago, in 2016. The following twitter thread calling the NYT to do its most basic job is so spot on. Yet, they fail again and again. Just listen to press conferences, one after the other. It is disgusting.

    I’m sorry if in recent days I’m calling out more things about politics, The Clown in Chief and the US. I should be writing about Apple, photography my dear passions. This is a special time. It requires a special reaction I guess. I just want to return to some form of normality, acceptability. I guess we have to be patient.

    Reference: daringfireball.net/linked/20…

    → 8:21 PM, Mar 31
  • There are great changes ahead, after the coronavirus, many are happening now.

    www.axios.com/newslette…

    → 7:46 PM, Mar 30
  • Google is being greedy and stupid for putting a simple feature like background play under their paywal. Oh, and, on iOS, does Premium enable another basic feature like 4K video?

    → 10:53 AM, Mar 30
  • Must. See. 👨🏻‍💻😳 #coronavirus #covid19 twitter.com/mikaeltha…

    → 8:46 PM, Mar 29
  • Spent the last few hours testing Basecamp. This thing is soooo cool.

    → 2:03 PM, Mar 29
  • Should we believe numbers coming from Russia? #covid19 #coronavirus 🤔

    → 9:39 AM, Mar 28
  • Working from home, because I do a lot less “socializing” (no surrounding colleagues) is much more demanding. I’m exhausted at the end of each work day. I don’t know how long I’ll be able to mainting this rythm. You?

    → 11:02 AM, Mar 25
  • Woah, just wrote something similar… taken from my Twitter feed…

    → 7:42 PM, Mar 24
  • Yep. It does happen all the time. #coronavirus #covid19 twitter.com/seanbgone…

    → 10:23 AM, Mar 24
  • Group Facetime, Zoom, Messenger, Whatsapp, etc.: what group conference tool is more popular around you? #coronavirus #poll

    → 10:38 AM, Mar 22
  • The Clown in Chief is the devil with a pretty face. #coronavirus

    → 9:57 PM, Mar 20
  • Current numbers from Italy are frightening to say the least. 😟 #covid19

    → 12:22 PM, Mar 20
  • Each day I’m a bit more disgusted by the American political class and by those voters who doesn’t understand anything in anything…. #covid19

    → 11:32 AM, Mar 20
  • The amount and variety of ads on TV that feel « out of place » or « no longer relevant » because of the COVID-19 crisis: vacations, trips, restaurants, etc. #covid19 😔

    → 5:01 PM, Mar 19
  • All those dashboards about COVID-19 progression around the world… all those news feeds with bad news… it loos like a bad video game… wish I could just wake up. 😔 #covid19

    → 4:41 PM, Mar 19
  • It’s been a few days now of intense remote work. Lot’s of collab tools usage (Webex, Zoom, MS Teams) for work with many collegues and many are not used to this. Some participant would benefict if they knew about some basic behavioral etiquette while attending virtual meetings. 😩

    → 4:08 PM, Mar 19
  • Went for a short walk this afternoon in my neighborhood. I wasn’t alone. We we’re like walking “alive” looking to spend time outside, just to change how focus from this crisis. #covid19

    → 3:11 PM, Mar 19
  • COVID-19, Schools and Technology (hit link for more)

    From what I’m seeing, the private school of my teenager where iPads are mandatory, don’t really take advantage of the possibilities of this technology. Limited remote teaching. No group chat, no nothing. That is a real reality check: the iPad as an enabling teaching device is quite overblown. More on this later.

    → 6:18 AM, Mar 18
  • It is a good thing to take a break from the news. Really. #covid19

    → 5:35 PM, Mar 17
  • This COVID-19 crisis will change many many things in our life for a long time. Daring Fireball: Use Both Soap and Hand Sanitizer

    → 7:17 PM, Mar 16
  • Get him off Twitter

    In other words, put the Clown in chief in quarantine.

    ‘Isolate him’: Ex-Trump official calls on president to go into ‘verbal quarantine’ during COVID-19 crisis www.rawstory.com/2020/03/i…

    → 9:55 AM, Mar 16
  • Just like for 9/11, I’m hooked to my screens. #covid19

    → 1:26 PM, Mar 15
  • COVID-19 and my PhD Friend

    I have a dear friend living in Denver, Co. He has a PhD in human comm. He is brilliant. But, he doesn’t understand all the fuss about COVID-19. For him, shutting down everything is over reacting. I tried to explain the curve, the pressure on health care system, etc. He thinks the flu is worst and yet we don’t shut down the country. I said yes and no.

    We shouldn’t trust current numbers in the US because they are way undervaluated. There is no reason to think the US population will be affected differently than other population in other countries without containment. They will. And it will be much worst becaue there is a lack of major containment as of this writing. The US is a the beginning of the curve. The exponential curve. This will be ugly. Remember: a single day of “wait-and-see” does make a big dfference and we have the numbers and the experience of other countries to prove it.

    → 7:56 AM, Mar 14
  • As a mass transit user, I’m working from home next week. Not obligated but volunteered action. #covid19

    → 5:44 PM, Mar 13
  • Working from home today. Like every friday. But this time, it is different. Same for my wife. Schools are closed today too. Unexpectedly. The world is slowly coming to a halt. For survival. #COVID19

    → 6:06 AM, Mar 13
  • Very hard to stay focused at work today. Everything seems to stop around me. People discussing about the situation with COVID-19.

    → 2:05 PM, Mar 12
  • The speech that should have aired yesterday night. But the clown 🤡 in chief just can’t do this. Read this Twitter thread. #covid19 twitter.com/jeremykon…

    → 11:33 AM, Mar 12
  • Yesterday’s night speech by the clown in chief 🤡 will be a turning point for him. Whatch the next few days when maths starts to do its magic the the US. Tick tock tick tock… ⏰ #covid19

    → 6:38 AM, Mar 12
  • Numbers, we need real numbers to help us govern actions. Simple.

    link.medium.com/4iWWjYg1J…

    → 7:47 AM, Mar 10
  • I’m not a gamer at all but when I see something that I like, I want it now! Still in development. Can’t wait to see more of this! 🥰 twitter.com/osksta/st…

    → 6:26 AM, Mar 10
  • 🙁😔

    Exclusive: The Strongest Evidence Yet That America Is Botching Coronavirus Testing www.theatlantic.com/health/ar…

    → 7:54 PM, Mar 7
  • Anxiety over #COVID-19 (follow link for details)

    Are we at a turning point where there will be a before & after world as we know it? I mean, this shit is here to stay among us for a long time… right? This long streak of economic growth (since 2008) really look to be coming to an end. Young generations will find things, economically speaking, to be harsh from now on and will have to get their shit together when looking for jobs as unemployment will start to be on significant rise… I’m Gen X, I do know what is it like when future is uncertain from a jobs perspective… in case you asked. Full employment may be a thing of the past from now on. We’ll see.

    → 5:43 PM, Mar 6
  • I’m in the last few miles of enduring a very bad cold. Tired. I wonder how is it diffrent than having COVID19. The only thing I didn’t have is fever. Working from home for the last three days.

    → 7:06 AM, Mar 6
  • Hard for me to get over someone liking one of my tweet dating back to 2016. 😳

    → 11:02 AM, Mar 5
  • Here is a very personal one: getting older is accepting things that are profoundly irritating about how we lose abilities. One example: typing on the on-screen keyboard on my iPhone is getting harder and produce too much typing errors. 😔

    → 7:15 PM, Mar 4
  • Remember Posterous? I do. Good night, Posterous

    → 8:51 PM, Mar 3
  • Oh I can’t to play this classic! So much good memories when I was a kid playing video games in arcades with my pocket money from my parents. Atari announces Missile Command Recharged for Android, iOS - Polygon

    → 7:42 PM, Mar 3
  • Thought of the day: If I had to return as an indie iOS developer like I was back in 2009-2013, I would design and build a Micro.blog client. Why? Because none of them right now are satisfactory to me.

    → 8:10 AM, Mar 3
  • the man in charge

    With this guy in charge, we have nothing to worry about.

    Inside Trump’s frantic attempts to minimize the coronavirus crisis www.washingtonpost.com/politics/…

    → 5:41 PM, Mar 1
  • If rockets science is your thing like it is for me, please do yourself a favour and watch this video. You’ll learn quite a few clever things about how rockets are built. twitter.com/smarterev…

    → 10:44 AM, Mar 1
  • Interesting small new app: Tot from iconfactory. More interesting though: free on Mac. One time purchase on iOS. iCloud sync. See the trick? I like this. Clever. It could have been the other way around too. But I’ll stay with my current tools. tot.rocks

    → 7:38 AM, Feb 28
  • On bookmarking apps and services

    Bookmarking apps and services like Pinboard are great but they offer limited features… (I was a user of Pocket before). For me, I decided to use more versatile tools like Notion.io instead. More complete, deeper learning curve but way more than bookmarking service. (I was evaluating Raindrop.io but stopped because of lack of support of multitasking on iPadOS. I wrote the developer about it. Still didn’t get a response). alanralph.co.uk/3721-2/

    → 4:39 PM, Feb 26
  • Just opened Adobe Spark Post to create something and I was greeted with a poll. The first question was how I would feel if Adobe Spark Port was no longer available. 😳😱 That doesn’t bode well for this service.

    → 7:48 PM, Feb 25
  • A by-product of switching to News Explorer, a powerful RSS reader, the deletion of these apps from my iPad. RSS FTW! Review available here: numericcitizen.me/2020/02/2…

    → 11:28 AM, Feb 25
  • Desjardins' modern offices in Montreal's olympic stadium tour

    Desjardins, a major financial institution here in Canada, deserving mostly Quebec province and well known for a major data breach they were victim of recently, occupies modern offices near my home. They rented and rearchitected the internal space available in the olympic stadium’s main tour. Impressive. See the link here to have a look. design-milk.com/montreals…

    → 6:39 AM, Feb 25
  • Sometimes I feel that I’m spending more time testing tools and switching my stuff between them than actually doing useful work with them. Currently testing MarsEdit and Notion. Always looking for better tools and services.

    → 8:54 PM, Feb 24
  • Reeder ➡️ News Explorer. numericcitizen.me/2020/02/2…

    → 8:24 AM, Feb 24
  • Finally finished my review of News Explorer, a great RSS feed reader with many goodies.

    → 7:11 AM, Feb 24
  • I don’t know if I’m alone with this behaviour… are you one of these guys who keep unused (or very rarely used) apps on your devices? Do you keep them “just in case you need them”? I’m trying to change this behaviour and I created a folder called “On the way out”. 😳🤔😂😂

    → 9:02 AM, Feb 22
  • Looking to add Google Analytics Widget to my iPad Home Screen - help

    Asking my dear network of friends: I’d like to be able to put a widget of Google analytics on my iPad home screen. Do you know of any iOS apps that can do this? I’ll pay for it if the design is up to my taste. Something along the line of this one (which is no longer being maintained). Thanks. 🙏🏻 apps.apple.com/ca/app/ga…

    → 7:35 AM, Feb 21
  • it all comes down to compromise

    When so many apps are available for a specific task, choosing one can be a nightmare. Recently, my focus was to select a new calendar app following the release of Fantastical update. I finally settled on the one that I use for a few years now: Calendar 5. The same is happening right now with RSS readers. But this time, I’’m switching from the excellent Reeder app to News Explorer. The latter is not perfect but from a functional point of view, it is an improvement. More on this soon.

    → 6:01 PM, Feb 14
  • You cannot have it all it seems in the RSS reader space. Reeder is a great design example but is lacking a few features. News Explorer has more features but is lacking some design nice touches. 🤷🏻‍♂️

    → 3:47 PM, Feb 14
  • On Testing News Explorer - Another RSS Reader

    Yesterday I learned about the existence of a different RSS reader named “News Explorer”. As a long time user of Reeder, I wasn’t really interested in trying a different one. But, after playing with the trial version on macOS: I’m mostly converted. Stay tuned for more details.

    → 11:17 AM, Feb 14
  • Another day, another 15cm of snow here downtown in Montreal, Canada. We have a very well known song here that says “My country is not a crounty, it is simply winter”. This is the kind of day. Photo processed with Apple’s Photos.app on iMac. #montreal #canada #winter #snow

    → 7:03 PM, Feb 10
  • I’m not a film critic but I really enjoyed One upon a time in Hollywood. Why? Because it remindedme about my childhood a lot from many perspectives: TV shows at that time, household product we use to have, cars, “electronics”, etc. Can’t wait for the Oscars night.

    → 10:31 AM, Feb 9
  • I think I need some help understanding these. #1: posting new content on my micro.blog can be cross posted to Twitter (Apple_Observer)? #2: new posts appearing from my main blog (WordPress feed) could be cross posted to ? I’m confused. Any hints? Thanks 🙏🏻

    → 5:57 PM, Feb 8
  • Major snow storm coming in the next 24 hours. More than 30 CM of snow. Winds. I like that!

    → 4:56 PM, Feb 6
  • Not knowing how many followers I’ve got on Micro.blog is killing me. May be I’m talking to an empty room.

    → 7:22 AM, Jan 29
  • Going to Dallas, TX for a training. That’s Trump country, right? 😑

    → 6:45 AM, Jan 13
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