Misc on Numeric Citizen Blog

Mon, 13 Apr 2026 07:45:16 -0400

I just updated my blog at meta.numericcitizen.me with my new design. The default view on the site is now dark mode, which includes a smooth visual animation.

Announcing a New Blog Design

Sun, 12 Apr 2026 12:18:04 -0400

Finally, after so many years on Micro.blog, I’m excited to announce that this blog is now using my custom-built visual theme, built entirely with Claude AI, Claude Code, and a lot of my spare time. Bye-bye third-party visual plugin¹! This marks a major milestone for me, as I have always wanted to have my own design for this blog².

I was using the excellent Cards Theme. ↩︎
I’m still working out some issues that I didn’t have on my test blog before, but only occur on my production site. ↩︎

Sat, 11 Apr 2026 10:38:19 -0400

This year is an iPhone upgrade year for me; coming from a still-powerful iPhone 15 Pro Max. First time since my current iPhone still feels snappy for 99% of my use. Yet, I’ll move ahead with the upgrade because one of my expectations I have is that the new Siri will be more demanding.

Mon, 06 Apr 2026 10:13:26 -0400

I’m taking a quick one-week vacation, hence my silence. 🤫

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 19:27:00 -0400

It’s been a long time since I watched a rocket launch live from NASA. It was a great one 🚀. I didn’t know that two of the main engines are coming from previous space shuttles!! 😳

Mon, 30 Mar 2026 20:05:38 -0400

Apple Maps Is Getting Ads. It’s Apple’s Riskiest Bet Yet — I might like Apple ads, after all. #not

Sun, 29 Mar 2026 09:31:03 -0400

I officially lost my Apple Pencil Pro. This 200 CAN$ doesn’t support Find My??? WTF. This is the second time I’m losing an Apple Pencil. The first time was the original one.

Sat, 21 Mar 2026 16:20:28 -0400

Started working on my next YouTube video. I consider myself not very good at this. It takes way too much of my time to create a single one, but I sometimes want to share things I otherwise couldn’t in written blog posts. One of the things I should do for each video is write a script. I don’t. I never did. I’m a “go with the flow” type of guy when I record. I don’t feel at ease when reading something in front of the camera (and I don’t have the right desk setup for that).

Fri, 20 Mar 2026 21:12:47 -0400

It’s rather impressive how slowly things are turning for the worse in the Middle East. It won’t end well. And it will last much longer than originally claimed. I hope this will be all the nails required for his coffin.

Fri, 27 Feb 2026 08:28:05 -0400

What is happening in Singapore? I get major spikes in visitors from this country from time to time. Both Plausible and Tinylytics are reporting the same behaviour. 🤔

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 20:53:34 -0400

I have such a hard time explaining to people around me (family, friends and colleagues) that platforms like Meta are no good and that we should avoid them. 😔

Fri, 20 Feb 2026 07:45:34 -0400

For each edition of my Ephemeral Scrapbook newsletter, I have to select a header image in landscape orientation. Each time I’m struggling with that. How about that one?

Fri, 13 Feb 2026 21:39:57 -0400

I would pay to have a widget that shows an up-to-date view of Claude’s credit usage.

Sat, 24 Jan 2026 15:22:38 -0400

It seems a big one is coming… the first biggy of 2026.

Mon, 19 Jan 2026 07:48:59 -0400

Out of curiosity, yesterday I asked ChatGPT what the latest firmware release was for my Nikon Z f camera: 3.0 (it was at 1.21)! I applied the 110 mb binary update right on time for my upcoming trip. Yes, I know, my camera needs a little cleanup, too.

Sun, 04 Jan 2026 19:06:03 -0400

Another update to my blog: the blog post categories are no longer listed on the main page header. Categories are shown on each blog post. I think that’s enough. Categories are available in the Archive page. This makes the home page less busy.

Sat, 03 Jan 2026 10:22:18 -0400

Putting up a new website on Micro.blog is way too… easy. 🫣🤫🫢

Fri, 02 Jan 2026 18:14:55 -0400

My Microblog Poster web front end now supports Markdown files, drag-and-drop, and preview mode, all in a simple (but less simple than initially built) web interface! 😅

Fri, 02 Jan 2026 12:12:37 -0400

My updated profile description for 2026:

“I’m a compulsive creator and contributor, a digital nomad, a light painter. Aspiring peace supremacist and democracy propagandist. Proud member of the Secret Internet Curators (SIC) brigade.”

Sun, 28 Dec 2025 09:24:37 -0400

I made my first Vercel app: a simple form for posting to Scribbles.page. Super lean, super clean. I do have coding experience, but not with Next.js. Claude AI helped me out. Here is the final form. Next up: same thing but for Micro.blog. This time, the title field, the categories will be shown by default! 😅

Fri, 19 Dec 2025 09:04:45 -0400

For the first time ever, I applied decals to a device. 🙈

Sun, 07 Dec 2025 14:06:13 -0400

Anyone from my dear followers reading my newsletter (the ephemeral scrapbook)? Thoughts? 🙏🏻

Sun, 07 Dec 2025 09:53:09 -0400

I forced my wife to update her iPhone 16 Pro to iOS 26.1. She will probably kill me today. It was nice to meet you guys. 🫢

Sun, 07 Dec 2025 08:30:34 -0400

I always feel like I’m losing the time-saving benefits if I spend time improving an automation (an Apple Shortcut, for example). 🤦🏻‍♂️

Sun, 30 Nov 2025 10:01:44 -0400

As much as I love Tinylytics, I wish there was some basic analytics on Micro.blog, just like Bear’s. I should update my Micro.blog wish list. If @manton don’t want to spend time working on this, maybe he could find a way to integrate a Tinylytics dashboard inside Micro.blog? 🙏🏻

Thu, 27 Nov 2025 12:58:38 -0400

Feeling a little bit frustrated this morning: discovered a rather significant scratch on my Apple Watch screen. 🤦🏻‍♂️😒 Now all my portable devices have a scratch on the screen: my iPhone 15 Pro Max and my M4 iPad Pro. It’s the time since I own Apple devices that this happens. Never had a single scratch before! Fuck. 😢😟😩😢

Paperlike 3 take 2

Tue, 25 Nov 2025 22:50:01 -0400

Bought the Paperlike 3 for my M4 iPad Pro except that it was for a 2018 iPad Pro. Ordered the wrong one. 🫤 Asked my wife if I could give it to her and install it on her iPad. Initially, she said no. 😔 She eventually abided to my offer. I ordered a new one for my iPad. Reason: there is a small scratch on the screen that I want to hide. 🤦🏻‍♂️

I had the first edition of the Paperlike for my previous 2018 iPad Pro and really liked it. The installation process was very different from today’s version. While the new process is more complicated, it allows for a more controlled installation that minimizes dust and bubbles. The surface texture of the film is also much finer. I’ll have to wait for another week before getting mine.

Sun, 23 Nov 2025 20:36:41 -0400

Earlier today, I recorded this update about Micro.blog. At one point, I wanted to show blog post summary in action. Everything was going according to the plan except that, after publishing the blog post, the summary didn’t go through. 😔 I had to cut that from the finished video. 🤷🏻‍♂️ I don’t know if this was a one-time event of if it’s something I did wrong… who knows.

Sat, 22 Nov 2025 22:54:45 -0400

Watched: Pluribus S1E2, Pirate Lady 📺 Still not finished it, but man, this is so weird.

Sat, 22 Nov 2025 14:52:24 -0400

Working on the next edition of “What’s Up With Micro.blog”. The last one was done a year ago. Not only are there so many new and updated things in Micro.blog, but my workflow for going back and analyzing the changelog is so much different and more efficient. I hope to get it done by the end of this weekend!

Sat, 22 Nov 2025 11:41:51 -0400

Watched episode #1 of Pluribus yesterday. I wasn’t expecting this at all. I don’t know what to think. Maybe episode #2 will help me settle on it.

Sat, 22 Nov 2025 10:02:17 -0400

I’ve been making those videos about Micro.blog and wish I could post them here too, not just on YouTube. Sadly, many of them are over 20 min long… which doesn’t fit the MB Studio limits… can we work something out, @manton?

Fri, 21 Nov 2025 13:21:10 -0400

What the US “leadership” is doing to Ukraine is beyond cruel. All this bloodshed for that? What if Mexico invaded the US and people were forced to speak Spanish after a three-year war? How about that?

Thu, 20 Nov 2025 13:56:00 -0400

Is this a new tactic by Amazon: clicking on reviews count to take a look at reviews to discover that not all reviews apply to the currently selected product? 😳😒

Wed, 19 Nov 2025 07:54:57 -0400

I’ve been creating YouTube videos for several years, mainly focused on Craft, but also covering Micro.blog and a few other topics. Some of my older Craft videos seem outdated since they reference much older versions that are not relevant anymore. Should I set these videos to private now? What are other YouTubers doing in this situation?

Tue, 18 Nov 2025 08:11:14 -0400

Another major Internet outage is ongoing, thanks to CloudFlare this time. I’m experiencing several unusual issues this morning (Inoreader, Micro.blog, Craft-hosted docs, etc.).

Wed, 12 Nov 2025 14:17:30 -0400

I’m so proud of us Canadians 🇨🇦 who avoided the US for vacations creating a four billion dollar deficit in tourism this year. I hope this will continue as long as the US is acting like an enemy. Power to the people who dare to defy stupidity and autocracy.

Wed, 12 Nov 2025 13:21:30 -0400

Experimenting with new video support of Micro.blog. Please, ignore. Now returning to normal programming.

Wed, 05 Nov 2025 07:45:49 -0400

According to the reactions I’m seeing on my Micro.blog timeline (which also includes some people on Bluesky and Mastodon) shows that everyone is a democrat. Cool because I don’t like nazis.

Sat, 01 Nov 2025 09:13:20 -0400

Just pushed an update to the Projects section on my personal landing page.

Fri, 31 Oct 2025 19:25:23 -0400

I just rewatched Thriller, like I do every year on Halloween. What a great music video! Everything is in there: music, storytelling, special effects, dance, great décor, and a good ending. Pure and genuine entertainment.

Mon, 13 Oct 2025 20:36:29 -0400

It took one question from someone who watched my latest video to realize that I might have rushed that one out a bit. I failed to explain and mention the reasons why I still need an app like Craft while I use Ulysses, another app for writing. 🤦🏻‍♂️

Sat, 11 Oct 2025 08:59:15 -0400

Watched: The Gorge. I don’t watch enough movies, but yesterday I was tempted by The Gorge on Apple TV+. The trailer hinted at a science fiction film with a vibe similar to Silo. Despite an atmosphere that sometimes reminds me of Severance in terms of the soundtrack, the shift toward a romance between the two antagonists was a bit too easy. The environment deep inside this gorge is sometimes surprising and well done, though. I never would have guessed the presence of these… creatures. I don’t want to reveal any more.

Thu, 09 Oct 2025 06:36:25 -0400

I’m surprised that the new Movies section here on Micro.blog didn’t end up in a revamped Discovery section. To me, it’s seems like a good fit.

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 15:42:00 -0400

What a beautiful day it is. I had an 11 KM hike today. We touched 30 °C, which is astonishing for October 5th. I mean, this is autumn, guys!

AI Unsuspected Collaterals

Mon, 29 Sep 2025 20:56:59 -0400

Accenture reportedly laid off over 11,000 employees, citing a lack of demand for workers without the necessary AI skills. Additionally, Accenture warns that further layoffs could occur if remaining employees cannot quickly acquire AI skills in a rapidly evolving world. I believe we should look beyond the headlines and question the real motives. What were the laid-off employees doing? What value did they bring to Accenture’s clients? Or is it simply because there is less demand for consulting services? Is it more appropriate to frame the layoffs as linked to “AI”? If you’re aware of some AI limitations in a complex business environment, where layoffs are supposedly driven by AI replacing workers, I would argue that they didn’t significantly impact the company initially. Alternatively, framing AI as a questionable strategy is a dubious approach. And it’s only the beginning.

Sat, 27 Sep 2025 17:08:13 -0400

If the US government actually shuts down, does this include the shutdown of the white house and everyone in it? Asking for a friend. 🍊

Mon, 22 Sep 2025 21:18:47 -0400

I received a notification in the Settings app about an AppleCare renewal for my iPhone 15 Pro Max. I’m uncertain whether I should proceed with the renewal or leave it to chance. It’s 15 CAN$ a month. Not cheap. I got a scratch on the screen.

Thu, 04 Sep 2025 07:34:00 -0400

I just submitted one of my comments about Google and Apple deals to Techmeme, and it got picked up. Am I famous now? I’ve been following Techmeme more closely in the last few weeks; it’s a strange but informative place to be.

Tue, 22 Jul 2025 17:43:38 -0400

So, according to Trump, we, Canadians, are nasty? Oh. Proud of it. And fuck him and his clowns.

Tue, 22 Jul 2025 06:29:28 -0400

I’ve been using the Digg beta for a few weeks, and I have mixed feelings about it. I appreciate its design and the way users curate links and content. However, I worry that it might become as toxic as Reddit once it opens to everyone. Just this morning, I participated in a thread where some users were posting angry comments—albeit mildly—toward someone who disagreed with the majority. The argument is simple: Reddit is a toxic place and people want an alternative. Digg came up trying to be different but some people think that under the surface, it will become as toxic as Reddit. Boom. I wonder if the Internet can ever be a place for debating.

Thu, 17 Jul 2025 07:24:15 -0400

It’s been a while but recent news and trends about AI-based bots trying to ruin the life of psychologically vulnerable people triggered an update to my /nope page.

Sun, 13 Jul 2025 16:05:16 -0400

What happened to @maique@social.lol ? I no longer see him on my MB timeline as “@maique” … 🙁👀

Thu, 03 Jul 2025 21:02:48 -0400

I’m not sure why and what Americans will celebrate tomorrow.

Thu, 19 Jun 2025 19:37:31 -0400

Today, I placed my order to have my face processed through Iconfactory’s pixelated portrait service. I’m eager to see what they come up with. Maybe I’ll update my avatar that I’ve been using for so many years?

Mon, 26 May 2025 08:02:34 -0400

Asking for a summarized review of reviews of a product like the NIKKOR Z 70-180mm f/2.8 with Perplexity pro prompt is super cool to get the gist of a product quality and capabilities (here are the results¹). We live in exciting times, even if challenging.

I’m not sure if you can open that link, though. ↩︎

Sun, 04 May 2025 11:45:51 -0400

You know your country is in deep turmoil and trouble when the president isn’t sure if it has to respect the constitution. Lawers are working on it, he says. Think about it. WTF is this clown?

Wed, 30 Apr 2025 08:27:10 -0400

We live in a hyper connected world. Gare Centrale, downtown Montréal.

Sat, 26 Apr 2025 11:20:37 -0400

I’m currently recording a YouTube video for Micro.blog users to demonstrate how you can interact with the social web from Micro.blog. Expect the video to be published soon. Feel free to say “hi”, you’re on camera!

Thu, 03 Apr 2025 11:13:44 -0400

Each time I select a few emails in Outlook at the office and then move them into a folder I think of Severance’s employees working on their computer to gather numbers and drop them in a bucket. Every. Single. Time. And now you’ll probably do, too. You’re welcome.

Tue, 25 Mar 2025 16:50:19 -0400

From my point of view, with recent security breach from the government members, more signs point to being much closer to a dictatorship than we are willing to admit. Many cabinet members are using Signal on purpose because they don’t want scrutiny, they don’t think they owe anything to the American people.

Sat, 15 Feb 2025 16:36:56 -0400

I updated the blog theme plugin to add support for Micro.blog summaries. In order to work, I had to disable showing the full post on the main page, which triggers the display of the summary with a “Continue reading” link. Is it a better reading experience for my readers? You tell me, please. I’m not sure.

Fri, 14 Feb 2025 12:20:29 -0400

As reported by Engadget and many others:

According to researchers, anyone who knows where to look can spray digital graffiti on the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) website. Two web development experts said the site doesn’t seem to be hosted on government servers and that the database it pulls from can be modified by those who locate it. At the time of writing, a message reading “these ‘experts’ left their database open - roro” is still visible on the DOGE site.

Thanks, I feel much more confident now.

Fri, 14 Feb 2025 08:57:36 -0400

Another big snowstorm is coming right at us this Sunday. It should be a bit smaller is intensity compared to yesterday’s storm. So far, snow accumulation estimated range is 20-30 cm. ❄️

It's Time to Vote With My Money

Tue, 11 Feb 2025 07:40:20 -0400

DHH at 37 Signals praising Musk for his business (and now) government spending management is yet another red flag and a no-go for me. I won’t link to this post. I’m going to vote with my money and cancel my HEY Mail subscription this fall when my subscription is expiring. If Musk buys ChatGPT, I’ll again vote with my money and cancel my ChatGPT subscription in due time. As Trump is imposing 25% tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum, I’ll vote with my money and cancel my yearly business trip to the US this fall. Some of these changes are a pain to implement but resisting is never an easy thing.

Mon, 10 Feb 2025 20:03:59 -0400

A rather big one is coming at us this Thursday, the first big snow storm of the season. Mostly heavy snow, rather weak winds. North shore of Montreal to get the most snow. Working from home that day for sure.

Mon, 03 Feb 2025 20:01:56 -0400

Now the orange clown put tariffs on hold for 30 days… what an erratic guy… I know he is doing that on purpose because this is the only way he runs his businesses…

Sun, 02 Feb 2025 11:11:58 -0400

For once, I’m really proud of him, of us. This is Canada’s Prime Minister of Canada, Mr. Justin Trudeau, announcing retaliatory actions against the White House absurd and unjustified tariffs. The first four minutes entirely reflect who we are. So well said and quite moving, actually. 🇨🇦 💪🏻

Sun, 02 Feb 2025 08:58:10 -0400

As a Canadian who will face unjust tariffs thanks to the small clique of rich and famous people in the White House, I will reconsider each of my subscriptions that originate from the United States, including Apple One. It starts now.

Fri, 31 Jan 2025 11:57:30 -0400

I understand that people, particularly my colleagues, are using ChatGPT much more than they are willing to admit, as evidenced by my conversations with a few of them this morning.

Sun, 26 Jan 2025 19:05:05 -0400

I love the Severance Apple TV+ series and I thought I understood most of it, but this episode of ScreenCrush tells me that I didn’t at all. I’m probably too old for this, but I love the vibe of Severance. I’ll probably have to rewatch season one. Oh well…

Fri, 24 Jan 2025 14:52:41 -0400

I understand those out there who didn’t vote for Trump decided not to pay attention to what is coming in the next four years, because it will be a pain to watch, but I think this is a mistake, a real big one. People not only should care, but they should continue voicing their outrage and concerns to send a clear message of “resistance”. All people’s voices are important. All the time.

Fri, 24 Jan 2025 07:40:07 -0400

Micro.blog replies disabled, for now. It’s becoming too heavy.

Mon, 20 Jan 2025 13:30:11 -0400

OMFG! Not going to the US until after this clown is out! Fuck him!

Sun, 19 Jan 2025 15:49:51 -0400

So, Trump restored TikTok? What an achievement, and he is still not in the Office. I can’t wait for the next four years. #not

Sun, 19 Jan 2025 14:23:36 -0400

The first thing to do when visiting a new coffee shop after ordering and sitting at your place? Connecting to Wi-Fi and testing its speed. Only after you can taste the coffee. That is my way of living. ☕👨🏻‍💻

Fri, 17 Jan 2025 08:34:36 -0400

I couldn’t resist.

Tue, 14 Jan 2025 15:20:21 -0400

Started something new with Micro.one… but in French this time… seems the Micro.blog branding is never too far… which is confusing. One question for @manton: can you check why uploading an image doesn’t work (clicking the button starts the upload, but it never completes), and the “Post” button for posting something doesn’t work either.

Fri, 10 Jan 2025 10:37:56 -0400

I NEVER take and share pictures of cats… but this one living in the building where I’m currently staying for a few months 🤩… worth enough to push to Pixelfed, too!

Wed, 01 Jan 2025 14:10:48 -0400

For Craft users: it’s still the right time to buy this 2025 Calendar template!

Wed, 01 Jan 2025 09:05:30 -0400

Hello 2025! 🎉 Happy new year folks! So this is it, that was my very first post of 2025.

Sun, 22 Dec 2024 19:02:16 -0400

COVID is still a thing: my sister and brother-in-law (69 & 71) got it. They got vaccinated five days before. Too little, too late, I guess. Goodbye, Christmas and family reunion. 😔

Sat, 21 Dec 2024 11:45:56 -0400

I wish there was a quick way to delete all the posts from the test blog on Micro.blog. @manton

Sun, 15 Dec 2024 15:43:59 -0400

I’m still exploring ways to monetize my experience with Craft. After creating The Craft Bible, now it’s Craft Support Call. I don’t expect much from this, but I’m curious to see how it goes if I ever get one request.

Wed, 11 Dec 2024 23:11:19 -0400

I’m surprised that, so far, nobody tried to shoot down one of these drones flying over New Jersey! I mean, come on, USA!

Mon, 09 Dec 2024 08:25:26 -0400

Those drone sightings stories in New Jersey are… troubling? How come authorities can’t figure out what they are? They are big drones yet too small objects for serious analysis? Where are they coming from? Who is operating them? What are the purposes of those low altitude sighting? 🤔

Sat, 07 Dec 2024 09:39:33 -0400

Updating plugins on Micro.blog is as satisfying as updating apps on the Mac. I wish there were more updates.

Fri, 06 Dec 2024 08:43:13 -0400

Special announcement: for Craft Docs users wishing for a 2025 calendar template, here you go.

Thu, 05 Dec 2024 09:51:56 -0400

Caseless day™ 🙃🫣

Tue, 26 Nov 2024 13:55:10 -0400

Up until now, I was able to keep Micro.blog at the center of my blogging activities and my social networks presence but with Bluesky taking off, I can’t keep up with new follows… I follow people on Bluesky from Bluesky, not always from Micro.blog. Low friction probably explains this behaviour.

Sun, 17 Nov 2024 12:06:08 -0400

If I’m less active here it might be because I’m more active on Bluesky. 😬 @numericciten.me

Tue, 05 Nov 2024 19:40:52 -0400

I’m nearly done with an article about the Pixelmator buy-out by Apple, but I will wait a bit before publishing it…. everyone being focused elsewhere.

Sun, 13 Oct 2024 21:39:32 -0400

Walked 20KM, 28000 steps. Feeling exhausted. 😓 But I still love NY, 9 years since my previous trip in June, 2015.

Fri, 11 Oct 2024 06:40:15 -0400

I can’t stand watching and listening to Musk for more than five minutes. He is such a bad speaker, really. I think he should let someone else talk for him, like one of his robots, it might be much better and bearable.

Sun, 06 Oct 2024 11:32:54 -0400

When I created my Ko-fi page, I said that I would be sharing more personal stories about me on it. Today, I just did. Plus, my supporters are getting a free perk. Want to become a supporter too? Thanks.

Wed, 02 Oct 2024 21:16:01 -0400

I found a font that I like a lot: Dosis. This will be the official font for my future consulting company. I find it to be a mix of modernism and retro style. Easy to read. Singular.

Thu, 26 Sep 2024 19:38:13 -0400

Back home. Feeling good. Returning to normal programming soon. 🤗

Tue, 24 Sep 2024 14:53:42 -0400

What is the fuss with Automattic lately? Missed something apparently. 🤨

Tue, 17 Sep 2024 07:25:41 -0400

Currently curating my Bluesky home feed to my liking. If someone on Bluesky didn’t post since last year, when Bluesky was red-hot, I unfollow. I’m using Bluesky lists to curate my best accounts and build a custom timeline with them. I did something similar back in the day for Twitter as documented here.

Thu, 12 Sep 2024 16:32:30 -0400

I knew it: Trump lacks courage. He wants us to believe he can talk and fix anything in 24 hours but refuses a simple second debate. What a fake guy.

Wed, 11 Sep 2024 06:39:51 -0400

Hey, ABC News, you should be embarrassed by how you allowed that man to yell about anything he wanted. One person said he got 9 extra minutes by butting in, and they wouldn’t cut his mic.

Brian Christiansen https://briandigital.com/2024/09/10/hey-abc-news.html

Nine minutes seems a lot, but yeah, I’m not that impressed by the moderators.

Tue, 10 Sep 2024 22:38:52 -0400

Fuckin unfair management of the debate, especially in the last halftime. Big fail in my book. 🤬

Tue, 10 Sep 2024 22:07:52 -0400

I’m a little upset at the moderators. They don’t do their job fully or am I missing something? Why can’t they say directly “you don’t answer the question, please proceed or else“?

Tue, 10 Sep 2024 18:56:05 -0400

I’m going to watch the whole debate tonight. Even as a Canadian, I think it’s important to get direct reading values instead of going through social / news networks to help me forge my opinion. If I were an American, I would vote for Harris, without a doubt, but I want to see more of her tonight, to get a better idea of what she really stands for. Hoping for civility and clarity.

Sun, 08 Sep 2024 07:23:20 -0400

I returned to Medium with enthusiasm but was disappointed by the clickbaity titles that we can find. For example, I read an article titled “iPhone 16 Pro Max Unveils New Features That Left Me Stunned!” only to discover that the author was excited about a potential new photo mode with the telephoto lens (macrophotography) without citing sources for the rumors. The author speculated on the revolutionary nature of the device without testing it. It raises questions about the possible involvement of generative AI in crafting this story. Oh, and the other article: “Why I Stopped Upgrading to the New iPhone Every Year (And You Should Too)”… I can’t wait to let someone tell me what to do. 👀🤷🏻

Compare this to my latest post about the M4 Mac mini: “The M4 Mac mini Will Be My Best Mac Ever”. I speak for myself only in the title.

Thu, 08 Aug 2024 08:46:47 -0400

Thought of the day: Watch out democrats, Trump and Vance aren’t just weirdos. They are disfigured fascists.

Mon, 05 Aug 2024 22:01:12 -0400

At the very least, I could reserve my username on Instagram and Threads, just in case. While maintaining strong principles is important, being open-minded and reasonable can also be valuable. May the night be beneficial. 😒

Fri, 02 Aug 2024 08:35:16 -0400

When one of my colleagues presents me with a text produced by ChatGPT (or any other comparable tools), I am sometimes astonished by what I read, but what interests me much more is the initial prompt that allowed the content to be produced. It helps put the results into context.

Wed, 31 Jul 2024 14:01:40 -0400

I’d like to try non-Apple mechanical keyboards because they look cool and they got stylish design but the problem with those third-party keyboards like Lofree is the lack of non-English language support.

Sun, 28 Jul 2024 07:26:34 -0400

Who is the Micro.blog community manager, again? Thanks.

Fri, 26 Jul 2024 18:27:30 -0400

I’m so proud of Celine Dion’s performance. WOW. ❤️ #openingceremony

Thu, 18 Jul 2024 16:51:25 -0400

You can’t make that shit up, right? WTF is wrong with them? 🫣🤮 sorry about this negative post right after a positive one. 🙃

Thu, 18 Jul 2024 16:46:12 -0400

Today’s positive post: it’s caseless day! I love to feel my iPhone this way in my hands! 🤗

Tue, 16 Jul 2024 12:10:03 -0400

Best new feature of iOS 18 / iPadOS 18? We can hide app names on the home screen! This post is part of a series where I try to share things that I like, things that are positive… you are welcomed. 🤓

Sat, 13 Jul 2024 19:44:21 -0400

So American. 👀

Wed, 10 Jul 2024 12:24:37 -0400

It’s been a few days since my last travel update, but a more pressing matter has been monopolizing my spare time: writing a heartfelt message for my son, who is turning 20 this September. This task holds greater significance because my message, along with others, will be compiled into a printed book as a special gift for him.

Sat, 06 Jul 2024 15:55:50 -0400

We met a couple in their thirties, from Dallas Texas, this evening at the cruise opening diner. Eventually, near the end of the diner, politics came up in the discussions. Nowadays, it’s a tricky subject and we don’t force it outselves. We quickly discovered that they were anti-Trump and very caution about the Democrats too. It’s refreshing to meet people coming from those areas of the US that shares some of our views about the US, politics and general values. I’m French Canadian, mind you.

Wed, 03 Jul 2024 09:51:14 -0400

Biden is losing much more by staying than by leaving. His career legacy will be: he lost because he didn’t want to let it go. For whom? For what? A real leader would just step back.

Fri, 28 Jun 2024 02:50:49 -0400

If democrats are really eager to govern the next five years, they will replace Biden. If Biden is a leader, he will step down. A lot of big ifs.

Sun, 23 Jun 2024 10:01:07 -0400

I finally completed the Digital Legacy Management Guide (available here on Gumroad). It comes as a Craft document that can be duplicated as a template, as well as PDF and Markdown files downloads. The goal here is to help people plan for their digital legacy handling.

Sun, 23 Jun 2024 09:22:23 -0400

Should my /nope page go to my blog here or to this hub site? Help me decide.

Sun, 23 Jun 2024 08:33:37 -0400

What’s wrong with this? 🤔🙄

Wed, 05 Jun 2024 13:10:47 -0400

The narrated blog posts are now working correctly on my blog. You can listen to the first post and second one. Disclaimer: I’m using Adobe Podcast Enhance Speech for the post recording audio improvements.

Tue, 04 Jun 2024 07:37:57 -0400

I just created a quick poll on my Ko-fi page! I want to know, “how did you discover me?” Please, fill it in, the post is public! Thanks.

Thu, 30 May 2024 17:22:45 -0400

Lock him up NOW. Lock him up NOW. Lock him up NOW. Lock him up NOW. 🤡 #trump

Wed, 22 May 2024 15:30:03 -0400

I’m happy to see some countries recognize Palestine as a state. Bravo to Spain, Norway and Ireland. Who’s next, Canada? Israel is furious. Who knew.

Tue, 14 May 2024 07:02:10 -0400

I’m curious to know if any of you are using Finder’s Tags. Why do you use them? Do you find them reliable? Thanks!

Tue, 07 May 2024 06:06:32 -0400

I rarely do and share selfies! But here’s one. Walking on the “Promenade des anglais” in Nice, France.

Sun, 28 Apr 2024 19:33:04 -0400

It’s funny how my subscribers count can vary after I share a new video on my YouTube channel. In recent days, I got many new subscribers, thanks to a video about building a dashboard with Craft. Then, I share this video about Micro.blog, and many people suddenly quit and unsubscribe¹. 🤷🏻‍♂️

We can’t please everyone, I guess. ↩︎

Fri, 26 Apr 2024 18:54:33 -0400

Tempted to start watching “The Last of Us”. But I need to subscribe to Crave apparently. Is it really good? I’m a mild science fiction type of huy. 🤔

Sat, 13 Apr 2024 08:08:18 -0400

Can you imagine having spent $12,000 up-front for Tesla’s “full self driving” only to see it descoped to “supervised driving” and then price slashed to $99/mo? Congrats on being given the privilege of training Elon’s model for a huge fee!

Jonathan LaCour https://cleverdevil.io/2024/can-you-imagine-having-spent-12000-up-front

Can you spell “class action lawsuit”?

Wed, 03 Apr 2024 10:23:17 -0400

Hello to my Bluesky followers! Reply and say hello Numeric Citizen! (Posted from Micro.blog)

Mon, 01 Apr 2024 12:34:00 -0400

Happy April Fools day guys!!! 😀😂 I’m not going anywhere!!! You are stuck with me! Returning to normal programming! 🤗😂

Mon, 01 Apr 2024 10:17:58 -0400

After much thinking I decided to do some cleaning in my life. And this begins with the closure of my website here. Too much noise. Too much to maintain. Life should be about life, not digital life.

Mon, 18 Mar 2024 20:08:47 -0400

I should visit Techmeme website much more often than I do. I usually end up on this site by coming from a linkpost¹. I should be more intentional and go directly on the site myself. I like this newspaper style.

It’s probably the case for the vast majority of visitors. ↩︎

Sat, 09 Mar 2024 17:01:36 -0400

Still not clear if it will only rain or if we will get heavy and abundant snow. Weather forecast is predicting only rain. I’m ok with this. This winter has been so warm so far, that’s incredible. We will probably be in a drought this summer because of the lack of snow this winter. And you know what it means? Forest fires.

Wed, 28 Feb 2024 19:26:39 -0400

Wow, there is a thunderstorm ⛈️ right now in Montreal! Just like what would get during summer! +11C, winds. Thanks to this cold front moving in. Thanks to climate change. Tomorrow -13C. 😳🫣⛈️

Tue, 27 Feb 2024 21:52:28 -0400

Today is the kind of day where I feel that I’m in a constantly moving mode: from Craft to Micro.blog or Bear 2. Closing this subscription, starting a new one. And all this for what? Content preservation? Data silos fighting? It’s exhausting.

Sat, 17 Feb 2024 16:18:03 -0400

I wrote a little article¹ explaining how I’m using Ghost’s API to “browse” published articles so that I can select an article that I want to update.

On Numeric Citizen I/O blog (link). ↩︎

Wed, 14 Feb 2024 21:45:46 -0400

Day and night, my blog will be in dark mode. I think it better fit my avatar style.

Wed, 14 Feb 2024 09:27:19 -0400

I officially enabled Shoutouts on this blog! It is quite easy and fun to setup¹. Happy to show support for @vincent.

Easy to spot at the end of each individual post. ↩︎

Thu, 08 Feb 2024 08:13:29 -0400

Funny how help.micro.blog looks like a community in itself. I think it’s cool.

Mon, 29 Jan 2024 22:44:05 -0400

This weekend, I released the first video of the “What’s Up With Microblog” series, and today @manton is already at it with a new addition to Micro.blog: manual cross-posting. Time to prepare for the next video. But the best part: the next video will, I hope, cover the next “big” addition to Micro.blog. I have no clue what it could be, but I have a feeling that it will be exciting.

Sun, 28 Jan 2024 22:34:32 -0400

The blog theme switch has been completed. Still, a few issues to fix, but 95% of the job is done. Tell me what you think.

Sun, 28 Jan 2024 20:51:25 -0400

The work to switch my blog’s visual theme is going really well. It’s a bit easier than I thought to set the desired colour theme, thanks to the plugin’s settings and user-friendliness. I may try the switch tonight, so buckle up during the transition. Reminder: I’ll switch from TinyTheme to Cards Theme. Why? Here’s why: 1) the overall design gives some bit of depth to the content. 2) Post categories are exposed and provide an easy way to browse the blog content. 3) The theme plugin settings give some flexibility. 4) Long posts with a title look better. 🛠️

Sun, 28 Jan 2024 14:34:22 -0400

🚨Hey, it’s Sunday! And you know what happens on each Sunday? The new edition of the weekly creative summary newsletter has been released! Here you go, ladies and gentlemen! Enjoy. Made with care and love. 😌

Sun, 28 Jan 2024 08:24:05 -0400

I decided to update the look of this blog by switching to the Cards theme by @ericgregorich. I think this theme looks cleaner and offers more possibilities than the current one by @Mtt. Here are a few highlights: better control of colours via the plugin settings web interface instead of editing CSS, support for reading time for longer posts with a title, display of post categories at the top, and more flexibility for displaying the post’s date & time, just to name a few. But I’m not ready to make the switch just yet because it requires a lot of fine-tuning to get the colours right. I also need to check for compatibility with all my current plugins and ask for a few fixes on the theme’s GitHub page. It’s another tweaking project on my plate. 😅

Sat, 27 Jan 2024 18:49:37 -0400

Decided to send some appreciation to @ericgregorich for his Card theme for Micro.blog.

Sat, 27 Jan 2024 14:35:40 -0400

🚨So, what’s up with Micro.blog this January? Well, quite a lot, if you ask me. Here’s everything new in this short video. Tell me if this is useful. 🙏🏻 cc @manton @jean

Fri, 26 Jan 2024 18:14:47 -0400

Should I write Micro.blog or Microblog in everything I write about this platform. That is the question. I’m always pondering which form to use. Help me @manton 😩

Fri, 26 Jan 2024 17:19:22 -0400

Following my request to close my Adobe Stock account, I finally got my money for selling some of my pictures through Adobe Stock. I made a big 20 US$ directly dropped to my PayPal account. 🙂

Fri, 26 Jan 2024 17:00:21 -0400

Thanks to the recently introduced “one-page” site feature with Micro.blog coupled with a redirect for the root of the site ("/")¹, now someone hitting “photos.numericcitizen.me” will end up on my Pixelfed profile page! I find this clever! 😌 More details in this week-end video! 🙂

Also a feature of Micro.blog, just in case you asked. ↩︎

A Step-by-Step Guide to Creating a One-Page Site on Micro.blog

Fri, 26 Jan 2024 08:33:45 -0400

Choose your subdomain name¹. 2) Create a CNAME pointing to it². 3) Switch to your full custom domain. 4) Write content³. 5) Install a few plugins⁴. 6) Create pages in the navigation structure to organize content⁵. 7) Create page footer⁶. Voilà. 🔥

abc.micro.blog (must be unique to Micro.blog). ↩︎
Done on your Domain name provider, not on Micro.blog. Must point to abc.micro.blog. ↩︎
Markdown supported. Insert images using Uploads and “Copy HTML” option, then paste into page. ↩︎
Visual theme plugin (optional, if you don’t like the default theme), Analytics (Plausible, Tinylytics, etc.). ↩︎
Optional but is a great addition. ↩︎
Optional. Use footer editor to insert your content. ↩︎

Thu, 25 Jan 2024 21:24:05 -0400

Introducing the Numeric Citizen Hub, a brand new landing page¹. Thanks to the recently introduced “One-page website” feature on Micro.blog, you can now learn about the places I share my creativity right from a single place². Enjoy.

It will replace my Linktr.ee page once my subscription ends, in December of 2024. 🙂 ↩︎
I know that some of you might think: well, another website from Numeric Citizen! 😃 ↩︎

Thu, 25 Jan 2024 08:10:48 -0400

This is how my current avatar came to be. 👀

Mon, 22 Jan 2024 19:04:52 -0400

5x traffic spike on Gumroad for The Craft Bible. Saturday, I bought a dedicated domain name for this subscription on Gumroad. Coincidence? 🤔 I’ll have to see the coming days to make a final judgment.

Sun, 21 Jan 2024 12:47:39 -0400

I’m thinking of leaving Write.as. Last year, I purchased a 5-year subscription during a promotion, intending to use it extensively. However, I haven’t used it as much as I anticipated. My main focus was writing about the Ukraine war. I could migrate this to Micro.blog. Yet, I’m concerned that my views on the conflict might offend some people here, as not everyone is interested in politics. 🤔🧐

Sat, 20 Jan 2024 22:28:37 -0400

Hello Madonna! I don’t go often to see shows like this one. Can’t wait! #montreal

Fri, 19 Jan 2024 20:46:27 -0400

Installed the brand new Micro.blog plugin to enable the /newsletters page on my website. This enables an index page of past newsletters that were sent to my subscribers! Thanks to @manton!

Wed, 17 Jan 2024 21:20:00 -0400

My Micro.blog timeline being a bit too busy to my liking, I decided to disable replies from people I don’t follow. It’s much better now. I might turn it back on eventually. This option shouldn’t be in the account section but should be more easily accessible. Would like to get a static toolbar at the bottom.

Tue, 16 Jan 2024 08:08:01 -0400

I’m a bit sad 😔 that this post, “Dear Micro.blog - How Can I Help” didn’t get the expected traction. I don’t know why. Maybe it fell between the cracks of a busy Micro.blog timeline. But this morning, I’m trying something different by explicitly tagging my virtual friends cc @jean @manton

Mon, 15 Jan 2024 22:49:56 -0400

Made a tweak to this blog: using the Footer field of the Design section (on a Micro.blog feature), I added a footer to each individual post that adds links to my other websites and my Mastodon handle. It’s a mixture of HTML and CSS. I took advantage of MacGPT to learn what was needed. I know a bit about HTML but not enough about CSS. My “assistant” helped me, again.

Fri, 12 Jan 2024 08:32:27 -0400

Another big snowstorm is coming over to the Montreal area. This one could produce more snow than the previous one, which gave us more rain than snow. Expect 15 - 20 cm of snow and some gusty winds. the worst will be Saturday morning, right when I’ll record my next YouTube video. For as far as I can recall, I always loved snowstorms. Image source.

Thu, 11 Jan 2024 22:52:49 -0400

Currently studying the PARA method for a future video. The funny thing is that without knowing it, I organize my data inside Craft, using similar principles.

Tue, 09 Jan 2024 13:39:22 -0400

A big one is coming toward us. In Montreal, it will be a mixture of snow and rain, limiting the total accumulation thanks to a strong influx of hot air from the southeast. Up north of St-Lawrence River, this could be totally different with more than 40 CM of snow! And winds! Can’t wait for our first “northeaster” of the season! Stay tuned for more comments about this meteorological event!

Tue, 09 Jan 2024 09:29:54 -0400

Appreciation of the day: putting freshly recharged AirPods Pro in the ear, while they are still warm, is in itself worth the price!

Mon, 01 Jan 2024 15:38:30 -0400

1000 subscribers goal achieved! Six month later than I would have hoped. Better late than never!

Mon, 01 Jan 2024 13:58:09 -0400

I still struggle with the idea of writing posts directly on Mastodon or Bluesky. Replying to others who write to me directly there is ok, though, if I can’t reply from Micro.blog.

Mon, 25 Dec 2023 10:49:47 -0400

Merry Christmas to all my followers! 🎅🏻 In other news, I fell into a rabbit hole when I started looking at my Adobe Creative Cloud migration¹. The process is far easier than I thought but it takes a little while to move files around. I could complete it before my next scheduled payment on January 8th. That is one of my 2024 goals!

I’ll be moving out of it so that I can focus on the Photomator / Pixelmator duo instead. ↩︎

Sun, 24 Dec 2023 12:42:45 -0400

Playing Christmas music everywhere in the house using HomePods and AirPlay is quite cool. You cannot escape Christmas! 🎅🏻🎶🦌

Fri, 22 Dec 2023 20:04:10 -0400

Going to my sister’s house tomorrow for holidays celebration. She got a new MacBook that she wants me to configure 🤓

Fri, 22 Dec 2023 16:23:09 -0400

In Montreal city, two days before Christmas, there is no snow. No precipitation is expected either until maybe Dec 27th at the earliest. This is so different from what I experienced as a kid.

Fri, 22 Dec 2023 08:32:05 -0400

Some possible Micro.blog marketing taglines. Add you own.

Micro.blog means Macro Power.

Micro.blog means Macro Flexibility.

Micro.blog means Macro Openness.

Micro.blog means Macro Privacy.

Micro.blog means Macro Connectivity.

Micro.blog means Macro your take here

Micro.blog means nothing but Macro.

cc @manton

Thu, 21 Dec 2023 22:57:40 -0400

I wonder if this QR code could be my next avatar.🤔

Sun, 17 Dec 2023 11:04:31 -0400

Time for a shameless promotion. To #Craft users out there looking for a great calendar year template for 2024, head to Gumroad (link). Only 5$. Starting in January, the price will go up. End of the shameless ad.

Sat, 16 Dec 2023 15:11:03 -0400

Just finished creating my 25-minute mix! I’m slowly getting there! I’m super excited for this. For those who might ask, I’m using Djay with a Pioneer DDJ-400. #techno #technomelodic 🎧🎶🕺🏻

Sat, 16 Dec 2023 12:38:59 -0400

Coffee shop time! 😃 For some reason, I always test their Wifi service each place I visit. Always¹. 🤷🏻‍♂️

The same goes for hotels while I travel. ↩︎

Thu, 14 Dec 2023 08:06:08 -0400

After the My Defaults trend, here comes the My Subscriptions trend.

Mon, 27 Nov 2023 11:04:49 -0400

While on my desk, I want to use my iPad Pro over Ethernet @ 1 GbE (much faster than wifi) while keeping it charging. Also, it seems that it’s not possible to prioritize Ethernet over Wireless (like we can on the Mac)¹. Am I missing something? Am I the only one on earth who prefers Ethernet? Any suggestion?

It seems that Wifi needs to be disabled. ↩︎

Fri, 24 Nov 2023 12:20:34 -0400

A new goal: about security: migrating my two-factor authentication from Authy to Apple’s Keychain / iCloud Passwords. Signing into any service when using Apple’s solution is too cool and efficient to pass.

Fri, 17 Nov 2023 13:40:44 -0400

Getting vaccinated today for flu and Covid. Hopefully not too many symptoms in the nextt 24 hours. 😑

Wed, 15 Nov 2023 12:20:42 -0400

So, how is** iOS 17.2 beta3** going? Stable? I’m asking for a friend.🤭

Thu, 09 Nov 2023 22:17:06 -0400

My theory about what happened at Humane…
Founders pitch investors on a hand laser thing when it’s a napkin sketch. They raise too much money, hire too many people.
They build a prototype, but too late. Turns out the laser UI sucks and eats too much battery.
“Hmm. Investors are shopping for AI companies now… voice uses less power… pivot to AI!”
Suddenly tech has a downturn. Can’t raise another round of funding. They launch an alpha.
They know it’s doomed. It’s an advertisement for acquirers.
Ben Sandofsky https://mastodon.social/@sandofsky/111383368562341707

Sounds like a plan.

Mon, 06 Nov 2023 08:07:43 -0400

👉🏻 One quick question for my followers or readers: for those using AI (often or not), did you think of any usage rules that could form your ethical view on AI in your work or personal life? Would you mind sharing those rules with me? I’ll start with one of mine: Use AI on non-controversial subjects.

Thu, 02 Nov 2023 07:09:56 -0400

Following the release of Ghost’s new “Recommendations” feature this week, I set up my recommendations list. Some here might recognize themselves! 👀

Sat, 28 Oct 2023 08:31:32 -0400

I spent some time on Bluesky this morning… found out that I have 6 invite codes. Is anyone looking for one of them? Let me know.

Sat, 21 Oct 2023 18:33:26 -0400

I’m tempted to only bring my 2018 iPad Pro for this business trip to Las Vegas¹. I’ll need it to take notes during sessions and do meetings with Teams. That should be enough. I try to travel light².

And AirPods Pro 2! ↩︎
I will bring the Magic Keyboard for sure. ↩︎

Sat, 21 Oct 2023 08:45:24 -0400

Why am I getting this on YouTube to watch one of my own videos? I’m using Safari and tried disabling ad blocker, NextDNS, StopTheMadness. Works fine on Firefox. 🤔 Help!

Thu, 19 Oct 2023 18:50:57 -0400

My 2018 iPad Pro is starting to show its age. iPadOS 17 might be the last enjoyable version on this device. Stage Manager is disabled. No external monitors support. Great external monitor with my Mac mini, though. 🤔

Wed, 11 Oct 2023 18:48:47 -0400

I just received my Nomad leather case for my iPhone 15 Pro Max. Best case I ever used on an iPhone. Better than Apple’s leather case. It complements the Peak Design one for use with my bike. Another great case, btw. Not cheap but well worth it. 👌🏻

Wed, 04 Oct 2023 20:16:27 -0400

👉🏻 I’m ready to share my first digital product: a Craft template to support the process of research and writing on a specific subject. See the introduction post on Gumroad. Special introductory price: 5$ or about the price of a latte at Starbucks. Think about it! 🤣

Sun, 01 Oct 2023 10:00:06 -0400

Wish of the day: I would love to have a canonical URL pointing to my published newsletters hosted on Micro.blog so I could refer to them in other blog posts. cc @manton 🙏🏻

Wed, 27 Sep 2023 06:51:56 -0400

💡Thought of the day: I don’t have a thing like a second brain 🧠 using a dedicated app. It’s a popular concept nowadays to build a second brain utilizing an app like Craft, Obsidian or anything else. I don’t believe in the idea of having a second brain. But let’s suppose I believed in this concept; I would argue that my second brain is inside my MacBook Air, spread in different apps, fulfilling a specific task in supporting this idea of the second brain. ☝🏻

My Interview with Manton Reece of Micro.blog

Sun, 24 Sep 2023 07:00:05 -0400

I had the chance to spend some time with Manton Reece and ask him a few questions about Montreal’s poutine, Apple’s power and the App Store, Twitter¹ and the future of Micro.blog. I hope you enjoy the interview as much as I did doing it.😊

I refuse to name this otherwise. ↩︎

Thu, 21 Sep 2023 20:40:00 -0400

A better title for episode 4 could have been “The Day I Met John Gruber”. Oh well. I’ll ask ChatGPT the next time.

Thu, 21 Sep 2023 20:24:43 -0400

It took way too long to record, process and publish my latest podcast episode. I must tweak my workflow ASAP. It was supposed to be a “quick and easy thing”, but it isn’t. It is unsustainable. 😑 Why is everything so hard for me.. grrr. 😒

Wed, 20 Sep 2023 07:51:05 -0400

How I Automatically Include a Blog Description in My RSS Feed

I’ve been asked a couple of times how I get this short site description to be included in every entry of my RSS feed.

I’m one of those curious who asked the question. Wondering if this could be addressed via a new plugin by @Mtt or by @manton Micro.blog base service.

Sun, 17 Sep 2023 19:17:52 -0400

Who’s reading my weekly creative summary? Do you like? If not, why? I’m genuinely curious. 🧐

Sat, 16 Sep 2023 08:30:36 -0400

This is how much forests burned so far this summer in Canada. ☹️ There are still close to a thousand fires still in action. This is freaking bad for so many reasons. First, we need forests to remove CO2. In a sense, removing trees diminishes the capacity of nature to limit climate change. We lose this capability. Second, all that burning created a lot of CO2. Third, it will take half a century to regain those lost forests.😔 It’s really hard to feel positive about our future.

Thu, 14 Sep 2023 06:50:37 -0400

Experimenting with reading my Micro.blog timeline in RSS mode with Reeder. It’s surprisingly very effective for catching up on the last 12 hours of posts. It is, in fact, more effective than reading past posts on the website.

Sun, 27 Aug 2023 10:27:49 -0400

My About Me page as seen on the web

This morning, I updated my online About page¹, taking some ideas from Brian Lovin’s website. The page was built entirely with Craft’s shared document and custom domain name². I wonder if this is something that Micro.blog should expand on and be added to the premium subscription. Cc @manton

I probably have too many about page. Another one can be found on Linktr.ee. 🤦🏻‍♂️ ↩︎
I should probably do a new YouTube video explaining the process. ↩︎

Thu, 24 Aug 2023 12:20:46 -0400

At the food court. The guy beside me is listening to some cheap TV show on his cheap-no-name Android speakerphone. Can you imagine if we all did the same? Even if he were using a top-of-the-line iPhone, I would judge him. 🤦🏻‍♂️🙉 Humans…

Wed, 23 Aug 2023 07:54:50 -0400

These transcript links give 404. Is this normal? Editing works fine, though. cc @help @manton

Tue, 22 Aug 2023 21:27:08 -0400

Mmmm, 🤔 for some reason, my Microblog RSS feeds are not updated to reflect my latest posts… Trying to rebuild the whole site. Any ideas @manton @help ?

Mon, 21 Aug 2023 07:41:11 -0400

Made some visual tweaks to the blog visuals: added tags to the list of bookmarks on the bookmarks page and made the blockquote blue instead of yellow. Eventually, this is going to be exactly how I like it.

Fri, 18 Aug 2023 07:25:22 -0400

Trying to figure out robots.txt file format using freely available robots.txt generators on the web. My goal is to exclude this blog from being crawled by YandexBot. Is this file (safe link) achieving this? Seems counterintuitive in my mind. Oh, and do you think it’s a bad idea to block Yandex from crawling? Seems to be feeding other search engines like DuckDuckGo… Thanks for your input!

Wed, 16 Aug 2023 21:02:17 -0400

Finding a well-designed, non-bulky, sturdy iPhone bike holder seems mission impossible. Searching this on Amazon is even harder, with all the paid sponsors/scammers filling all possible space. The one from Peak Design product seems great, but I will have to wait for the iPhone 15 Pro Max case to come out!

Tue, 15 Aug 2023 22:06:13 -0400

If US legal institutions cannot take down Trump, then this country is in a dire situation.

Sun, 13 Aug 2023 20:25:10 -0400

Say hello to hello@numericcitizen.me!. Finally decided to spend some time making my hello@numericcitizen.me work using the iCloud+ Custom Mail domain. Works great so far. Come and say hi!

Thu, 10 Aug 2023 06:51:09 -0400

Call for comments: those with a recent MacBook with a notch, what utility are you using to make it “disappear”? TopNotch doesn’t work on the latest macOS release for me. I’m unsure if this is because it conflicts with another utility (like Bartender).

Tue, 08 Aug 2023 09:57:17 -0400

Decided to move PocketCast on my first iPhone homescreen so that I increase my podcasts listening. I under utilize this great app for which I’m a subscriber. I’m not sure it will move the needle.

Tue, 08 Aug 2023 07:03:14 -0400

On my last flight heading back to Montreal. This is where, for me, the iPad shines. Hey @manton look carefully at what is on my iPad screen… 👀 Ask @jean, she will explain to you what I’d like to do eventually with you.

Sun, 06 Aug 2023 17:34:07 -0400

Sketch, the Mac vector app used by over a million people, recently invited me to adjudicate their most recent #SketchDesignChallenge. But not wanting to miss out on the fun (even though I can’t win because I am a judge… whatever…), I still booted up the app and created a widget of my own: Widget Radio. Source: Widget Radio — Basic Apple Guy

I follow Basic Apple Guy since his beginning. The quality of his work never ceases to impress me. He is so good that he was invited by the makers of Sketch! And boy did I like the iPod radio feature!

Tue, 01 Aug 2023 13:57:04 -0400

Just for you! Right from Santa Cruz! 😂 @maique !!

Sun, 30 Jul 2023 04:04:37 -0400

In a few days, on August first to be exact, the next edition of my blog posts summary newsletter will be sent out to all my subscribers (millions of them…. not really, just a few people). Maybe it’s the right time for you to subscribe too, especially if you are a new follower of mine, so you get a better view of what I’m up to! Link below.👇 You’re welcome. 🙏🏻

Tue, 25 Jul 2023 18:00:58 -0400

Fun fact: “at Threads” is available on Micro.blog. 🤪

Sun, 23 Jul 2023 18:10:44 -0400

With the future demise of Vanmoof, I decided to look elsewhere for my ebike. I found it. And bought it. My first new bike in more than thirty years. It’s probably my last one, too. Today, a perfect bike day in Montreal, I ran for more than 28 km for my first test drive. 🚲🚴🏻‍♂️😎😅😊

Fri, 21 Jul 2023 22:09:53 -0400

I was six years old. In my early days with computers, I was exposed to some of that stuff: fast line printers, disk packs, and punch card readers.

Fri, 21 Jul 2023 14:30:01 -0400

Surprising how many Reddit posts about Notion never get an answer. It’s the vast majority in seems (3 out of 4 questions). This /r/Notion is super popular, with many subscribers (292K)! Weird.

Fri, 21 Jul 2023 07:16:16 -0400

No Friday Notes post this week. I have a few ideas but didn’t have time to expand on them and write the article. Hint: it’s about photo sharing in the age of content abundance. Oh well. 😔

Wed, 19 Jul 2023 19:25:14 -0400

Poof Vanmoof!

July 17, 2023: “VanMoof was declared bankrupt in the Netherlands on Monday by the Amsterdam District Court, following the company's pandemic-time boom”
Sept 1, 2021: ↓
“This is the largest ever Series C investment for a European e-bike brand and brings VanMoof’s total raised to $182 million (£132 million) in less than two years, making it the most funded e-bike company in the world.”" loading=“lazy”>
Read: mastodon.social
counternotions https://mastodon.social/@counternotions/110742832402679227

Too bad for them. It was THE electric bike I was looking for since I heard about them. Sadly, they never expanded in North America. They don’t do business with partners. I always regarded Vanmoof as the Apple of the ebike.

Tue, 18 Jul 2023 19:03:01 -0400

This is the Discover tab with the focus on “people to discover” on the @pixelfed@mastodon.social official app (still in beta). The problem with this “selection”: how is this list built? The same can be said of Micro.blog discover feature. Why is the criteria never or rarely explained? Why is this list mostly static? The open web should be about absolute transparency too. Cc @manton

Github Offers a Fascinating Look at Software Development

Tue, 18 Jul 2023 06:42:10 -0400

I learned to use GitHub for the repo of my Blot website last year (read more about my experience with Blot here). I didn’t want to use Dropbox. I’m no longer using Blot, but I’m still visiting Github occasionally to keep track of project development like Plausible, but more recently for Pixelfed and a few plugins for Micro.blog. Peeking at change logs, commit comments, files changed, etc. offers an intimate look at software development. It’s also a great way to learn something.

Sat, 15 Jul 2023 07:48:39 -0400

YouTube put this video suggestion in my feed this morning. I was curious and watched it. Then, I realized that without knowing it, I’m actually using the PARA approach in Craft. Now I’m wondering if I should rearrange and rename a few things in there to better align with the PARA naming convention. 🤔

Fri, 14 Jul 2023 22:22:50 -0400

How it started, how it ended. That was yesterday. 88mm of rain in two hours. Oh, and one tornado touchdown. Two others possible.

Thu, 13 Jul 2023 17:50:21 -0400

Wow, we are just in the last moments of a “three-wave” storm with heavy rain, winds and lighting. I guess we got between 50mm - 100mm of rain in three hours. Power failures all around are reported. One might say: well, it’s summer; it is expected. Yeah, but when you look at the trend this summer, we got way too much rain, too fast compared to the average rainfall.

Thu, 13 Jul 2023 15:42:45 -0400

Tornado warning. We mostly never get those in our region. WTF?

Mon, 10 Jul 2023 17:22:20 -0400

Am I the only one here on Micro.blog who feels satisfactory feelings when I upgrade one of my plug-ins to a newer version? Is there a cure for that? I’m asking because it was the same feeling when I was on WordPress… and god knows that you can have many more plug-ins on WordPress.

Bad News for Weather in Canada

Wed, 05 Jul 2023 06:56:34 -0400

Yesterday, weather report summary for June in Canada was released and it is ugly. Much higher temperatures in the wrong places and at much earlier time this year. Many records broken by wide margin (since 1871). Lot’s of discrepancies in rain distribution with lack of rain in the north of Quebec which then allowed much widespread forests fire than usual.

One month is not a trend but when you look far back, there are many worrying trends.

Sun, 02 Jul 2023 09:00:33 -0400

Annnnnnnnd… back home. 🛬 Feels good. 😃 But this jet lag… bleh.😒

Are We Ready for This Dystopian World?

Wed, 14 Jun 2023 07:02:13 -0400

Warning: it’s not about the Apple Vision Pro headset, which many people think will bring a touch of a dystopian future to our life. Something else more serious will.

I read this week somewhere that, to get climate back into the normality zone🌪️ to ensure the sustainability of the human race and life in general, everyone on earth would need to live in an oppressive world where everything would be controlled by laws and government all the time and for decades. From buying food to cars to travelling to entertainment services, we would be under constant quotas, which would bring our quality of life much lower than we currently enjoy. In fact, developed countries’ quality of life would join the much lower quality of life of the vast majority of the earth’s population in less developed countries. This would be the only way to get around this climate crisis. Not convinced? The COVID pandemic brought massive and repetitive confinements that weren’t enough to bend many climate change indicators downwards. It lasted two years, more or less. 😱

Oh, and should we talk about forced birth control everywhere? Because we should, even if this is a taboo subject.

Are we ready for this dystopian world? 😷

I can see a great Vision Pro use case right here where people watch daylong movies about what used to be a much more enjoyable world in 3D. 😒

Mon, 05 Jun 2023 10:15:57 -0400

My blog theme was tweaked this morning to set a wider content area (from 40em to 60em). Since the content is resized according to the device screen, I don’t think it should create a problem.

Sun, 04 Jun 2023 11:36:25 -0400

Thanks to @Mtt & @rcrackley, I’m now using a different and quite nice Micro.blog theme for the first time in many years! I’m quite happy with the final results. Hope that you enjoy the change as much as I do!

PS. There are a few things that I’d like to tweak, but that will be for another day!

365 Days Later

Sun, 04 Jun 2023 09:58:12 -0400

Thumbnails of my produced YouTube videos

A year ago, I shared my first YouTube video on my YouTube channel. My initial goal was to share videos about using Craft, but later came videos about using Micro.blog. Here are some notable facts:

52 videos about Craft were produced;
5 videos about Micro.blog were produced;
All videos totalling more than 13.5 hours of watch time;
My YouTube channel has 813 subscribers as of now;
Two subscribers gave me money as a sign of appreciation.

I feel I’m now on par with all the things I wanted to talk about regarding Craft. Future Craft videos will touch on new features and tweaked workflow. I still have much work to do for Micro.blog video series, though.

At the initial pace of new subscribers, I set the goal of hitting a thousand subscribers in the first year, but I’m sad to report that I won’t make it. The pace of new subscribers has slowed quite a bit.

This video production journey is full of learning and lessons. Over time, I settled on a production style I’m happy with. I finally found a way to get better sound quality. I recently added iA Presenter to get cue cards showing on my screen while recording (read “iA Presenter — A Different & Clever Take at Presentation Software”). My workflow is stable now and is supported by this Craft template (you can download and use it if you are a Craft user, BTW). Finally, I started using Play.app to gather all my video links in one place. This provides a quick way to refer to past videos whenever needed.

I also produced videos about other apps like Capacities, Inoreader and Anybox. Some of these videos take the form of a 60 minutes session with the app as a first-time user. It’s fun as there is no script supporting those experiences.

Today, I will record a video about the WWDC 23 conference. The video will complement my recently published article on the same subject. It will be my first foray into tech news and commentary. I’m not planning to do many of these, but WWDC is significant and needs some of my production time attention.

Sat, 03 Jun 2023 21:48:55 -0400

Mmmm, it seems that I’m unable to use my test blog on Micro.blog to post from Ulysses or Micro.blog.app. Am I missing something here?

Sat, 03 Jun 2023 11:55:34 -0400

I hate .webm files. There, I said it. Why? I don’t know.

Sun, 28 May 2023 21:32:52 -0400

YouTube reminds me every day why I hate algorithmic timelines. Suppose I open up YouTube and click on one video about long-range airplanes. The minute I’m done watching the video, my timeline becomes full of airplane-related videos. YouTube completely washes out my timeline with what the algorithm was programmed to show me based on my consumption behaviours (and probably based on some other weird and highly questionable factors). I hate it. One video and boom, my YouTube universe flips elsewhere. Disclaimer: I’m a paying subscriber so I never see an ad. This behaviour is infuriating.

Sun, 28 May 2023 19:12:12 -0400

I never share my food over here but god this was delicious: aspergus, lobster for a risotto! Nothing left on the table. Sorry.

Sat, 27 May 2023 09:22:13 -0400

Now there are 42 members (Micro.bloggers) on Wavelength! Keep joining if you want! Invite link.

Targeting the First Thousand YouTube Subscribers

Fri, 26 May 2023 18:27:46 -0400

My goal when I started doing YouTube videos about Craft (and now Micro.blog) was to reach a thousand subscribers during the first year. At the current rate, I won’t make it. Am I sad about this? No. Is it nagging me? Yes. Why?

I think there are a lot of Craft users out there, and I think they could benefit from watching a few of my videos. That’s the whole purpose and “raison d’être” for my YouTube channel which was (and still is) to help users get better at using Craft or learning about Craft if they are not currently using it. Is my absence from Twitter to promote my content making any difference? Maybe. Maybe not. Who knows.

I still have some time left before June 6th, but I’m being realistic here.

Thu, 25 May 2023 07:40:14 -0400

Some housekeeping this morning: I made some changes to the navigation bar on my website so that FeedPress feeds are more prominent. Removed is the link to the monthly newsletter tag as I’m no longer publishing them.

Wed, 24 May 2023 13:38:01 -0400

As a fan of meteorology, I was fascinated today by this visible satellite imagery sequence of east North America. We can observe clouds at different levels in the atmosphere for the same geo area that travel in different directions. Just look at the cursor for where to observe the phenomena. This is not exceptional, but it is fascinating nonetheless.

Wed, 17 May 2023 10:25:01 -0400

I’ve got one Bluesky invite available. Just saying. 🙂

Tue, 16 May 2023 07:13:52 -0400

I finally completed and shared the last part of my story “Moving out of WordPress”, this time, it’s the DNS side of the story, where I explain the process of moving out of GoDaddy to CloudFlare so that I can keep using my root domain numericcitizen.me. Go on my Numeric Citizen I/O website for all the details if you’re curious.

Mon, 15 May 2023 18:40:59 -0400

My creative goals are all met, and it’s Monday. 😅 Maybe I wasn’t aiming high enough? 🤔

Sun, 14 May 2023 14:26:12 -0400

In my last two YouTube videos, I decided to stop using cross-fade between segments. It’s a bit visually harsh (I’m not getting used to that), but it seems like the general trend among YouTubers these days. Plus, when using bookmarks, thumbnails get a better preview.

Thu, 11 May 2023 19:29:15 -0400

I’m wondering how good MacWhisper will be at decoding my English with my accent. Will try for my next YouTube video ad I always wanted to add video captions.

Thu, 11 May 2023 08:14:52 -0400

Fun and interesting fact: I have four times more followers on Bluesky than on Mastodon, even though the latter has much more users like in the millions instead of in the thousands for the former. 🤔

Sun, 07 May 2023 20:13:20 -0400

Wow, the Opal C1 camera software is still in beta… after so long on the market?? The last beta dates back to February. I have such a camera… still in my drawer. Happily using the Continuity Camera with my iPhone 13 Pro.

Sun, 07 May 2023 17:38:33 -0400

In case you didn’t know: there is a small group of Microbloggers on the messaging app Wavelength. You can get on board and join the other 38 other members. Here is the invite link. The idea behind this group is not to replace Micro.blog, far from it, but to add a complementary option for discussing any subjects that you might find interesting in near real-time.

Sat, 06 May 2023 07:58:08 -0400

I’m a big fan of Raycast, and I cannot wait to get my hands on Raycast AI, but there is one thing that I cannot stand about it: the app icon. 🤢 I’m wondering if @mattbirchler has the same opinion here.

Mon, 01 May 2023 18:33:17 -0400

Thanks @manton for the auto-complete! It works great on the iPad!

Sat, 29 Apr 2023 16:05:03 -0400

For each video about Micro.blog that I make and share, I lose subscribers.😔 People don’t like the mixing of videos about two different things I guess: Craft & Micro.blog. 🤷‍♂️

Sat, 29 Apr 2023 10:44:22 -0400

This blog post was created, edited and posted using the venerable and excellent MarsEdit text editor. Before switching to Ulysses, MarsEdit was my go-to choice for writing posts of a certain length and complexity because of its simplicity and for supporting posting to Micro.blog.

This blog post was used for recording an upcoming video about apps that I use for posting content on Micro.blog. The video will be published soon on my YouTube channel.

Fri, 28 Apr 2023 12:55:58 -0400

Something that bugs me with Micro.blog. Nothing serious, but still. The questionable sidebar arrangement. Why is Replies at the near bottom? Why not have a “Website” category with Plug-ins + Design inside of it? Why plans not into Account? Why “Feeds” sits inside Accounts? Why not rename “Feeds” to “Digital hub”? I’m just wondering out loud, @manton!

Apple Entering the Journal App Landscape Soon? Hell Yeah, Count Me In!

Fri, 21 Apr 2023 13:17:14 -0400

As reported by the Wall Street Journal (since it’s paywalled, look at MacRumors report instead), Apple is supposedly working on its own journaling application. Code named « Jurassic », many interesting details are emerging from this report.

As an avid user of Dayone (read « Documenting My Numeric Life With Dayone »). , I find the prospect of having Apple entering the journaling apps landscape quite exciting. The idea of using journaling to help users with mental health issues is pretty clever. There is so much information available on our devices from which, I guess, we can infer some mental states. I’m guessing machine learning can be of some tremendous help here. Coupled with Apple’s stance on privacy, this provides a potentially very compelling story for a lot of people. Me included. Yet, some people could find this move to be crossing a line that is not acceptable for them. We will see.

The WSJ story is referring to very specific detailed aspects of the rumoured app. For example, journaling suggestions would be based on call history and iMessage conversations, and be ephemeral. After four week they would vanish from suggestions. I’m guessing this would help automate some aspects of daily journaling.

I asked this question to ChatGPT: « _Is the young generation into journal as much as older generations? _». Here is what it has to say:

_ There is no definitive answer to this question, as attitudes towards journaling can vary widely among individuals of all ages. However, some studies suggest that younger generations may be more likely to engage in forms of expressive writing such as blogging or social media updates, which could be seen as a form of journaling._

The debate might still be out if the youngsters generation is very into the writing journey, but having some part of the journaling automated would alleviate some rebarbative aspects of maintaining a journal.

Can you imagine having the journal app assembling photos, messages, phone calls, geo locations into pre populated journaling suggestions? Wow. I’m really looking forward into that one.

Sun, 16 Apr 2023 10:10:28 -0400

RIP Twitter 2007-2022 is now live (well, mostly live as tweets are still being processed and imported). Thanks for this @manton!

Fri, 14 Apr 2023 13:23:50 -0400

Still alive. Only on vacation. 😎

Wed, 05 Apr 2023 21:09:24 -0400

Somehow, I forgot to include my devices in my creator toolset website. Done now.

Wed, 05 Apr 2023 06:39:09 -0400

My wife recently told me how she was looking and considering tools like ChatGPT in her work. She considers ChatGPT like having an intern working with her. The intern will do the work she asks, but she knows she will have to give it a critical eye on the results just in case any errors creep in. If using interns in companies, why is ChatGPT not considered at the same level? Open for debate.

I like this intern analogy.

Sat, 01 Apr 2023 14:46:22 -0400

Finding software bugs at the least expected place and time while recording long YouTube videos, it’s always fun! #not #craftisbuggy

Sat, 25 Mar 2023 12:18:27 -0400

Earlier in March, Alisabeth Hayden, from Washington state in the US, was separated from her AirPods – Apple’s pricey micro headphones – while disembarking from a plane in San Francisco. She swiftly realized that they appeared to have been stolen. Source: This woman left her AirPods on a plane. She tracked them to an airport worker’s home | CNN

Sad story for sure. I remember my wife forgetting her iPad in the pouch in front of her seat after leaving the place many years ago. She never got it back after contacting the airliner personnel. It was before “Find my friends”. Who knows what happened to this iPad, but this story tells me that it probably ended up in someone else hands.

Sat, 25 Mar 2023 11:37:18 -0400

If you are curious about the migration process from WordPress.com to Ghost (the SaaS version), you can read all the details about it right here. There is another part of the process regarding the DNS management that will be published soon. So stay tuned.

Fri, 24 Mar 2023 22:08:24 -0400

Ok, I’m done with this migration/merge ops. More details tomorrow.

Wed, 22 Mar 2023 22:00:46 -0400

Even if my full-time job is in IT infrastructure, I hate playing with DNS and registrars.

Tue, 21 Mar 2023 07:47:22 -0400

Moving out of WordPress is such a pain. It was a pain to be there. It is a pain to get out of it. My problem: I’m moving to Ghost. I need to use their plugin, but the resulting files will get ingested in Ghost with a format that I don’t like. Each post will be inside an HTML object instead of a native Ghost post. That, I don’t like. Thinking of exporting content using WordPress export option and then translating it to Markdown. But Ghost doesn’t support Markdown files import. I could republish each post using Ulysses for example. But I cannot back-date any post when publishing.

Did anyone try importing from WordPress to Micro.blog?

Sun, 19 Mar 2023 20:28:51 -0400

Never say never, I suppose.

Proof.

Sun, 19 Mar 2023 19:49:36 -0400

I recently discovered two new apps that are now in my documented toolset: Anybox and Zavala. Both apps have something in common: the ability to copy a deeplink to an object like a collection or a document. For example, in Anybox, I select a collection and use the “Copy Link” option. In Zavala, I select a document and use the “Copy Document Link” option. Then, I can use these links in Craft. Here is an example: anybox://collection/2340CA48-16BC-4F33-AFFA-6323FEB6605A. When in Craft, clicking such a link will open the app with the target object in focus and selected. It’s super useful as those apps taken together form a powerful combination.

Fri, 17 Mar 2023 06:57:46 -0400

Microsoft:

Today, we are bringing the power of next-generation AI to work. Introducing Microsoft 365 Copilot — your copilot for work. It combines the power of large language models (LLMs) with your data in the Microsoft Graph and the Microsoft 365 apps to turn your words into the most powerful productivity tool on the planet. Source: Introducing Microsoft 365 Copilot – your copilot for work - The Official Microsoft Blog

It’s funny how great some of Microsoft’s promotional videos are in regards to Office and Windows user interface. But why, in actual usage, does Microsoft products’ UI suck anyway? We never seem to get the UI that Microsoft is presenting in their videos. Office doesn’t look like that at all. Windows doesn’t either.

Sat, 11 Mar 2023 20:57:27 -0400

After so many iPadOS releases, these two gestures I suggested in 2019 were eventually added. This article was a timid entry in the user interface mockups world. It didn’t last long. Thanks to Apple for having listened. 🤣

Sat, 11 Mar 2023 19:08:20 -0400

Another big update to my complete toolset website: a new dedicated section for my current projects. Use the newly added table of content to navigate to the new section. Now you know more about how and why I’m spending my personal time.

Sat, 11 Mar 2023 09:53:51 -0400

Here is something that I really would like to do. Using Apple shortcuts, Charty for Shortcuts and Plausible analytics APIs: create an iPhone and iPad widget to display visitor statistics on my home screen. Another app like Actions would probably be needed too.

Thu, 09 Mar 2023 20:33:21 -0400

Do you know MacUpdater? It’s a paid utility to keep your Mac up-to-date. I use it on my M1 Mac mini, but on my M1 MacBook Air, I use “Latest”. It’s open-source and free and a very well-crafted piece of software. I highlight recommend it. Download it here. You’ll thank me later.

Sat, 04 Mar 2023 14:13:04 -0400

🎦 Smile, guys; you’re on camera! 😃 I’m getting myself ready to record th first video in the “Understanding Micro.blog” video series. This blog post on blog.numericcitizen.me will appear in the video while I’m giving a quick tour of a typical website hosted on Micro.blog.

Sat, 04 Mar 2023 12:53:31 -0400

Spent part of the morning trying to do some automation using Hazel and Shortcuts. What a time-consuming task. I’m wondering if I’m not wasting any future productivity gains here. 🤔🤨

Here's The Weekend… Suggestions Instead of Infinite Social Media Scrolling...

Fri, 03 Mar 2023 17:18:12 -0400

It’s the week-end in a few hours, consider those suggestions by Shawn Blanc: A few alternative things you can do when you’re bored (instead of scrolling social media)

Here are a few alternatives to what I call the “Just Checks”.

– Scroll through your Day One timeline and read a previous journal entry or browse some old photos and memories.

– Launch Day One and log how you’ve spent your time so far for the day. Doing this for a few weeks can also be super helpful for getting a perspective of where your time and energy are being spent.

– Write down 3 new ideas. These could be articles you want to write, business ideas, places you want to visit or photograph, topics you want to research, date ideas for you and your spouse, gift ideas for a friend, etc. These ideas never have to to be acted on — the point isn’t to generate a to-do list, but rather to exercise your mind and build your idea muscle. Ideation and creativity are muscles, and the more we exercise them the stronger they get.

– Send a text message to a friend or family member to tell them how awesome they are.

– Don’t get out your phone at all — do some stretches or take a 5-minute walk.

Me? I’ll be creating, as always. Have a great weekend.

Wed, 01 Mar 2023 08:30:54 -0400

Massive migration going on right now… to Anybox. I’m in love with this little app. Currently moving out my bookmarks from Craft. Next up will be Safari. Thankfully, Anybox can import Safari-exported bookmark files.

I’m always anxious when I use an app built and maintained by a single guy, as seems to be the case for Anybox.

Tue, 28 Feb 2023 11:01:07 -0400

I want to share a little follow-up to my previous post regarding Anybox. As much as I like what I see in this nifty little app, it must replace something else to make the cut (Raindrop.io?). It must help improve an existing portion of my workflow (putting my monthly newsletter together - possible initial use case). It must make a real difference, not only add a new stopgap.

Tue, 28 Feb 2023 08:54:42 -0400

Another day, another rabbit hole. This time, meet Anybox, a bookmark manager for macOS, iOS and iPadOS. I’ve been playing with it on macOS and I really like what I’m seeing. It’s a bit nerdy, but I do like it a lot. Everything I tried or wonder if it could do was met with a “ah” or “ooooh”. PopClip integration, easy integration with Things 3, data portability secured (lots of import & export formats), great user interface, Safari extension support. The list goes on and on.

Now, the only thing is to try to find a real use case for it. I’ve been using Craft for the most part for bookmarks collection, so my need for an app like Anybox is still unclear. Stay tuned on that one.

Is this another solution in search of a problem? 🤔

Wed, 15 Feb 2023 07:41:58 -0400

🤔 @help @manton could look into this error message that I’ve been getting on my timeline for a few days now? Thanks a lot! Love ya! Sorry for the interruption. Returning to normal programming.

Sun, 12 Feb 2023 11:56:13 -0400

Are there any Inoreader subscribers here? How do you take advantage of the service’s features? Do you use the Broadcast feature? How about tags and annotation features?

Sat, 04 Feb 2023 13:30:14 -0400

You might have noticed that I’m experimenting with YouTube shorts. They are easy to create using the YouTube app but the next ones will be created with Apple’s Clips, if it’s even possible. 🧐

Thu, 02 Feb 2023 08:24:14 -0400

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.

Sat, 28 Jan 2023 12:50:24 -0400

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. 😔

Thu, 26 Jan 2023 22:57:31 -0400

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.

Wed, 25 Jan 2023 11:42:49 -0400

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.

Sun, 22 Jan 2023 22:42:18 -0400

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.

Sat, 21 Jan 2023 19:11:14 -0400

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.

Sat, 21 Jan 2023 16:00:14 -0400

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. 🤣

Sat, 21 Jan 2023 13:22:31 -0400

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!

Thu, 19 Jan 2023 19:50:34 -0400

Listening to Leo Laporte’s voice of Twit.tv in my AirPods Pro 2… wow, what a great voice this man has.

Tue, 17 Jan 2023 22:44:56 -0400

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. 🙂

Sat, 14 Jan 2023 15:33:22 -0400

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.

Sat, 14 Jan 2023 12:43:48 -0400

Thought of the moment: on any platform, porn is never very far. #mastodon 🫣

Sat, 14 Jan 2023 12:38:47 -0400

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. 😔

Sat, 14 Jan 2023 10:43:09 -0400

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

Fri, 13 Jan 2023 19:34:54 -0400

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? 🙏🏻

Fri, 13 Jan 2023 14:32:48 -0400

👉🏻 Getting ready for: numericcitizen.micro.blog 🔜 blog.numericitizen.me 😎

Tue, 10 Jan 2023 08:03:28 -0400

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!

Sun, 08 Jan 2023 17:16:39 -0400

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?

Sun, 08 Jan 2023 12:27:26 -0400

Dear @manton, How can I get the “reply with Micro.blog” on my post details?

Wed, 28 Dec 2022 13:25:53 -0400

I would rather buy a Micro.blog client from Tapbots than a Mastodon client. There. I said it.

Wed, 28 Dec 2022 08:59:46 -0400

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.

Tue, 27 Dec 2022 00:47:31 -0400

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. 🫤

Mon, 26 Dec 2022 16:25:55 -0400

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. 😳🤦🏻‍♂️

Sat, 24 Dec 2022 14:58:01 -0400

Merry Christmas 🎅

Fri, 23 Dec 2022 23:08:53 -0400

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.

Fri, 23 Dec 2022 18:21:00 -0400

That is a hell of a low pressure. Very windy now. Lots of rain earlier. Getting way colder by tomorrow.

Getting Ready for the Holidays and my Next Trip

Fri, 23 Dec 2022 12:24:59 -0400

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! 😅

Wed, 21 Dec 2022 20:08:35 -0400

Found a great place for my Tidbyt.

Installing Windows in 2022

Wed, 21 Dec 2022 10:44:28 -0400

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.

My Experience With Tidbyt LED-Based Display

Tue, 20 Dec 2022 08:02:32 -0400

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.

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.

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.

Mon, 19 Dec 2022 22:22:59 -0400

So what do have here… quick and dirty review coming soon. 🤓🤗

The Stars of the Show for 2022 Are...

Fri, 16 Dec 2022 22:15:40 -0400

If I look back at my software usage in 2022, three stars stand out:

Raycast
Things 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.

Fri, 16 Dec 2022 09:24:11 -0400

Raycast year in review. Wow. I love this thing so much!

Hands Down to Hand Mirror Plus

Thu, 15 Dec 2022 22:31:08 -0400

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.

Wed, 14 Dec 2022 08:22:08 -0400

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?

When Ukraine Is Home of Great Software Makers

Mon, 12 Dec 2022 21:10:32 -0400

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.

Sat, 10 Dec 2022 16:22:11 -0400

Sorry for your timeline flooding about this Mac Pro thing… probably a big in MarsEdit 5.0. Returning to normal programming now.

Twitter’s Essentials

Wed, 30 Nov 2022 08:00:00 -0400

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.

Sat, 12 Nov 2022 18:20:50 -0400

If you read my Friday Notes series, then it’s a good way to learn about me. Just sayin. Happy Saturday night!

Fri, 28 Oct 2022 18:53:16 -0400

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.

On This AI-Generated Podcast Interview Between Joe Rogan and Steve Jobs

Tue, 18 Oct 2022 07:08:47 -0400

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”

On Software Subscriptions

Fri, 23 Sep 2022 07:30:23 -0400

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.

AirTags Can Make a Difference

Tue, 16 Aug 2022 07:54:56 -0400

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.

No, no, no, and no.

Sat, 13 Aug 2022 07:15:13 -0400

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. 😞

The Disconnected Country

Fri, 08 Jul 2022 16:15:03 -0400

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.

Fri, 24 Jun 2022 06:18:29 -0400

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.

There’s no such thing as time elasticity

Sat, 18 Jun 2022 08:17:46 -0400

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!

Thu, 02 Jun 2022 22:10:00 -0400

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.

A Week of Software Releases in Review

Fri, 20 May 2022 06:58:13 -0400

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.

My Reading Workflow Is in a State of Flux

Sat, 07 May 2022 07:25:24 -0400

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

Mon, 04 Apr 2022 21:42:00 -0400

Two quick questions: how do you cope with what’s happening in Ukraine? Are you watching the news?

Venting My Frustration About Microsoft Teams

Wed, 23 Mar 2022 06:46:54 -0400

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.

Dear Mobile Apps Developers

Mon, 21 Mar 2022 20:28:36 -0400

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.

A Message for Ukrainians

Thu, 24 Feb 2022 07:48:57 -0400

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.

Dune Movie - Woah!

Sat, 19 Feb 2022 22:23:19 -0400

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?

Challenge of the day: exporting posts from WordPress to Ghost

Sun, 13 Feb 2022 08:51:00 -0400

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

Tue, 08 Feb 2022 19:32:35 -0400

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.

Fri, 04 Feb 2022 11:07:21 -0400

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/

From Apple’s AirPort Exterme to Ubiquiti’s Amplify HD

Sun, 30 Jan 2022 21:01:54 -0400

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.

MP3 Files and the iPhone — Harder Than Necessary

Sun, 23 Jan 2022 16:02:57 -0400

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.

Yep, Notion is Bad

Sat, 22 Jan 2022 22:53:16 -0400

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.

Give Me Some Time...

Sat, 22 Jan 2022 10:33:32 -0400

…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?

Taking Advantage of the iPad Screen

Sat, 22 Jan 2022 09:05:46 -0400

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?

I’m a Big Fan of Craft But…

Wed, 19 Jan 2022 22:22:41 -0400

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.

Exploring the World of DJing

Wed, 19 Jan 2022 08:31:56 -0400

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.

Mon, 10 Jan 2022 20:42:06 -0400

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.

Surprise Me!

Thu, 06 Jan 2022 09:00:19 -0400

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?

On NFTs: What Am I Missing?

Tue, 04 Jan 2022 20:20:51 -0400

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? 🤦🏻‍♂️

He says "Hi!"

Sun, 26 Dec 2021 10:46:43 -0400

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

Completed The Servant Season 2 - At Long Last!

Sun, 26 Dec 2021 10:19:19 -0400

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

A Message for Christmas

Fri, 24 Dec 2021 09:17:03 -0400

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. 🎄

Phasing Out My Vimeo Account

Thu, 23 Dec 2021 09:23:49 -0400

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.

Fri, 10 Dec 2021 18:21:55 -0400

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…

Wed, 08 Dec 2021 09:00:00 -0400

💥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

My Current Status

Sat, 20 Nov 2021 09:45:06 -0400

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. 😎🌅

A New Home, Same Purposes

Wed, 17 Nov 2021 08:46:25 -0400

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/.

RTFM (Read The Fuckin Manual They Say!)

Mon, 15 Nov 2021 21:14:30 -0400

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?

Sat, 13 Nov 2021 15:33:18 -0400

Some of my heroes over the years. Do you have any?

Revisiting My Craft Content Organization

Mon, 08 Nov 2021 22:05:07 -0400

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.

Sat, 06 Nov 2021 09:04:16 -0400

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…

Fri, 05 Nov 2021 17:27:02 -0400

Time to relax, it’s Friday after all. Who’s playing?

Google, Are You Kidding Me?

Tue, 12 Oct 2021 20:06:12 -0400

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.

E-Bikes: #VanmoofV — What Is Going on Here?

Tue, 12 Oct 2021 19:47:08 -0400

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. 🧐

Dear @AppleInsider STOP THIS!

Sat, 18 Sep 2021 09:00:08 -0400

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.

E-Bike and the Apple Watch — a Quick Question

Sat, 11 Sep 2021 13:15:26 -0400

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

Can’t wait to try this

Thu, 09 Sep 2021 21:13:31 -0400

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.

Quick Ranting On Medium App Updates

Thu, 09 Sep 2021 07:19:05 -0400

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.

Sun, 29 Aug 2021 10:16:46 -0400

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! 👍🏻

Mon, 23 Aug 2021 06:53:45 -0400

Gosh, importing my stuff from Notion into Craft is not funny. There has to be a better way. 😵‍💫

Documenting past home screen arrangements

Tue, 27 Jul 2021 21:07:23 -0400

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.

Four days week day? We can only dream it seems

Mon, 26 Jul 2021 21:49:26 -0400

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.

Mon, 26 Jul 2021 21:35:19 -0400

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. ❤️

Wed, 21 Jul 2021 17:45:46 -0400

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. 😳🤧

Sat, 17 Jul 2021 16:22:19 -0400

Weird.

Sat, 17 Jul 2021 10:06:31 -0400

First deception with Pocket Cast: no support for widgets. 😒

Moving from Castro to Pocket Cast: 100% completed. 👨🏻‍💻⌛️👍🏻😁

Sat, 17 Jul 2021 09:50:30 -0400

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.

On PC in the cloud

Thu, 15 Jul 2021 06:43:53 -0400

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.

Going to space… to watch a burning planet.

Sun, 11 Jul 2021 19:38:22 -0400

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.

Thu, 01 Jul 2021 08:48:24 -0400

Instagram Plans to Take on TikTok With Full-Screen Video Content

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

Another coat of paint to Windows UI mess? (#windows11)

Mon, 28 Jun 2021 14:16:00 -0400

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.

Sun, 27 Jun 2021 12:34:59 -0400

💉✖️2️⃣. 😎 Let’s go and put all this behind us: get vaccinated.

When hackers strikes personal NAS-type devices

Fri, 25 Jun 2021 16:04:11 -0400

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.

Fri, 18 Jun 2021 19:00:53 -0400

Currently entering vacation area. Enjoy. I’m going to be much more active. Be warned.

Mon, 14 Jun 2021 07:00:10 -0400

A few words to help you get a peek on what I’m working on right now: Toggl. Focused Work.

Count me OUT then - Twitter Blue #twitterblue

Thu, 03 Jun 2021 12:02:13 -0400

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.

Another solid update to Craft!

Wed, 02 Jun 2021 06:31:25 -0400

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!

Sun, 16 May 2021 09:46:03 -0400

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.

Sat, 17 Apr 2021 12:21:25 -0400

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

HEY World missing button

Sat, 17 Apr 2021 09:16:39 -0400

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. ☝🏻👋🏻

Sat, 17 Apr 2021 09:08:26 -0400

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.

Mon, 05 Apr 2021 17:59:00 -0400

> numericcitizen [numericcitizen.io](https://numericcitizen.io/)

My trick to read more (#reading #writing #tips #tricks)

Sun, 04 Apr 2021 15:58:33 -0400

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.

Remembering... (#techmemories)

Sun, 04 Apr 2021 11:07:27 -0400

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?

Curiously Entering the World of DJing (#music #dj #mixing #electronicmusic)

Sat, 03 Apr 2021 09:40:37 -0400

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.

Thu, 01 Apr 2021 18:40:59 -0400

So, Pocket + Readwise for one year it will be. Expect a blog post about why I chose Pocket over Instapaper.

Tue, 30 Mar 2021 13:45:24 -0400

👉🏻 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. 👀

Thu, 25 Mar 2021 07:06:58 -0400

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. 😎

Fri, 19 Mar 2021 07:59:50 -0400

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?

Thu, 04 Mar 2021 08:35:30 -0400

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.

Tue, 02 Mar 2021 08:44:00 -0400

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!

Hey, World (#hey #newsletters)

Tue, 23 Feb 2021 18:43:53 -0400

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.

HEY, Hey just got updated (#hey)

Mon, 22 Feb 2021 21:56:34 -0400

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.

Learning Blot.im the hard way (#blot #selfhosting)

Sun, 21 Feb 2021 09:13:35 -0400

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!

Testing, testing, 1.2.3. (#webmention #indieweb #openweb)

Sat, 20 Feb 2021 09:28:13 -0400

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.

Dear Micro.blog, where do you plan to go next? (#microblogging #microblog)

Wed, 17 Feb 2021 08:17:46 -0400

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.

Bye Bye Spend Stack - I barely knew you (#apps)

Sun, 14 Feb 2021 16:10:25 -0400

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.

Sun, 14 Feb 2021 10:20:04 -0400

Quick question to @jack : Is “baty.net” a micro.blog? If so, what’s your theme?

Looking for Micro.blog friends (#microblog #socialnetwork)

Sun, 14 Feb 2021 09:17:56 -0400

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. 🙂

What happened to my Twitter usage? (#twitter)

Sat, 13 Feb 2021 09:56:52 -0400

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.

Sat, 13 Feb 2021 08:33:25 -0400

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!

Tue, 09 Feb 2021 08:25:28 -0400

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!

I could play with this forever (#snowflakegenerator)

Wed, 27 Jan 2021 20:52:30 -0400

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

On Tweetbot 6 update (@tweetbot #update #subscription)

Tue, 26 Jan 2021 21:12:53 -0400

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.

@numericcitizen on Clubhouse (#clubhouse)

Fri, 22 Jan 2021 21:25:48 -0400

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.

My daytime job reality (#IT #computerscience #tech)

Tue, 19 Jan 2021 21:02:27 -0400

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.

Another Massive Update to @CraftDocsApp (#craft #writer #writing #blogging #tools)

Mon, 18 Jan 2021 20:38:44 -0400

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.

Improving my Apple Watch Heartbeat Readings (#applewatch)

Sun, 17 Jan 2021 17:29:00 -0400

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.

Mailbrew is getter better and better (#mailbrew #newsletters)

Wed, 13 Jan 2021 08:18:13 -0400

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.

Programming, mathematics and brain activities (#research #computers #computerscience)

Mon, 11 Jan 2021 19:47:20 -0400

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!

Ten Reasons to love RSS feeds (#rss #openstandard)

Sun, 10 Jan 2021 21:09:38 -0400

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.

How to turn me off big time (#signin #services #facebooklogin)

Sat, 09 Jan 2021 22:53:59 -0400

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.

Next week - back to a "normal" day job (#blogging #writing #personalnews)

Thu, 07 Jan 2021 18:21:57 -0400

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.

Another wild Microsoft rumour about Outlook (#microsoft #rumours #outlook #office365)

Wed, 06 Jan 2021 14:54:05 -0400

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.

About this rumoured big Windows visual overhaul (#microsoft #windows)

Tue, 05 Jan 2021 16:52:49 -0400

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).

I'm afraid your maths are right, @brentsimmons (#covid19 #vaccination #usa)

Sun, 03 Jan 2021 14:36:32 -0400

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.

Documenting our numeric life (#journaling #tools)

Sat, 02 Jan 2021 09:26:32 -0400

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.

Not the best way to build brand loyalty, @LGUS (#smarttv #airplay2)

Wed, 30 Dec 2020 09:47:44 -0400

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.

Thinking of closing my Google Analytics account − who knew (#googleanalytics #privacy @mailbrew @plausiblehq)

Tue, 29 Dec 2020 14:58:20 -0400

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?

Thoughts on my first contact with Disney+ on Apple TV (#appletv #disneyplus #streaming)

Mon, 28 Dec 2020 11:50:08 -0400

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?

Best wishes to all my followers and readers

Thu, 24 Dec 2020 16:31:53 -0400

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

I don’t buy commercial Christmas cards. (#adobe #sparkpost #creativity)

Thu, 24 Dec 2020 12:08:51 -0400

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.

Tempted by Vimeo, again. (#vimeo #YouTube #experiment)

Tue, 22 Dec 2020 10:55:25 -0400

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. 😎

Time for something. Again. (#me #avatar)

Fri, 18 Dec 2020 16:18:21 -0400

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. ☺️

Uniformity across diversity (#youtubers #YouTube #design)

Mon, 14 Dec 2020 08:37:55 -0400

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?

What came before the diagram (#blogging #tips)

Thu, 10 Dec 2020 22:57:41 -0400

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.

A Substack reader, really? (#substack #mailbrew #hey #newsletters)

Wed, 09 Dec 2020 09:26:07 -0400

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

How Synology NAS can improve my blogger workflow (#synology #nas #storage #blogger #tools)

Tue, 08 Dec 2020 08:40:11 -0400

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.

Massive update coming to Synology NAS users 😍 (#synology #dsm #update #nas)

Mon, 07 Dec 2020 13:32:01 -0400

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.

The Unifi Dream Machine gets a major update! (@ubnt #udm #update)

Sat, 05 Dec 2020 14:08:38 -0400

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.

Using Twitter Fleet, why not! (#twitter #creativity)

Fri, 04 Dec 2020 13:38:15 -0400

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.

Let's meet! Here is a free idea for calendaring app makers (talking to you guys! @macguitar @flexibits)

Thu, 03 Dec 2020 18:14:30 -0400

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.

For Icons lovers (#macos #ios #apple #design #ui #ux #visualarts)

Fri, 20 Nov 2020 07:56:37 -0400

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.

I can breath. (#bidenharis2020) 😀🇨🇦

Sat, 07 Nov 2020 13:54:27 -0400

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.

Pray. (#vote2020 #electionnight)

Tue, 03 Nov 2020 21:09:41 -0400

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.

Widget Radar (#widgets #ios14 #weatherapps @rjonesy)

Tue, 03 Nov 2020 07:52:47 -0400

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.

Third edition is out! (#newsletter #blogger #writing #apple)

Wed, 28 Oct 2020 19:28:40 -0400

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!

A wild dream (#apple #macpro #vmware #virtualization #lab)

Sun, 18 Oct 2020 09:48:38 -0400

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.

Look who’s in town (#rssreader #rss #reading @reederapp)

Sat, 17 Oct 2020 11:02:19 -0400

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. 🤔

Software is art (@airbuddyapp, #macOS)

Fri, 16 Oct 2020 06:44:00 -0400

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?

Deliveries 9.0 - Does it deliver?

Sat, 10 Oct 2020 08:30:13 -0400

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.

HEY, here is an important update!

Mon, 05 Oct 2020 17:08:31 -0400

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!

Tue, 29 Sep 2020 19:36:45 -0400

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

Micro.blog 2.0 - Testing, 1-2-3, Testing...

Tue, 29 Sep 2020 17:51:48 -0400

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

Deliveries: what’s in for me?

Tue, 29 Sep 2020 12:51:43 -0400

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.

A message to attention seekers

Thu, 24 Sep 2020 06:53:57 -0400

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.

On increasing COVID-19 cases...

Sun, 20 Sep 2020 12:56:11 -0400

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?

I'm falling in love, again.

Mon, 14 Sep 2020 19:56:26 -0400

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.

From Overcast to Castro — Quick Observations

Sat, 12 Sep 2020 14:12:04 -0400

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

On IFTTT Pro

Fri, 11 Sep 2020 08:29:13 -0400

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?

Wed, 09 Sep 2020 20:11:29 -0400

Sad but true in a sense. #climatechange

twitter.com/pjux/stat…

Mon, 07 Sep 2020 19:47:49 -0400

I second that. Instagram is going down the drain. Fast. Thank you Facebook.

twitter.com/morrick/s…

Sat, 05 Sep 2020 16:51:37 -0400

I would pay a lot of money for this kind of table.

Fri, 04 Sep 2020 19:26:32 -0400

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

Fri, 04 Sep 2020 16:47:15 -0400

This is my Twitter family. I wonder what my Micro.blog family would look like.

Wed, 26 Aug 2020 20:21:15 -0400

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?

Wed, 26 Aug 2020 08:08:09 -0400

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

Mon, 24 Aug 2020 20:49:03 -0400

Yes, I do remember Windows 95 launch. Windows on top of DOS.

Mon, 24 Aug 2020 10:41:29 -0400

I’m flabbergasted to see soooo many new To Do or expanse tracking apps coming in crowded app categories.

Sun, 23 Aug 2020 09:10:09 -0400

What a downgrade. Dull just like the president’s wife. twitter.com

BREAKING: Adobe Lightroom CC 5.4 Users - Data Loss

Thu, 20 Aug 2020 14:33:26 -0400

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

Mon, 17 Aug 2020 10:48:15 -0400

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…

Fri, 24 Jul 2020 14:16:35 -0400

I’m getting there. Where? No idea. Entirely random city design and building. That is what playing is all about. #townscraper

Fri, 24 Jul 2020 08:15:05 -0400

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

Tue, 21 Jul 2020 20:23:01 -0400

I love this game. Spent a few hours building this unknown city. 😍 #townscraper

Sun, 05 Jul 2020 10:28:13 -0400

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

Sun, 05 Jul 2020 09:43:25 -0400

For the next two months. Life is good to me, even in 2020. #bloggerlife #blogger

Fri, 26 Jun 2020 12:26:07 -0400

No more Microsoft physical stores. End of an (short, insignificant) era. #microsoft #microsoftstores

Sat, 20 Jun 2020 09:28:44 -0400

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.

Sat, 20 Jun 2020 09:08:57 -0400

About HEY/Basecamp founders. Found on the Internet. 😳

HEY, Micro.blog and web standards

Fri, 19 Jun 2020 16:31:55 -0400

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.

Thu, 18 Jun 2020 15:29:36 -0400

Woah. So. Nice. twitter.com/andrewapr…

Thu, 18 Jun 2020 12:15:36 -0400

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

Wed, 17 Jun 2020 16:13:55 -0400

Waiting for Hey.com invite is killing me. That is all.

Wed, 17 Jun 2020 07:30:44 -0400

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. 😳🤦🏻‍♂️

Sat, 13 Jun 2020 10:41:20 -0400

I do have a good feeling with Hey, a new email service based on my experiments with Basecamp. twitter.com

Thu, 11 Jun 2020 07:06:48 -0400

Been playing with this guy for 12 hours now… I’m… ecstatic. Expect a full review soon. @ubnt twitter.com/ubnt/stat…

Wed, 03 Jun 2020 07:15:00 -0400

In a world full of subscriptions, this app not only looks great but could prove to be useful. Outgoings apps.apple.com

Wed, 03 Jun 2020 07:09:45 -0400

I’m not in the market for bookmarking apps but this one certainly looks really nice, well designed and focused. Readit apps.apple.com

Mon, 01 Jun 2020 21:27:08 -0400

This guy can read? Really? Who knew.

twitter.com/mboorstei…

Sat, 30 May 2020 17:51:07 -0400

This looks like summer to me.

Fri, 29 May 2020 19:52:37 -0400

Ubiquiti Unifi Dream Machine it will be. This is not an ad. #notgoogle #notamazon #fuckmasssurveillance

twitter.com/ubnt/stat…

Wed, 27 May 2020 11:12:21 -0400

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.

Wed, 27 May 2020 08:32:14 -0400

Poor little boy… [Update: Trump responds] Twitter puts a fake news tag on Trump tweets for the first time - 9to5Mac

Mon, 25 May 2020 17:37:52 -0400

Is this a movie? twitter.com/SpaceX/st…

Mon, 25 May 2020 17:31:27 -0400

Oh. my. god. 😍 Hyperdeck.io twitter.com/terhechte…

Sun, 24 May 2020 16:39:36 -0400

Today, I saw someone enter a phone booth to make a phone call. 😳

Sat, 23 May 2020 14:56:52 -0400

I rarely post pictures here. Taking a quick break from bike ride. Great weather; dry, sunchine, windy. Loving every seconds of it. 🚲😷

Fri, 22 May 2020 16:06:43 -0400

Ok, this one is for geeky people. So funny. twitter.com/scottreuw…

Thu, 21 May 2020 10:42:10 -0400

Is it me of every single Google apps look like a web page? www.macrumors.com/2020/05/2…

Wed, 20 May 2020 07:02:51 -0400

Microsoft Office Fluid looks nice and refreshing. www.theverge.com/2020/5/19…

Sun, 17 May 2020 09:14:45 -0400

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?

Sun, 17 May 2020 08:02:42 -0400

I’m testing something really intriguing, different, unexpected. Built #onuniverse. the-perfect-imperfections-series.onuniverse.com

Sat, 16 May 2020 22:11:06 -0400

In case you didn’t know, I’m on Telegram: t.me/numericci… Get all the latest updates from my main blog.

Fri, 15 May 2020 07:51:12 -0400

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.

Sun, 10 May 2020 20:13:33 -0400

I’m kind of tired of all this. #covid19 #coronavirus

COVID-19 by the Numbers

Sun, 10 May 2020 12:17:15 -0400

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

Noto - A Wonderful app

Sat, 09 May 2020 16:09:45 -0400

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:

Fri, 01 May 2020 15:18:34 -0400

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…

Just Made an Unexpected Discovery

Tue, 28 Apr 2020 20:26:36 -0400

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

Sat, 25 Apr 2020 09:45:19 -0400

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

Thu, 23 Apr 2020 21:44:55 -0400

Every update to Notion app is welcomed. Welcome to release 1.5.

Sun, 19 Apr 2020 09:21:21 -0400

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/

Sun, 19 Apr 2020 09:11:40 -0400

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…

Sat, 18 Apr 2020 12:53:01 -0400

👉🏻 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. 😳

Fri, 17 Apr 2020 17:00:20 -0400

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.

Tue, 14 Apr 2020 21:16:04 -0400

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

Sun, 12 Apr 2020 17:56:10 -0400

Walked for more than two hours in my city’s empty streets. Took many pictures. Stay tuned.

Sat, 11 Apr 2020 09:12:36 -0400

Maybe he was talking to a group of 4 years old? twitter.com

RT @JoyceWhiteVance

Wed, 08 Apr 2020 08:25:59 -0400

Welcome to the future, now. 😳😂😂😂 twitter.com

Tue, 07 Apr 2020 13:48:43 -0400

Competition will heat up in the Mail business apparently… This: hey.com That: 9to5mac.com/2020/04/0… 🤔

Sun, 05 Apr 2020 17:12:45 -0400

People are dumb. 🤷🏻‍♂️ twitter.com/tomwarren…

Remember these clicky keyboards? I do.

Sat, 04 Apr 2020 20:08:19 -0400

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…

Sat, 04 Apr 2020 18:02:28 -0400

Wearing a face mask is now fashionable. #coronaviris #covid19 😔

Fri, 03 Apr 2020 10:51:48 -0400

I’m losing memories of how the world was before the coronavirus. Not a good sign. #coronavirus #covid-19 😟

Fri, 03 Apr 2020 08:37:44 -0400

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

Is Microsoft missing the Covid-19 wave...?

Thu, 02 Apr 2020 08:29:30 -0400

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…

Tue, 31 Mar 2020 21:24:08 -0400

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…

It is disgusting.

Tue, 31 Mar 2020 21:21:11 -0400

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…

Mon, 30 Mar 2020 20:46:54 -0400

There are great changes ahead, after the coronavirus, many are happening now.

www.axios.com/newslette…

Mon, 30 Mar 2020 11:53:06 -0400

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?

Sun, 29 Mar 2020 21:46:24 -0400

Must. See. 👨🏻‍💻😳 #coronavirus #covid19 twitter.com/mikaeltha…

Sun, 29 Mar 2020 15:03:29 -0400

Spent the last few hours testing Basecamp. This thing is soooo cool.

Sat, 28 Mar 2020 10:39:51 -0400

Should we believe numbers coming from Russia? #covid19 #coronavirus 🤔

Wed, 25 Mar 2020 12:02:26 -0400

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?

Tue, 24 Mar 2020 20:42:03 -0400

Woah, just wrote something similar… taken from my Twitter feed…

Tue, 24 Mar 2020 11:23:15 -0400

Yep. It does happen all the time. #coronavirus #covid19 twitter.com/seanbgone…

Sun, 22 Mar 2020 11:38:05 -0400

Group Facetime, Zoom, Messenger, Whatsapp, etc.: what group conference tool is more popular around you? #coronavirus #poll

Fri, 20 Mar 2020 22:57:51 -0400

The Clown in Chief is the devil with a pretty face. #coronavirus

Fri, 20 Mar 2020 13:22:39 -0400

Current numbers from Italy are frightening to say the least. 😟 #covid19

Fri, 20 Mar 2020 12:32:47 -0400

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

Thu, 19 Mar 2020 18:01:18 -0400

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 😔

Thu, 19 Mar 2020 17:41:45 -0400

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

Thu, 19 Mar 2020 17:08:48 -0400

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. 😩

Thu, 19 Mar 2020 16:11:15 -0400

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

COVID-19, Schools and Technology (hit link for more)

Wed, 18 Mar 2020 07:18:40 -0400

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.

Tue, 17 Mar 2020 18:35:36 -0400

It is a good thing to take a break from the news. Really. #covid19

Mon, 16 Mar 2020 20:17:09 -0400

This COVID-19 crisis will change many many things in our life for a long time. Daring Fireball: Use Both Soap and Hand Sanitizer

Get him off Twitter

Mon, 16 Mar 2020 10:55:06 -0400

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…

Sun, 15 Mar 2020 14:26:28 -0400

Just like for 9/11, I’m hooked to my screens. #covid19

COVID-19 and my PhD Friend

Sat, 14 Mar 2020 08:56:29 -0400

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.

Fri, 13 Mar 2020 18:44:41 -0400

As a mass transit user, I’m working from home next week. Not obligated but volunteered action. #covid19

Fri, 13 Mar 2020 07:06:31 -0400

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

Thu, 12 Mar 2020 15:05:05 -0400

Very hard to stay focused at work today. Everything seems to stop around me. People discussing about the situation with COVID-19.

Thu, 12 Mar 2020 12:33:39 -0400

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…

Thu, 12 Mar 2020 07:38:48 -0400

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

Tue, 10 Mar 2020 08:47:28 -0400

Numbers, we need real numbers to help us govern actions. Simple.

link.medium.com/4iWWjYg1J…

Tue, 10 Mar 2020 07:26:08 -0400

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…

Sat, 07 Mar 2020 20:54:14 -0400

🙁😔

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

Anxiety over #COVID-19 (follow link for details)

Fri, 06 Mar 2020 18:43:16 -0400

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.

Fri, 06 Mar 2020 08:06:41 -0400

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.

Thu, 05 Mar 2020 12:02:15 -0400

Hard for me to get over someone liking one of my tweet dating back to 2016. 😳

Wed, 04 Mar 2020 20:15:57 -0400

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. 😔

Tue, 03 Mar 2020 21:51:16 -0400

Remember Posterous? I do. Good night, Posterous

Tue, 03 Mar 2020 20:42:32 -0400

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

Tue, 03 Mar 2020 09:10:18 -0400

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.

the man in charge

Sun, 01 Mar 2020 18:41:25 -0400

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/…

Sun, 01 Mar 2020 11:44:17 -0400

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…

Fri, 28 Feb 2020 08:38:52 -0400

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

On bookmarking apps and services

Wed, 26 Feb 2020 17:39:00 -0400

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/

Tue, 25 Feb 2020 20:48:19 -0400

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.

Tue, 25 Feb 2020 12:28:20 -0400

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…

Desjardins' modern offices in Montreal's olympic stadium tour

Tue, 25 Feb 2020 07:39:47 -0400

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…

Mon, 24 Feb 2020 21:54:27 -0400

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.

Mon, 24 Feb 2020 09:24:45 -0400

Reeder ➡️ News Explorer. numericcitizen.me/2020/02/2…

Mon, 24 Feb 2020 08:11:23 -0400

Finally finished my review of News Explorer, a great RSS feed reader with many goodies.

Sat, 22 Feb 2020 10:02:25 -0400

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”. 😳🤔😂😂

Looking to add Google Analytics Widget to my iPad Home Screen - help

Fri, 21 Feb 2020 08:35:10 -0400

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…

it all comes down to compromise

Fri, 14 Feb 2020 19:01:26 -0400

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.

Fri, 14 Feb 2020 16:47:12 -0400

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. 🤷🏻‍♂️

On Testing News Explorer - Another RSS Reader

Fri, 14 Feb 2020 12:17:06 -0400

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.

Mon, 10 Feb 2020 20:03:57 -0400

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

Sun, 09 Feb 2020 11:31:59 -0400

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.

Sat, 08 Feb 2020 18:57:33 -0400

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 🙏🏻

Thu, 06 Feb 2020 17:56:12 -0400

Major snow storm coming in the next 24 hours. More than 30 CM of snow. Winds. I like that!

Wed, 29 Jan 2020 08:22:25 -0400

Not knowing how many followers I’ve got on Micro.blog is killing me. May be I’m talking to an empty room.

Mon, 13 Jan 2020 07:45:34 -0400

Going to Dallas, TX for a training. That’s Trump country, right? 😑