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A Message for Ukrainians
The news of the Russian criminal invasion of its sovereign neighbour, Ukraine, is appalling. Putin and his regime is committing an aggression that shall be punished, at the right time, at the right place with the right means. I cannot believe that weāre seeing such an invasion in Europe, in 2022. Whatās next? Whoās next? Weāre all going to suffer at various degrees from this utterly criminal invasion. I pay no respect to Putin, his government, his propaganda machine and every single Russian who support this aggression. This is an act of war against democracy.
No wonder why Ukraine wanted to stay in NATO camp, because Russia is simply an antidemocratic land. Democratic governments and systems are far from perfect, but they are the least imperfect solution.
For now, Iām sending my positive waves of support to the Ukrainians community of Montreal, Canada. I cannot wait for the next demonstration, so I can show my full support of the Ukrainians.
Hitler must be so proud.
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Dune Movie - Woah!
Today, I finally saw the Dune movie, by the Canadian director, Denis Villeneuve. As a Canadian myself Iām so proud of him! Itās not a movie review, far from it. Let me just say that when I think about this movie, the word āequilibriumā comes to my mind. The movie is well balanced: storyline, intrigue, visual effects (visual effects serving the story), music, Duneās world imaginary world. But the best for me were those āornithoptersā. Wow, they were sooooo cool! Canāt wait for the next part.
Have you seen the movie? What do you think of it?
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Challenge of the day: exporting posts from WordPress to Ghost
Well, well, well, it seems that data portability among CMS is an issue. Who knew! I’m trying to find an easy way to move a few posts from my WordPress blog into my Ghost website. Exporting data from WordPress seems like an all-or-nothing situation. There are a few plugins available for this. The problem is that the content isn’t easily imported into Ghost. The latter does have a plugin, but it doesn’t support selecting posts. I don’t want to do this manually.
Any idea or suggestions?
Update 2022-02-16: There is a follow-up to my quest, read all the details here
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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.
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For (more) personal stories of mine, here is the place to go.
Friday Notes #61 ā Knowing Our Parents numericcitizen-introspection.blog
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From Appleās AirPort Exterme to Ubiquitiās Amplify HD
As reported in my previous blog post, I had a chance to perform a ātech refreshā of my sisterās 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. Itās 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. Itās 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.
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MP3 Files and the iPhone ā Harder Than Necessary
I find it surprisingly hard to find a simple MP3 player for an iPhone these days. I mean, just a simple application capable of downloading an MP3 file locally on the device with good playback controls, simple library management, nothing fancy. Readdle’s Documents (which I know very well) and EverMusic seem to be popular options. Documents offers a good user experience, albeit its multipurpose mission with documents management.
(Iām 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.)
Whatās your experience in playing MP3 files on your iPhone? Iām curious.
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Yep, Notion is Bad
I’m nearly done with my Notion to Craft migration. I know I’ve been lazy; I’ve been using Craft for many months while my old content was still sitting there in Notion. While doing the migration, I realized, again, that I don’t really like Notion’s handling of a document. It just feels unnatural and quirky. Export options are very limited, which makes my job much harder. I’m also losing some metadata along the way (and database content too). I don’t have high hopes for a Craft eXtension to support Notion’s API to help users do this kind of rich content migration. I expect to finish the migration in the coming days.
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Give Me Some Time...
…and Iāll move out of 1Password. Itās on my to-do list for 2022. Gruberās article is a reminder that time is ticking. Iām just being too lazy to move my stuff out of 1Password and put that in Appleās Keychain. It takes time, which is a rare resource for me.
I donāt like 1Passwordās direction. It seems to me that going the enterprise way is counterproductive for the average users. Corporations and individuals donāt share the same objectives. Why do you think Microsoft is making Teams for personal use?
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Taking Advantage of the iPad Screen
Consider the previous annotated screenshot from Matter. Way too many applications have the same design issue. Why, in 2022, developers cannot fix these wasted space? I see that the content is of the same width if the iPad is used in portrait or landscape orientation. Why not adjust width dynamically? Is it that hard?
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Iām a Big Fan of Craft Butā¦
As you probably know, Iām 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 āApps & Servicesā. 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, Iām realistic, and I would argue the contrary. The team behind Craft is surely a fraction of Notionās. Basic things are hard to come by. Said another way, my expectations arenāt met as fast as I wished. Take this weekās update, which was released earlier this week. While Iām happy to see improvements, there is not much to talk about. The release notes starts by the possibility to āstarā 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, itās 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 Craftās core experience, which I find somewhat lacking.
I think Iām being overly demanding. Patience is a virtue.
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Exploring the World of DJing
I always liked electronic music, but Iām not a musician. In recent moths, Iāve been exploring the world of DJing. Itās a way for me to feel that I can do music without deep knowledge of musical theory. Itās 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 āunlockā 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. Itās irritating for someone like me whoās 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 fromā¦ I donāt knowā¦ even on Windows they probably look aliens. The best looking application is Algoriddimās 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.
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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.
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Surprise Me!
The Surprise Me! plugin for Micro.blog is undoubtedly a lot of fun to play with. It will pick a random post from this blog out of 1578 posts published since 2018. It’s a fun way to resurface old yet still relevant content. Try it! I wonder how many hours of my life were used to write and publish all that stuff?
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On NFTs: What Am I Missing?
First, consider this announcement from Samsung:
āIn 2022, Samsung is introducing the worldās first TV screen-based NFT explorer and marketplace aggregator, a groundbreaking platform that lets you browse, purchase, and display your favorite art ā all in one place.ā
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 Iām not missing a lot, and that I should probably move on. Nothing to see here. Yet, how long before platforms like Unsplash steps in? š¤¦š»āāļø
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He says "Hi!"
For no apparent reason, I started a photo series of this little guy in all sorts of visual contexts. I’m using an album to store them all. I’m currently at 23 photos of him. He’s so cute, isn’t he? I got my inspiration from someone here on Micro.blog who did the same in recent months. I can’t remember who, though. So who knows where this is headed. It’s the time of the year for frivolous projects. š
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Completed The Servant Season 2 - At Long Last!
Finally was able to finish season 2 of The Servant on Apple TV+ yesterday, just in time for the third season. What a weird story. The only occasion I can spend time watching TV series is during the holidays. Using AirPods Max for the listening experience is pure magic; nobody in the living gets distracted by the TV, and the sound quality is impressive. Now, I should finish For All Mankind Season 2.
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A Message for Christmas
To all of you, even though I donāt know you personally, since I spend quite some time here all year long reading your posts, I kind of feel familiarity. Itās like being part of a small community. I like this a lot. Itās 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. š
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Phasing Out My Vimeo Account
Well, Iām not a video guy. I prefer photography. My experience with Vimeo is coming to an end. I wonāt renew my subscription. Iāll 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 donāt like to do. Itās like putting hard work, countless hours of work down the drain. š
You can have a look at my Vimeo profile if you are curious.
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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…
