The Beginning of My Journey to Midjourney

“A man sitting in front of a retro computer doing some important work”. 👀

This is my first ever prompt sent to Midjourney. I think this image is an excellent representation of my current state. A guy experimenting with Midjourney in front of my computer. I’m blown away. What a great time to be alive! Discord, as a client of this back-end service, is fascinating. 🤯

I subscribed for one month to the basic plan. I’m not sure how I’ll use the service. One example could be to create illustrations for my blog posts on Numeric Citizen Space. Another use case would be for illustration purposes for my work. I’ll see and continue experimenting. I’ll report back here my discoveries and impressions.

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.

Right from Glass’s highlights website:

We’re wrapping up the final touches on our AI-powered Search beta that we’ll be releasing soon to Early Access. Early Access is an included perk for a new level of Glass membership that we’re announcing soon. Once we’ve tested it thoroughly over the coming months, it’ll be released to everyone. Source: New Member Search in Beta — Glass

In other words, Glass will add another subscription level where you’ll get pre-release features for testing. Subscriptions are not enough. Now we must pay to be beta testers. Great. 🤦🏻‍♂️

One of the reasons I’m leaving Smugmug is the fact that most of their improvements in the last year are geared toward selling your images. I’m not into this business. I tried selling some of my images on Stock a few years back and made a few dollars. I do have some images for sale on Adobe Stock. The revenue I get for selling an image is RIDICULOUS! I’ve sold 12 images, generating more than… 17$ in revenue. Who’s buying images these days? There is so much free content available (looking at you, Unsplash! 👀). Why bother?

On Articles Size & Twitter

Tweets on Twitter use to be 140 characters max. Later it was increased to 280 characters. Now, apparently, you can post a note with a maximum of 2500 characters.

Now, looking at MacRumors or similar sites, it seems we get shorter and shorter articles, almost the size of a note on Twitter. Isn’t it strange?

People are busy and their attention span has shrunk considerably. Twitter once was very popular and others tried to adjust to its modus operandi. The web is adjusting in unexpected ways.

I'm Subscribing, Now What?

Now that I’m a subscriber of TapbotsIvory client for Mastodon, what’s up with the updates? Is it because it’s summertime? Why do I feel that the development of new features and improvements has considerably slowed in recent weeks and months? After all, the roadmap is clear here.

Tweetbot followed the same trend. Not all developers or companies follow the same product releases, but regarding Tapbots, the trend is slowing and is a pattern. Now, look at Mastodon’s official client; there is an update nearly every two weeks or at least monthly. Ok, there are more than 40 contributors to the open source project of r the iOS app while Tapbots is a three-person company.

I’m ok with subscriptions, but just like the subscription itself, the commitment from the developer has to keep up. The subscription model is everywhere and is here to stay. The software and services landscape has changed forever. Expectations from customers like me are changing too. It’s too easy to grab my money regularly without showing up in the App Store “Updates” tab.

I’m watching you, Tapbots. Don’t deceive me again.

Yeah, Tweetbot was a great app, just like Ivory is, but it lacked some love in the last few years before its demise.

Ranting off. Sorry.

On Clipboard Management & Subscription Model

I’m testing Paste, a clipboard manager software utility for Mac, iOS (link). I kind of like it. It has better management features than Unclutter, which also offers some clipboard management. I’m on a 14-day trial period, but 19 $CAN, a year for a utility without a one-time purchase option, is bugging me. Will see where it goes.

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: ↓

“VanMoof raises $128m to make its high-tech
e-bikes the new standard in cities worldwide” 
<p>“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”></p><p class=Read: mastodon.social

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.

A new ad by Apple. I never share this but this one made me smile many times. Very entertaining too. Interesting how Apple highlights many features of its products in s single ad.