A day at the office. Today, I had a meeting with my client’s external IT resources. One of them had a strange name, hard to pronounce. While waiting for everyone to join the meeting, wanting to fill in the silence, I asked where he was from. He responded, “Russia.” I said, “Oh.” 😱 This was followed by a big silence while I could see in mack back my Tidbyt display showing a prominent Ukrainian flag. 🇺🇦👊🏻We moved on to the meeting’s first subject. 😏😂

A colleague of mine told me after the meeting that not all Russians are ok with this war in Ukraine. Yeah, right. I guess. This is not a valuable excuse in my book. Where are the diaspora demonstrations, in Canada? In the US?

Women in Iran have more courage to defend democratic values than those men in Russia to defend what is blatantly right from what is wrong. This is utterly frustrating.

Glory to Ukraine. 🇺🇦🇺🇦

In Photography, the iPhone Can Be a Killer

My nephew, a semi-pro photographer, recently sold 90% of his photography gear (Canon). He only kept one body and one 50mm lens. 😱 He upgraded his phone to the iPhone 14 Pro. 😏He couldn’t be happier, he told me. Even with the iPhone, he essentially kept his photo-processing workflow as-is (Adobe Lightroom). This makes me pause a bit. Sure, he spends much less time doing professional photography work, but still. I call this the iPhone-photography killer effect.

He got his first exposure (pun intended) to the art of photography with me when he was still a child, more than thirty years ago, when he accompanied me for a short photowalk. He demonstrated that he could be a photographer, even at this young age, just by his numerous questions and suggestions.

I’ll bring my small (but heavy) camera gear (Nikon) on my trip to Morocco and when I visit the Canary Islands later this summer. Will these trips be the last ones where I use the big one? 🤔 I know that I’m going to upgrade my iPhone 13 Pro to the upcoming iPhone 15 Pro Max later this fall. This could trigger a similar fate to my camera bag.

📺 I always keep two Apple TVs: an Apple TV HD for the main bedroom that I gave to my brother-in-law, and an A12-based Apple TV 4K was my main ATV for the living room. Today, I bought the 2022 Apple TV 4K with Ethernet. The older one is now in the bedroom, and the new one is in the living room. Not what I call exciting upgrades. Had to redo all the apps setup. 😒 But it does feel faster in a more compact package.

Still working from the coffee shop. 😅 While reading a technical document, I wish I could take notes and keep bookmarks about my readings. I discovered that, as well-thoughtful my personal creative workflow can be, I’m under-equipped for my work life🤦🏻‍♂️. OneNotes from Microsoft is great but so dull at the same time. This leaves me with Notion and Craft Docs. 🙄🤔 I really have to up my game at work; I’m way too lousy. I should use lessons learned from my blogger life.

As much as I’m invested in Craft Docs, I’m not sure I’ll use it for my travel notes this time around. It’s not very good when working offline. Maybe Apple Notes? Why not Day One? 🤔 The latter could be a fun experiment, and it’s easy to export journal entries into Markdown for reuse elsewhere!

There is one thing that I’m really looking forward to on our trip to Morocco🇲🇦. For the first time ever, we will have a private guide for the whole trip. I’m usually the main driver when going on such a vacation. Now, I’ll be quietly sitting in the van and be free to take pictures while on the move. 📷

I’m still slowly digesting Apple news of this week (think of a cow 🐄 in the field 🌿). About macOS Sonoma widgets 🖼️: it’s surprising that Apple is showing widgets to be perfectly aligned when they are dropped on the desktop background. According to some YouTuber’s early reviews, you can be messy with them and drop them wherever you want. People will get messy, for sure.

Watch Out Reddit

🤨 Because of recent Reddit behaviors towards their API consumption models, seeing Apollo go, just like that, plus similarities of behavior with Twitter, I may drop my cross posting to Reddit as a first step of protests. Then, stop manual posting (in /r/craftdocs for example). Ultimately, closing my account could become a possibility. 🫤

I don’t know if it is because I’m getting older, but I have more and more trouble and aversion with high-velocity feeds coming from platforms like Mastodon (when following tags like #WWDC during the dub dub week). I prefer the slowness of Micro.blog’s feed or a simple articles reading session.