Weekly Posts Digest from Numeric Citizen Microblog
11 min read
Twitter Is Xenophobic Now
I’m in violation of Twitter’s guidelines because I do promote content coming from other social platforms. I do use Linktree and have my Linktr.ee URL set on @numericcitizen.
<script src="https://micro.blog/quoteback.js"></script> "Accounts that are used for the main purpose of promoting content on another social platform may be suspended.". 2022-12-18This new "Promotion of alternative social platforms policy" on Twitter deserves memorializing for the pure idiocy of it.
Less Than 1%
The longer you’ve been on Twitter (I joined in 2007), the more likely that most of your followers are inactive accounts. My guesstimate would be that less than 1% of my followers are actually active, and even fewer actually care about what I’m saying or posting. So why on earth, give a damn?
2022-12-19<script src="https://micro.blog/quoteback.js"></script> Great idea. Time to give more space to non-centralizing platforms. 2022-12-19I’ve stopped clicking on Twitter links. Starve the site of attention.
The Cost of Twitter
I could save more than a whopping 400$ annually by shutting down my Twitter accounts. Thanks to the potential removal of a few service subscriptions from my workflow and potentially unjustified without Twitter in my digital life: Buffer, Typefully, Mailbrew.
It’s incredible how thinking about my Twitter reliance makes me realize so many things on so many levels in my content creation workflow.
2022-12-19Rewind: Thanks but No Thanks
After watching a recent video from Matt Birchler about Rewind, a constant screen recording utility for the Mac, I was excited to give my email address and get onboard the waiting list for early access to the app. I got my invite a few days ago. As much as I would like to test this app, here's this deal-breaker for me: 20 US$ per month to get on the early access program, no thank you. Why?
I understand Rewind is still in beta, but the developer wants me to pay for testing the application. Shouldn’t it be the other way around so I get a rebate when the app goes out of beta? I mean, even with a 30-day “trial” I still can’t get over this. If it’s 20 US$ a month now for the early access, what will be the price of the final product then? Even more expansive?
Rewind makes me think of CleanShot, and I find Rewind’s pricing overly expansive if I think about the scope of both apps.
Rewind is a great idea, even if it pauses many security risks, but I’ll pass for now.
2022-12-19On Twitter’s Attention Seekers
On Twitter, you can get notified when someone starts following you. Sounds great until it isn’t. You know, many people will start following others to get attention about their existence, hoping to get a follow back. It’s easy to know they are seeking your attention because after a few days they will unfollow you. I always despised this behaviour. For this reason, I prefer Micro.blog’s lack of notifications when someone starts to follow me. I don’t pay attention.
2022-12-19
I get way better interactions here on Micro.blog (more often, better quality) than on any other platforms I ever spent time on. Just a not-so-random thought.
2022-12-19
So what do have here… quick and dirty review coming soon. 🤓🤗
My Experience With Tidbyt LED-Based Display
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.
2022-12-20Installing Windows in 2022
I just spent part of my morning installing Windows 10 version 22H2 on a virtual machine with VMware Fusion 12 on my recently acquired 2013 Mac Pro. God, it’s been a long time since I experienced the Windows installation process. It is so freaking slow (way faster to install a Linux machine, BTW) and with so many reboots. I still prefer Apple’s macOS in that respect.
2022-12-21
Why Close My Twitter Accounts? Here Are My Five Reasons
I think it is essential to elaborate on why I will close my Twitter accounts in 2023. This is not something to do lightly. So, after much thought, here are my five main reasons.
- I disagree with the values and views as they are expressed by its new owner: Elon Musk. Even if he resigns, it won’t matter much. Elon Musk has broken too many things since he became the owner. Twitter is a broken platform and cannot be trusted.
- I no longer want to feed the beast (user tracking, advertising networks, algorithm-based timelines). I won’t pay to get rid of 50% of the ads or whatever Musk decides to ask for.
- I no longer trust Twitter’s sustainability and ability to thrive in the future. Twitter has become a loser in my digital landscape. If anything, Twitter has become the other wake-up call for the toxicity of a centralized web. The time has come for decentralizing the Internet.
- Twitter doesn’t add significant unique value to my digital life anyway. Most of what I’m getting from Twitter can be found elsewhere.
- Before I decided to close my accounts, I wanted to focus on one of my two accounts anyway (numericcitizen) instead of apple_observer, but it doesn’t have enough traction to warrant the efforts for the change.
What are your reasons?
2022-12-21
The trend is clear: people are leaving Twitter. This is my follower count since June of 2022. If there was any doubt left about my decision to quit Twitter, no more. 2022-12-21 Found a great place for my Tidbyt.
2022-12-22 Assign to All Desktops - A Must Know macOS Stage Manager Trick
Updated my last Mac to macOS Ventura and discovered something super useful when using Stage Manager. 
If you want to have an application always visible, make sure to select “Assign To: All Desktops” from the application icon in the Dock. This is particularly useful with the Finder so we can easily do drag & drop of a file into the active window; the Finder needs to always be available for this to be possible.
2022-12-22
Write.as: Are You Fediverse Friendly?
Write.as and Fediverse support (or lack of):
Write.as doesn't render the URLs of both the toot and the PeerTube video. The HTML embedding code does work, but the rendered video is not responsive and doesn't blend well with the page on mobile.My guess is that we will see changes to Write.as to make it more Fediverse friendly. 2022-12-22
What I’ll Lose By Leaving Twitter
As per my current analysis and preparation for leaving Twitter, here’s what I’m going to lose.
- Access to product announcements, most of which I track because they are part of my workflows (Examples: Glass, Unsplash, Substack, Opal, Readwise, and 90 more). This could be hard to replace, not all websites support RSS feeds.
- Access to some public services status messages like special events or some type of alerts.
- Two of my Brews on Mailbrew that are entirely based on Twitter content will need to be deleted.
- Interaction with people following me who won’t leave Twitter to go elsewhere. I rarely get replies, though. Not a big loss.
- According to [my Plausible page](https://plausible.io/numericcitizen.micro.blog), 50% of visitors coming from non-direct sources are coming from Twitter. One way to mitigate this is by enabling RSS feeds and letting people no in advance other ways to get in touch.
- Quite a few of my published articles or blog posts refer to my tweets as links or embed. They won’t show up anymore when I turnoff public access to my tweets. That's not cool.
Musing About Writing Needs And This War
Earlier this year, back in May I think, I started a subscription to Write.as. Why? I was curious about this platform for writers and there was a special for a five-year subscription. So, why not! Then I started to write about my reactions to the war in Ukraine. I wrote maybe a dozen of posts on this subject. I had to let go my feelings. Then I stopped. But I still follow the news about this senseless war. I’m still in state of mixed feelings ranging from feeling helpless, frustrated, desperate, raging, etc.
Now, I don’t know what to do. Should I continue writing on Write.as or move my written frustrations elsewhere? Here? I don’t know. Enabling posts import to my timeline from the Write.as RSS feed might be a good solution.
Tell me what you think about dilemma.
2022-12-22
Starting from now: I no longer cross-post my original Micro.blog posts to Twitter. Curious to see how bad it will be for my visitors analytics.
2022-12-22
Sometimes I wish I had started blogging fifteen or twenty years ago. It would be so cool to have this long stretch of writing at my disposal and reflect back at what I wrote. I guess I’ll do just that in ten or fifteen years from now… 🤷🏻♂️
2022-12-22
More is Indeed Better on Micro.blog
I receive more user feedback or interactions in a day here on Micro.blog than in an entire month on Twitter. On top of that, the quality is 100x higher too.
Think about that for a second.
Thank you guys!
2022-12-22
An iPhone + a Belkin iPhone Mount + macOS Ventura + FaceTime Call
I finally tested a FaceTime call with my iPhone 13 Pro and the Belkin iPhone mount with my M1 MacBook Air running macOS Ventura. The setup was easy. iPhone automatically detected as a possible camera source within FaceTime. The image quality was obviously top-notch. The sound was great too. The tabletop feature required a bit of tweaking but eventually led to good (but not “top-notch”) results.
The only problem is the weight of the combined iPhone 13 Pro with a case and the Belkin mount: the screen panel of my MacBook tends to move back during the call. Oops. 🤣
2022-12-23
After Closing Twitter, Medium Will Be Next
The next victim of my "digital cleanup" will be my Medium account. Even though I stopped writing original content there a while ago, I currently get a few cents a month of revenue, maybe a few dollars when I’m lucky. It’s tough to expand the readership over there. My revenue used to be enough to pay for my Partner Program annual membership, but not anymore. All in all, the time has come to move on.
2022-12-23Getting Ready for the Holidays and my Next Trip
Closing out my working session with my office for the holidays. What a year it was. Now is the time to finally get ready for Christmas and everything that comes with it. Next, on December 26th, we’re leaving Canada for Brasil and our first cruise trip in five years! 😅
2022-12-23
That is a hell of a low pressure. Very windy now. Lots of rain earlier. Getting way colder by tomorrow.
2022-12-23 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.
2022-12-24
If you don’t have a website, a blog or a newsletter and only exist on Twitter, then I give up. You’re not worth it. Thought of the night.
2022-12-24
The Digital Cleanup Continues
This morning, I visited IFTTT and Zapier to turn off ten applets which were using Twitter. My About page was updated to remove references to my Twitter accounts. While at it, I removed all references to Medium and GetRevue since they are no longer used.
I still have to figure out how I will follow people on Twitter who are valuable (there are a few) but refuse to move elsewhere. I might use News Explorer to follow them, cutting the noise because I refrain from using a Twitter client. It’s not a perfect solution because I would get all their replies which makes things noisy. Speaking of Twitter clients (Twitter & Tweetbot), these were removed from my devices too.
It is one of the most comprehensive digital cleanups I ever did since 2007. For the upcoming year: I’ll focus on the open web services and tools for publishing most of my content. There are a few exceptions: YouTube and WordPress.com.
I may sound a bit extremist.
2022-12-24