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Travel update #9: Krka National Park & Sibenik, Croatia
It’s been a day with ups and downs. We left the apartment at around 10:30 AM in direction of the Krka National Park, 45-minute drive to see some other waterfalls and translucide lakes. The first part of the visit was really nice because it was like a repeat of the other visit to the national park that we visited earlier in the week with great waterfalls and gorgeous lakes with transparent blue water. Unlike the first national park, this time, it was much more crowded to a point of being unpleasant at some point because we had to wait for people to finish their selfies. 🤨
We left to see another part of the park where a bigger waterfall was expected and was located further in the park, but we couldn’t locate it and wasted our time waiting for the bus to get us back to the parking lot. The last stop was to visit a secluded church rather hard to locate on the maps. We eventually ended up at the entrance and couldn’t buy any tickets to visit the area but a priest did let us anyway visit the monastery and the areas with a little smile on his face. It was a welcomed gesture.
Next up, we had to return to the apartment to exchange my pair of glasses otherwise I would have been enable to drive at night when coming back to the apartment. For dinner, we decided to go to Sibenik, a great little village near Vodice. Oh boy I instantly fell in love with it. I didn’t have my main camera so I was left with my iPhone to take as many pictures as I could. We decided to come back tomorrow and this time, I’ll bring my other big camera. I can’t wait for this.
2024-07-01 ∞On My Writing Style As a Traveler
As you probably know, I’ve been writing and sharing my travel notes since the beginning of my trip to Croatia. I’m proud of maintaining the regularity to post each day, but not as proud of my writing itself. I can’t quite describe the quality of my writing, but when I read it back, it feels rather superficial. Why do I feel this way?
Well, my writing tends to list the places I visited and whether I liked them. But I almost always fail to explain why I loved visiting them. Take yesterday’s travel update, for example: I wrote that I fell in love with Sibenik and shared a photo of banners adorned with children’s drawings. What exactly resonated with me in this place? What were my emotions when I entered the narrow streets of the village and first saw the banners everywhere? It was surprising—the children’s drawings added a contrast to the old buildings' walls, giving the city a sense of humanity. And you know what? It was the children’s festival! It’s a great way to celebrate humanity.
Part of my problem is that I’m not a native English speaker, but a French speaker. I don’t have the same level of vocabulary to describe feelings or physical places. I’m wondering if I could first write a version of my travel update in French and then ask ChatGPT to translate it into English. For today’s travel update, that’s what I’m going to do. We’ll see how it comes out this time. Let me know if you notice a difference.
Disclaimer: this text was first written in English (yes, in English!) and I asked ChatGPT to improve to the writing. It made a big difference, trust me, but I still have this feeling of owning the ideas and the final results.
2024-07-02 ∞The “joy” of trying to be iPad-only while traveling. Hitting “try again” fixes the issue but it’s a recurring one. I’m just browsing a folder containing images stored on the iPad itself for god’s sake! 🤬
My next trip to the US is to see a Sting show in New York in October. After that, I'm not planning to visit the US for at least five years. I refuse to visit totalitarian states. Fuck #Trump. Fuck those who supports this buffoon and clown.
2024-07-02 ∞Travel update #10: Sibenik Take #2, Croatia
Once again, what a beautiful day we had in Sibenik. The main objective today was to visit the three forts of the city, which offer a splendid view of the town and the islands off the coast. The weather was magnificent even though storm cells were threatening the region. Fortunately, we were spared from rain and lightning!
We visited the three forts, which were overall interesting but are mainly worth visiting for the views they offer. We took advantage of the occasion to have a picnic at lunchtime while the wind was blowing moderately across the area. It was pleasant to hear the wind rustling through the trees, mostly mature pines.
After visiting the forts, we descended back into the city, this time making sure to choose a parking spot on the west side of town so we could walk along the long promenade by the docks. We ended up in the old part of the city to revisit and complete our tour from yesterday, which was merely a preview. This time, I had the good camera in hand, and I took the opportunity to capture new perspectives different from those taken yesterday.
We were back at the apartment around 6:30 PM to freshen up before heading out to a small neighboring village of Vodice, i.e., Tribunj. I can't wait to see this little village.
I can’t wait to share some of my best pictures.
2024-07-02 ∞Observation of the day: because of the trees, we can hear the wind. Travelling has great influence on my spirit.
2024-07-02 ∞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.
2024-07-03 ∞Travel update #11: From Sibenik to Split, Croatia
Yesterday, I didn't have time to write the daily update because it was a transition day by car to our next destination: Split in Croatia. Of course, we took advantage of our route to stop in Trogir to visit and have lunch there. It was our last stop by car as we had to leave it at the airport in the suburbs of Trogir. From now on, we will take a boat. More details to come on that.
Our journey continued to Split, taking a taxi via Uber. The trip took a little over half an hour. Once there, we went to drop off our luggage at our apartment and took some time to explore the surroundings. What a strange but beautiful urban environment. Our apartment is located inside the old palace of Split. Accessing it is not easy as there are winding corridors and numerous stairs to climb. We felt like we were living within the walls of a medina like those found in Morocco. It’s lovely.
I took advantage of the late afternoon light to take some photos. What a beautiful city. I already know that I won't have enough time to see everything and try to capture photos that are off the beaten path. I'll do my best, and it will serve as an excuse to wish to return someday.
2024-07-04 ∞Travel update #12: Visiting Hvar, Bisevo, Vis Islands, Croatia
Once again, with a bit of delay, I’m sharing a new update on my trip to Croatia. Yesterday, the day was primarily spent on the waters in front of the city of Split. We took a small speedboat cruise to visit three beautiful large islands. The tour lasted more than ten hours. We also passed through the popular Blue Lagoon and visited a cave located on the island of Bisevo, where the turquoise water offers a surreal setting. It was absolutely magnificent. We had a mini lunch in Hvar and spent two lovely hours there, strolling and enjoying this beautiful place. A fishing village welcomed us. Fishing is still practiced there, but tourism is by far the largest economic activity. The architecture of the buildings is similar to what is found throughout the Croatian coast, with light stone buildings and terracotta-tiled roofs in shades of orange. This is also similar to what you find in Italy, by the way. We had a quite bumpy return to the coast as the sea was much more agitated than in early morning. It was quite an experience. Thankfully, the boat operator was experimented.
Regarding food, restaurant offerings mostly consist of grilled dishes, mainly fish and meat. Tuna salads, Niçoise, and Greek salads are also on the menu. Some restaurants feature typical Croatian dishes like goulashes. The sale of ice cream and gelato is very common in southern villages, where it's warmer. I succumbed a few times, actually. The brightness on clear days here is absolutely perfect, just like everywhere on the Côte d'Azur.
We are halfway through our stay in this beautiful country. Tomorrow, we will embark on a small cruise for a few days to visit other islands, ultimately leading us to our final destination: Dubrovnik, where we will spend a few days. I’m really looking forward to it.
2024-07-05 ∞Travel update #13: Bye Bye Split, Let’s Do Another Cruise to Dubrovnik!
Today was our last day in Split, Croatia. We strolled through the streets of Split once again and had breakfast at the "Bepa" restaurant, which is accessible from one of the public squares. Once again, we ate very well. However, the prices for food are even higher than we expected. We're coming to the conclusion that traveling in Croatia is almost as expensive as traveling in countries like Italy!
Today also marks the beginning of a short cruise that will allow us to visit the islands of Korčula and Mljet before arriving in Dubrovnik, our last stop before returning to Canada. We still have many beautiful things to discover, fortunately. I don't know if it's a good sign or not, but the early experiences from the beginning of our trip already feel distant.
2024-07-06 ∞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.
2024-07-06 ∞A summer taste of Croatia. 🤗
Slowly but surely heading to Dubrovnik, Croatia, by the sea. 🤗 what a wonderful morning, isn’t?
Our current view in Dubrovnik port, Croatia. That’s the moon that I love! 😍
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.
2024-07-10 ∞An ATM in Montenegro shows a warning asking the admin user to login to activate Windows. 😱🤪
Finally booked my Apple Vision Pro demo session for this coming week. I’m not buying this thing but I can’t wait to try it out. Side note: during my vacation in Croatia, we went to see a museum in Split where we were handed Meta Quest headset. The experience was interesting but the visual quality left to be desired.
2024-07-13 ∞Brought a book with me for vacation. Didn’t read it as I always find better things to do. Typical me. 🤷🏻♂️🙄
2024-07-13 ∞My current view: in-flight infotainment screen where we can see the flight timeline. Easily spot when meals are served. First time that I’m seeing this. I find this really cool and probably helps answer many questions from people. Side note: I’d love to see Apple build a FlightPlay user experience (CarPlay equivalent).
I support LGBTQ+ cause. I read MacStories story about Threads murky management of controversial posts. My personal take is simplicistic: stop using Meta platforms. I do understand that for some people to be heard, they want to be on Meta’s platforms, though.
2024-07-13 ∞People are so quick to say “I don’t want him to win but I also don’t want him to die” as if there’s some prize for not wishing death on someone who does more than wish us dead. If someone in power actively attempts to do unthinkable damage to the world and people around you, just a reminder: you get absolutely nothing in exchange for kindness toward them.
Some food for thoughts.
2024-07-14 ∞Yep, Fucking Guns
Great take by Gruber on this week sad but highly predictable events. The US is a sick country. Sidenote: on my last few trips, all Americans that I met told me after presenting themselves as Americans: “I know, we’re one of those stupid Americans…”. I reserve this thought mostly to Trump supporters which I never met personally, thanks god.
2024-07-14 ∞But Techies Will Be Happy
But speaking of the DMA, Chromium is, far and away, the most popular browser engine that the DMA compels Apple to allow on iOS. There are legitimate reasons to wish that Apple allowed third-party browser engines on iOS. But there are also legitimate reasons why Apple doesn’t allow them. Chrome really is bad. Better to let the market decide than let clueless regulators decide.
I'm on the side of Gruber here. Governments are usually not very good at tech. We should always be on the doubters side when they want to regulate. Opening up the iPhone will make it weaker than today, not better. I would even argue that the vast majority of users will lose more than they gain. But some techies will be happy.
2024-07-15 ∞So, iPadOS 18 beta3: nothing obvious, really. Feels snappy. Less buggy than expected. Some rough edges, of course. Autocorrect seems way better. Finally. Tempted by iOS 18 now. 🤦🏻♂️🤷🏻♂️
2024-07-15 ∞I 🥰 the new design of Photos in iPadOS 18. Probably the most controversial opinion about iPadOS this year.
2024-07-15 ∞Trying to Find Comforting Thoughts
Manuel Moreale reflecting on one hundred people who took the time to sign his guestbook (I did):
It’s the number of people who have taken a few minutes out of their busy lives to write something on my guestbook. One hundred doesn’t seem a lot in the grand scheme of things, especially on the web. If you have one hundred followers you might as well have zero. One hundred views on a YouTube video? That’s nothing. You need at least one hundred thousand to be part of the conversation. And yet, I find one hundred signatures in a guestbook to be a lot. Can you imagine having one hundred people in front of you, all saying something to you, one after the other? It would feel overwhelming.
I often think about this. Just like Manuel, I have a blog, a YouTube channel, a podcast (sort of). Globally, my follower counts are very low (even lower than Manuel's) when looked through the Internet scale lens, but if those people were in front of me, in the same room, that would be quite something else. I find this thought to be comforting.
2024-07-16 ∞Apple Is Telling Half the Story
There is something incomplete in how Apple is portraying Safari as a way to stay private when surfing the web. The ad is certainly visually striking, with surveillance cameras flying over people as they browse the web on their non-iPhone devices. It's a compelling analogy. It reminds me of another Apple ad where a person is in a similar situation, being watched and followed by a group of people who want to know their online whereabouts.
But you know, Apple is mum about its deal with Google as being the default search engine in Safari. The last time I checked, Google isn't the type of privacy-protection company you might think they are.
2024-07-16 ∞If Apple were to design a new router, the resulting device would likely resemble this one from Ubiquiti. The box has a similar aesthetic to Apple's iconic networking hardware.
2024-07-16 ∞Taboola + Apple News? No thanks
Apple’s decision to strike a deal with Taboola is shocking and off-brand — so much so that I have started to question the company’s long-term commitment to good customer experience, including its commitment to privacy. As it chases more and more revenue to appease Wall Street, it’s clear Apple will become one of those companies that prioritize shareholders over paying customers and their experience.
I hate ads. I hate ads. This is a sad day. That is not cool at all. How can Apple brags about protecting user privacy (see that ad on YouTube?) and al while serving ads through an external ads network? More than ever, Apple is becoming like everyone else and IS profiling its users, for money. I'm starting to hate Tim Cook's Apple. As soon as I see a change in News, I'll cancel my subscription to Apple One.
2024-07-16 ∞In today's positive post, it's about Inoreader filtering capabilities. Without them, cutting out the noise from feeds from AppleInsider or MacRumors just to name a few obvious abusers would be impossible. These feeds are usually filled with ads disguised as posts. Filtering keywords include: Amazon, Deal, Rebate, Gift, Discount, Prime, Amazon. You get the idea.
2024-07-17 ∞Tomorrow I'm going to the Apple Store for an Apple Vision Pro demonstration. For some reasons, I'm not that excited for this. And I'm a big Apple fan. I was excited for the AVP when it came out, but like everyone else, the hype is no longer there. Apple is still working to find THE killer app or use case for this. And, something is broken with Apple these days...
2024-07-17 ∞Today’s positive post: I’m happy to have installed iOS 18 beta 3 on my phone. A few bugs here and there and glitches but nothing earth chattering. 🤗
2024-07-17 ∞Eddy Cue doesn’t lose many arguments but he lost that one. All of the effort spent pushing Apple to support RCS would have been better spent pushing Apple to ship iMessage for Android. And without a supported iMessage client for Android, that role ought to go to WhatsApp, not RCS. WhatsApp is free, secure, and works equally well on all phones.
I think Apple made a big mistake by not shipping iMessage for Android.
2024-07-18 ∞Apparently, a social network like X does not promote posts containing links to external websites. While this policy may be frustrating1, there are possible responses to this practice to consider. If someone shares a post with a link to X, you could choose not to open the link2. Encouraging others to adopt a similar stance can be an effective way to voice your opinion and influence the platform's practices through your engagement, or lack thereof.3
2024-07-19 ∞In a meeting this morning at the office, I was quick to point out that those running Macs were just fine (we’re a Microsoft shop with a few weird guys like me promoting the Mac). I got booed. I guess people in IT are masochist. #crowdstrike 🤷🏻♂️
2024-07-19 ∞Today’s CrowdStrike update is probably the most expensive update of all time in IT history. Will we really learn from it? Some big players probably will but in general, I doubt it. #crowdstrike
2024-07-19 ∞Today I made a template. Who knows, it might be useful to some big company.
“We will release {insert product or service name here} over the coming months, but not in the EU due to the unpredictable nature of the European regulatory environment,” {insert company name here} said in a statement to {Insert news agency name here}.
You are welcome.
2024-07-19 ∞👋🏻 I'm a little bit late, but hey, here is the newest edition of my weekly creative summary newsletter. The email edition is coming up later today. 😅
2024-07-21 ∞It’s 8:45 AM. The joy of running beta software. 😱👀
In iOS 18 beta 4, look at user ratings in the App Dtore and the choice Apple made for the star’s gray shades… it’s very hard to spot how many actual stars were given out of the five. Is this on purpose? 👀🧐
Seriously considering closing my Reddit account. It’s not worth it. And their corporate attitude don’t align with my values.
2024-07-25 ∞Jeff Perry on Reddit deal with Google for content access exclusivity in indexing their content: The Enshittification of Search Continues
This could set a precedent for other sites like Hacker News and Pinterest to start searching for the highest bidder to make their content exclusive on another search engine. Eventually other sites might do the same in hopes to thwart the serial scraping of their content for AI models to learn from and make a few bucks in the process. It is just another byproduct of the Enshittification of the web.
Troubling, indeed. Emphasis is mine.
2024-07-26 ∞I had a bug in one of my IFTTT applets that usually gets each post I share and stores it on Day One. The applet hasn't run since July 7th, but I only found out today. Sadly, the IFTTT RSS feed service doesn't keep a pointer of the last successful import. I'm not sure what to do to recover the posts that weren't saved. 🤔😒
2024-07-28 ∞Is today’s world (AI models training, security, etc.), I wonder if site owners are well equipped with robots.txt as the only way to control who’s in and who’s out when it comes to deciding free and massive content consumption on their site.
2024-07-29 ∞So iOS 18.1 is a thing, after all. Well, as I live in Canada, I'm not going to set the region to English US on my phone1. I rather wait and see other devs and YouTubers delve into this beta of Apple Intelligence and see how it goes. That should be fun and interesting.
Update: changing the region of the device doesn't do much except for date formatting, temperature metric and dollars amount formatting. Oh, and if you set one device (iPad) to use one region, the other device (iPhone) will also use the same region. Why?
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I'm not sure what would be the consequences of doing so, besides the Date, Time and Currency settings being changed. ↩
I am installing iPadOS 18.1 beta 1 on my iPad Pro right now because... just for text proofreading1 and summarizing, it's worth it. Most of my creative hobby happens to be done in English. Also, changing the device region (not the Apple ID region) to US is not a big deal. Finally, I don't talk too often to Siri on my iPad (which I do in French on my iPhone, though).
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Soon: bye bye Grammarly Premium. ↩
I believe it could take anywhere from 12 to 18 months for Apple Intelligence to make its way to Canada and support the French Canadian language. (This text was originally written by me than processed by Apple Intelligence to make it more friendly). #appleintelligence
2024-07-29 ∞Memories
Today is my mother's 91st birthday. She passed away 18 months ago, but the memories of her remain vivid. This morning, my iPhone suggested a video memory highlighting cherished moments with her, which nearly brought me to tears. Time may have flown by, but my affection for her endures, even though I wasn't that close to her, not has much as I would have liked. One of my last photos of her. 😔
2024-07-30 ∞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.
2024-07-31 ∞