Numeric Citizen Blog Posts Monthly Digest

My most “complex” n8n workflow so far. This workflow retrieves Tinylytics AI-generated insights for the day across all my websites and creates a meta-summarization for inclusion in today’s Craft Daily Note.

MacUpdate Is Dead?

From MacUpdate website:

Unfortunately MacUpdater 3’s promised lifetime of “until 2026-01-01” is now over. There will be no MacUpdater 4 or any continuation of the MacUpdater product from us. Our daily maintenance has been stopped and we don’t verify updates anymore. MacUpdater 3.5 is now unsupported but free-to-use including all previous “Pro” features.

WTF?? 😩

I saw many times people talking about Ghostty for Mac, a terminal emulator. My question: why use Ghostty instead of Apple Terminal? I just downloaded it and my first reactions are: less window chrome, bigger windows, split-window mode, better font and better default colors scheme. Adopted.

I decided to try building a small website on GitHub Pages. I have no idea if I’ll ever make something useful out of it. Since I’m spending some time with GitHub, I have found some interesting side features.

I’m making quite a bit of progress with my Micro.blog UI frontend to the point where I’m wondering how much of the whole experience I could rebuild using Vercel and Claude Code. Challenge?

When I get this from Claude AI, it’s time for either a break or to work on something else until the reset.

I’ve been working on a new workflow that would let me skip using Ulysses when sharing new content from Craft to Ghost. To that end, Claude came to the rescue as always, but I’m not done yet. Here are a few details.

Claude needs an n8n workflow (exposed via the n8n MCP server) to retrieve the content of a specific document using Craft APIs. Using an n8n workflow keeps credentials secure, as I don’t need to provide them directly in Claude prompts. Next, Claude converts Craft blocks to well-formatted HTML, the format Ghost expects from its APIs. Next, Claude depends on another small n8n workflow to securely push the HTML content to Ghost. Those two n8n workflows use webhooks (triggers) and HTTP requests (GET, POST) to transfer information between Craft and Ghost via their respective API endpoints.

The publishing workflow is done and handled by Claude AI, but posts are always in draft mode so I can review them in the Ghost Admin management interface before publishing. I need more work to finish this because now I have to make sure that on the next occasion, in a new Claude conversation, Claude will remember to use my n8n workflows and how I want the content converted. Another issue seems to be about the size of the request being sent to Ghost to create the draft post.

If I go back a few weeks, I barely knew how to use Claude Code or leverage webhooks and MCP servers meaningfully. Now I do, thanks to AI. I feel empowered by AI.

My updated profile description for 2026:

“I’m a compulsive creator and contributor, a digital nomad, a light painter. Aspiring peace supremacist and democracy propagandist. Proud member of the Secret Internet Curators (SIC) brigade.”

My Microblog Poster web front end now supports Markdown files, drag-and-drop, and preview mode, all in a simple (but less simple than initially built) web interface! 😅

And the next n8n project is?

My next project with n8n automation is to build a replacement for Mailbrew. 🫣 I’m facing many architectural decisions:

How do I fetch content (web or RSS feeds)?
How do I extract articles for more efficient summarization?
How do I combine the results?
How do I control the size of the summary?
Do I need some form of temporary data persistence within the workflow?
How do I minimize LLM credits usage?
Should I use an n8n data table for storing data sources and loop through them one by one?
Where do I send the summary and how (Telegram, Discord, Email)?

…and probably a few more decisions to ponder!

Putting up a new website on Micro.blog is way too… easy. 🫣🤫🫢

I cannot stress enough how flabbergasted I am by the value Tinylytics is offering. Just finished configuring recently added options. What you see is my Blips analytics dashboard. Hat down to Vincent.

“We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country.”

There you go. That’s the real reason for the invasion, just like Iraq. WMD? Drugs? These are just excuses to get the oil. Only a month ago, the POTUS pardoned the former President of Honduras for trafficking cocaine into the US. As usual, the lies are blatant.

Jeff Johnson https://mastodon.social/@lapcatsoftware/115832384114132583

The more it changes…

“Start a blog. Start one because the practice of writing at length, for an audience you respect, about things that matter to you, is itself valuable. Start one because owning your own platform is a form of independence that becomes more important as centralized platforms become less trustworthy. Start one because the format shapes the thought, and this format is good for thinking.” - JA Westenberg in The Case for Blogging in the Ruins

Beyond feeling independent, having a blog helps active thinking.

Launching Numeric Citizen Blog Digests

Today, I’m excited to share my latest idea and creation: a website collecting my Micro.blog posts, monthly digests. What, another website? Yup.

In case you didn’t know, Micro.blog has a newsletter capability. My blog offers readers the opportunity to subscribe to a monthly blog post digest delivered to their inboxes. Plus, each digest is also available as a webpage (here’s the index page if you are curious). It’s a great way to get a quick overview of everything I published for a specific month. Of course, the whole thing is searchable.

But one day, I tried feeding one digest into ChatGPT and started asking questions about it. It was a revelation. Eventually, I asked for a structured summary, and ChatGPT promptly complied, returning a beautifully formatted summary. I spent quite some time reading the output, and I was blown away by how accurate and complete it was. This is where the idea of creating a new website to store and share those summarized digests. I think it’s a great way to get up to speed with my blog for newcomers or for people who might have missed a few months.

So, here we are, digests.numericcitizen.me is born. For now, you’ll find the summary of last month, but each month will be added as a single article. An AI-generated summary (by Micro.blog) describes the current month, and you need to click the title to get all the content. I plan to add some other highlights to this site. Stay tuned and enjoy.

I’m discovering this powerful n8n node this morning. This means I could trigger that workflow from an external source, such as a Telegram message, and receive a response with some RSS content.

Today, I created a new blog post category. Now, all blog posts related to automation (usually n8n-based) or AI will be assigned the “Automation & AI” category. I went back to my blog posts and updated a few of them to reflect this change. You can follow the blog posts with this dedicated RSS feed, which is automagically created and maintained by Micro.blog.

My latest n8n workflow automates summarizing my Micro.blog timeline (via its private RSS feed) and sends the results to my Discord server every hour. Pretty cool, right?
Auto-generated description: A flowchart illustrates a process involving an RSS feed trigger, RSS reading, post aggregation, interaction with an AI agent using the Anthropic Chat Model, and communication with Discord.

On OpenRouter.ai

I just finished reading about the service openrouter.ai. I was curious to understand the purpose of this service as well as its business model. I saw several instances of this service being used in n8n workflows. The problem I see with this service is that it makes the consistency of the quality of responses from the requested LLMs even more unpredictable. Each request could be handled by LLMs with different characteristics and performance from one time to another. I’ll pass on this, but I still learned something tonight.

2026-01-05 ∞

An Important Lesson

When I started my studies in computer science over 40 years ago, we learned to read functional specifications and then translate them into machine instructions (COBOL, FORTRAN, Pascal, etc.). It was the training of a programmer. I knew that one day I could become the person who writes functional specifications. I didn’t become a programmer, nor did I work in the development world.

Due to my recent experience with Claude AI, Claude Code, and Vercel to create custom applications, I realize that I have become the one who writes functional specifications, but for processing by artificial intelligence. What does this tell me about the profession of a software developer? The need to write specifications remains essential, if not more so, even with powerful tools like AI. I think it’s a valuable lesson.

2026-01-05 ∞

Claude Code skills are probably the most intriguing aspect of Claude Code and Claude AI. I’m not so sure yet how to take advantage of them. My understanding from this excellent video is that you have to be an expert at something to create those skills.md file.

2026-01-06 ∞

I can confidently say I’ve learned at least one significant new concept every day over the past two to three weeks. It is not only satisfying but also quite stimulating. This will keep me from aging, that’s for sure.

2026-01-06 ∞

On Tahoe Icons

Just finished reading “It’s hard to justify Tahoe icons”, which many UI design pundits and non-UI experts, as well as simple, passionate Mac users, have been referring to a lot recently. I appreciate the documentation effort. It’s really well done. Very convincing. But…

Designers age and are gradually replaced by a younger generation. Whether you like it or not, they bring new beliefs (justified or not), design principles (better or not), and values (questionable or not). Recently, there’s a trend where software appears much less crafted than it once was. Everything seems thrown together, flat. And still…

I like those macOS Tahoe menus with icons (🫣), but yes, there is an absolute lack of consistency.

2026-01-07 ∞

Something is about to happen. Again. 🤗🫣

2026-01-08 ∞

Apparently, people are barely using Stack Overflow to ask questions, thanks to LLMs and AI. I expect a similar trend among people in a community like this one on Micro.blog. Some questions would be super easy to answer by asking ChatGPT or the like. I do understand that many people still want this human touch, though.

2026-01-09 ∞

My Defaults as of 2026-01-10

Changes from the last edition are in bold.
✉️ Mail Client: Fastmail
📨 Mail Server: Fastmail
📝 Notes: Craft + Apple Notes
✅ To-Do: Things 3
📷 iPhone Photo Shooting: Camera.app
📚 Photo Management: Photos.app + Photomator
🗓️ Calendar: Calendar.app
🗄️ Cloud file storage: iCloud
📰 RSS: Reeder connected to Inoreader
📇 Contacts: Contacts
🕸️ Browser: Mobile Safari + ARC Browser on Mac + ChatGPT Atlas
🧠 AI: ChatGPT + Claude AI
🔎 Search: Kagi Search
💬 Chat: iMessage (WhatsApp when abroad)
🔖 Bookmarks: AnyBox
👓 Read It Later: Inoreader
📜 Word Processing: Ulysses, Craft
📊 Spreadsheets: Numbers
🛝 Presentations: Keynote
🛒 Shopping Lists: Reminders
🧑‍🍳 Meal Planning: None
💰 Budgeting & Personal Finance: Numbers
🗞️ News: La Presse (Apple News for English news)
🎶 Music: Apple Music
🎧 Podcasts: Apple Podcasts
🔐 Password Management: iCloud Keychain & Apple Passwords
👨🏻‍💻 Blog hosting: Ghost, Micro.blog, Scribbles.page
🌐 Web Services: Cloudflare, Chillidog Hosting, DigitalOcean

Simon Willison on AI-assisted programming:

The more time I spend on AI-assisted programming the less afraid I am for my job, because it turns out building software - especially at the rate it’s now possible to build - still requires enormous skill, experience and depth of understanding.

One of the frustrating aspects of LLMs is their lack of consistency unless you develop specific skills, which can take time to implement effectively. For example, I wanted to generate documentation for my most recent n8n automation workflow, but Claude was unable to do it, and I can’t remember the prompt that finally made it possible. I should have saved it somewhere for easy retrieval. I’m wasting precious credits. 🤦🏻‍♂️

Ten days into 2026, I have achieved much more than I anticipated. If I maintain this pace, I will complete my list of wild ideas soon. It’s not just about checking items off the list, but also about learning a lot along the way. It’s very fulfilling.

When Things Go Wrong With AI-Generated Code

My first bad experience: the code generated by Claude Code made my dashboard unresponsive in my browser. Eventually, the data stopped updating. After a ten-minute debugging session, I asked Claude Code to revert the change, and it did so promptly. But then I started getting execution failure notices on Discord. A lot of notifications. Then I started investigating…

It appears the browser was making frequent refresh requests to one of my workflows, which depleted my Claude pay-per-use credits. Bummber. Looking at my n8n dashboard, I saw that one of my workflows was failing because of that. Logs were confirming the problem with the interaction with Claude AI. As shown on the graphs below, my instance CPU usage went through the roof. Ouch. Now I know what happened, and the problem was fixed. Now, I should find a way to rate-limit this type of behaviour. That’s for tomorrow, I guess. 😅

I made two important changes this morning for my automation-related operating environment:

Using DigitalOcean monitoring, I created two resources alerts (CPU > 50% for 5 min, Disk usage > 70% for 5 min). Alerts will make me look into n8n automation misbehaviours.
I switched my AI nodes to use Claude AI Haiku 4.5 instead of Sonnet 4.5 to reduce costs for comparable results. I don’t think my summarization tasks needs more powerful LLM.

This diagram tries to illustrate the how modern AI, Claude AI in particular, compares to traditional computing paradigm. Models more or less are processors, Agents are more or less the operating system and Applications are more or less Skills. It’s interesting, but I’m wary about agents because they open up too many pandora boxes.

Inspired by basicappleguy on Mastodon, here’s my rating of each Apple product. Design, usefulness, feature focus, maturity, and usage frequency are the key factors here.

iPhone
Mac
iPad
Apple Watch
Apple TV
AirPods
Vision Pro
AirTag
HomePod

I just discovered that Raindrop.io offers many integrations, including n8n! I might need to reconsider my bookmarking strategies, yet again. I’m currently using Anybox. 🤔 I’m exploring ways to move the data around. If you made a similar move, I’ll be more than happy to learn about your experience. For now, I’ll prompt ChatGPT for strategies.

On Apple’s Deal with Google

Back in November, Google announced Private AI Compute, positioning themselves to offer something like Apple’s Private Cloud Compute. It might be something that OpenAI wasn’t willing to do or didn’t see a fit in their business mission. By offering Private AI Compute, Google might have secured the business with Apple. Anyway, it’s becoming impressive how Google is taking back the lead in AI. Lastly, maybe we will see Google Gemini being added to this week’s next beta of iOS 26.3 to go side-by-side with ChatGPT?

2026-01-12 ∞

On Scrollbars

After reading a recent Gruber article about the macOS Tahoe window-resizing issue, I found a setting in Appearance that keeps scrollbars always visible. It’s somewhat odd because of the scrollbar’s thickness. I wish Apple would make them thinner and less noticeable. I’m unsure if I’ll get used to this.

Note: On Windows 11, scrollbars are always visible by default but are less obtrusive. 🤷🏻‍♂️ Apple was once known for leading with excellent design and great visual taste, but this is less obvious nowadays.

Auto-generated description: A computer interface displays settings for appearance customization, including options for Liquid Glass, theme colors, and icon styles.

2026-01-12 ∞

/rant on

Can you believe it? I updated my M4 iPad Pro today to beta 2 of iPadOS 26.3, thinking I would see some much-needed fixes, but elas many visual bugs are still unfixed, bugs that were there in 26.1 or even 26.0. I mean, bugs that are very easy to catch and experience. I can’t believe I’m the only one experiencing those. One example: when sliding up an app to return to the home page, the background briefly disappears.

Please, Apple, stop piling up new features and fix your shit.

/rant off

2026-01-12 ∞

Anthropic on Cowork:

“That said, there are still things to be aware of before you give Claude control. By default, the main thing to know is that Claude can take potentially destructive actions (such as deleting local files) if it’s instructed to. Since there’s always some chance that Claude might misinterpret your instructions, you should give Claude very clear guidance around things like this.”

and

“You should also be aware of the risk of “prompt injections”: attempts by attackers to alter Claude’s plans through content it might encounter on the internet. We’ve built sophisticated defenses against prompt injections, but agent safety—that is, the task of securing Claude’s real-world actions—is still an active area of development in the industry. “

A world of possibilities awaits you. 🫣

Simon Willison on experimenting with Cowork from Anthropic:

“I had Claude Code reverse engineer the Claude app and it found out that Claude uses VZVirtualMachine - the Apple Virtualization Framework - and downloads and boots a custom Linux root filesystem.”

Whoa, this is clever. This is a reminder, too: my next Mac must have more than 16GB of RAM.

It appears that Photomator in MIA in today’s announcements which doesn’t bode well for its fate. 😔

I’m sorry but Apple no longer knows how to do icons. Serious downgrades. WTF is this? I could do better in a weekend.

Apple Creator Studio - A Few Comments

On today’s announcement by Apple:

Now we know why it took so long for Apple to update Pages, Numbers and Keynote. Where is iWork? Why no iWork subscription without the pro stuff?
I don’t understand this bundling of pro apps with consumer-generalistic apps. Is Apple trying to upsell Pro Apps to consumers via a new subscription? They might be. I don’t think pros want to get Numbers or Pages, though.
Icons are utterly un-Apple, or Apple has become something I no longer relate to software-design-wise. It’s not a good sign.
Yes, Apple does look like Adobe and … Microsoft. And less, Apple.
No mention of Photomator. I believe merging Photomator into Photos is not a good idea; combining a photo browsing app with a photo editing app isn’t ideal. Currently, Photos functions more as a photo browser than as a dedicated editing tool, and both aspects risk becoming mediocre. I want a focused, serious photo-editing app that doesn’t try to rival Photoshop. Is that too much to ask? The challenge lies in Apple’s prioritization of profit over user needs, which makes it difficult to develop such an app.

What a strange start to the year.

Digg is finally in public beta. They also introduced a refreshed design (compared to what was available during the private beta), and I think it’s way better. Also introduced are user-defined communities. It’s currently limited to two per user, which I think is fair. This is my profile. I was looking to create a community, only to realize I was about to dilute myself again. My community is here.

2026-01-14 ∞

Tomorrow, I’m planning to visit Apple’s new Ste-Catherine store in downtown Montreal. From the outside, it certainly looks much better than the previous store on the same street, 100 m further west. I don’t plan to buy anything; I just want to look at the architectural details, the crowd, and the mood. Expect some photos and maybe a short video.

2026-01-16 ∞

I completed implementing automated backups of all my n8n workflows to GitHub and documenting their triggering times in a compact format using Claude AI. The backup workflow is based on a template found in the n8n community.

2026-01-17 ∞

How long will it take Apple to fix the Apple Watch setup process involving restoring from previous backups? It’s been an issue for many people for years! My setup process when I upgraded from Series 6 to Series 8 was hindered by this issue. Same when I upgraded from Series 8 to Series 10. Either the backup found wasn’t recent, or there was no backup to restore from. Michael Tsai is one such person. Anyone at Apple is setting up a new watch? 🤔

2026-01-17 ∞

Building A Dedicated Photo-Sharing Website in Claude Code

Thinking about the upcoming trip to Egypt, I realized I still didn’t have a good solution for sharing photos and comments beyond the usual social networks. Drawing on my experience from the past few weeks deploying web applications on Vercel, I decided to try the same by building a website for sharing and viewing photos. The additional complexity here is that the viewing portion is separate from the photo upload section. Therefore, I need to protect this feature with a password. Additionally, image storage must be optimized to minimize costs and provide a pleasant, flexible viewing experience. I’m using Vercel-only blog storage and Redis for metadata store.

In less than 2 hours, I built a fully functional application with Claude Code and Vercel. Impressive.

2026-01-18 ∞

“Please, add a map of all the places I visited based on photo metadata”. “Add animation across the site to make it more dynamic, nothing too fancy”. “Please, add support for progressive web app and make sure to set the favicon with the provided image”. “Add support for swipe gestures (ledt and right) while glancing at individual image”. “Add a counter of how many images are stored in each album”.

Are you getting it?

This is simple web app development in 2026 built using Claude Code, Vercel, Next.js and Tailwind CSS. 🤯

Looking at my Micro.blog timeline summary I see this bad interpretation of my words in a recent post about updating my Nikon camera firmware from 1.21 to 3.0. 🤷🏻‍♂️🤦🏻‍♂️

Miniroll: what a great idea, and a well-designed one above all. Is it for me? I don’t know. I barely update my blogroll on Micro.blog. I’ll certainly keep an eye on the changelog to see where it’s going, and who knows…

This weekend, I wanted to work on my next YouTube video, but I fell into this “photo-sharing website for my close family and friends” rabbit hole. It took most of the day to refine that I completely forgot about my video. 🤦🏻‍♂️

Asking Claude Code to suggest new features and improvements for my photo-sharing app is a lot of fun. Reviewing the list, I see several valid suggestions. However, as a “product manager”, I must decide what gets implemented and what does not. It’s kind of a power trip. You know “A thousand no for each yes”? 😎

2026-01-20 ∞

Something Is Going On

I’m still working on this, but I’m heading in the right direction. I realize that every blog post should have a title so that my RSS flow feed looks great. 👀

2026-01-22 ∞

So far this year, AI and Claude Code have completely changed my plans to learn writing extensive Apple Shortcuts. In fact, I would even argue that Apple has to find a way to enable a Claude Code like experience to write Apple Shortcuts (and why not AppleScript while at it).

2026-01-22 ∞

Intel puts consumer chip production on back burner as datacenters make a run on Xeons — The Register

If you notice PC prices creeping up over the next few months, the rising cost of memory won’t be the only reason, because on Thursday Intel said it is reallocating foundry capacity from client chips to meet surging demand for Xeon processors used in AI servers.

I wonder if Apple can manage to keep iPhone prices stable this fall with the release of the iPhone 18. They are certainly facing headwinds.

2026-01-22 ∞

iPhone 18 Pro: Leaker Reveals Alleged Size of Smaller Dynamic Island — MacRumors

The account “Ice Universe” today claimed the Dynamic Island cutout on the iPhone 18 Pro models will be approximately 35% narrower than it is on the iPhone 17 Pro models. Specifically, they said it will have a width of around 13.5mm, down from around 20.7mm, and they shared the mockup image above to show what it would look like.

When Apple eliminates the camera and sensor cutout from the display, maybe next year or the year after, what will happen with the dynamic island? My take is that the dynamic island continues to show content popping up from the top of the screen, just like before.

2026-01-23 ∞

I visited some friends this weekend and talked about Apple’s latest software updates. The general sentiment seems to be that they don’t like the updates (iOS 26 as well as the “new weird and fuzzy look”). Apple no longer delights users. 😔

I’m not sure it was a good idea to put my GitHub repos inside iCloud Drive Documents folder. Some of my projects have more than 50K files inside of them, thanks to dependancies. The fileproviderd process consumes quite a lot of CPU cycles at times.

I’m putting the final touches on a few of my web apps before going on a two-week vacation. One nice thing is that my RSS Flow app can call my Microblog Poster app to quickly create a link post from a text selection in RSS Flow.

At this rate, I wonder if I could create a custom-build, highly feature-focused Inoreader replacement using Claude Code. My experience so far with RSS Flow seems to confirm that I could, piece-by-piece.

Here’s a very short demo of RSS Flow.