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Reminder of Substack to Ghost
🤨 Even though I moved my newsletter home a few months ago from Substack to Ghost, as explained here, people are still subscribing to the newsletter on Substack. I’m happy to welcome new subscribers, but I need to register them on my Ghost instance manually. What else could I do? 💡Update my signup newsletter telling them about the new place! ⚠️
#newsletter #bloggerlife
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About ME
👨🏻💻 I think it’s important that you know a bit about who’s behind this continuous musing feed. So, here you go.
Dear visitor, welcome to my write.as blog. My real name is JF Martin, but I prefer to be called Numeric Citizen in cyberspace. This is my pen name (learn why I’m using this name). I’m an IT (Information Technologies) professional since the early nineties. I’m 55, I’m probably getting old, I know. I have many hobbies, but writing is the one that’s taking up much of my spare time. I spend about twenty hours a week on writing and publishing (fully documented here). Why? Get the answer in “I read, I learn, I write, I Share”. As explained in this post, I write about my passions which are revolving around Apple, photography, privacy protection and climate change. You’ll find plenty of stuff on these subjects in my digital garden (⚠️ warning: it’s a rabbit hole 🐇).
As you can see, I have more than enough interests to trigger my inspiration. So much so that they are the source of my monthly newsletter.
You can find more information about me here. Get to know all my sites with Linktr.ee. (think of this as some sort of visitors card)!
That’s about it! 😳😅
Last updated: 2023-04-26.
#aboutme #meta #announcement
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People No Longer Read Apparently
📚 While looking around me and paying attention to the generation that follows, I see most people on their screen looking at videos (Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, YouTube, etc.). I rarely see someone reading on their screen, even less a book. I find it troubling in a few ways. First, I think people are becoming lazy about getting new knowledge and culture. Second, it’s harder to read than watching videos. Third, attention span has never been this short in the younger generation.
When I write an article with an average read time of more than four or five minutes, I know before hitting the publish button that very few people will read it. Those who do are probably older people. I might be wrong. I hope. 😒
Do you feel the same way?
#reading #writing #musing
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Maybe I'm Thinking Way Too Much
🤔 When thinking about my newsletter subscribers, I often think about them as being people attending a class or a presentation: each newsletter being some sort of a presentation. According to my recent analytics, 45% of my subscribers read the newsletter. If I continue with the class or presentation analogy, this means more than half of the people who show up don’t even bother listening to what’s I’m saying. 🤨😔
Some writers prefer newsletters instead of having a blog, thinking they have a more personal relationship with their readers by sending them an email. Allow me to think differently. 🤔
#newsletter #blogger #bloggerlife #musing
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Musing About the Typical Blog Post
📝 As I gain acquaintance with write.as, a typical blog post content and format is settling in. Each blog post has to be short (less than 400-500 characters), contain highlighted words for improved readability, include tags at the end, a few emojis and optionally a “Discuss” link to invite the user to comment. Each of these posts should require less than 10 minutes to write and publish. 🏷
#blogging #writing #blog #tips
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Musing About External Links
🔗 When I write articles or blog posts, like this one or this one, I’m trying as much as possible to include external links. For link posts, it’s obviously mandatory for citing the source and the context. For other types of content, external links might guide the reader to read complementary content. Whatever the reason, adding external links can be time-consuming. My experience (and analytics) show that less than 10% of the visitors will click on them. I wonder if the time it takes to include these links is worth it. Do you visit external links when reading an article or do you find it distracting to do so? 🧐
#blogger #writer #musing
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Learning as I write.as...
🧠 Every day, I learn a few new things about write.as. Today it’s about using tags and the reader mode. I went back in time to add those to most of my past posts. They are helpful, for the reader and for me the writer.☝🏻
#tools #writeas
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Content Expiration Date
Today, I deleted 54 blog posts from my blog at https://numericcitizen.me. This blog is where it all started for me, in 2018. Unfortunately, most of these posts were of very low value or simply outdated. This brings me to the question of content value on the internet; things move fast, value often declines quickly. It’s the case for my content anyway.
#blogging #writing
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My Oldest Post
Going back in time on previously published content can be the source of a few smiles. My oldest post on my main blog is about Micro.blog. Here is an excerpt:
This morning I found out the existence of a blogging platform called Micro.blog. Something very special. Very lean. Very light. Without ads. Leaner than WordPress. Yet capable. Close to Twitter but with less clutter.
It’s funny. It’s not about introducing my blog or something like “hello” world.
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On Content Portability
🚀 A message to content creators out there: be wary of content portability when selecting a writing platform. It’s not that easy to move things around. There are always issues of all sorts that can make your experience miserable and time-consuming. ⚙️
#tools #platform #cms
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Challenge of the day: exporting posts from WordPress to Ghost
Well, well, well, it seems that data portability among CMS is an issue. Who knew! I’m trying to find an easy way to move a few posts from my WordPress blog into my Ghost website. Exporting data from WordPress seems like an all-or-nothing situation. There are a few plugins available for this. The problem is that the content isn’t easily imported into Ghost. The latter does have a plugin, but it doesn’t support selecting posts. I don’t want to do this manually.
Any idea or suggestions?
Update 2022-02-16: There is a follow-up to my quest, read all the details here
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Digital Citizen
🤨 I wish I could have used Digital Citizen instead of Numeric Citizen as my pen name. Digital > Numeric in English, from the word meaning perspective and the idea of being a citizen of the digital world. Oh well. 🤦🏻♂️
#thinking
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Voluntary Simplicity
Minimalistic. Scarce. Effective. Bare. Imperfect but perfect for the task. Trustworthy. Simple. Modern. Open. Frictionless. Unobtrusive. Distraction-free. Focused. Cheap. That’s write.as.
#tools
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Peeking at AirDrop in the Coffee Shop
☕️ Going to the coffee shop today after six weeks of sanitary restrictions. Those were lifted recently, at long last. After setting up my MacBook Air, I open up AirDrop in the Finder to see who’s there. Naturally, I don’t know anyone from the list of available devices. It’s just for fun. Available devices vary a lot for each visit. Today was a great crop. 👨🏻💻😜
#musing
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An Unexpected Side of the Pandemic
The pandemic gave me more time and opportunities to create, write and publish. I don’t want to lose these when it’s all over. My creativity-related activities helped me go through all of this.
#covid19 #creativity
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Feeling the COVID-19 Fatigue
😒 We’re approaching two years of this COVID-19 pandemic. We’re entering a phase where people no longer feel the need to care about COVID-19. I feel that way. I don’t care anymore. I don’t feel guilty about it. When I look at the news, more and more signs of people being fed up are popping up. Our collective energy is now directed at saying out loud how we’re tired of all this instead of making concessions about our liberties to fight some invisible virus. I certainly hope that no other major variant will come to life, requiring another six months of confinement, sanitary rules, and de-confinement. But, unfortunately, I am afraid people are going to resist this time. 😔
#covid19
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Engage
👉🏻 If there is something that I have learned in recent months is this: the more you engage with a community, the better and the most rewarding it is. Most of the time. 👀
#socialnetwork
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Please, don’t think that because I’m now subscribing to write.as that I’m leaving Micro.blog. It couldn’t be farther than the truth. You’re pretty much stuck with me here, for as long as I can see! ☺️
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The Inspiration Killer
I’m sad that I’m rarely doing photography these days… the pandemic and COVID-19 killed my inspiration.
#covid19 #photography #creativity
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Bonus Content
I like the idea of selectively cross-posting some of the posts here to Twitter or Ghost, but not that many. Each cross-posting is some sort of blips or advertisement on the web. People who pay attention or are simply curious in nature hitting the source link will be in for a treat. Unpublicized posts would act like bonus content for the reader to discover.
