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My Source of Dopamine
🧠 It is well documented that social networks are a great source of dopamine. Likes, retweets, etc., all contribute to providing the much-needed boost that we, as humans, are in constant need of. I’m ok with that. You might think that I’m no different. You are partly right. But, as a writer, I also get my dopamine when I hit publish. That’s the one source that I’m trying to prioritize. Not always easy. Continue reading →
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Now Discovering Remark.as
🤦🏻♂️ Today, I just found out how to use Remark.as for commenting on a writer’s post. On the same occasion, I found out that many people were replying to my posts. I didn’t get notified by this, and I’m unsure how to enable this. 😳 I wanted to let you know that I read them all and thank you in advance for your comments and remarks. I’m highly appreciative of that. Continue reading →
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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 Continue reading →
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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. Continue reading →
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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. Continue reading →
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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. 🤨😔 Continue reading →
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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 Continue reading →
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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. Continue reading →
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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 Continue reading →
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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 Continue reading →
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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. Continue reading →
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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 Continue reading →
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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. Continue reading →
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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 Continue reading →
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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 Continue reading →
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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 Continue reading →
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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 Continue reading →
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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. Continue reading →
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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 Continue reading →
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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! ☺️
