Raycast Focus is nice until you realize that it doesn’t integrate with macOS Focus modes and can’t start an automation like a shortcut to turn off other things so that we can really be focusing. 🤷🏻‍♂️

I couldn’t resist.

Posting photos on Pixelfed from Micro.blog is cool in principle, but in practice, it’s still an unpredictable experience. My photo posted here earlier this morning wasn’t cross-posted to Pixelfed and I don’t know why. It’s a bit frustrating if you ask me. And there is no provided way of retrying a cross-post to Pixelfed, for some reason. @manton as you seem to be focusing on photos for Micro.blog, consider adding / fixing this issue, if this is something under your control, of course.

I don’t support any peace plan projects for Ukraine until Russia is defeated or on their knees. Here is why (Bluesky post).

A famous building in São Paulo, circa December 2022. Taking a photo of someone else’s artwork makes me pause and question my own contribution as a photographer. By adding a specific angle or using a unique perspective, I believe I add a layer of meaning and interpretation to the artwork. This helps me rationalize my internal debate and justify my actions.

I’m at the office today, first time in 2025. I’m one of those who is fortunate enough to work for a company that doesn’t care too much about who’s in and out of the downtown office, they care about the results and how efficient we are to get those. I find it rather sad that the discussions around people returning to the office or not never or seldomly revolve around the idea that working from home might be one of the ways to combat climate change by limiting those in and out and commute time to go to the office. We don’t learn or we’re afraid of accepting that we need to change, for real this time.

Pixelfed finally gets the attention from the public. The release of their mobile app and the general negative sentiment toward Meta’s offerings are two key factors here. I hope they can keep up with the load.

Somewhere in New York, circa November 2024. Ephemeral whispers of the sky meet mankind’s steadfast monuments. #blackandwhite #blackandwhitephotography #architecture

Using ChatGPT latest feature: scheduled tasks, you can schedule a daily summarization of an RSS feed content each morning. That’s cool and actually useful.

Today, I think I finally found a real use case for Micro.one. I bought my domain and set up my account. It was rather quick and easy. If I had let Micro.one set up my domain name for me, it would have been even easier.

I think the ingredients of Micro.one are all there for an accessible solution for those who want to get out of Meta or other silos and start owning their little space on the web, free of tracking, free of ads, and built on open software technologies. Of course, Micro.one isn’t the only service of its kind. But it does offer the right feature set to be an open and federated web citizen.

I feel an overwhelming desire to explore and savor this type of web content even further. I believe that sharing my passion for this subject matter could potentially ignite a similar level of enthusiasm in those around me. Even if it doesn’t, if people are genuinely curious enough to inquire about the reasons behind my enthusiasm, it’s a positive development, potentially marking the beginning of something more substantial. After all, who knows what the future holds?

I’ll share more in the near future.

Started something new with Micro.one… but in French this time… seems the Micro.blog branding is never too far… which is confusing. One question for @manton: can you check why uploading an image doesn’t work (clicking the button starts the upload, but it never completes), and the “Post” button for posting something doesn’t work either.

I like opposing things in photography. This is such an example that I took during a short walk. #blackandwhite #blackandwhitephotography

That is why not only ads are infecting everything online, the data brokers behind them is an even worst idea. Data Broker Hack Exposes Location Info From Millions of iPhone Users - MacRumors

Meta Is Blocking Links to Decentralized Instagram Competitor Pixelfed
https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/01/13/meta-pixelfed-links

Meta is acting more and more like Russia.

I’m seeing more and more online stores using Shop.app for shipment tracking. It’s great to have a consolidated view of all the shipments (better than Parcel? Or what used to be Delivery?). I wish Apple would go further in that space, even including buying receipts to be standardized and electronics-only.

Medium seems to suffer from another problem: AI-generated content and fake account for fake engagement to generate revenues. According to their recent article (Paywall might be enforced to read this), many accounts under the Partner Program were suspended recently to stop this fraud.

I’ve returned to Medium last fall (read my comments about the reading and writing experience over there) and found that content quality has gone down compared to what we used to read there. The revenue program is much less generous than it used to be. I published 18 stories since my return and earned less than a dollar! We don’t know how these revenues are calculated, but it is a bit insulting or at least discouraging. At this rate, I won’t recover the Partner Program subscription cost in the first year which makes my presence there questionable. This should have been a no-cost journey which it’s not. Still seven months to go…

After nearly abandoning the idea, because it was too complicated to choose from the many different keyboards, today I ordered this mechanical keyboard¹ for two reasons: semi-retro look with the wooden sides and the sound of the typing experience.

I’m about to start a recording session for my next video about Craft and the PARA method. I wonder: why am I doing this? Is it because it might help Craft users to better take advantage of the app features? Is it because I just like being in a creative process? Is it because I love working on the Mac using different apps together to put something out there? Is it all the reasons above? Or is it simply because it provides a subtle reminder of being human is being creative and putting something out there? Maybe I’m asking myself too many questions.

The first edition of 2025 of the Ephemeral Scrapbook newsletter is out. I’m curious if some of you look into these. Let me know.

I’m always positively surprised to read my Bluesky replies here on Micro.blog. I mean, this is the modern and open where that we should continue to promote and defend. For me, and I wish it was the case for more people, it is priceless, but the value is not as tangible as I would like.