I played with Apple’s Maps Places feature, as shown in the following video. It’s nice, but it’s not exactly intuitive. There are many missing features, like setting a path between places and adding photos to a place within the guide, from the Photos.app for example to name a few. Also, it’s not clear if a shared guide gets updated if new places are added, or places are removed.

In a world where we all struggle with how much we use our devices (let’s be real, we mean our phones), I think it’s kinda nice to have some places that just give up and tell us, “my dude, you’ve read it all, go do something else.” Source: Let the internet run out

I relate to this thought so much. Sometimes, enough is just… enough.

My About Me page as seen on the web

This morning, I updated my online About page1, taking some ideas from Brian Lovin’s website. The page was built entirely with Craft’s shared document and custom domain name2. I wonder if this is something that Micro.blog should expand on and be added to the premium subscription. Cc @manton

  1. I probably have too many about page. Another one can be found on Linktr.ee. 🤦🏻‍♂️ ↩︎

  2. I should probably do a new YouTube video explaining the process. ↩︎

I updated my toolset website today1 with three additions under consideration: Digest2, Lazy3 and Heptabase4. The statuses of my current projects were also updated. Thanks for paying a visit.

  1. Use the table of content at the top of the site to locate the right section. Convenient, heh? ↩︎

  2. To replace Mailbrew. ↩︎

  3. A super-charged “save-for-later” service. Could replace Omnivore or complement it. I put myself on their waiting list. ↩︎

  4. A hard-to-define service / apps for supporting research. Could complement Craft. Or not. Another subscription. Gush. ↩︎

One Podcast, Three Looks

From left to right: Overcast, Pocket Cast, Apple Podcast

I always subscribe to my own content distribution channels for quality control purposes 1. I’m using Overcast, Pocket Cast and Apple Podcast to display my latest podcast episode. In these screenshots, I selected the info button to display the episode details. I’m a paid subscriber of Pocket Cast. I prefer the Pocket Cast display, but it has a caching issue as it doesn’t get the latest podcast artwork, but the other two do2. Bold text is missing on Apple Podcast for some reason. The overcast look is… mildly ugly.

  1. This blog post looks like a mini-plug for my podcast. It is. ↩︎

  2. The artwork display issue is also present on the web version of the Pocket Cast player. ↩︎

Episode 01 — This Is Not a Drill!

Hey, this is Numeric Citizen and you are listening to Thoughts and Tribulation of a Compulsive Creator Podcast.

This is not a drill, I repeat, this is not a drill.

This is episode number one.

Now that this podcast is all set, is available on the Apple Podcasts platform, it’s time to get this thing started.

Today, this is Saturday, and I’ll probably spend some time at a coffee shop as the weather outside is not going to be great.

I think coffee shops are a best place for creative work.

And I’ll probably be working on the latest update about Craft, which adds the YouTube integration.

This is a highly requested feature, and I’ll be working to create a new video for my YouTube channel about this integration.

And I think it’s probably going to be a game changer for many reasons that I’ll explain in my video.

This week, I went to the Apple store to get my iPhone screen replaced.

And the reason for that is that because there is three scratches on the surface of the screen.

And since I’m going to use the trade-in program to get the new iPhone 15 Pro Ultra, or whatever the name they give to this upcoming iPhone 15 Pro, the credit we get when we return a phone that is in good shape without any problems is about $780 Canadian.

And the reason for replacing the screen is that if you say that there is a scratch on your phone when you insert the small survey when we configured the trade-in, the value of the trade-in goes down to $290 Canadian.

So you lose a lot of value because of this.

So I took an appointment with the Apple store support guys, and the outcome of this visit was that the screen was not required to be replaced.

And the reason for that is that they consider the scratches to be only cosmetic damage.

And so there is nothing to worry about.

And then I should, when I come back, I’m sorry, and then I should set the value of the iPhone condition to be just okay, since it’s not a crack in the iPhone screen.

So I should be good to go with the full value of the credit.

So I’ll have to take his words for it, because this is what I’m planning to do.

So I came out of the Apple store without a new iPhone screen.

And the other problem is, because since I’m using the iOS 17 beta, the process of replacing the iPhone requires to run a post replacement diagnostic on the phone.

And it’s currently not supported to do that on a phone running a public beta.

So I didn’t want to revert my phone to iOS 16.

So that’s why in the end, I decided to keep the iPhone screen like this.

So if you are planning to use the credit or the iPhone trading program, when you buy a new iPhone, don’t be shy.

And if there is just a few scratches on the screen, just mark it as being okay, and Apple should take it as is without questions.

So this means that I’m going to, I’m getting ready to get this iPhone 15 Pro, the bigger one, this year.

It’s the first time I’m going to use the Max edition.

I’m currently using the iPhone 13, and that’s why I wanted to get my screen replaced.

So that’s it.

This concludes the episode one of this short podcast.

Don’t be shy and share your thoughts and comments on microblog, mastodon, and bluesky, where this is cross-posted, thanks to microblog’s cross-posting feature.

And thanks for listening.

In this challenging world, in constant crisis and state of emergency, please do me a favor and take care until the next episode.

Bye.

Poll: 1️⃣ iPhone 15 Ultra or 2️⃣ iPhone 15 Pro Ultra? 1

My gut feeling is that if Apple really is going to use the Ultra, it would be tied to the Pro moniker, otherwise this would create confusion.

  1. I Wish there was a poll feature on Micro.blog 🥺 ↩︎

On Dark Sky and Apple's Weather

A Eulogy for Dark Sky, a Data Visualization Masterpiece

The design of Dark Sky was so wonderful that I could understand the shape of the weather at a glance, even from a zoomed out view of the app.

Great analysis of the now-defunct Dark Sky weather app. I’m a bit late on that one. I don’t remember using Dark Sky because I think it wasn’t working in Canada. I’m not sure about this. Once Apple took over and brought the redesigned weather app with iOS 16, we could visually feel the Dark Sky’s influence on it. But Apple being Apple, they dropped a few things here and there and made a few things their own. I tend to use Carrot Weather more, but recently, I deep-dived into Apple’s Weather, and frankly, they did a good job. Yet, there was something unique in Dark Sky that I don’t feel in Apple’s offerings. Is it too close to the Yahoo Weather look & feel? Maybe.