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This time of the year where I fill my iPhone with podcast episodes. Using PocketCast. Getting ready for the airport ✈️
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Finally finished and published this article this morning 😅. It’s been long in the making. Looking at my writing projects pipeline, it has always been pretty short. 😱
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Well, Riccardo Mori doesn’t like Apple Vision Pro, visionOS, or many of what Apple is doing these days. I’ll reread his blog post because I think there is some good takes and also because there is so much to digest.
Neither I nor he saw or experienced the headset, yet we are so far apart in our takes on Apple’s current vision. 😒
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Charging all my devices. Installing app updates. Getting my bags ready. This two-weeks vacation is really welcome.
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Just finished configuring my WhatsApp account on my iPhone. What a weird user experience. I couldn’t get my verification code to be sent by SMS after many tries. Finally asked to be called. WhatsApp asked me if I wanted to restore data from a non-existent iCloud backup. My account is configured with my current phone number which I’m pretty sure won’t work once I’m in Morocco. I bet that changing this phone number will require me to access my SMS on my primary line, which won’t be possible because I’ll depend on an eSIM. I’m not sure what is my “WhatsApp handle” either if such a thing exists. What is I prefer to use my email address so people can find me? I should probably spend an hour googling to sort this out.
And WhatsApp is the de-facto standard in most parts of the world, except North America.
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Testing CloudFlare Analytics, because, I can, thanks to this plugin.
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Day One creator Paul Wayne, on Apple’s foray into journaling app:
Rather than seeing this as competition, we embrace Apple’s entry into digital journaling as a testament to its growing importance. This evolution is not just beneficial for Day One, but also for our valued users. Source: Apple’s Journal App and Day One’s Evolution
I applaud the positive attitude here. There is one thing that is missing from Day One: the capability to share a journal entry as a web page.
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Are We Ready for This Dystopian World?
Warning: it’s not about the Apple Vision Pro headset, which many people think will bring a touch of a dystopian future to our life. Something else more serious will.
I read this week somewhere that, to get climate back into the normality zone🌪️ to ensure the sustainability of the human race and life in general, everyone on earth would need to live in an oppressive world where everything would be controlled by laws and government all the time and for decades. From buying food to cars to travelling to entertainment services, we would be under constant quotas, which would bring our quality of life much lower than we currently enjoy. In fact, developed countries’ quality of life would join the much lower quality of life of the vast majority of the earth’s population in less developed countries. This would be the only way to get around this climate crisis. Not convinced? The COVID pandemic brought massive and repetitive confinements that weren’t enough to bend many climate change indicators downwards. It lasted two years, more or less. 😱
Oh, and should we talk about forced birth control everywhere? Because we should, even if this is a taboo subject.
Are we ready for this dystopian world? 😷
I can see a great Vision Pro use case right here where people watch daylong movies about what used to be a much more enjoyable world in 3D. 😒
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Building a CRM in ... Notion? Really?
💡I’m trying to build my own CRM with Notion for my daytime job. After a few hours today building the data model using Notion tables and relations, I concluded that I underestimated Notion for such use case. It’s impressive and very flexible. It has a lot of potential. I’m pretty happy with my current work. I sometimes find it a bit laggy, but let’s keep the experiment running for a few months.😃
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On 15-inch MacBook Air: Is It Too Big?
When the 15-inch MacBook Air 💻 was officially announced, I was excited and knew it would replace my M1 MacBook Air. Since then, I read many reviews and watched many unboxing videos. People seem to enjoy the new bigger MBA, and all is good, right? But, is it?
Nobody talks about the device’s size when you use it on your lap like I do with my MBA right now as I write this post. It’s an important factor to consider for such laptop category which the MBA is targeting. Are 15 inches too wide? Is it still comfortable? For some reason, I have a few doubts. This 15-inch MacBook Air is… big, but is it too big for me? 🤔
When I come back from vacation, a visit to the Apple Store will help me decide once and for all.
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Am I the only one who thinks that Adobe is slowly but surely morphine Lightroom Classic into Lightroom? From a distance, I sense that all the cool stuff appears in Lightroom first. The latest example: the capability of exporting a photo-processing session in a video file is available in Lightroom (iPad, iPhone only) but not in Lightroom Classic. 🤔
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A day at the office. Today, I had a meeting with my client’s external IT resources. One of them had a strange name, hard to pronounce. While waiting for everyone to join the meeting, wanting to fill in the silence, I asked where he was from. He responded, “Russia.” I said, “Oh.” 😱 This was followed by a big silence while I could see in mack back my Tidbyt display showing a prominent Ukrainian flag. 🇺🇦👊🏻We moved on to the meeting’s first subject. 😏😂
A colleague of mine told me after the meeting that not all Russians are ok with this war in Ukraine. Yeah, right. I guess. This is not a valuable excuse in my book. Where are the diaspora demonstrations, in Canada? In the US?
Women in Iran have more courage to defend democratic values than those men in Russia to defend what is blatantly right from what is wrong. This is utterly frustrating.
Glory to Ukraine. 🇺🇦🇺🇦
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In Photography, the iPhone Can Be a Killer
My nephew, a semi-pro photographer, recently sold 90% of his photography gear (Canon). He only kept one body and one 50mm lens. 😱 He upgraded his phone to the iPhone 14 Pro. 😏He couldn’t be happier, he told me. Even with the iPhone, he essentially kept his photo-processing workflow as-is (Adobe Lightroom). This makes me pause a bit. Sure, he spends much less time doing professional photography work, but still. I call this the iPhone-photography killer effect.
He got his first exposure (pun intended) to the art of photography with me when he was still a child, more than thirty years ago, when he accompanied me for a short photowalk. He demonstrated that he could be a photographer, even at this young age, just by his numerous questions and suggestions.
I’ll bring my small (but heavy) camera gear (Nikon) on my trip to Morocco and when I visit the Canary Islands later this summer. Will these trips be the last ones where I use the big one? 🤔 I know that I’m going to upgrade my iPhone 13 Pro to the upcoming iPhone 15 Pro Max later this fall. This could trigger a similar fate to my camera bag.
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📺 I always keep two Apple TVs: an Apple TV HD for the main bedroom that I gave to my brother-in-law, and an A12-based Apple TV 4K was my main ATV for the living room. Today, I bought the 2022 Apple TV 4K with Ethernet. The older one is now in the bedroom, and the new one is in the living room. Not what I call exciting upgrades. Had to redo all the apps setup. 😒 But it does feel faster in a more compact package.
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Funny thing: I don’t see many comments about iOS 17’s autocorrect. Is it really better or what?? Either nobody cares, not that many are using iOS 17 yet (it’s beta 1, after all), people are busy checking compatibility with their apps, or it’s the same sh**? 🤔
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I’m Testing Day One for My Travel Journal Experiment
Date: June 9, 2023 at 5:25:24 PM EDT Weather: 18°C Mostly Cloudy Location: Montréal, QC, Canada
I’ll be going to Morocco a week from now. I plan to use Day One to document my trip there. It will be the first time since I’m a Day One user. I don’t know how I could not think of this before. I’ve been a big fan of Day One forever. It’s such a rich journaling app for the Mac, the iPad and the iPhone. I can wait to use it on my iPhone to create rich journal entries as my vacation progresses.
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Still working from the coffee shop. 😅 While reading a technical document, I wish I could take notes and keep bookmarks about my readings. I discovered that, as well-thoughtful my personal creative workflow can be, I’m under-equipped for my work life🤦🏻♂️. OneNotes from Microsoft is great but so dull at the same time. This leaves me with Notion and Craft Docs. 🙄🤔 I really have to up my game at work; I’m way too lousy. I should use lessons learned from my blogger life.
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Suddenly, while I’m working on my iPad Pro in a coffee shop, I’m starting to wonder if having only my iPad Pro will be enough for my trip to Morocco. I need to travel « light », but… 🤔
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As much as I’m invested in Craft Docs, I’m not sure I’ll use it for my travel notes this time around. It’s not very good when working offline. Maybe Apple Notes? Why not Day One? 🤔 The latter could be a fun experiment, and it’s easy to export journal entries into Markdown for reuse elsewhere!
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There is one thing that I’m really looking forward to on our trip to Morocco🇲🇦. For the first time ever, we will have a private guide for the whole trip. I’m usually the main driver when going on such a vacation. Now, I’ll be quietly sitting in the van and be free to take pictures while on the move. 📷