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Thanks to @Mtt & @rcrackley, I’m now using a different and quite nice Micro.blog theme for the first time in many years! I’m quite happy with the final results. Hope that you enjoy the change as much as I do!
PS. There are a few things that I’d like to tweak, but that will be for another day!
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365 Days Later
A year ago, I shared my first YouTube video on my YouTube channel. My initial goal was to share videos about using Craft, but later came videos about using Micro.blog. Here are some notable facts:
- 52 videos about Craft were produced;
- 5 videos about Micro.blog were produced;
- All videos totalling more than 13.5 hours of watch time;
- My YouTube channel has 813 subscribers as of now;
- Two subscribers gave me money as a sign of appreciation.
I feel I’m now on par with all the things I wanted to talk about regarding Craft. Future Craft videos will touch on new features and tweaked workflow. I still have much work to do for Micro.blog video series, though.
At the initial pace of new subscribers, I set the goal of hitting a thousand subscribers in the first year, but I’m sad to report that I won’t make it. The pace of new subscribers has slowed quite a bit.
This video production journey is full of learning and lessons. Over time, I settled on a production style I’m happy with. I finally found a way to get better sound quality. I recently added iA Presenter to get cue cards showing on my screen while recording (read “iA Presenter — A Different & Clever Take at Presentation Software”). My workflow is stable now and is supported by this Craft template (you can download and use it if you are a Craft user, BTW). Finally, I started using Play.app to gather all my video links in one place. This provides a quick way to refer to past videos whenever needed.
I also produced videos about other apps like Capacities, Inoreader and Anybox. Some of these videos take the form of a 60 minutes session with the app as a first-time user. It’s fun as there is no script supporting those experiences.
Today, I will record a video about the WWDC 23 conference. The video will complement my recently published article on the same subject. It will be my first foray into tech news and commentary. I’m not planning to do many of these, but WWDC is significant and needs some of my production time attention.
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I’ve been watching my feeds analytics through FeedPress, since I made the switch. I’m surprised by the number of subscribers that keeps going up and up. I wasn’t expecting that. Should I trust the FeedPress numbers? Am I more popular than I initially thought? 🤔
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Mmmm, it seems that I’m unable to use my test blog on Micro.blog to post from Ulysses or Micro.blog.app. Am I missing something here?
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From the release notes of the May 30th version of Hazel:
Added missing arm64 support for certain auxiliary binaries. Not having these meant that certain specialized functions were being run using Rosetta on Apple Silicon Macs.
That is something so important on an 8GB MacBook Air like mine. The less memory consumed by system services like Rosetta, the better. And I applaud the developer for mentioning it in the release notes.
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And just like that, I discovered that my original Mastodon account is enabled and active. I didn’t know my account was finally made active after I submitted my request in Dec, 2019. Now I’m up to three Mastodon addresses. I wonder if I could drop my account at techhub.social and switch to the official Mastodon instance? And how should I do that, actually?🤔
What would you do?
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I hate .webm files. There, I said it. Why? I don’t know.
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My morning so far. Just finished and shared my thoughts on iA Presenter. Got myself ready to watch the WWDC 23 keynote using this handy shortcut. I tried to set up a mail address for numericcitizen.me (something like hello@numericcitizen.me) using iCloud+ Mail custom domain feature. Sadly, I won’t be able to do so as my numericcitizen.me root domain needs to be aliasing Ghost hosting website for my blog to work. This is conflicting with iCloud+ Mail custom domain requirements. Oh well, nobody use emails these days, right, right? Any suggestion on this if you are reading this? Finally, updated my Ubiquity DreamMachine to the latest release of UniFi OS.
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Getting ready for WWDC keynote. This WWDC23 button on my Stream Deck mini triggers a screenshot of my Mac screen using Cleanshot X. Each file will be saved automatically and later processed by Hazel rules and moved to my Synology Photos library for future reference and use. 😎
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Why my (numericcitizen.me) website is getting a lot more traffic in the last two days from … Facebook is a mystery for me 🤔
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On Reddit API Access Pricing
So, apparently, just like Twitter, Reddit is entering into a “kill-third-party-apps” by charging an enormous amount of money to use their APIs. It looks like it. Apollo isn’t happy, and for good reasons. Unless there was a calculation error from the makers of Apollo, it just makes no sense for them to continue. Maybe Reddit made some calculation errors, too. Perhaps they fail to read the room’s temperature. But maybe they are entitled, to some degree, I guess, to charge for their APIs, right?
I’m tempted to make a parallel with Apple’s dreaded 15%-30% App Store commission. Is Apple’s stance on its App Store different from Reddit’s stance on its APIs? Is charging a commission to be on the App Store and take advantage of all Apple’s technology to get a chance to be distributed on hundreds of millions of iPhones similar to consuming a platform APIs? If not, what is different, actually? Is free API usage a dead end in today’s world? There are whole business models built around APIs these days. API speaks intellectual property in my book. Only companies with business models supported by massive ad distribution or expansive paid subscriptions can think of thriving by giving away their API access. It will be interesting to see how Reddit is reacting to third-party developers’ pushback.
Oh, and if they actually kill the third-party Reddit client ecosystem, unlike Twitter, Reddit platform alternatives are not obvious to me.
I guess it’s time to remember: there is no such thing as a free lunch.
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I’m thinking: The Mac Pro is expected to feature the same design as its predecessor and the M2 Ultra chip. I have doubts on this. The design was highly influenced by the need of air flow that was driven in part by Intel processors, a power hungry monster. With Apple Silicon, I would expect Apple to tweak the design to reflect the lower power consumption and heat dissipation by the chip.
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How many tech sites like MacRumors will switch to Mastondon to live-toot their comments during WWDC keynote ? Not MacRumors apparently has they still advertise their live tweets for the event. 🤔
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I’ve been looking from a distance at the launch of Mimestream, and reactions are pretty enthusiastic. As a subscriber to HEY email, do you think/know if we could replicate the “Imbox / Feed / Paper Trail” model with a Gmail account + Mimestream? The other big issue with Mimestream: no iPhone or iPad client. 😔
I like HEY’s service principles, but their mail client is a bit goofy. I’m due for renewal on July 9th.
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I’m not into Mastodon besides cross-posting to it and sometimes interacting with a few people. But when I do so, I want to use a great app. Ivory seems the best. I’m still unsure if I should go ahead with the subscription.
Tried Mona and Icecube, too. Ivory feels better in most accounts.
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I finally checked off enough of my tasks on my to do list to make room for the WWDC conference! On that day, I’m calling off for the afternoon to watch the keynote! 🤣
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Mentally, my creative hobbies take as much energy as my daytime work. I find it surprising how easily I can go from one world to another and back so easily.
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Where I’ve Been
To follow the trend started with Manton from Micro.blog, here’s my list of countries I visited.
- 🇺🇸 United States
- 🇲🇽 Mexico
- 🇨🇺 Cuba
- 🇩🇴 Republic Dominica
- 🇯🇲 Jamaica
- 🇦🇷 Argentina
- 🇧🇷 Brazil
- 🇺🇾 Uruguay
- 🇫🇷 France
- 🇪🇸 Spain
- 🇵🇹 Portugal
- 🇦🇹 Austria
- 🇨🇿 Czechia
- 🇳🇱 Netherland
- 🇬🇧 England
- 🇮🇸 Iceland
- 🇦🇪 UAE
- 🇮🇹 Italy
- 🇧🇪 Belgium
- 🇸🇪 Sweden
- 🇩🇪 Germany
- 🇨🇭 Switzerland
- 🇬🇷 Greece
- soon 🇲🇦 Morocco
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YouTube reminds me every day why I hate algorithmic timelines. Suppose I open up YouTube and click on one video about long-range airplanes. The minute I’m done watching the video, my timeline becomes full of airplane-related videos. YouTube completely washes out my timeline with what the algorithm was programmed to show me based on my consumption behaviours (and probably based on some other weird and highly questionable factors). I hate it. One video and boom, my YouTube universe flips elsewhere. Disclaimer: I’m a paying subscriber so I never see an ad. This behaviour is infuriating.
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I never share my food over here but god this was delicious: aspergus, lobster for a risotto! Nothing left on the table. Sorry.
