My Weekly Creative Summary for the Week of 2023/36

After a slow week-end enjoying life in general, the rest of the week was busy working on many different things, in a very iterative way, as usual. This second weekly creative summary might be a bit longer than usual. This summary is available online and by email for all my subscribers. Buckle up!

This document is available as a Craft shared document here.

👨🏻‍💻 Writing

I started a new writing project. It's a long shot. It is about sharing my observations and my frustration even about the more and more frequent occurrence of user hostility from companies selling their apps and services. It will take time before I publish anything as I want to document and frame typical cases in different areas of our modern life. *️⃣ This blog post is about what I accomplished from a creative perspective and what I couldn't do. Again, I couldn't write a new edition for this week’s Friday Notes series (lack of subjects). I wish I could publish more regularly for this series.

🌄 Photography

Nine more photos were shared and posted on my Pixelfed page. The header image of this blog summary is the one that gathered the most appreciation. My migration off SmugMug continues, one day at a time, one photo at a time. My SmugMug subscription ends next April 2024. I still have time to move my stuff. *️⃣ I listened to an interesting discussion on a recent ATP podcast episode about cropping images with the iPhone 14 Pro while using a 2× zoom vs cropping a 1×. Apparently, it's better to crop from the telephoto using the 40MP resolution instead of 12MP using the same telephoto. 🤔 I'll see for myself when I finally upgrade my aging iPhone 13 Pro in the upcoming weeks.

🎙️ Podcasting

I shared episode 03 of my recently launched podcast. I refer to the upcoming Apple announcements and how they will trigger news waves, observation and analysis. While amid all this, It will be hard to keep up and come out with my comments and my own take. It's stressful but exciting at the same time.

🍎 Apple

Rumors about the upcoming iPad Pro redesign in 2024 are starting to pick up, and it looks like they are setting up the stage for an upgrade on my 2018 iPad Pro. I still use the iPad, but much less than the Mac, but still… my iPad Pro dates back to 2018 and next year, it will mark the sixth year of use. Battery life is not what it used to be, and the lack of modern hardware (M1 CPU, more system memory) prevents me from using it with my larger Apple Studio Display. I'll start to save my money for it. *️⃣ Only two days before the Apple Wonderlust keynote, announcing the next iterative design of the iPhone lineup. *️⃣  Finally, in this blog post, I wonder why Apple self-promote their apps. *️⃣  On the eve of the iPhone 15 release, where the Dynamic Island is expected to arrive on the non-Pro models, do you think it lived to its full potential?

🚧 Special projects

I consider my interview preparation with Manton Reece to be a unique project. Initially, I wanted to do it when I started my video series about Micro.blog, but the timing wasn't perfect. Now that vacation time is behind most of us, the timing is right. We had to postpone the recording and move it further into September. We should record near the end of the month, if all goes well in his life!

📱 Apps & Services

A recent update to my beloved app, Craft, version 2.5.15, brought some design tweaks to URL bookmarks (or rich links as they call it in the app). There are some issues with the new design, and old bugs are still waiting to be fixed. I submitted my feedback on the company's Slack channel, but I also created a short YouTube video about this so the team behind Craft really gets the message. Things 3 got an important update introducing variable text size, supposedly a highly requested feature. Since this app is central to my creative workflow, I'm happy to report that after testing it on the Mac, I enjoy the bigger text size, especially on the Apple Studio Display. CleanShot X received a significant update, too, focusing on video recording improvements and other little details that are quality-of-life tweaks. Omnivore, the open-source Read Later and Pocket/Matter/Instapaper alternatives, is still being improved. I spent some time this week to look at improvements and boy, I like this service. I started testing the fascinating and troubling Rewind utility after they decided to add a free tier, as noted by Matt Birchler. This utility enables recording of everything happening on the computer screen and microphone. Searching back in time using the AI assistant is simply freaking cool. I'm still not sure I want this, but I already found a handy use case while writing this: I wanted to search when I learned about the recently introduced free tier yesterday. I knew I saw it somewhere. Using Rewind search, it took me a few seconds, and I could return to the exact website at the right place.

👨‍👩‍👦‍👦 Personal

Earlier this week, I returned from a weekend trip to my hometown. I had a blast. The weather was splendid, allowing me to ride twice on my bike for a long ride. I visited a state park by bike for the first time. Incredible landscapes surrounded me all along. I wish I had more time for an extended stay in the area. Instead, we had to limit our stops to a minimum, preferring to cover more places instead of focusing on specific park area. This translated to a limited number of photos taken during our short stay there. *️⃣  I got an email from one of my readers following the publication of edition #107 of the Friday Notes newsletter. It was unexpected (I rarely get emails from my readers) but a heartfelt gesture. You can say hello@numericcitizen.me too!

📺 YouTube

I posted a short video explaining what Craft could do to improve the user experience with bookmarks (also called rich links). We shouldn't have to fight software to take advantage of it. This video feedback was also posted on Craft's Slack channel so that people at Craft would notice. Plus, I shared a video explaining the process of putting together this weekly creative summary, from Craft to Ulysses, then to Ghost, my hosting service.

🔮 Looking ahead

The upcoming will be a busy one, thanks to Apple releasing their new iPhone and watches. A big portion of my spare time will be spent reading the news. My expectations are quite low regarding what I'm going to accomplish this week because next week-end I'll be travelling to Quebec city to meet friends. I'll see how it goes.

💎 Miscellaneous

As a creator, should I care about the durability of the content I create and share? What if one of my beloved app, Craft, cease to be updated or even stop working altogether? This blog post, from Steph Ango, makes me think about these issues in our modern creative world.

“File over app is a philosophy: if you want to create digital artifacts that last, they must be files you can control, in formats that are easy to retrieve and read. Use tools that give you this freedom. File over app is an appeal to tool makers: accept that all software is ephemeral, and give people ownership over their data. I wish you a great week!”

Exhibits 👀