My Weekly Creative Summary for the Week of 2023/45
Highlights of things that I created and shared with the world with some introspective thoughts.
With this week’s edition, you’ll find a new section called “Discoveries”. This week, I didn’t publish much and worked instead on a project involving The Craft Bible and Gumroad. All the details are below. It’s funny how the domains I’m working on change one week after the other.
👨🏻💻 7 articles posted on my blog posts & 2 articles shared on my main website 🙂
🏞️ 9 photos shared 🙂
🎙️ 0 podcast episodes published 😔
📺 1 YouTube video published 😃
📖 Reading
1️⃣ I’ve read a few articles about Hu.ma.ne and their new (and first) product. It's certainly fascinating. The tech world was eager to come out with all sorts of analysis and take on this first gen product. It would be easy to call them doomed or DOA because of the concept novelty. They have something really unique on their hands. I'm curious to see where it's going. Beyond that, I don't have a firm opinion yet. While reading these articles about the "experience” delivery of the AI pin, I thought about the concept of the App Store that we've been enjoying since the iPhone, and I feel the concept is becoming tiring. We are really at the end of the App Store line. Is Apple aware of it? 🤔
🗺️ Discoveries
1️⃣ For the first edition of this new section, I want to share my excitement for a great new app for the Mac: Keyboard Maestro. It replaces an app I used to automate some tasks on the Mac named Keysmith. It wasn’t updated in a long time and doesn't work well with macOS Sonoma. I had to find an alternative. This is where Keyboard Maestro comes into play. With other apps, Keyboard Maestro shines and helps me be more efficient and productive. I worked on many macros for use in conjunction with Craft, which in some areas lacks keyboard shortcuts. I made a video about this on my YouTube channel, see the link below.
👨🏻💻 Writing
1️⃣ Writing is a significant portion of my creative journey. Since the explosion of AI in our digital life, it was a matter of time before it made its appearance in one way or another in my creative journey. Because of that, it is now time to share my guiding principles for using AI-based tools and services. You can find them here
🌄 Photography
1️⃣ “John Morris, a professional photographer from Prince Edward Island, Canada, was trying to get a shot of Quebec City’s iconic Chateau Frontenac hotel on Tuesday when he was accosted by a guard from the nearby U.S. consulate.” - from a story reported by Petapixel. The story says the photographer was sitting near the U.S. consulate to shoot photos of the Chateau Frontenac in Old Quebec, Canada. He was waiting for the perfect composition with clouds in the sky. He was arrested for loitering. I bring up this story because I can see myself doing the same as he did: requesting why he should move since he was in a public place, doing nothing wrong. He will have to pay the fine but plans to challenge this in court. That's an abuse of power, plain and simple.
Matt Growcoot
I would have done the same.
🎙️ Podcasting
1️⃣ It's been a while since I published a podcast episode. I do have many ideas but I lack the required time to push one new episode out. I feel sad about this. 😔
🍎 Apple
1️⃣ Apparently, Apple is ready to let go of its walled garden in Europe by allowing third-party App Store on the iPhone. I bring this up here because it has profound implications for Apple users. I bet this will eventually come worldwide once it’s been available in Europe for a while. I guess Europe will be a test bed for Apple. 2️⃣ I'm still in awe with my MacBook Air and Mac mini, both using Apple Silicon. Apple has been on a roll in CPU development since 2020. They recently introduced the M3 iteration, which provides substantial performance gain, depending on which Mac you are upgrading. Please look at the exhibit section below for a complete chart of all versions of Apple Silicon chips.
🚧 Special projects
1️⃣ My Gumroad account was finally verified, making my digital products available for search and in the Discovery section (see the exhibits section below). I'm anxious to see if it will make a difference. Fingers crossed! 2️⃣ I've been working on my next project: making The Craft Bible available as a paid subscription. My reasoning is simple: I put so much effort into maintaining this website; I think it offers genuine added value to the Craft users community, and asking for a small compensation feels reasonable. The new subscription is available here on Gumroad. 3️⃣ Earlier this year, I had the idea of building a widget for the iPhone with Charty (link) to display my website visitors’ analytics provided with Plausible (link). I started doing some exploratory work only to realize this was a much more complex project than I initially thought. I eventually encountered a guy on Micro.blog who shared his desire to build Apple's Shortcuts. I got in touch with him, and a few months later, I got my first version of the Shortcut, fully functional and doing precisely what I wanted. I sent him some money for his support. Charty is a fantastic app. It's been a while since the last release, but according to the developer, he is working on a new version, 2.0. I can't wait!
📱 Apps & Services
1️⃣ I spend quite some quality time experimenting with Keyboard Maestro. My first use case is automating some portions of my weekly newsletter process. My second is automating portions of Craft interactions. In the latter case, this automation helps circumvent Craft's limited use of keyboard shortcuts. It's fun to be a power user! 2️⃣ I was expecting an update to Craft this week, but it didn't come. Next week, maybe. Meanwhile, I decided to reduce my implication in Slack channels regarding Craft. I'll spend my precious time on other things than playing a fake community manager. Sorry for venting some frustration here. 3️⃣ I'm still pondering if I should subscribe to ChatGPT and leave behind Midjourney. The problem is that Raycast offers GPT-4 for an additional 8$ a month, but it won't recognize my ChatGPT subscription. I would end up paying twice for the same.
👨👩👦👦 Personal
1️⃣ Did you know that I’m celebrating thirty years in information technology? Probably not. It all began in 1993 as a professional IT technician. I started writing an article on this personal milestone. More to come soon. Time flies and I think I still have another decade in front of me. After, I'll be done.
📺 YouTube
1️⃣ Fun fact: did you know that before being on YouTube to share my videos about Craft or Micro.blog? I tried Vimeo, but It wasn't very successful. I prefer the Vimeo publishing experience, but compared to YouTube, it felt like a ghost town. 2️⃣ I made a new video about using Keyboard Maestro with Craft for my YouTube channel. It has been a long time since my last video. I was a bit in a hurry and lacked the usual preparation time. I'm not super happy with the video quality from an execution perspective.
🔮 Looking ahead
1️⃣ I’ve been investing more and more of my time into ChatGPT derivative tools recently. My interest in these next-generation services is increasing significantly. I'm a light user of ChatGPT, but I'm blown away each time I use it. I'm considering augmenting my use of these tools in my creative journey. Because of this, I think it is also time to reflect on the values underlying my creative work. This is why I want to continue working on my "My Personal Guiding Principles for AI Tools and Services Use”. 2️⃣ I'm also considering increasing my subscription and accessing the more performant model, GPT-4. I'm thinking about the best tool to use for this. Raycast is probably the one I'll go ahead with.
I wish you a great week!
Exhibits 👀
The first OpenAI keynote ever. Watch to see the future happening right now.
Using Keyboard Maestro with Craft to automate simple tasks
