My Weekly Creative Summary for the Week of 2023/47

👨🏻‍💻 10 articles posted on my blog posts & 2 articles shared on my main website 🙂
🏞️ 8 photos shared 🙂
🎙️ No podcast episode published 😔
📺 1 YouTube video published 😃

📖 Reading

1️⃣ I spent some time reading about the OpenAI woes of the past few days. I felt it was essential to better understand the possible disruption of one of the most well-regarded companies in a very hot field: AI.

🗺️ Discoveries

1️⃣ I started using Clop, an image processing utility for the Mac that works in conjunction with Dropshare or separately. More details are below. 2️⃣ I started using Backblaze for storing files. More details are below. 3️⃣ I experimented with a somewhat unknown RSS reader called “Lire” because it recently introduced a feature to save articles into Omnivore.

👨🏻‍💻 Writing

1️⃣ A recent update to Micro.blog added support to import blog posts from Write.as. I tested the import feature on my test blog on Micro.blog, and it works great. I would need to clean up a few things here and there, but that’s expected. I've been writing on Write.as at about the same time the war in Ukraine started. I wanted a dedicated space for covering this historic event simply because I didn't want to bother my followers on Micro.blog about this delicate subject. Today, I wonder if this is a good strategy. Now that I know I can migrate my content, I added a task to reconsider my use of Write.as and see if I should consolidate. That's probably for early 2024. 2️⃣ While revisiting my content on Write.as, I decided to re-publish an article that I published early 2023 that explains the Write.freely ecosystem.

🌄 Photography

1️⃣ Since using Dall-E and Midjourney, my usage of Unsplash has greatly diminished. I used to go there to grab a new image that would illustrate a newsletter edition or an article subject. I'm better served with AI in that respect. But, more importantly, my work is unique in that I don't risk using an image already used by thousands of other creators. 2️⃣ Speaking of Unsplash Awards 2023 finalists are now publicly known. This is my favourite image, by far. 3️⃣ Here is a great conversation on Micro.blog about street photography, where photos depict people doing all sorts of things or in different social contexts. Is it okay to take a picture of people on the street? Should we ask permission at the risk of ruining the moment? What is okay and not okay? I'm not really into street photography, and when I'm taking photos with people in the frame, I try to be far from the subjects. I'm not at ease doing this, never. 4️⃣ In this article about Write.freely platform, I tried to use Dall-E to generate an image of a scene with a person typing on an old typewriter. After many iterations, I abandoned Dall-E and remembered that I had an image of an old typewriter without anyone using it, but it perfectly fit the article's purpose.

🍎 Apple

1️⃣ Don't miss this year's holiday ad. 2️⃣ It's a quiet time of the year for Apple. My attention is already directed to the first half of 2024 when the iPad should receive meaningful upgrades.

📱 Apps & Services

1️⃣ Craft v2.6.0 is out this week with more smart link types (four more added to the long list) and better support for shared document URLs. This release is also the first to be scrutinized to produce an analysis report only available to the subscribers of The Craft Bible on Gumroad. The experience of writing the analysis report in Craft and then exporting via copy & paste operations in Gumroad emails editor is not perfect. Still, it is far more accessible than I thought. 2️⃣ As with each release, there are some heated discussions on Slack, mainly about using Slack for community discussions instead of less ephemeral platforms like Circle, Canny or Discord. 3️⃣ I started looking into an image processing app called Retrobatch from the makers of the image editing app, Acorn. It's a pretty clever design and more powerful than Squash. Now, do I need this app in my creative workflow? How often do I need to batch-process images? 4️⃣ Dropshare will drop their cloud offering, based on which my file-sharing space is based. I reconsidered my Dropshare + Short.io and selected a different cloud storage solution, Backblaze, because I could also use it as a backup destination for my Synology NAS. The transition was easy, but I had issues with my connection configuration in Dropshare. All is good now. 5️⃣ While working to fix my Dropshare issue, I discovered Clop, a free image optimization utility for Mac. It's very powerful and drastically reduces image file size without affecting quality. It works by watching a folder for new image files. As soon as some are dropped in the folder, Clop starts its magic. I typically see screenshot files from 4 MB to a few hundred KB. Even with fast internet connections, having a lightweight website improves the user experience and Google's pagespeed metrics.

👨‍👩‍👦‍👦 Personal

1️⃣ This week, I thought about people following me on all my sharing spaces (Micro.blog, Mastodon, Bluesky, etc.) The vast majority of them are silent and never engage in conversation. A minority will engage by giving their feedback or asking questions about my creative work. I like this a lot, and I reply most of the time. I don't have many followers compared to other creators and the potential of the whole internet jungle. The scale of the potential is mind-blowing. Comparing to that potential is not the best way to look at it and see if I'm successful or not. Consider my subscribers on YouTube. As I write this, I’ve got 978 people who, at some point, tune in to my channel to watch a video. What if those people were physically in one room? That would be a big room, for sure. Transposing those numbers into the physical world helps me better appreciate that, even if I'm not a big star on the net, I do have many people who are there to read or watch what I'm doing. And I'm ok with this.

📺 YouTube

1️⃣ This week, while working on documenting my updated creative workflow, I thought it was a good time to create a YouTube video where I could share all the sites where I publish content. Now, it's done.

🔮 Looking ahead

1️⃣ I'm starting my DJing course this week, a first three-hour session, using Serato DJ Pro. I’m more acquainted with Algorithm Djay, which is relatively simple and much more beautiful than Serato. Per the instructors’ requests, I proceeded with the Serato Pro installation on my M2 MacBook Air to get ready for my course. I wasn't sure it would work, as Sonoma is still not officially supported by Serato. The installation took quite some time but was eventually completed successfully. My first run of Serato was met with deception. The default graphic resolution is not optimized for Retina displays. I went on Reddit to express my surprise about Serato Pro not being compiled for Apple Silicon, which I find a shame since these chips have been around for over three years. It didn't take long before some people started to patronize me. Reddit can be toxic. As for the display resolution, there is an option to enable high-res mode to fix the issue. More comments to come next week!

💎 Miscellaneous

1️⃣ I spent some time this week reworking and updating my creative workflow. I shared this announcement post about it on Micro.blog. You can find the details right here. I'm more and more satisfied with the foundations of my creative journey. I see less and less need to change major portions or components of it.

I wish you a great week!

Exhibits 👀

Clop - Image, video, PDF and clipboard optimiser

Image, video, PDF and clipboard optimiser. Copy large, paste small, send fast

Clop - Image, video, PDF and clipboard optimiser

Dropshare Apps - for macOS and iOS

Upload Screen Shots, Screen Recordings, Files, Folders, just anything with Dropshare.

Dropshare

Short.io — White label URL Shortener. Create your own short branded URLs

Short.io (formerly short.cm) makes short links (vanity urls) on your own domain. Free signup, analytics and API. Chrome, slack, zapier and segment integrations.

About us

My Complete Content Creator Toolset And Some More