Creative summary

My Weekly Creative Summary for the Week of 2023/48

Highlights of things that I created and shared with the world with some introspective thoughts.

JF Martin

Dec 3, 2023 — 7 min read

A popular photo that I published during the week on Pixelfed

This is edition #13 of my weekly creative summary. Lots of different things this week. I’m still loving putting these weekly summaries together. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do. 🙂

👨🏻‍💻 9 articles posted on my blog posts & 1 article shared on my main website 🙂
🏞️ 7 photos shared 🙂
🎙️ No podcast episode published 😔
📺 1 YouTube video published 😃

📖 Reading

1️⃣ I've saved several articles in my Omnivore queue but failed to read them during the week! I should spend more time reading on a regular basis.

🗺️ Discoveries

1️⃣ I'm learning to use the Serato Pro DJ app. As a user of Algoriddim DJay, I find Serato awful for my eyes. But the design consideration doesn't seem to be a thing in the DJ world. Maybe I'm wrong. 2️⃣ I'm also new to Google Classroom. The teacher in the DJing course uses this platform to share notes and tasks with other students. As for Serato Pro, Google Classroom is minimalistic and doesn't shine. I wish we had used Apple Classroom instead. Yet, both app reviews are awful. 3️⃣ If you like wallpapers for your iPhone, don’t miss the latest from Basic Apple Guy. If you want to see the internals of your shiny new iPhone 15 Pro Max, get it! It's free and shows the amount of work and details that goes into producing those wallpapers. Simply incredible.

👨🏻‍💻 Writing

1️⃣ I've been putting the final touches to the year in review for Craft. At the beginning of each year, I start a new document to write down changes to this note-taking app. Near the end of the year, I put up a summary and wrote my thoughts. The article should be published right after the last update, somewhere in the first half of December. It's been a strange streak of updates this year. More details soon. 2️⃣ I still have a hard time writing articles in a single stretch. I'm more iterative. I've been working on many articles during the year and rarely could write one from start to finish in a single day. I'm not sure this is a bad thing. For example, writing in a timely matter following an event is a big challenge for me.

🌄 Photography

1️⃣ The annual Unsplash photo awards are out; you can find gorgeous images on their website. This is my favourite image. 2️⃣ The Art of Photography YouTube channel published a video about a photo cataloging service called Mylio. What makes this service apart from the crowd is the fact that the service is based on a device-to-device network to synchronize images. There is no cloud backend. Think of it as a decentralized synchronization service. I wonder if this could be a replacement for my Adobe Cloud storage. I could probably download all my images on a master Mac and have it synced to my other devices. I'll keep an eye on that one. 3️⃣ I ordered a slide scanner from Kodak. I have a few hundred of them to scan. Stay tuned for a review of the device and the scan quality.

🎙️ Podcasting

1️⃣ I still wish I had enough time to sit down and prepare a new podcast episode, but it is what it is. When I started this podcast, I wanted to publish at least once a month. I'm barely able to achieve that. 😔 2️⃣ PocketCast, my go-to app for listening to podcasts, released the year-in-review summary within the app. It's something similar to what Apple releases each year with Apple Music. According to this summary, my podcast consumption increased greatly this year (2x), mainly due to consuming more electronic music and CoreIntuition podcasts.

🍎 Apple

1️⃣ Ubiquiti, the networking equipment maker, recently launched the Unified Express, a small router with bundled Wi-Fi. It reminds me of a small Apple TV but in white. Reviews are very positive, and tech pundits are enthusiastic about it. I wish Apple stayed in this market because there is a massive demand for well-designed and very focused products like this for the home and small business networking markets. Too bad. I used a Ubiquiti Dream Machine before being a satisfied Apple AirPort user. Read my experience of migrating to Ubiquiti.

🚧 Special projects

1️⃣ I had my first DJing course this week. Of all 11 students, there are as many girls as boys. I'm the oldest. I'm learning with Serato Pro. It's not the best-looking application on earth, but it seems good for what it needs to accomplish. I still prefer DJay, though. The teacher reminds me of myself and many others when he says he likes to buy new DJ gear, test it, and resell it. And the same goes for applications and utilities in the DJ world. I could say the same with apps and computers in my creative journey. Now I need to practice what I learned this week.

📱 Apps & Services

1️⃣ I came across a new service and app named “Cosmos". His goal is to be a Pinterest replacement. It's available on the iPhone and the web. It's not free, with a pretty steep monthly price (another subscription, you might say). 2️⃣ Photomator introduced complete HDR editing. I love Photomator, and it could become the Lightroom replacement if I ever quit the Adobe ecosystem. Editing HDR on the Mac or the iPad, provided the display supports HDR, is mandatory to experience the colours and the contrasts precisely like they’re coming from the iPhone (which supports HDR photos). Read the press release here. Oh, one last thing: Photomator was named Mac app of the year! 3️⃣ The YouTube videos management app, Play, released version 2.0, which adds the capability to subscribe to a YouTube channel. This makes Play 2.0 a serious content management tool. I started the 7-day subscription trial to see if I keep it. So far, I really like what I'm seeing. 4️⃣ I discovered a new app that I’ll be using for my YouTube recordings: Bezel. This Mac utility enables the display of the iPhone or iPad screen on the Mac. It's useful to record a video on the iPad to demonstrate something. I'll probably buy it. 5️⃣ I’ve been using Djay this week and found out somewhere that they are close to releasing version 5.0. I think this DJ app is an underdog and should be more popular than it is in the DJ world. I can't wait to see what they are coming with this next major release.

👨‍👩‍👦‍👦 Personal

1️⃣ I was sick 🤮 on Tuesday morning, and my life was miserable all day, but I could attend my DJing course. It took me a few days to fully recover from that bug. Gosh. 😵‍💫 This might explain why I couldn't do everything I had planned for the week. 😔

📺 YouTube

1️⃣ I came across a video about Omnivore by Matt Birchler. It's a little bit less than 10 minutes long. He steals my intention of doing a similar video. I've been wanting to do a 60-minute video with Omnivore. I could still do it, but I feel slightly less inclined now. If you are curious about this read-later service, watch the video! 2️⃣ YouTube is full of potentially interesting content. Sometimes, when I find a potentially exciting video, I don't have the time to listen to it. This week, I created a workflow to fix this problem, thanks to generative AI tools like ChatGPT. You can read more details in this blog post. It's well worth your time, I guarantee you. 3️⃣ I created and shared a video about how users on Micro.blog can be more efficient at consuming their Micro.blog timeline with simple tips and tricks. I never expected that many people would watch these videos because not many people are on Micro.blog, but I like to put them together.

🔮 Looking ahead

1️⃣ This week is my DJing session #2. After learning the basics and with some practice this week-end, I'm ready to learn the next things!

I wish you a great week!

💡

This newsletter edition is also available as a Craft shared document here. This week's edition is based on template version 1.0.7 — 2023-11-05 and was put together with ❤️ on a 15-inch MacBook Air and Craft.

Exhibits 👀

My newest YouTube video, this time about Micro.blog timeline consumption.

A paid service as a Pinterest replacement. Are you in?

For those using Photomator, instead of Lightroom, this is a must-install update.

The yearly Unsplash awards for 2023 are out!

A demonstration (and a bit ad-like video) about a novel image cataloging app.

Could this be the ultimate image cataloging service?

A quick overview of Omnivore by Matt Birchler

The evolution of iPhone’s camera bump over the years.

Timery-Summary Report@2023-12-03@09.37.54@2x.png

Here is my Timery report for the past week, including device uage. — Here is my Timery report for the past week, including device usage.

Here is my logbook, as seen in Things 3.