My Weekly Creative Summary for the Week of 2023/49
Highlights of things that I created and shared with the world with some introspective thoughts.
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A storm that came too early.
Another busy week, my dear readers! I had less time this week, preferring to spend more time practicing and working on my music selection and DJ abilities. Nonetheless, I could still be creatively active! Let’s see what’s in store for this week!
👨🏻💻 3 articles posted on my blog posts & 1 article shared on my main website 🙂
🏞️ 17 photos shared 😃
🎙️ No podcast episode published 😔
📺 1 YouTube video published 😃, 1 video rejected!
📖 Reading
1️⃣ This week, I tried something different for my readings: I used Omnivore’s text-to-speech feature to read some longer articles aloud. The voices are stunning, but how can we highlight text while listening? It's also harder to stay focused than reading the text myself.
“Technology won’t fix human behaviour.” — Manuel M on Mastodon
🗺️ Discoveries
1️⃣ This week's discoveries were mostly about the world of DJing, as my four-week course is ongoing. I learned how and where DJs are getting their music. If my teacher is any indication, DJs aren't too concerned about "stealing” music from others without paying a dime in royalties, and they don't expect too much in return when sharing their creations. This might not be the case, but I find this surprising nonetheless. It's a world of creative abundance, and musicians are seeking exposure.
👨🏻💻 Writing
1️⃣ I’ve been spending some time completing my year in review posts about my creative journey and about Craft. I love to write summaries like these, especially the personal ones. Revisiting them near the end of the year helps me get a sense of all my creative accomplishments for the year. This year was a biggy! I can't wait to share this summary with my readers! 2️⃣ As I'm writing this, I plan to release three articles on my main blog and that will conclude the year.
🌄 Photography
1️⃣ The last camera my late father was able to use was a digital Canon PowerShot point-and-shoot. He never owned a smartphone. As a young adult, he quickly bought a film camera in his late forties. His father, too, loved photography. I wonder how different photos would have been if my father had an iPhone. Having a camera with us always makes us the best camera and helps us document our daily lives. My sons will get access to my everyday life when I’m gone. I wish I had this from my father. 2️⃣ This week, I started digging into old boxes of photo slides shot in the nineties, before digital cameras. Among those were a few slides coming from late parents. They contain fond memories of them and find the process of opening the album, flipping through pages and deciding what's worth keeping and what should be put away hard. The whole process makes me rather sad and depressed. I'll continue the whole thing, but only in small doses. 😔 3️⃣ On the more positive side, I see so much familiarity between my current photographic style and my father’s. It's somewhat surprising that I couldn’t figure out a different style that is unique to me. The similarity is that strong.
🍎 Apple
1️⃣ There are rumors that Apple is close to releasing updated MacBook Air with the M3 chip. The M2 MacBook Air that I'm currently using to write this newsletter was bought last August. Even if I'm not fully utilizing this device's power, I would be annoyed to see an M3-based MacBook Air coming out so fast. But I would probably not upgrade, preferring to see a redesign instead in the future.
🚧 Special projects
1️⃣ For Christmas, I will create Christmas cards using ChatGPT and Dall-E. The idea is to make the front page image using Dall-E with prompts that relate to the person to whom the card is destined. Next, I'll simulate a short conversation with ChatGPT about asking questions like “What is the most important thing to say for Christmas”? I'm still thinking about the best way to involve ChatGPT for this. Overall, I want this to be funny for those who will get the Christmas card. 2️⃣ With a few hours of work, I put together a feature request board for Craft using the popular Canny.io web service. It's free for me and for users to use. I explain why I made this in the public announcement. So far, many people have already entered their requests, more than I expected. It's a good sign.
📱 Apps & Services
1️⃣ DJay 5.0 was released, and I didn't expect that, right in the middle of my four-week DJing course! Lots of improvements and quality-of-life additions. There is a YouTube video tour of the new features. 2️⃣ I'm a big user and fan of Craft, but I always keep an eye on Capacities, a similar app closer to Notion than Craft in its philosophy. I don't have any use cases for it, but it's fun to watch it evolve. I do keep a free account, just in case. 3️⃣ I've been testing Play 2.0 to gather YouTube videos from my channel subscriptions. I find this app very useful, and I see myself spending less and less time on the YouTube website and more time on Play. Here is a review here. Since the release, there have already been three sub-releases to add features and tweaks.
👨👩👦👦 Personal
1️⃣ We're two weeks away from Christmas, and I'm not really into it now. I find this time of the year more stressful than anything else. It's probably the case for a silent majority of people anyway. The good thing is that I'll be on vacation for two weeks and ready to spend time with family members. I should probably be more free to spend time on my hobbies.
📺 YouTube
1️⃣ There is a running controversy surrounding Google's policy blocking ad blockers for non-subscribers on YouTube. I guess the logic goes like this: if you don't want to be a premium subscriber, fine, but then you must see those pesky ads; it is what it is. As a paying premium subscriber to YouTube, I don't have a clear opinion on Google's stance because I wouldn't say I like ads. I do use ad blockers. When visiting a website which will detect that I'm running ad blockers, if the website only warns me but lets me in, I'm fine; otherwise, I move on elsewhere. The website loses, and I probably lose, too. I think the web needs to strike a new balance in the future. We're not there yet. 2️⃣ I shared a new video this week about Craft: a public announcement for The Craft Feature Request Board. I got some positive feedback both on Micro.blog and Slack. I hope this video triggers some more thoughts from the team behind Craft. 3️⃣ I created a video tour guide of Play 2.0 and posted it on my YouTube channel, but Google immediately took it down for content policy violation. I made this video for nothing. You can find the video thumbnail in the exhibits section below. Too bad. More details here "Strike One".
🔮 Looking ahead
1️⃣ There are three weeks left to 2023. I know that my creative work for the year is coming to an end. I do have three articles mostly ready to share that will conclude my year of writing. They are a retrospective look at specific areas of my digital life. Stay tuned.
💎 Miscellaneous
1️⃣ I'm wondering what the future of the Apple Rumors Hub will be. It's a website about Apple rumors that I’m maintaining using Craft. It rarely gets visitors. I think I'll keep it for me, not for other people. I'll probably need to make a decision early next year.
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.
One more thing: do you know how much time it takes to write these weekly summaries? About three hours a week.
Exhibits 👀
If you want to get a good overview of Capacities, it’s one of the videos you should look.
Play 2.0 Adds YouTube Channel Support, Folders, and a New Premium Subscription
Marcos Tanaka’s Play has become the way I watch YouTube, which isn’t something I expected would happen as much as I’ve enjoyed the app since its launch early last year. The app, available on the iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple TV, started as a way to save YouTube links to watch later. That made Play
John Voorhees
