My Weekly Creative Summary for the Week of 2024/03

JF Martin (@numericcitizen@pixelfed.social)

She had perfect curves... #blackandwhite #blackandwhitephotography #architecture #architecturephotography

Pixelfed

January is mostly over! Wow, that was fast. I guess being busy with all sorts of creative activities explains it! Enjoy this edition, my friends! 😀

👨🏻‍💻 31 articles posted 😃
🏞️ 12 photos shared 😃
🎙️ No podcast episode published 😔
📺 1 YouTube video published 🙂

👨‍👩‍👦‍👦 Personal

1️⃣ I’ve got a few paying members on numericcitizen.me, where I host this weekly creative summary newsletter, which is available publicly. I've been thinking: what type of exclusive content could I create for my paying subscribers? I think supporters merit getting some extras, but I'm unsure exactly which content extras. So, I decided to send them an email and ask them. I'm looking forward to their response.

🗺️ Discoveries

1️⃣ I discovered that one of the guy that I'm following on Micro.blog is the author of the Cards visual theme for Micro.blog websites. After spending some time with the theme's capabilities, I decided to start a small project. See below for more details on this new little “tweaking" project. You know, I’m always tweaking something in my digital life.

📖 Reading

1️⃣ Thanks to news surrounding Apple's announcement in response to DMA, I had many articles to read to better understand what was at stake. See the logbook in the exhibits section. The best article comes from John Gruber. I do think Apple is being arrogant and stubborn. They do what any corporation would do: protect their bottom line. I do believe we are hypocrites when we want to break highly profitable business models because we all benefit from them and the system allows them to become what they are. But it's a complex matter.

“The delicious irony in Apple’s not knowing if these massive, complicated proposals will be deemed DMA-compliant is that their dealings with the European Commission sound exactly like App Store developers’ dealings with Apple. Do all the work to build it first, and only then find out if it passes muster with largely inscrutable rules interpreted by faceless bureaucrats.” - John Gruber

👨🏻‍💻 Writing

1️⃣ I realize that I no longer write about the war in Ukraine. This was the primary use case for my blog on Write.as. The closure of this blog has nothing to do with it because I still have many thoughts about this insane war. I still want to share my thoughts about these events. It's hard to read the news and do nothing about it. Expressing frustration or disbelief or asking questions helps to cope with the matter. 2️⃣ Day One introduced Shared Journals where people can share their thoughts and general writings in a shared journal. I love this idea. I don’t plan to use it as I'm the only one using Day One in my family, to my knowledge. You must have a premium account to post, but free accounts can comment. But this new release reminds me how much I'd like to be able to write on Day One and share a specific journal entry as a blog post on the web. I know that Day One is available on the web (in beta), but I wonder if the next step isn't to allow public journals. My sentiments about this align with Manton Reece's take on this. Fingers crossed.🤞🏻

🌄 Photography

1️⃣ I attended the Madonna “Celebration" show and took close to 300 photos using my iPhone 15 Pro Max. Overall, I'm rather happy with the results. Shows like this don’t offer the easiest conditions for photography with a smartphone. 2️⃣ Pixeflfed needs some work to support better sharing of multi-image posts. You can view some of the best images of the show right below this section. 3️⃣ While reading articles on DPReview, I stumbled on articles about the Nikon Z8 mirrorless camera and started thinking that I wish I had one. It's not cheap and I don't use my Nikon D750 enough to justify this type of upgrade.

JF Martin (@numericcitizen@pixelfed.social)

Here’s a selection of my best ten photos taken during the Madonna “Celebration” show. What a great night! Each of these images has something that, I think, conveys a unique take on this two-hour show. Sometimes, it’s the composition, the action on the scene, a ray of light, the surrounding lighting, the ambiance, the complexity of the scene, etc. All image comes without any post-processing, right from my iPhone 15 Pro Max.

Pixelfed

🎙️ Podcasting

1️⃣ I didn't produce a new podcast episode but I did listen to quite a few of them this week. See the logbook in the exhibits section.

🍎 Apple

1️⃣ The Mac turns 40. I wrote something about this milestone. During the day, I could read many posts on my timeline from people sharing their first Mac they had under the #MyFirstMac hashtag. It was fun and brought me a lot of great memories. No mention of this milestone on Apple.com or the Newsroom. It's a bit sad. But we got a lengthy article on Wired from Steven Levy. Apple can be nostalgic, but not about themselves. This is fun. 2️⃣ Lot’s of new things announced by Apple with iOS 17.4 directed to developers (and users) for the European Union and the DMA act. There is a lot to digest. One question keeps popping up in my head: how long before the modifications become available worldwide? Judging by the reactions, it seems to be a bit more positive than anyone expected. We will see how the EU will respond to this. These features requires iOS 17.4, which is currently in beta, and should be officially released somewhere in March. What happens if the EU rejects the Apple proposals? Could this delay the release of iOS 17.4 to the public?

Apple announces changes to iOS, Safari, and the App Store in the European Union

Apple announced changes to iOS, Safari, and the App Store impacting developers’ apps in the EU to comply with the DMA.

Apple Newsroom

Apple Details How It Plans to Comply with the EU’s Digital Markets Act

Today, Apple announced how it intends to comply with the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which the European Commission says applies to the App Store. There are a lot of details to cover, but in summary, radical change is coming to the EU App Store, but only in the EU. Let’s take a look at how

MacStoriesJohn Voorhees

🚧 Special projects

1️⃣ Another week, another little project: building a new landing page that will eventually replace my Linktr.ee subscription. It took me about two or three hours to build this and set it to my liking. The one-page website is a new feature for premium subscribers of Micro.blog. My understanding is that we can have as many as we want. The layout is not as cool as on Linktr.ee, but it is functionally equivalent. I'll save 90 US$ a year for this, which is nearly the same for a premium subscription to Micro.blog. 2️⃣ Now that my new landing page is up (and that I’m mostly satisfied with the end results), I'm turning my attention to start the process of switching my blog visual theme to a new one, the Cards theme. It will take some time to get there, but it's fun, and I can't wait to see how it looks on my blog! 3️⃣ I'm always tweaking something; I spent some time updating my visitor card on Sunday morning, which I'm proudly sharing here. 4️⃣ I'm working on another secret project that I cannot reveal right now because it involves a big partner. Let's say that I'm beta-testing an app. Something that I wanted to do for a long time for this partner. Stay tuned for that one.

📱 Apps & Services

1️⃣ I decided to stop using Write.as and keep focusing on Micro.blog instead for everything, including my thoughts and observations about the war in Ukraine. I made the announcement on my Write.as blog. Importing the content into Micro.blog was super easy and fast. I did have to do some content cleanup as some tags used by Write.as are not supported on Micro.blog and ended up in each post content. 2️⃣ Since the beginning of the year, Inoreader has been releasing a bunch of new features, and I think they are welcomed additions. The Verge posted an article about RSS readers where Inoreader is #2, Feedly taking the top spot. I'm not considering switching, especially if Inoreader keeps improving their offerings like they do since the beginning of this year. 3️⃣ Surprise update to Craft this week. No new features, only bug fixes. Significant releases are long to come buy. They may be working on something big. 👀🕵🏻‍♂️4️⃣ I bought Sleeve, an Apple Music player for the Mac. It's fully configurable and really well-designed.

📺 YouTube

1️⃣ Don't miss the Computer History Museum event “Insanely Great: The Apple Mac at 40”. Great stories about the Mac, Apple and Steve Jobs. 2️⃣ I created a video summarizing all the recent changes to Micro.blog.

💎 Miscellaneous

1️⃣ I decided to support Birchtree after Matt Birchler announced “More Birchtree”. I think it’s important to support other creators like me. This makes me wonder if I could also write content for my paid subscribers. This is something I should consider. Maybe I should ask the question to my paying members? 🤔 I did. Waiting for feedback.

🔮 Looking ahead

1️⃣ In the near future, I plan to replace the Timery reports (screenshots at the end of each edition in the exhibits section below) with Toggl's upcoming public dashboards. They are currently in beta, but I think they are cooler than having a bitmap. Stay tuned for that one.

I wish you a great week!

Exhibits 👀