My Weekly Creative Summary for the Week of 2024/04

JF Martin (@numericcitizen@pixelfed.social)

Like a painting.

Pixelfed

Welcome to the newest edition of my weekly creative summary. Lots of things are happening this week, as usual.

👨🏻‍💻 2 articles posted 🙂
🏞️ 6 photos shared 🙂
🎙️ No podcast episode published 😔
📺 No YouTube video published 😔

👨‍👩‍👦‍👦 Personal

1️⃣ Early in the week, I woke up with an email from a long-time reader of mine. He wanted to express his appreciation for my creative work. Apparently, I helped him better understand Craft. It was a very touching email because he alluded to serious health issues that would put an end to his life relatively soon. I responded without knowing too much about what to write. I heard my voice and wrote a big thank you to him for his support, and I wished him to be surrounded by people he cares about for the road ahead.

🗺️ Discoveries

1️⃣ Apparently, there is a movement called "The small web”. I first discovered its existence on Github. Think of it as the promotion of the 1995 web: small, light, privacy-friendly. There is a great description here. I like this idea. Looking at what I'm doing as a blogger with Micro.blog, I feel like being part of this movement and I feel great about it.

📖 Reading

1️⃣ For news and online consumption, something is brewing on Kick Starter: “Weaving your favourite blogs, social media, and more into a unified and chronological timeline.” Tapestry, a project from Iconfactory on Kickstarter, has caught my attention. After reading the project details, I went ahead and put down 125 US$ to support the project. Then, I spread the word. I wonder if this will be a reimagined Flipboard clone but presented as a timeline. Let's wait and see where it goes.

"Because of their decades of truly great products, Apple thinks they are more clever than anyone else. Because of their focus on privacy, Apple thinks they are righteous. Because of their financial success, Apple thinks they are more powerful than governments. The DMA will test whether they’re right." - Manton Reece

👨🏻‍💻 Writing

1️⃣ Last week, I emailed my few subscribers asking their input on what type of content they would like to receive as a paying member. I'm still waiting for a single reply. For now, I'll pass exclusive content. There aren't many subscribers, but I feel grateful for their support. 2️⃣ I have a few writing projects I'm working on. One article is about the next major release of Craft, version 2.7.0, which I had a chance to test for about a week. Another article, this time about Craft & AI, tries to detail how newer Gen AI models could augment Craft features and overall value. You can read it here. I started writing about using Apple software features and other third-party services to protect my privacy. That article could be long, and I have difficulty working on it. The tentative title is "How Am I Protecting My Data & Privacy Online”. 3️⃣ Bye bye January, hello February: the blog posts monthly digest from Micro.blog is out. All previous monthly digests are available here. It’s a great way to revisit the written past. 😌

Numeric Citizen Blog Posts Monthly Digest - Numeric Citizen Blog

Numeric Citizen Blog Just finished going through my monthly newsletter come out of Micro.blog. 😳 It’s long and feels a bit messy. 🤨 For 2024, I decided to be …

Numeric Citizen Blog

🌄 Photography

1️⃣ I was less active this week because of my other creative activities (writing articles, preparing YouTube videos, testing a new browser, etc.). Yet, I was able to push a few of my photos from my archives.

🍎 Apple

1️⃣ The Apple Vision Pro arrived in tech reviewers' hands, and many reviews are already flowing through the gates. Consider watching the EPIC review. It's one of the best demos of visionOS capabilities that I’ve seen so far. Really, the Vision Pro certainly looks like one of the best 1.0 products Apple ever released. Coupled with visionOS 1.0 and Apple's ecosystem core technologies, Apple Vision Pro feels like pure magic on day one. And I haven't tried one yet. I'll probably buy one. Or maybe not. 2️⃣ I think Apple keeps making a lot of money.

"As a former customer, I wish Spotify would spend half the energy it has used to moan about Apple’s app store monopoly on creating a better customer experience and making me love the service." - Om Malik

🚧 Special projects

1️⃣ I finally made it and updated my blog site with a new design. It took me a few hours last Sunday and I'm happy about the end-results. I was expecting this mini project to take much longer but my curiosity to try out and experiment with the new design was enough to convince me to switch as fast as I could. Each Micro.blog user gets a blog for testing purposed and I find this cool. It's probably because of Manton's background as a developer. You can have a peek at it in the exhibits section below. There are a few issues still to be ironed out but I'm confident they will be fixed in the coming days or weeks.

📱 Apps & Services

1️⃣ The maker of the Arc Browser came out with Arc Search. It’s an interesting app, but it’s too early to make my default browser on the iPhone. Why? Dependency on Google for searches. No, thank you. I have the same feelings expressed in this quick video review. 2️⃣ The maker of Arc Search is also making the Arc Browser. I was curious and watched a quick video overview. Sounds interesting. I do see some similarities with Safari features, which I don't really use. Anyway, out of curiosity, I'll set some time aside soon to try it out. 3️⃣ Matt Birchler made an interesting video showcasing a big part of his publishing workflow. We both use Reeder, Ulysses and Ghost, but the workflow linking their use is somewhat different. I don't use Obsidian to store reading highlights; I prefer Craft for that, but my setup is manual and far from optimal. His Obsidian automation to create link posts is clever but requires advanced knowledge. There is always room for improvement. Oh, and instead of Readwise, I prefer Omnivore, a lesser-known read-later service. 4️⃣ I started experimenting with the Arc Browser, and I must say that I'm really liking it. I'm only starting to get used to it. Everything seems buttery smooth and feels less cluttered. I think this design is superior to Apple Safari’s. It’s better for consuming RSS feeds in Inoreader and YouTube videos than Safari. I should probably do an article about it in the future.

📺 YouTube

1️⃣ I have four videos in the pipeline that I started working on—two videos about Micro.blog, and two videos about Craft. I'm very iterative in my creative work. I work on each video in a round-robin fashion. It's the same for my writing projects. The next will be published at the beginning of next week, probably on Monday, 5th. I'm quite happy with that one for many reasons. I think I’m still perfecting my setup. This time, I switched to the Arc Browser to demonstrate a website in my video, which looks cleaner than Safari.

💎 Miscellaneous

1️⃣ I should celebrate my 13th year on Reddit, according to… well, Reddit. Should I? 🤫 I used to cross-post many of my website's articles to Reddit using IFTTT automation, thinking that people on Reddit would interact with my content, but it never really clicked, besides a few upvotes from time to time. Then came the API restrictions controversy, and I stopped cross-posting my content indefinitely. I currently have 51 members in the /r/numericcitizen subreddit. My last post there was published five months ago.

🔮 Looking ahead

1️⃣ Next week should be exciting and very busy. I can't wait to share what I'm currently testing as I write these words. 2️⃣ I'll look for the upcoming reviews and comments about the Apple Vision Pro. I'm devouring these. But I find this piece of technology utterly fascinating. It's like the future now. I'm paying attention to how people will adapt their social acceptance of being isolated to experience a new way of interacting with a sophisticated computer. Remember the AirPods when they first came out? People were laughing at them. And still... they are everywhere now. 🤷🏻‍♂️ 3️⃣ Algoriddim released version 5.1 of Djay, their music mixing application for the Mac. Version 5.1 supports the Apple Vision Pro but also supports Apple Music as its source for music mixing. I quickly tested it to see if a streaming service like Apple Music would cause a problem. It doesn’t, apparently. I'll spend more time soon to test this out. Music quality is certainly something to consider when using streaming for mixing.

I wish you a great week!

Exhibits 👀

https://youtu.be/hdwaWxY11jQ?si=YUb9TfiBmrWyXCD0