Creative summary

My Weekly Creative Summary for the Week of 2024-22

“All I want is to make a difference, even if it’s a small one.” — JF Martin

JF Martin

09 Jun 2024 — 7 min read

IOne of my many photos taken in Livorno, Italy.

👨🏻‍💻 30 posts 😃
🏞️ 6 photos shared 🙂
🎙️ 2 podcast episodes published 😃
📺 No YouTube video published 😔

👤 Personal

1️⃣ On June 7th, Manuel Moreale published my written interview with me on People & Blog. You can read the written interview here. I was excited to take part in this must-read series. Let me know if you can read the interview; you might learn a few things about me! It was undoubtedly fun to answer the questions.

🗺️ Discoveries

1️⃣ In the following Marques Brownlee video, I learned about IP68, the iPhone's water resistance. I learned that durability and repairability are two attributes that fight in opposite directions: themore durable, the less repairable.

It’s a great video on durability testing at Apple and a good explanation of durability vs repairability.

📖 Reading

1️⃣ I have a book, “The Phoenix Project,” sitting on my bedside table. I started reading it a few years ago. As I'm going on vacation soon, I think I should take it with me and set myself the goal of finishing it once and for all.

“It’s often fun to play with “new” software and discover how it works, even when you are not planning to adopt it” — Christopher Curtis on Enthusiasms

👨🏻‍💻 Writing

1️⃣ I’ve been reading M. G. Siegler a lot recently. I like his writing and critical views on many tech subjects. However, one thing that stands out in his writing style is the intensive use of links within a single article. This article is a good example: “NVIDIA's Last Laugh with Apple.” I count 18 links in an article of less than 600 words. I feel that's a lot. How can he keep track of all possible links when writing an article? I'm curious about his workflow and knowledge management system. 2️⃣ I tried something different for writing a blog post: I took an article, asked ChatGPT to summarize it, and then added my take on it but mentioned that it was generated with ChatGPT. I don't know how well it was received.

🌄 Photography

1️⃣ I was thrilled to see an update for the beloved Photomator app this week when it now supports RAW images from my Nikon Z f. I thought, "Finally, I can ditch Adobe DNG converter and Adobe Bridge!" However, the app currently supports only 14-bit RAW images, not the 8-bit version I use. After contacting Pixelmator support, they confirmed this limitation. I sent a sample image to their engineering team for further review and hope for future updates. Meanwhile, I’ll check how to configure my Nikon to generate 14-bit images. 2️⃣ I don't know if I already shared this observation. While searching for a new unknown photographer on Glass, I was reminded that most photographers are male! Why is that? 3️⃣ I migrated an old article from here to there that was originally posted in April of 2021 about closing my Universe account. It was three years ago. Since then, a lot has changed, both in my digital life and the landscape of photo-sharing services.

Photomator update promising support for Nikon Zf RAW image format.

In fact, not all RAW images from the Nikon Z f are supported.

Street photography exists since photography is an art. Great for discovering photographers. I didn’t know any of them.

🎙️ Podcasting

1️⃣ This week, I discovered an interesting feature on Micro.blog. When I create a narrated post, it automatically generates a new podcast episode. This happens because I host my podcast on the same platform, and it can't distinguish between narrated posts and actual podcast episodes. At first, I was surprised and unsure if this was intentional. However, after thinking it over, I realized it’s a pretty cool feature, similar to audiobooks. I now consider these narrated blog posts as "audiocasts" and plan to create more.

🍎 Apple

1️⃣ AppleInsider's video presents a compelling case for Apple's potential return to the wireless router market. While it would be exciting to see Apple re-enter this space, I'm inclined to continue using Ubiquiti's router for now. 2️⃣ LJPUK has an article about the recent iPad models. While the new M4 iPad screen offers a substantial quality improvement, the author is not convinced it’s worth it for those who own the 2018 iPad Pro. As a recent M4 iPad Pro owner who upgraded from a 2018 iPad Pro, I'm afraid I have to disagree with him. Beyond the screen, CPU and system RAM are enough to warrant an upgrade, mainly if you use resource-hungry apps. 3️⃣ Hookmark 6.2 came out, but my license expired, and I cannot upgrade. I'm wondering what to do because I don't use it much. 🤔 4️⃣ MacRumors revealed the side of the next iPhones. Those bezels, especially on the Max model, will be impossibly thin! Will I switch this year? Probably not; I prefer to upgrade my aging M1 Mac mini, and my iPhone upgrade cycle is every two years.

I wish Apple would return to the home router market

I love this ad for the atmosphere.

📱 Apps & Services

1️⃣ Apple nominated Copilot for an ADA. I spent some time on the app's website, and I must say that I really like what I'm seeing. I always wanted an app to get an overview of my finances. In the nineties, I used Quicken to record all my spending transactions. Getting reports and graphs showing where my money came from and how I would spend it was valuable and fun. Sadly, Copilot is not yet available in Canada. 2️⃣ Something really cool: the restoration of an original Macintosh 128K project. All the stories can be found here. There is so much work on this website. The guys could have done a simple article but decided to make something special instead. 3️⃣ I can't wait to get my hands on Sublime Feeds. Here's an introduction post. I wish the developer would make it part of Scribbles because having the possibility to write link posts directly from reading an RSS feed is something that I've been looking for. 4️⃣ it seems that the Pixelfed.app is close to coming to the App Store. It's been like forever. The new app is apparently built using React Native.

📺 YouTube

1️⃣ I need an effective way to summarize YouTube videos. I download videos using Downie and then import the files into Whisper Transcription. Sometimes, the video is a .webm file, requiring conversion to a .mp3 format compatible with Whisper Transcription. This is a convoluted process that I wish to simplify. There is a video summarizer GPT available via ChatGPT. Still, it often fails to work as expected. 2️⃣ One of my readers pointed me to many different YouTube summarizers, and I tested https://summarize.ing/. It's very well done. Summarizing a video takes a few minutes. Summaries contain a brief summary, highlights, a mindmap, keywords, highlights and the actual transcript. Here's an example summary that I asked for a video about the iPad Pro. The one big problem I have with this service is the lack of exporting capabilities. It’s a deal breaker.

That’s a video showcasing HDR content. I watched portions of it on my M4 iPad Pro and boy some segments are spectacular.

💎 Miscellaneous

1️⃣ With this newsletter edition, you'll see that I made some changes to the content structure. I no longer include a separate exhibits section. Instead, I decided to spread those exhibits in their respective section. I also stopped using Craft Daily Notes to store my newsletter editions. You won't see that on your end, though. These changes should help accelerate the production process. 2️⃣ If you've been following me here and there, you know I use the same avatar everywhere. Is it time for a refresh? I don’t know yet, but the Iconfactory Kickstarter project Tapestry offered to do avatars in pixel art, and judging from this toot, they look gorgeous and well done. I wish I had mine done. It could have replaced my current avatar on special occasions. They will apparently offer a service once their Project Tapestry is completed.

I wish I had my face done too! It could replace my current avatar on special occasions!

🔮 Looking ahead

1️⃣ Next week is WWDC 2024. I don't have a wish list this year. I expect a lot about AI. There will be no new hardware. It's all about the software story. I can't wait to see what's next. 2️⃣ Thanks to Basic Apple Guy, It's time for the WWDC 2024 Bingo card. Are you excited for WWDC this year? If Apple enters the generative AI by adding it as an opt-in service, will you enable it?

Apple logo for this year’s WWDC edition.

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 1.3.0— Sun, Jun 2 and was put together with ❤️ on a 15-inch MacBook Air, Craft and many subscriptions! Support my work (Paypal) or become a supporter with Ko-fi!