My Weekly Creative Summary for the Week of 2024-23

JF Martin (@numericcitizen@pixelfed.social)

Three tiers.

Pixelfed

👨🏻‍💻 24 post(s) 😃
🏞️ 4 photos shared 🙂
🎙️ 1 audiocast episode published 🙂
📺 1 YouTube video published 😃

👤 Personal

1️⃣ This coming weekend, I’ll be on vacation for three weeks; I don’t plan to produce new editions until I get back in mid-July. Taking a break from my writing hobby is often salutary, as I focus on photography. I usually come back with my head full of thoughts and ideas. 2️⃣ Someone called me out on Reddit because I supposedly use the /CraftDocs subreddit to promote my content on my YouTube channel. It's the first occurence of such a thing. I won't share the link to the original post here because I think this behaviour doesn't need more attention. Suffice it to say that as someone who shares a lot of content online, it's a matter of time before someone disagrees with what I do. I had a short chat with the guy and boy, it was flying low. It's hard not to take it personnally. But there are better ways than others to do it. I asked the moderators to remove that post because I think it is triggering harassment behaviours. Even if they don't remove the original post, I'll leave it at that, but I asked on Micro.blog how I should handle such a matter. I got many thoughtful and positive responses. I feel supported. 🙂

🗺️ Discoveries

1️⃣ Remember Gravatar? I did this week. I wanted to update my profile with recent information, but my account is no longer accessible under the name /numericcitizen. Too bad. I discovered another Gravatar account was linked to my active GitHub account and somehow used a very avatar image. I don't know how I'm going to recover from this.

Rui Rocha on Glass Photography Community

Rui Rocha. I’m an amateur portuguese photographer. I prefer shooting street / travel / urban photography-

📖 Reading

1️⃣ Lot's of reading about Apple's announcements this week, obviously. You can get a glimbse of this on the logbook as generated by Things as I check items off the list, down below.

“To me the explanation flows directly from Strategy 101: Apple Intelligence is the application of generative AI to use cases and content that Apple is uniquely positioned to provide and access” — Ben Thompson

“Apple is positioning itself as an AI Aggregator: the company owns users and, by extension, generative AI demand by virtue of owning its platforms, and it is deepening its moat through Apple Intelligence, which only Apple can do; that demand is then being brought to bear on suppliers who probably have to eat the costs of getting privileged access to Apple’s userbase.” — Ben Thompson

👨🏻‍💻 Writing

1️⃣ I shared my hot take and thoughts about Apple's WWDC keynote on the same day as the keynote, which was a first for me. It's hard for me to be that fast and feel great about my writing. I think this one is more than good enough. 2️⃣ Apple Intelligence triggered many reactions, positive, negative, neutral or wait-and-see types of reactions. As exposed in this blog post, I'm very positive, and I don't yet understand some of the pushback Apple is getting at some portions of the Apple Intelligence platform.

“Enthusiasts present AI as a magic wand that can solve humanity’s biggest problems. In the meantime, it uses an exponential amount of energy to make everything the same. With every thought we outsource, we miss out on a chance to grow. Love it or hate it, AI is here to stay. However we use it, we need to think more, not less.” — Informations Architect blog

🌄 Photography

1️⃣ I finally got Nikon Zf RAW files opening correctly in Photomator. The perfect setting to use is RAW (only) with lossless compression. Files are a two-times bigger bug, but hey, it is what it is. I must say that the Pixelmator team has been really responsive and collaborative in helping me. This means that I'll be able to edit my brand-new M4 iPad Pro while on vacation! 2️⃣ Do you take a picture, or do you make a picture? I usually take a picture, but I understand the "make a picture" too, but they convey different but subtle things. Interesting thought in this thread on Micro.blog. 3️⃣ There was an update to Halide this week and I started to wonder if I would use this app instead of Apple's Camera for my trip to Croatia. I could unlock all the features for a mere 2 CAN$!

aows (@aows@mastodon.world)

Attached: 1 image Winter storm at the golf course, V. Indiana, January 2023 #aowsimages

Mastodon

🎙️ Podcasting

1️⃣ I wrote and published another narrated post about my upcoming trip to Croatia. On the first try, I selected the wrong blog, then on the second try, this time on the right blog, the title had a typing error (“Ponedring" instead of “Pondering”). I corrected the error but I'm not sure the podcast feed will eventually reflect that. Oh well. It's time for vacation, I guess.

🍎 Apple

1️⃣ I shared many thoughts and observations about Apple's keynote and what they announced here. Apple will be monetizing their Apple Intelligence journey. Here's how. 2️⃣ I'm a bit frustrated, just a little bit, that I'll have to wait maybe a year before being able to experience Apple Intelligence in full on my device. Nonetheless, it will be exciting to follow how Apple Intelligence will be rolled out in the coming months. 3️⃣ Apple no longer holds live keynotes, but this year, something feels different. I watched many YouTube videos, including one-on-one interviews between a YouTuber and one of Apple’s executives. 4️⃣ Great photos on Apple Campus in Cupertino by the maker of Halide, the photography app for iPhone. 5️⃣ I the new tabbar design on iPadOS 18 the new Safari tabs redesign debacle? Will Apple listen to this comment and feedback and tweak the design before the final release? I hope so because from what I'm reading from this blog post, it seems a terrible idea and regression.

Did Apple Just End AI’s First Era?

AI’s performance arms race yields to the product arms race…

SpyglassM.G. Siegler

I’m not sure if I like this idea of tinted icons on the iOS 18 Home Screen, but I certainly do in dark mode.

🚧 Special projects

1️⃣ I bought a second Nixplay digital photo frame to make the background behind me more dynamic while recording my YouTube videos. 2️⃣ Moving out of 1Password is a new special project I plan to complete by the end of 2024. 3️⃣ I don't have any tattoos yet, but I know what the first one will be, and you can find it on this wallpaper reproduced by Basic Apple Guy: the mouse arrow pointer. The second might be the hourglass. Each of these shall find its place on the back of the upper portion of my arms. The Mac iconography is a symbol of where it all started for me.

macOS Sequoia 1984 Macintosh Wallpapers — Basic Apple Guy

Screen-grab of the new Macintosh Dynamic Wallpaper in macOS Sequoia.

Basic Apple GuyBasicAppleGuy

📱 Apps & Services

1️⃣ What do Grammarly, Soulver, and 1Password have in common? They are going away from my subscriptions with Apple's next major operating system releases this fall and beyond, especially when Apple Intelligence ships. They have been Sherlocked! I'll save some money along the way! 2️⃣ I updated my content creator toolset website to remove Toggl and Timery and rework some older content. 3️⃣ Whisper Transcription 8.6.1 now supports ChatGPT prompts against the transcription. This is super useful for summarizing video transcription. I can't wait to try it on my next YouTube video production! The following screenshot demonstrate this feature in action with summarization of my latest YouTube video. For those reading this edition on the Craft website (instead of the email or my main blog), you can read the generated key points for the video.

“In the late ’90s, Apple launched a search app named Sherlock for macOS 8 that you could use to search the web and files on local systems. Now, a company called Karelia Software already had a $29 search app called Watson, with features like plug-ins for better internet search. In 2002, Apple released Sherlock 3 with features similar to Watson, making Karelia’s app redundant. Since then, people in tech circles have used the term “sherlocking” whenever they want to refer to a new feature from Apple that does the same thing as an existing third-party app.” — from TechCrunch

📺 YouTube

1️⃣ For Craft users: I made another video about Craft: using it for presentations. This videos explains the features and limitations of Craft presentation mode.

💎 Miscellaneous

1️⃣ I asked ChatGPT what he knows about me as a creator. Here is the answer below. Apparently, Numeric Citizen is a creative platform! 😂

🔮 Looking ahead

1️⃣ I'll be starting a three-week vacation this weekend and don't plan to release a new edition before leaving. If all goes well, the next edition should come out on July 21st. I hope to see you there when I come back!

I wish you a great week!

📅 Meta

My Weekly Creative Summaries Index