The Ephemeral Scrapbook — 2026.03.22

👤 Personal {#health}

1️⃣ I recently encountered some health issues. 😔 Nothing serious, though, don't worry (at least that's what my doctor says). I see this as a warning and plan to adopt new habits for a better life. For example, reducing screen time, going outside more often to get some fresh air, exercising more (hoping spring arrives soon!), and limiting my intake of coffee and alcohol. I'm also turning to Apple Fitness+ for meditation and workout sessions throughout the week, and I use Apple Health to track my blood pressure, mood, and other indicators. It's very convenient, especially for exporting this data as PDF files to share with my doctor. 2️⃣ Professionally speaking, things are going really well. I’ve been at this new job since last June. Since then, my involvement with current and future projects has only increased. My next challenge will be to manage a large migration project that should last between 15 and 18 months. I never did project management before, but I worked with many project managers throughout my career. I think I'm ready to try this myself. My boss, who is PMP certified, will coach me. I started exploring the subject by asking questions to Claude about project management and got some really good insights. I'm not alone in this. 🙂 3️⃣ This year's winter has been long in the tooth. It started early last November, and now that Spring is among us, temperatures are still colder than normal, and precipitation is frequent. It's a little bit hard on morale.

🗺️ Discoveries {#webdesign, #webapp, #design }

1️⃣ Probably the most clever, beautifully designed and useful About Me webpage I've ever seen by Parker Ortolani. It is modelled on the Mac OS X Tiger user interface. You can play with the small windows. I'm curious how much effort went into this. 2️⃣ Super cool tool to create a poster of city maps: TerraInk: The Cartographic Poster Engine. Files can be downloaded on your computer. Very flexible.

👨🏻‍💻 Writing {#inspiration}

1️⃣ Beyond posting to my blog and putting together this newsletter, I don't write much these days. I no longer engage in long-form writing like I used to. It's a struggle because I wish I could be as prolific as some other bloggers that I follow and like. I'm lacking spare time and motivation. 2️⃣ Blogging is supposedly not that hard, right? Ask Manual Moreale about his two-step AI-free blogging process.

🌄 Photography {#tech, #astronomy, #astrophotography}

1️⃣ I always liked astronomical telescopes. As a child, it was a dream to own one, which never happened. A company named “Vaonis” makes a great-looking one. It's very impressive. If you visit their websites, you'll probably find some similarities with Apple’s mini website design. Warning: it's not entry-level equipment; it's expensive. Consider browsing their image gallery here. 2️⃣ I recently visited a friend of mine and showed my photos of my trip to Egypt. She really liked them because she felt emotion in photos with humans as a subject. I'm glad she liked them because taking photos of people is not my forte. She really liked this one.

“A new ethic is quietly emerging among modern travelers. It is called Digital Silence. It is the conscious decision to share the art and the emotion of a place without giving away its exact coordinates… It is a radical act of conservation.” as shared in a linkpost by Kottke (the original is on Instagram, bleh).

🍎 Apple & Tech {#applehistory, #macbook, #ios26, #appstore}

1️⃣ The MacBook Neo not only challenges the Windows laptop world, but it might also challenge its little brother: the iPad. 9to5Mac has an interesting argument about the iPad line's perceived value: it costs much more and is much more powerful in many ways, yet still feels "not quite there yet," while the Mac seems finally accessible. 2️⃣ If you aren't running iOS 26 on your device, it's time to upgrade. You might have heard bad press about Liquid Glass, and rightfully so, but let's face it, the party is on iOS 26, don't stick to the past. 3️⃣ There is a rush for AI companies to team up with space launch/satellite companies to build data centers in space. It's not going to work. What a fucking bad idea. Are we losing our minds? 4️⃣ Google seems more willing to appease regulators. When this news came out, I didn't see anyone linking to Apple's current position, which seems to be the status quo in the US. 5️⃣ Gruber isn’t happy about macOS Tahoe and the window resizing. But he finally updated his main machine, thanks to the wallpapers that come with the new MacBook Neo. By the way, resizing windows on... Windows 11 is not easier... and you would think that on Windows this would be its forte. It isn't if my experience is any indication. 6️⃣ I've been following Apple's story for more than 40 years. What a journey: 50 Years of Thinking Different

"The winners in AI won't be the ones who build the infrastructure; they'll be the ones who own the customer, and no one on Earth owns better customers than Apple." — Asymco in The most brilliant move in corporate history?

📱 Apps & Services {#weather, #app, #aibubble}

1️⃣ This weather app, Acme Weather, has something that I didn't see elsewhere: temperature forecasts include many sources and the average forecast. That's rather useful. 2️⃣ It's a rather impressive web app, ColorFlow, for creating wallpapers... but I don't have the time to spend on creating one wallpaper. Enjoy if you can. 3️⃣ OpenClaw is really something big. It's also a dangerous piece of free software that can cost you real money if you don't pay attention. It's a dangerous piece of software if you give it too much control of your computer. I started experimenting with it when its developer was still on his own (not working for OpenAI). Then horror stories started to pop up. I put that aside to work on other projects. I'll return to this eventually, I'm pretty sure. By that time, I expect the software to have gained maturity.

"It seems that bad software isn't new with AI slop; it was a thing a long time ago, with all sorts of badly designed systems available to the masses. It's a people problem". » (AI) Slop Terrifies Me

🚧 Special projects {#vibecoding, #webapp, #utility}

1️⃣ I'm mostly done with my bookmark manager. I'm really liking the final product. I like its design, and I find it very useful for putting together this newsletter. The following screenshot shows the view of a newsletter edition’s content for this very specific edition. You can watch this web app in action in my recent YouTube video. 2️⃣ I’m already looking at my next opportunity to use Claude Code. This time, it will be to create a Micro.blog plugin for hosting a custom-made visual theme. I’ve been using someone else's theme, The Cards Theme, which served me well, but with Claude Code, it seems that creating my own is a reachable goal. My head is full of design ideas. 3️⃣ I'm finally putting the last touches to Numeric Citizen Digital Ecosystem diagram (see below for an overview). I plan to write an article about it for publication next month. Stay tuned.

📺 YouTube {#apple, #applehistory}

1️⃣ Many videos about Apple turning 50. First, a short video introduction from the Computer History Museum. 2️⃣ Tim Cook is interviewed in that one. If you pay attention to Tim Cook while he speaks, you might notice that his left hand is rather shaky. I hope it's not the beginning of some serious illness. 3️⃣ This is a must-watch video about Apple's 50-year history, told by those who were part of it and are still here with us to tell the details. Interviewed by the famous David Pogue. 4️⃣ Speaking of David Pogue, he wrote a book: Apple: The First 50 Years. He was interviewed by Cult of Mac.

🔮 Looking forward {#ai, #ai-coding}

"A recurring concern I've seen regarding LLMs for programming is that they will push our technology choices towards the tools that are best represented in their training data, making it harder for new, better tools to break through the noise.” — Simon Willison in Perhaps not Boring Technology after all

"Is the MacBook Neo the modern version of the bicycle for the mind that Steve Jobs envisioned? It might be." in 50 Years Later, Apple Has Finally Delivered Steve Jobs' Bicycle for the Mind

🌟 Miscellaneous {#digg, #socialmedia}

1️⃣ Digg is dead, long live Digg? Well, it seems it will take some time before we see Digg alive. 2️⃣ In a more constrained world, in the days when we were coding in assembler, I think we were more creative in finding solutions. We're still creative these days, but we are also lazy. The MacBook Neo might force some software writing rules to be revisited if my understanding of “This Is Not The Computer For You” by Sam Henri Gold is right.

"Should we drop “social” from social media? There is nothing social about this social media. And most of these platforms are essentially networked information distribution systems, and more and more of that information is just noise or disinformation. And humans aren’t helping either.

Everyone, including Captain America fantasist billionaires and yours truly, in some fashion or the other, are nothing more than mere botnets? In our divided modern “now,” one person’s information is another person’s fake news. Rumors are mere facts for the media to report on with a question mark? And at the same time, the news is a source of rumors; all you need to do is add a question mark. Either way, can we stop pretending that social media is social, about friends & people?

The biggest lie these platforms feed us is the idea of them being “social media” and “social networks.” In reality, they exist to show advertising “content” to consumers, who hopefully would buy more. This endless scroll does its thing on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, or Twitter. " — Om Malik in There Is No Socil in Social Media

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