Ephemeral Scrapbook

The Ephemeral Scrapbook — Edition 2024-36

The latest edition of 'The Ephemeral Scrapbook' shares the author's reflections on digital curation, recent tech events, and the evolving landscape of content creation.

JF Martin

15 Sep 2024 — 10 min read

This photo is from a series of images created last year to illustrate the passage of seasons.

The latest edition of "The Ephemeral Scrapbook" details the author’s activities, which range from sharing various posts and photos to digitizing family memories with Photomyne. Notable discoveries include Jony Ive’s new button design and Jeremy Ultey's blog on generative AI. The author expresses mixed feelings about sorting old family photos and highlights the significance of curation in combatting disinformation. The newsletter also discusses Apple's recent Glowtime event, iOS updates, and impressions of the iPhone 16. The author contemplates the future of content creation as centered on human curation, and shares insights on writing, with a particular process involving ChatGPT for translations. Future plans include visiting an Apple Store to experience new products announced in the recent keynote.

The following summarizes my contribution activities since the previous newsletter edition. The next edition is scheduled for early October.
👨🏻‍💻 19 posts shared 😃
🏞️ 3 photos shared 😔
🎙️ No podcast episode published 😔
📺 One YouTube video published 🙂

👤 Personal

1️⃣ Last weekend, I spent quite some time sorting out boxes of old family photos. I came out of this exercise with mixed feelings. It is strange to see in a picture that 95% of the people pictured are dead. It's hard to realize that I missed a significant portion of my parent's life when they were retired. I was too busy with my own things. I'm the youngest child, and I had a big age gap with my parents I somehow always saw them as being rather old. Nonetheless, I miss them. 2️⃣ I resubscribed to Photomyne for a month to digitize some of my family photos before throwing them out. It works great. I'm using my iPhone 15 Pro Max for this. I wrote a review of Photomyne a while ago.

🗺️ Discoveries

1️⃣ Jony Ive, now at “Love From” company, designed a... button. It looks cool, but I want to hear the satisfying click when both parts snap together. 2️⃣ I discovered this "blog" by Jeremy Ultey, a professor from Stanford University. He is currently invested in helping others take advantage of generative AI to help people and companies gain comfort and confidence. 3️⃣ Here is a good way to discover new blogs.

📖 Reading

1️⃣ In the article “Curate to Create,” I found the whole idea resonating. Based on the principle that nothing created is really new these days, what's left to be done is to curate and develop connections between bits of information. Also, I see that curation is one way to combat disinformation and add value to published content. In a way, it's the entire point of this newsletter. Am I good at it? No, but I'm working at it every single day.

“The reason why the current web sucks is because way too many people are expecting things to magically get better without doing their part. The web is a collaborative product and we all have to do our part to make it better.” — Manuel Moreale

👨🏻‍💻 Writing

1️⃣ Writing helps me think and sometimes leads to solving problems or challenges. For example, I’ve been writing a few stories about my thoughts on becoming a freelancer, and this helped me have a clearer view of what it really means. Writing, for me, is the best way to process thoughts and ideas. Without writing, I would be blind. 2️⃣ I wrote a new story on Medium this week about a personal experience at work. I followed this process: I wrote the initial story in French and then used ChatGPT to translate it into English. I read the results and felt it wasn't conveying the essence of the original text. I asked ChatGPT to improve the writing of the resulting first iteration. It came out pretty well. Then, I asked ChatGPT to elaborate on a specific story aspect I felt wasn't well explained. I was impressed with the results. What is this process telling me? It is sometimes more manageable to start writing my ideas in French. Asking ChatGPT to translate my text into English is transitory because the resulting translation often needs improvements.

🌄 Photography

1️⃣ I’m still eagerly waiting for the Glass Series to launch. No official dates have been set so far. It is exhausting to wait for that. 2️⃣ I discovered Micheal Beecham on Glass while browsing black and white photos. This guy is so good at capturing the mood, and doing it in black and white offers the best way to capture the subtleties of the scenes. 3️⃣ A series of great black & white portraits from JF Dupuis on Pixelfed.

🍎 Apple

1️⃣ Like him, I rarely use the action button on my iPhone 15 Pro Max. Apple is adding another button on the iPhone 16. Will people use it more? I guess so since it is dedicated à taking photos and videos. 2️⃣ Apple Glowtime event took place. In my opinion, we should call it an infomercial more than an event. I share most of my thoughts about it here. 3️⃣ Reactions are mixed, I would say. 4️⃣ Apple Observatory seems to be a new construction site at Apple Park in California. According to this article on Dezeen, it looks like a great place with a design that is similar to Apple's current architectural traits and elements. The place was first on the day of the Glowtime keynote, where the new iPhone 16 line was launched. It was used as a demonstration space, according to Gruber. 5️⃣ Speaking of Gruber, Manuel Moreale wrote a small post about the EU vs US iPhone debate, the iPhone divide, and the way Gruber keeps hammering the subject in the name of what, exactly? We don't know. This piece might come across as bold and confrontational. The tone challenges Gruber’s perspectives on Apple’s features and policies, especially around the EU vs. US debate over iPhone functionalities. It questions the value of Gruber’s critiques and urges him to adopt a more inclusive mindset, embracing user choice and differing opinions globally

"Apple’s brand, product ecosystem and marketing muscle are all so strong that even the bare minimum is usually enough." — Mark Gurman

Most of all previous iPhone models. Which one is your favourite? Mine is the iPhone 15 Pro Max, not pictured here, though.

“Sameness in design is not equivalent to a lack of creativity." — Om Malik

Apple Observatory, a new venue on the Apple Park.

“It just occurred to me that Apple (and other “gatekeepers”) are getting a bit of their own medicine with the DMA. Developers in the App Store have always had to live with unclear and changing rules, as well as the risk that Apple will effectively shut down your business with an absolute rejection. Suddenly the bully is being bullied, with changing rules and unclear guidelines — and they don't like it.” — https://mastodon.cloud/@drewmccormack/113106933929326824

This is a fake marketing, but this is really fun.

I always like Marques Brownlee’s takes on Apple’s announcements, this one is no exception. I chose to share this YouTube video over all the others because of that. He shares a balanced view on this year’s iPhone models.

Did BasicAppleGuy fare well? Yes and no: 50% hit, %50 miss.

🚧 Special projects

1️⃣ This Medium Publication « Numeric Citizen Journeys » is in fact gradually becoming my newest project. Since I like documenting a lot of stuff in my life, I think this could be helpful for other people in the same situation. Consider giving it a look, I'm quite happy so far with the design.

📱 Apps & Services

1️⃣ Apple's iOS 18 is finally in release candidate state while I'm using iOS 18.1 beta on my iPhone, iPadOS 18.1 beta on my iPad and macOS 15.1 beta on my MacBook Air. I'm waiting for the subsequent betas, which should be in the next few days. 2️⃣ I'm still using the new and controversial Reeder app, which is being updated to improve formatting and functionality. 3️⃣ Apple released three ads about Apple Intelligence. The main character in these ads is Isabella Ramsey, who was last seen in “The Last of Us” TV series (I can’t remember her name, sorry). I'm not sure that I like the messaging of these ads, especially where they make us look “fake” by making people think we remember things or that we read what we were expected to read, which we didn't. 4️⃣ I’ve been spending some time watching videos about Realmac Software's RapidWeaver Elements, a new static website building app, for the Mac. It is still being developed and is currently in private beta. I've been watching those videos for a secret project that might require me to build a website from scratch. Elements seems like a great Mac app. I'm afraid to learn CSS, but it should be minimal if videos are any indication. I'll report back in the future. 5️⃣ In my latest YouTube video, I discuss general concepts surrounding objects and Craft Objects. This upcoming feature in Craft is a game changer, and I felt the need to share some details before the official release later this fall. 6️⃣ Scribbles.page blogging service keeps improving quite a lot. Recent additions are live post previews which is handy when writing longer posts and private blogs for those who needs a closer exposure of their blog.

📺 YouTube

1️⃣ I recently discovered and watched the Fifth Element short film on YouTube only to find out later that this short film was entirely made by AI, from the visuals, the storyline, the music, everything! How much energy in how many datacenters does this short clip require to become reality? It's far from a perfect story, but it's a boring one. It's only the beginning.

💎 Miscellaneous

1️⃣ I would love to hear the click of Jony Ive's designed button. MG Siegler talks about it, too. 2️⃣ JPEG-XL image format is official, and the latest iPhone supports it. It seems too good to be true—faster, smaller, wider support. Something is scary, though: it's a complex file format requiring a lot of code to support, as reported on Threads. If it is true that Firefox needs 100K lines of code to support JPEG-XL, then it is safe to assume that this also becomes a great cybersecurity attack surface. Do you remember the Macromedia Player or the Adobe Flash Player? You can also find all the details about JPEG-XL on the official website. 3️⃣ This little Dji NEO drone is super cool, and while I don't need one, I wish I had one. See the following promotional video. 4️⃣ I realized that this newsletter is all about curation, human curation, to be specific. Is this the future of the web? Some people like Jeremy Utley think it is, as he shared in “Curate to Create.” The future of content creation lies in curation, as audiences face content fatigue and anxiety from endless choices.

Soooo cool. I want one.

A picture from the Severance series is available on Apple TV+. What a strange world this series portrays. I liked how they conveyed that people working with computers are doing things I don’t understand, and I’m in IT! What they do is unknown to me, at least. They move little numbers to meet a visual target using a trackball instead of a mouse. I like this retrocomputing style. It’s so weird and useless from our point of view. Maybe this is what other non-techy people think about those of us who work in IT, anyway?

🔮 Looking forward

1️⃣ I’m looking forward to visit the Apple Store next week and experience everything Apple announced during their Glowtime keynote. I’m really eyeing the Apple Watch Series 10, to replace my aging Series 8, bought in 2022. Battery life is miserable; I’m barely making it to the afternoon.

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 1.5 — Sun, Sep 1 and was put together with ❤️ on a 15-inch MacBook Air, Craft Docs and many supporting subscriptions! Support my work (Paypal) or become a supporter with Ko-fi!