The Ephemeral Scrapbook — Edition 2024-38

The following is a summary of my contribution activities since the previous newsletter edition
👨🏻‍💻 23 posts 😃
🏞️ 2 photos shared 😔
🎙️ No podcast episode published 😔
📺 No YouTube video published 😔
This newsletter edition covers weeks 37 and 38.

👤 Personal

1️⃣ It’s been a busy two weeks. I just returned from a business trip to Las Vegas and spent quite some time working on our future home improvement project. Plus, this underground project of going freelance also took some of my spare time. This explains why I didn’t share much in the last two weeks.

🗺️ Discoveries

1️⃣ As Manuel Moreale said, discovering (non-dev) blogs is hard. 2️⃣ I found this blog, Things, by Guy Schmidt: minimalistic, but with most of the things I like. 3️⃣ I haven't thought about it, but depending on the wallpaper you use on your iPhone, you could save battery power during the day. These wallpapers, because of the clever use of the rule of thirds, are rather beautiful if you like astronomy. 4️⃣ I love visual notes (also called Sketch notes). I took notes during a recent brainstorming session at the office and was reminded about sketch notes' existence. I researched the web, found many great examples, and stumbled on “Ink Company Studio.” What they do is clever: during a corporate event, you subscribe to the company’s service to create sketch notes during meetings or presentations. It’s very cool. While skimming different sketch note styles, I realized I like it when there is a good balance between text, iconography and colours. 5️⃣ Another cool discovery is the official website of Alberto Ortega. His artwork is made of paintings of street scenes from the fifties based on handmade miniature models that he creates. It's really cool and unique.

📖 Reading

1️⃣ While browsing my Micro.blog timeline, I met Erlend from Norway. I came across his Micro.blog hosted website that I have found to be gorgeous and unique in its design and appearance. At first, I didn't believe this website was hosted on Micro.blog using one of the available visual themes, but yeah, it is. Browsing his website is a delight both visually and with the content. I decided to support him via his Ko-Fi page.

"So many ‘exciting’ camera upgrades, so much computational assistance, you’ll end up forgetting what it means to take a photo." — Riccardo Mori

👨🏻‍💻 Writing

1️⃣ I'm enjoying writing for Medium. While doing so, I gathered a bunch of notes about my writing and reading experience on this platform. I plan to write an article about that soon. There are many things to like about Medium but a few irritating things to dislike too. It's a bit a love-and-hate relationship.

🌄 Photography

1️⃣ Another excellent photo series by JF Dupuis, this time about a dear subject of mine: clouds. Really big clouds. 2️⃣ For those with an old iPad, here’s a good suggestion: make it a photo frame with this app. I spent some time digitizing old family photos recently, and putting them on an old iPad is a good idea. 3️⃣ I decided to tweak some photo-related settings on my iPhone: Preview HDR content is now OFF and photographic styles is now set to rich contrast. My desire here is to remove some typical iPhone images flatness and this comes after watching this iPhone 16 Pro review from The Verge. 4️⃣ If you are contemplating buying the iPhone 16 Pro for its photo-related features, consider watching this video review from Peta Pixels. Well worth your time. One of my nephew bought the iPhone 16 Pro and found the Camera Control to be finicky to use requiring a long learning curve to master. I'm skipping this year's iPhone and hope that next year Apple will tweak that new button.

I’m wondering if the new iPhone 16 Camera Control is the new Touch Bar. – Numeric Citizen

Dewi Koomen on Glass Photography Community

Dewi Koomen. Love to see the extraordinary in the ordinary - proud mom 👧🏻 👦🏻 🇹🇼 - Click Pro - Dutch 🇳🇱

🍎 Apple

1️⃣ Lack of excitement. Sameness. Boring. Ennui. These are general sentiments about the last Apple Keynote announcing the new iPhone. On top of that is the perception that Apple Intelligence won't do the trick of triggering a super-cycle. As the main backdrop, developers have been angry about Apple for quite a while now. Something wrong is happening, and I wonder if Apple is noticing. 2️⃣ Not everyone is impressed by Apple. In this blog post, Riccardo Mori offers a rather harsh take on Apple and their recent announcements. Ouch. He is a longtime Apple user, but when he started with Apple, it was quite a different world, and Apple was so different. Apple, the underdog, was more likeable. 3️⃣ Manuel Moreale hates the redesigned Control Center. It seems Apple is doing everything wrong. 4️⃣ Apple Intelligence rollout will take a long time. How could this be different? Generative AI wasn't a thing until late 2022, and Apple had about two years to figure out a whole new integration and backend infrastructure to support that in a meaningful and secure way for its users. 5️⃣ While waiting for Apple Intelligence, it might be a good idea to read MacStories iOS 18 review. I want to mention two things about this review. First, I like the artwork used across pages and review details. It is a direct jab at Apple's upcoming Apple Intelligence image creation tool and AI-generated content. MacStories commissioned an iPad artist to create these artworks. Second, I like the author's take on Apple Intelligence, AI in general, and his desire to be a creative guy who dislikes AI-generated artifacts, which negates the unique value proposition of humans: creativity. 6️⃣ Meta Connect was fun, apparently.

🚧 Special projects

1️⃣ Since the official release of Apple's Passwords app, their official password management solution, I started migrating my passwords off 1Password. I came across this article from one of the developers behind Apple's Passwords, Ricky Mondello. He works for Apple. I'll use his "online method” to migrate and increase my online security posture. I’m trying to migrate a few passwords each day. Tedious.

📱 Apps & Services

1️⃣ There are two places to look for information about iOS 18 and iPadOS 18: MacStories detailed review and this guide from MacRumors. 2️⃣ The new Reeder app continues to trigger reactions. Some people really like the latest iteration. 3️⃣ iA Writer for Android will retire, thanks to Google’s Play Store rules.

“Developing on Android is a daily worsening struggle with red tape, inconsistent device performance, App Store search performance gaming3, and rampant piracy.” — iA Writer developer.

📺 YouTube

1️⃣ On the “How About Tomorrow?” podcast with Adam Elmore & Dax Raad, DHH joins in and discusses so many interesting and controversial things that I cannot decide where to start. From Apple’s current hegemony over developers and users, quitting the Microsoft world, then quitting the Apple world and joining the Linux bandwagon, quitting the cloud, and building its things, this discussion is highly entertaining. DHH is a controversial guy, and this discussion contains so many opinionated views that there is a lot to unpack. I must admit that many of the opinions expressed resonate with me. DHH is correct when talking about Apple and its power over developers. Quitting the Apple ecosystem is something that I read more and more. Many are talking about this, but very few make the jump. I don't see myself doing it soon; I'm probably too old for that, but I can see the point. Hyperconcentration of power is not a good thing for anyone. DHH’s bravery in calling out things is necessary. 2️⃣ I came across the new RodeCaster video reviews, and I must say that I’m impressed. So much that I’m considering getting one when it is finally available. For 1200 US$, it’s not exactly cheap, but it could solve many of the challenges I have while doing video recordings and for Teams meetings at work.

💎 Miscellaneous

1️⃣ I’ve been on Bluesky since April 25th, 2023. My user number is 35,638. Not bad. See my badge below. It reminds me of my early days on Twitter back in 2007. I was an early adopter, too. 2️⃣ I made a video about Craft. I shared a summary of it on Reddit. Got called out for writing a bad summary using ChatGPT. I got some support in response. Not everyone is a jerk. Still, I hate Reddit.

🔮 Looking forward

1️⃣ This video about Meta's Orion augmented reality glasses made me look at the Apple Vision Pro differently. Even if Apple Visio Pro is a technological marvel, Orion Glass shows the way in some areas, like device size and style. It's interesting. But I still don't like Meta and Zuckerberg.

I wish you a great week! ✌️👋🏻

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