The Ephemeral Scrapbook — Edition 2025-01

👤 Personal

1️⃣ First and foremost, I want to extend my warmest wishes for a prosperous and fulfilling new year. I genuinely hope you find success and happiness in your professional and personal endeavors. 2️⃣ Secondly, this marks the inaugural edition of this newsletter for 2025, and I’ve decided to introduce a few changes. Firstly, I’ve decided to eliminate the summary at the beginning of each newsletter. This section provided an overview of the number of blog posts, photos, and other content I’ve shared since the previous edition. While I appreciate the interest in these statistics, I believe it’s unnecessary to brag about them, and it takes a significant amount of time to maintain and update this information. I’ve also officially decided to retire the podcasts section from my newsletter. While I enjoy doing podcasts, I don’t find them particularly relevant to my current content creation schedule, and I believe it’s not worth dedicating time and resources to them.

🗺️ Discoveries

1️⃣ 3D printing can be really cool and useful, as shown in this blog post. There is a marketplace called MakerWorld where people can share their 3D objects, such as the iPhone clock dock. That's fascinating. 2️⃣ In 2024, LLMs were more power-efficient to run and train, but they are more complicated to use. These are some of the conclusions that can be found in this 2024 year-in-review. Very detailed review.

📖 Reading

1️⃣ The year 2025 seems off to a bad start. I’ve been reading all sorts of bad news tidbits this week and I must admit this is becoming rather depressing. From the war in Ukraine, to fires in Los Angeles and those wondering if it's really because of climate change, to Facebook’s 180-degree turns on content moderation and the reactions this change triggers, to Trump’s provocations about Canada becoming the 51 state, it’s hard to escape the bad vibe. Sorry if I’m sounding negative here, but that’s the current mood I'm in. I'm hoping to switch the mood soon.

👨🏻‍💻 Writing

1️⃣ Writing is hard. Writing constantly is even more challenging. Josh Ginter, the author of The Newsprint, wrote a blog post reflecting on his journey over the past decade, discussing the challenges of maintaining consistency in writing while balancing various life roles, such as being a father, professional, volunteer, and athlete. He acknowledges a decline in his creative output and desires to rekindle his creative energy through regular Sunday posts, viewing them as a mental exercise. I was a regular reader of The Newsprint and was curious why he didn't write as often as he used to. Now I know why and really understand. 2️⃣ I answered eight questions about blogging on my metablog. I hope you learn a bit more about me and my blogging journey that started in 2009. 3️⃣ Don't miss the monthly blog posts digest coming off my Micro.blog site.

🌄 Photography

1️⃣ I decided to use Micro.blog to post my images to Pixelfed for this year. Here’s a summary of my experience. I should probably update my photo-processing workflow, which was last updated in 2022, to reflect that change. 2️⃣ Pixelfed now supports full data export for backup or migration purposes (see the announcement on Mastodon). And speaking of Pixelfed, they are getting closer to finally releasing their iPhone app after more than a year in beta. 3️⃣ Some lovely images here from arnd on Glass. I wish I were that talented.

🍎 Apple

1️⃣ Tim Cook gave 1 million for Trump's inauguration. Part of the Internet, or more specifically, many Apple fanboys, are unhappy. I don't like Trump. There is nothing about this world where we allow such type of guy to become the president that I want. Yet, I like Matt’s take on this. Mitch’s take is sombre and probably more lucid. Paying to get attention and to be nice or give a favour can't be seen as good democracy in my book; I don't care who's paying. Tim, you could have done better, but you are like the others. What Steve Jobs would do? 2️⃣ A great story about Apple's Mac Os X Dock birth. I didn't know James Thompson, the developer of PCalc, was an Apple engineer in 2000. He worked 18 months on the Dock before most of his ideas were trashed! 3️⃣ As reported by this article by Jeff Johnson, Apple Photos sends data anonymously to Apple servers to help enhance the user experience. It’s on by default and this is wrong. Are you ok with this?

"Tim Cook cares about appeasing a would-be autocrat and taxing developers in an app distribution monopoly. It’s time for new leadership." — Manton Reece

🚧 Special projects

1️⃣ I’m looking at doing new creative projects to start 2025. One example would be to port the excellent “Forever Notes” notes system based on Apple Notes to Craft Docs. I spent some time trying to figure out another example: learning RealMac Software Elements, a website builder. I already have a few ideas for this one. I'm also looking at possible videos about Craft. I have difficulties finding a subject or a new angle on this matter. I asked people, via a poll on my YouTube channel, to see if there is interest in using the PARA method with Craft. The answer is yes, with more than 65% of people saying yes. I’m pondering my options. 🤔

📱 Apps & Services

1️⃣ Each year’s start is always slow on the applications and services updates, but since January 2, Micro.blog has offered a new subscription tier called Micro.one. For one dollar a month, you get a blog with many features. I'm not the target client for this, but many people who want to own their corner of the Internet could be potential clients, especially those quitting Meta’s services like Facebook and Threads. Some people are so enthusiastic they will go as far as offering to sponsor potential subscribers. That was a nice gesture. 2️⃣ I wondered if Matter, the read-later service, was still alive. According to some followers on Micro.blog where I asked for clarification, the answer appears to be yes. 3️⃣ Notion Face is out for you to build your custom profile face. I tried it, but one thing is missing: we cannot select ear shapes. I failed to design a face that resembles mine. Now, one quick question: why come up with this? 🤨

📺 YouTube

1️⃣ Apple is getting some serious competition from OnePlus phones. This video from Marques Brownlee proves it. Battery life is one thing but the screen quality is another. Must watch. 2️⃣ I'm a big fan of Ubiquiti networking equipment and their management software, Unifi Network. Version 9 is out and it comes with a big security improvement targeting the firewall module. 3️⃣ What's wrong with this video? The music? The DJ style? Something else? Spoiler: AI.

💎 Miscellaneous

1️⃣ Mark Zuckerburg made an announcement about Meta content moderation policies (I won't link it here, on purpose). Part of the Internet is on fire. I disagree with him because he constantly fails to recognize the power of his platforms in society. I'm happy that I'm staying away from Mark's shit. 2️⃣ The more I read about generative AI, the more I see that prompt engineering might be a thing in the near future. The more time you spend and the better you are at writing your prompt, the better outcome you might get. But what is the break-even point when the effort spent on writing a prompt is the same as doing the actual work?

🔮 Looking forward

1️⃣ LG is teasing its upcoming UltraFine 6K display with a design sporting a bezel-less monitor and a monitor stand that closely looks like Apple’s design. This is a gorgeous monitor, but there is no pricing yet. I'll keep an eye on that one. It could replace my 4K UltraFine if it ever breaks, which I recently took off storage for use, with my new M4 Mac mini. You can see my home office setup in the following image.

I wish you a great week! ✌️ 🇺🇦 🇨🇦