Apps on Numeric Citizen I/O — A Blog About Blogging

AI made me replace another subscription: Ulysses

Sat, 18 Jul 2026 17:07:43 -0400

I finally cancelled my subscription to Ulysses. Why? I was using Ulysses because it supported Craft’s export document so that I could then publish either to Ghost or Micro.blog. Since the beginning of this year, I’ve created two n8n automation workflows to publish directly from Craft to Ghost or Micro.blog.

Publishing from Craft to Micro.blog with a Single n8n Workflow

This is a technical write-up of an n8n automation that takes a document written in Craft, converts it to clean HTML, rehosts its images, and publishes it to Micro.blog as a draft — all from a single webhook call. It’s a companion to an earlier Craft → Ghost publisher and reuses the same document-fetching approach, but targets Micro.blog’s Micropub API instead of a proprietary CMS.

The goal is to write in one place (Craft) and let automation handle the tedious, error-prone part: block conversion and image migration.

What it does

An AI assistant (via n8n’s MCP integration) or any HTTP client sends a webhook request naming a Craft document by title. The workflow then:

Searches the Craft space for that title.
Scores the search results to pick the actual matching document.
Fetches the document’s full block tree.
Converts Craft blocks into Micropub-ready HTML.
Extracts every Craft-hosted image, downloads it, and re-uploads it to Micro.blog’s media endpoint.
Swaps the original image URLs for their new Micro.blog-hosted equivalents.
Publishes the result as a draft for manual review before it goes live.

The whole run typically completes in about 4–6 seconds, with image uploads accounting for most of the overhead.

Trigger and input

The workflow is triggered by an HTTP POST webhook that waits for the full run to complete before responding (a “response node” pattern), so the caller gets the final published URL back synchronously. It’s also exposed through n8n’s MCP server, which is what lets an assistant invoke it conversationally.

The input payload is minimal:

{ "targetTitle": "My Article Title" }

Flow overview

Webhook
  → Search Document in Craft
  → Find Best Matching Document
  → Fetch Document Content
  → Convert Craft Blocks to HTML
  → Set Micro.blog Token
  → Extract Craft Image URLs
  → Has Images?
       ├─ true  → Split by Image URL → Download from Craft → Fix Filename
       │          → Upload to Micro.blog Media → Merge Upload Result
       │          → Reassemble HTML → Merge Before Publish
       └─ false → Format No-Image Post → Merge Before Publish
  → Publish to Micro.blog
  → Respond to Webhook

The interesting problems

Most of the engineering effort went into three areas that aren’t obvious until you hit them.

1. Title matching against a full-text search

Craft’s search API does full-text search, not title-only. That means a document that merely mentions the target title somewhere in its body can rank above the document actually named that. Publishing the wrong document is a nasty failure mode.

The fix is a small scoring node that runs after the search and ranks each candidate:

Exact title match: 100
Title starts with the query: 80
Title contains the query: under 50, penalized by how much longer the title is than the query

Before comparing, it strips Markdown noise — bold markers, italics, and heading prefixes — so formatting in a title doesn’t throw off the match. If nothing scores above zero, the node throws a descriptive error that lists every candidate it saw, which makes debugging a missed title trivial. The node emits the single best match in the same shape as the search results, so the downstream “fetch content” step doesn’t need to know any scoring happened.

2. Converting Craft blocks to HTML

Craft stores documents as a nested tree of typed blocks, not as HTML. A dedicated conversion node walks that tree and emits Micropub-ready markup. It covers:

Paragraphs and headings (h1–h4)
Blockquotes and horizontal rules
Unordered and ordered lists — consecutive list-item blocks are grouped into a single <ul> or <ol> rather than emitting one list per item
Task checkboxes (rendered as ✅ / ☐)
Images, wrapped in <figure>
Rich-link bookmarks, rendered as a styled bookmark block
Code blocks (<pre><code>)
Inline formatting: bold, italic, strikethrough, inline code, links, and proper HTML-entity escaping

It also handles two different document shapes — a notebook with sub-pages and a flat single document — with a fallback lookup, so it doesn’t matter how the source is organized.

3. Rehosting images across services

Craft images live on Craft’s own CDN. If you publish those URLs directly, your post depends on Craft continuing to serve them — not acceptable for a permanent blog post. So every Craft image has to be pulled down and re-uploaded to Micro.blog.

The image branch:

Regex-scans the generated HTML for Craft image URLs.
Splits into one item per image.
Downloads each image’s binary from Craft.
Fixes the filename extension based on the response’s MIME type (Craft URLs don’t always carry a usable extension).
Uploads each image to Micro.blog’s media endpoint as multipart/form-data.

A subtle detail: Micro.blog’s media endpoint returns 202 Accepted and puts the new image URL in the HTTP Location response header, not in the body. To capture a header you have to ask the HTTP node for the full response rather than just the parsed body. A later node maps each uploaded image’s Location back to its original Craft URL by index, and the HTML is reassembled with every Craft URL replaced by its Micro.blog equivalent.

Image failures are handled gracefully: the upload node continues on error, so if one image fails (AVIF, for instance, tends to be rejected), the post still publishes — that image just keeps its original URL instead of breaking the whole run.

Why Micropub

The most reusable idea here is that Micro.blog speaks Micropub, a W3C standard, rather than a proprietary publishing API. The final payload is a standard h-entry:

{
  "type": ["h-entry"],
  "properties": {
    "name": ["My Article Title"],
    "content": ["<h2>...</h2><p>...</p>"],
    "post-status": ["draft"]
  }
}

Any Micropub-compatible endpoint would accept the same shape, so the publishing half of this workflow isn’t locked to one host. The post-status: draft field is deliberate — every post lands as a draft so it can be reviewed in the editor before going public. The endpoint responds with the new post’s URL, a preview link, and an edit link, which the workflow passes straight back to the webhook caller.

Error handling

A shared error-handler workflow catches failures across the automation.
The webhook always responds, even on failure, so a caller never hangs.
Image-upload failures are non-fatal (see above).
A missing title produces an explicit, descriptive error listing what was searched.
Full-text false positives are neutralized by the scoring node rather than by hoping the search ranks correctly.

Credentials and configuration (redacted)

For obvious reasons, the specifics below are not published:

Craft Connect REST link — a private access link used to search Craft and fetch block content.
Micro.blog app token — a Bearer token generated in Micro.blog account settings, stored in a dedicated “Set Token” node so it can be rotated in one place.
n8n instance URL, webhook path, and internal workflow IDs — infrastructure details specific to a self-hosted deployment.

If you rebuild something like this, you’d supply your own Craft access link and your own Micro.blog token, and point the workflow at your own n8n instance.

Takeaways

Treat a full-text search as untrusted input and score its results before acting on them.
When migrating content between hosts, migrate the assets too — don’t hotlink another service’s CDN.
Watch where an API returns the data you need; a Location header is easy to miss if you only read response bodies.
Prefer open standards (Micropub) over proprietary APIs where you can — it keeps the integration portable.
Publish to draft first. Automation should hand you a reviewable result, not a live surprise.

The Numeric Citizen Digital Ecosystem — Edition 2026-04

Mon, 27 Apr 2026 17:38:17 -0400

Today, I’m excited to share my latest digital ecosystem update, previously known as “The Numeric Citizen Content Creator Workflow”. The diagram sports a new title: “The Numeric Citizen Digital Ecosystem” to better reflect its scope: to enumerate services and apps at the center of my digital presence. It was entirely rebuilt in Apple Freeform, leaving Apple Keynote behind. Freeform is a joy to use; it’s much more flexible and powerful than Keynote, too. The content was also expanded to include a new set of tools I have built over the last few months since publishing the previous update. Let's dive in for all the details.

The entire ecosystem diagram was rebuilt from the ground up. Full resolution version available here.

At a high level, both Micro.blog and Ghost remain the two hosting and publishing pillars for most of my *.numericcitizen.me websites, while a few other websites, like my Ko-fi page and my new about website, Who Is Numeric Citizen, are hosted elsewhere. On the diagram, my websites are positioned on the left and in the top-left portion.

As you might notice, a lot has happened since my last update. Thanks to Claude AI and Claude Code, I made a major shift toward web app to meet two fundamental needs: a brand new bookmark manager (replacing AnyBox), and a lightweight RSS reader that integrates with my bookmark manager. Together, they support my reading workflow and help me produce the Ephemeral Scrapbook newsletter. See both web apps in this YouTube video.

My custom-built RSS reader web application

What’s in, what changed since last fall

AI is now playing a more prominent role in my digital ecosystem since the beginning of 2026. It’s mainly used for vibe coding, maintaining my web applications, and content summarization. You’ll see little light bulbs (💡) in the diagram; they indicate where AI summarization is involved. Anthropic’s Claude AI replaced OpenAI’s ChatGPT in all my workflows. Plus, Claude AI and Claude Code enabled many new possibilities for helping me build small digital services and web apps for my personal needs. It’s something I couldn’t have imagined a year ago.

Claude Code’s main window with some of my projects on the left sidebar and the DIFF view shown on the right

Another milestone was to replace IFTTT with n8n automation. It’s a major upgrade in functionality and usability. My n8n instance is running on the Digital Ocean hosting service, inside a pre-packaged “droplet” with 1 GB of RAM and 10 GB of disk space for $6 a month. Digital Ocean provides a one-click install of n8n which really made a difference in selecting Digital Ocean as a hosting service. I created more than a dozen automations, far more complex and useful than what I could build with IFTTT. Claude AI was also involved in optimizing many n8n workflows. It was possible because n8n supports the MCP endpoint that is exposed to Claude AI. In the following table, I present a summary of my n8n automation workflows. As you will see, Discord is a new entry, as it provides a custom server to receive n8n workflow outputs and some status reports from Tinylytics. Also good to know: all my n8n workflows are automatically documented in a Craft document, thanks to Claude Code, which connects to both the n8n and Craft backends. To get a well-structured documentation, I created a Claude Skill.

A portion of an automation workflow shown in the n8n canvas

My automated n8n workflows

Here’s a list of utilities running as n8n workflows on my self-hosted DigitalOcean instance.

API Credit Health Check — Pre-flight check on Anthropic credits; alerts Discord if depleted
Today's Forecast — Pulls weather data into the Craft daily note
Tinylytics Insights — Injects site analytics summary into the Craft daily note
Apple Daily News — Fetches MacSurfer headlines into the Craft daily note
Setup Craft Daily Note — Creates the day's 8-section journaling scaffold in Craft
Anthropic Daily Cost Report — Posts 7-day and 30-day AI spend breakdown to Discord

Example of automatically propulated Craft Daily note, thanks to n8n automation.

RSS & News Aggregation

A few workflows are used for content processing in the context of news consumption and Micro.blog timeline processing.

RSS Daily Summary — Aggregates RSS feeds and delivers an AI-summarized digest
Micro.blog Timeline Highlights — Summarizes Micro.blog activity via Claude
Apple News Flash Alerts — Real-time Apple news alerts from RSS
Apps & Services Release Highlights — Monitors release notes feeds for notable updates

Content & Publishing

Other workflows for supporting my content creation include:

Craft → Ghost — Two workflows (specific and generic) push Craft documents to Ghost as drafts
Ghost Publish Proxy — Triggers final publication on Ghost via webhook
Craft Fetch Proxy — Fetches Craft document content on demand for downstream processing
Poke to Craft / Peek at Ghost — Manual/chat-triggered utilities for quick content inspection

Newsletter & Email

A special workflow automation is processing email summarization on demand: simply forwarding an email to a dedicated Gmail account and after a few seconds I’ll receive a summary on my Discord server.

Email Summarizer — Polls Gmail every minute; summarizes newsletters and posts to Discord

Maintenance

Finally, backing up my workflows is a must, just in case something really bad happens on my n8n instance.

GitHub Backup — Backs up all n8n workflow definitions to a GitHub repo every Sunday

The Craft Agents main window

The updated diagram illustrates this: Craft consists of two parts—Craft content stored in the Craft cloud backend and various Craft clients, including the native general-purpose client and Craft Agents. Additionally, Craft now supports MCP and offers a comprehensive set of APIs, emphasizing the division between data storage and client applications. These latest additions to Craft are game changers and enable new use cases.

A few thoughts and observations about Craft Agents, a sort of spin-off of Craft, are worth sharing here. Think about Craft Agents as an orchestrator of AI agents. In many ways, Craft Agents can be compared to the Claude Desktop app. There is a high level of affinity between Craft Agents and Craft, connected via APIs or MCP. Consuming Craft content through Craft Agents is an obvious use case. Yet, I’m still not sure why the team behind Craft is spending so much effort on this, but it’s interesting to follow nonetheless. I’m still looking for clear use cases for it, hence the yellow dot (🟡) on its icon in the diagram. There are a few aspects of the app’s design and structure that I don’t like. I don’t like using the task manager to organize conversations. I don’t think task management belongs in this app. Plus, Craft Agents is a very hungry consumer of AI credits. It’s a major concern unless you subscribe to the highest tier of any AI provider (OpenAI, Anthropic, etc.). It’s worth noting that Craft also offers an assistant working inside Craft itself.

Also added to my digital ecosystem is CleanShot Cloud for hosting publicly shared screenshots or short screen recordings. I use that to share bugs or feedback. CleanShot X is sort of the client to CleanShot Cloud and is the best Mac utility you can get if you tae a lot of screenshots.

One last automation that prevented me from closing my IFTTT account was the process of automatically archiving my publications in DayOne. This process was briefly described in this blog post. Each time I share a blog post or an article, it is saved in DayOne. Micro.blog added a send-to-DayOne feature, which was the last needed nail in the coffin of IFTTT. It was such a relief.

Speaking of Micro.blog, I created a new website for sharing automated blog post digests on a monthly basis. Most of the process is supported by the use of AI summarization. It’s not fully automated but very effective. Each month I send my Micro.blog postss digest to Craft fo later processing using Craft Agents. The process takes less than 15 minutes to complete. I know there is a potential for a fully automated process. It’s on my todo list.

What’s out since the last update

Chillidog Web Hosting is out (the service hosting the Who Is Numeric Citizen website). It was replaced with Realmac Software Elements’ hosting solution. You can read the doc here. The transition was seamless. I prefer integrated solutions, which Realmac is now offering. Plus. Chillidog was purchased last year by Exact Hosting, and the purchase has been reported to degrade customer service.

Last fall, I added the ChatGPT Atlas browser to my ecosystem, but I removed it after switching to Claude AI. OpenAI Atlas was mainly used for summarizing articles, but now I do this within the Claude Desktop app. I still prefer using the ARC Browser, even though it might eventually be discontinued. The new browser, Dia, could take its place, but I’m interested to see how things unfold. Dia appears to require a Pro subscription to enable AI features in the browser. At $20 a month, I’ll pass.

Gone is Google News for cross-posting from Micro.blog. It never took off. Also gone is AnyBox, the very well-done bookmark manager available on all Apple platforms, but not available on the web, like Raindrop.io. I never liked Raindrop.io, so I built my own bookmark manager as a web-only app. It’s one of my new custom-built web apps.

Finally, the numericcitizen.io domain will be retired when it expires later this year, and the content hosted on a dedicated Craft subscription has already been moved to my main Craft subscription, helping me reduce costs. The meta.numericcitizen.me is taking over (my previous content was migrated there during 2025). Some of my content was also simply removed from public access.

My newly redesigned metablog as seen in dark mode

Still pondering about these

You’ll find yellow dots on the diagram which points to services or apps that I’m reconsidering. Let’s review a few of them.

Plausible vs Tinylytics: I use two web analytics. Plausible has been around in my ecosystem since I left Google Analytics. Then came long Tinylytics and I wanted to support its developer plus it provides a great design compared to Plausible. Yet, I have a lot of historic data in the latter. Plus, I started using Tinylytics APIs to feed one of my workflows who inject data inside Craft daily notes and dashboard web application. I could replace this with Plausible’s APIs but I don’t feel it’s worth the effort.

Things 3, a popular and highly regarded task manager, is currently being reconsidered. I like managing my to-dos, but I don’t have many. If I want to eliminate Things 3, I could switch to Craft’s basic task management, but it’s quite limited. For now, my most likely option is to create my own app, much like I did with my RSS reader or bookmark manager. However, I’m not in a hurry to switch away since it doesn’t require a subscription, giving me plenty of time to decide and develop a replacement.

Ulysses is another case where I’m pondering its long-term usefulness. If I can post to Micro.blog or Ghost directly from Craft (using my custom-made n8n workflows), why should I continue paying for this app? The next renewal is a year from now.

Finally, my Flipboard account hosts a magazine that pulls content from my main website via its RSS feed. I have 8 followers, apparently. I never get any reactions or comments from this place. The bigger question: is Flipboard still a thing these days?

Risk management

In this edition of the diagram, I included red dots (🔴) to indicate potential disruption risks. For example, Anthropic recently adjusted Claude's credit consumption, leading to a fivefold increase in the number of credits needed to perform the same task; something I've noticed too. Additionally, Anthropic conducted an experiment in which new subscribers could access Claude Code only if they chose the Max subscription tier at $200 per month. Although they quickly reversed this change, it raises the concern that they might eliminate the $20 plan altogether. If that happened, I could face serious difficulties and might stop maintaining my web applications built with Claude Code. Vercel is another risk potential: I’m using the free tier, which is rather generous. If they decided to remove this free tier, I would have to reconsider my position: either drop my web application or accept paying the monthly price they charge.

Concluding thoughts

This evolution reflects a fundamental shift in how I approach my digital life. By embracing AI assistants like Claude and building custom tools tailored to my specific needs, I've moved away from cobbling together disparate services toward a more cohesive, intentional ecosystem. The transition from automation platforms like IFTTT to n8n, coupled with the ability to code solutions with Claude Code, has given me both flexibility and control—rare commodities in the world of Software-as-a-Service.

The introduction of AI summarization across my workflows has transformed how I consume information, while the consolidation of my web presence under fewer, better-managed domains simplifies my digital footprint. Yet this ecosystem remains dynamic and somewhat fragile, dependent on the sustained availability of key services and the pricing decisions of AI providers. The risk management considerations I've outlined aren't just technical footnotes—they're essential guideposts for maintaining digital independence in an increasingly interconnected world.

As I continue to iterate and refine this ecosystem, the principles remain constant: intentionality, control, and the ability to evolve. The next edition will likely bring even more changes, but I'm optimistic that the foundations I've built will prove resilient enough to adapt to whatever comes next.

Previous update to my digital ecosystem can be found here.

Mon, 29 Dec 2025 17:38:22 -0400

Here’s a quick demonstration of the Microblog Poster web app I mentioned in my previous blog post.

My Content Creation Ecosystem - Fall 2025 Update

Sun, 02 Nov 2025 09:28:27 -0400

It has been a while since my last update in March 2025. Here’s a summary of the changes.

I removed Brief.news because I no longer think it will replace Mailbrew.
I removed Mailbrew because I no longer depend on it to consume Internet content. I tried to replace it with Inoreader email digests, but it didn’t work as I wrote here.
I decided to add ChatGPT Atlas because I now have a solid use case for it: articles summarization and analysis, as I explained in this YouTube video. This means Perplexity didn’t stay from my previous update. I’m focusing and want to settle on OpenAI for the foreseeable future.
My new personal landing page, which is mostly complete, has replaced the one previously hosted on Craft public documents.
I also made several visual tweaks to make it cleaner and more visually appealing.

The pace of updates slowed considerably in the last two years. It’s a good thing, and it means I can focus more on content and less on tooling.

Thu, 16 Oct 2025 19:23:38 -0400

As a Craft power user, I still need Ulysses to complete my writing and publishing workflow. I made a video about this.

Screenflow + Screen Studio

Sun, 28 Sep 2025 21:27:14 -0400

This week, I decided to add Screen Studio to my YouTube recording workflow. Screen Studio brings simplicity for recording more dynamic screen sequences. Everything Screen Studio does can be done in ScreenFlow, but it requires significantly more manual work. But Screen Studio has a severe limitation: we cannot merge recorded sequences. That’s why I’m keeping ScreenFlow.

In summary, my workflow proceeds as follows: individual sequences are recorded in Screen Studio, exported as .mp4 files, and then imported into ScreenFlow to be assembled into a complete video sequence, which includes the intro and outro sequences with background music. Chapter markers are also added in ScreenFlow before final export. Finally, video subtitles are created using Whisper Transcription and exported as an .srt file, which is compatible with YouTube Studio.

Overall, I do spend more time on video rendering, but I think it’s worth it. Lastly, disk space consumption is way higher than before, with 2x-3x more space consumed than with ScreenFlow alone. Ouch.

One more thing: Screen Studio is the only app that makes the M4 Mac mini fan run at full speed. I wonder if Screen Studio uses Apple Metal technology?

Sat, 16 Aug 2025 08:31:54 -0400

When I read about vibe coding to quickly create app mockups or even shipping an app to the App Store, I wonder if I could use genAI to vibe code a theme plugin for Micro.blog. That would allow me to use a unique visual theme inspired by my visual branding.

Mon, 28 Jul 2025 07:50:55 -0400

Because Diagrams for Mac seems to fall in the category of abandonware, if the latest blog post date is any indication, I decided to drop if from my tool set. The app wasn’t updated since macOS Monterey in 2022. Too bad, it was a rather promising diagramming tool.

An Update About My Journey with Realmac Software Elements

Tue, 06 May 2025 06:50:36 -0400

I’ve been quiet lately because I’ve been dedicating more time to learning Realmac Software Elements. I plan to create a few websites for fun. The first will be a new landing page to replace the current one shared with Craft Docs (look here). The second will be my professional website, which I’ll use when I transition to a freelance career. Ironically, the third will be a rework of my current employer’s corporate website, which I find quite unattractive.

So far, it’s a rather exciting journey. Elements is an excellent Mac app, and the team behind it offers a stellar presence on their support forums. This adds to the excitement of being part of a small club trying to build a new app. Elements is still in beta and should launch this year. You should see this video on YouTube showing the app’s user interface.

My experience with Elements reminds me of Apple’s iWeb website editor, which was part of the initial MobileMe rollout. However, Elements is much more powerful and geared toward a different crowd. The learning curve is much steeper, but it is reasonable for a guy like me. Elements is built around Tailwind CSS. I don’t know CSS or Tailwind CSS, but Elements hides its complexity.

Tailwind CSS is a utility-first CSS framework created by Adam Wathan and the team at Tailwind Labs in 2017. Designed to streamline web development, it provides a comprehensive set of low-level utility classes that allow developers to style elements directly in their HTML without writing custom CSS. This approach enables rapid prototyping and highly customizable designs, making Tailwind CSS a popular choice for developers seeking efficiency and flexibility in building modern web interfaces.

As soon as my first project matures enough, I’ll share more about it.

A Mandatory Update to my Content Creation Ecosystem

Sat, 22 Mar 2025 13:38:46 -0400

A visual look at my content creator ecosystem.

Some cleanup: Readwise is gone. Supporting services are now grouped at the bottom. Corrected a few typos. I made some visual adjustments to make things a little bit cleaner and easier to visualize, especially for website miniatures. I renamed the diagram to reflect the notion of an ecosystem instead of a workflow.

Many additions: each enhanced service with generative AI features is marked as such with a little brain icon. That’s the case for Inoreader, Craft and Grammarly. All my Micro.blog-hosted websites are now indicated. Since adhering to POSSE principles, I added the Fediverse and Bluesky icons and drew the cross-posting arrow lines to them.

A high-resolution version of this diagram is available here.

What is POSSE

The POSSE principle stands for “Publish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere.” It is a content distribution strategy often recommended for writers, bloggers, and publishers. The primary idea is to first publish your content on a platform you control, such as your personal website or blog, and then syndicate or share that content on other platforms like social media, Medium, or different online communities.

Here are some key points about the POSSE principle:

Ownership and Control: By publishing on your own site first, you maintain control over your content and ensure it exists in a space you own. This helps protect your work from the risks of platform changes or shutdowns.
Centralized Content: Your website becomes the central hub where all your content is stored and can be accessed by your audience.
Traffic and SEO: By driving traffic to your own site, you can improve your website’s SEO, increase your audience, and potentially monetize traffic through ads, affiliate links, or direct sales.
Syndication: After publishing on your own site, you can share your content with a wider audience by syndicating it to other platforms. This strategy helps reach readers who might not visit your site directly.
Preservation: Content publishing on third-party platforms may be subject to their rules and policies. Publishing first on your own site ensures your content is preserved and remains unchanged regardless of policy changes elsewhere.

The POSSE principle is popular among creators who value long-term control over their work and want to build a sustainable and direct relationship with their audience.

My Content Creator Workflow & Digital Tools — Edition 2024-12

Mon, 23 Dec 2024 08:15:32 -0400

It’s been quite a long time since my previous content creator workflow update, more than a year actually, back in November 2023. With 2024 coming to an end, it’s time for a detailed update. First, consider the following overall diagram, then continue reading.

An overview of my digital tools and workflows.

Outlining purposes: Zavala, a free open-source outliner, is nearly perfect for outlining YouTube video production. I don’t do detailed scripting before recording videos, but I like to create the outline. I was using Zavala until the release of Mindnote Next, but this might change. Mindnote is a superbly designed mind-mapping application that also supports the creation of outlines, which are more beautiful than those created in Zavala. One of Zavala’s strengths is that it is free but also easily exports a document into Craft via a simple drag-and-drop. I will see how it goes in 2025.

Presentation purposes: iA Presenter offers a unique approach to presentation creation. I rarely use presentation software outside of my day job, but when I do, it supports me while recording a YouTube video. A recent update to iA Presenter introduced an online presentation sharing feature that works really well and is beautifully implemented. For 2025, I’ll try to take advantage of this. iA Presenter is such a unique take on a very old software category I must keep trying to find a use for it.

Website site analytics: Tinylytics joins Plausible in my toolset. I was happy with Plausible until this year, but the developer of Tinylytics is also the developer of Scribble.pages, a blog hosting service I really like. I decided to subscribe to Tinylytics as a support gesture for all his hard work building simple yet valuable web services.

Web bookmark management: I’m happy to introduce Anybox. Sure, it’s not raindrop.io, but it’s a great native Mac app, also available on the iPad and the iPhone. That’s all I need. My collection has less than four hundred bookmarks, all organized using folders and tags. It’s nothing fancy but practical.

RSS feeds publishing: FeedPress is a simple yet effective way for adding a unified feed in front of all my different websites (Ghost, Micro.blog, Scribbles, Medium). Also, I offer an RSS megafeed that encompasses all my other individual RSS feeds, which can be found here: https://feeds.numericcitizen.me. The added value of using FeedPress is to enable RSS feed analytics, which other publishing platforms like Micro.blog, for example, won’t provide.

Podcasting purposes: Micro.blog is now my podcast hosting service of choice. The feature is built-in and very simple to configure and use. There are two ways for me to share a podcast episode: either use the narrated post feature of Micro.blog or use a traditional workflow, build an audio file using Screenflow, post-process it in Adobe Podcast, and convert it from WAV to MP3 using Permute before uploading the audio file to Micro.blog.

Files-hosting and cloud storage service: Dropshare will upload a file to Backblaze cloud storage, and Short.io will shorten the resulting URL. All my files are shared under the following domain name: https://go.numericcitizen.me, using my custom branding. Here is an example: https://go.numericcitizen.me/PLx2st2Y. This workflow was implemented in 2024 and works well. The only thing is that I don’t use it often enough, and it can compete with CleanShot Cloud, which I use more often when sharing screenshots or short video clips. Those media files are using the following URL: cloud.numericcitizen.me.

Specialized blog hosting: Micro.blog. I created a metablog on Micro.blog using one of the five blogs in my Micro.blog subscription. As you can conclude, I’m increasing my foothold on Micro.blog because it is cheap, effective and unique on the market.

Read-later service: I removed Omnivore because the service is no longer being developed, and I decided to focus on Inoreader instead. It’s not a perfect solution, but it is a cheaper one. I still depend on Readwise to sync text highlights from Inoreader.

Another blog hosting service, Scribbles, was. I’m using it to host short-form posts called Blips or longer ones using the /Now spirit under the following URL: https://blips.numericctizen.me.

One-page website hosting: Numeric Citizen Hub on Micro.blog has replaced my Linktr.ee page. I’m again focusing on Micro.blog for many of my online publishing needs while saving some money along the way. This one-page website is for hosting my visitor card, sort of. Micro.blog offers support for one-page websites, so I’m taking advantage of this.

When saving bookmarks on Miicro.blog, I take advantage of text highlights while reading the article that Micro.blog is keeping from the bookmark. Text highlights are synced to Readwise, too.

Website for my supporters: For prople who wants to show their support for my work, I have built a Ko-fi page that can be reached here: https://ko-fi.com/numericcitizen. It was created for the one dollars a month club initiative from Manuel Moreale. I’m one of his supporter.

Document writing and editing needs: Craft & Ulysses. Both apps are still at the center of my publishing needs. More than ever, I depend on Craft to gather my thoughts and notes, research, and write. Ultimately, content is exported into Ulysses for publishing to either Ghost, Micro.blog or, more recently, Medium.

Behind-the-scenes newcomers: Apple Freeform plays a more prominent role in helping me create diagrams. Freeform is joining Mindnote and Keynote for creating visual content when needed.

These are gone: All my domain name registrations are now entirely moved to Cloudflare, and gone is GoDaddy. Omnivore is being phased out by its developers; it’s gone, too.

Until next time

The continuous evolution of toolsets reflects the dynamic nature of technology and the diverse needs of users. No toolset is flawless, and each comes with its own set of strengths and weaknesses. This notion is evident in your evolving content creator workflow, where you adapt and integrate new tools, illustrating digital tools’ perpetual state of change. For 2025, I don’t expect too much change in my workflows. Don’t forget to visit my complete content creator toolset if you are curious about the individual tools that I’m using.

This document is also available as a Craft shared document.

Mon, 02 Sep 2024 08:15:52 -0400

For those who didn’t know, I maintain a description of all the apps and services that I use on “My Complete Content Creator Toolset And Some More” page.

Sun, 14 Jul 2024 14:27:58 -0400

Bye bye Hookmark, apparently my current subscription ended. I cannot justify subscribing to this app just to be able to browse hookmark files created when my subscription was active. I’ll need to update some of my Craft templates to remove all my hookmark file references. Tedious.

Sat, 15 Jun 2024 08:07:05 -0400

I spent some time this morning to update my content creator toolset mini website. It was long overdue.

Combining Craft And Things 3 For My Writing Projects

Mon, 27 May 2024 20:25:53 -0400

This article is about how I’m using Craft and Things 3, which is behind any short or long article I share online. Here is what happens when I get a new post idea.

In Things 3, Create an entry and set priority and desired or expected date of publication if known.
In Craft, I create a new document, set the title and then copy the document’s deeplink to the clipboard.
Still within Craft, I move the newly created document to the appropriate folder.
Still within Craft, I update my private creator dashboard document optionally.
Back to Things 3, and I paste the deeplink into the note field. It’s handy to jump from Things 3 to Craft with a single tap.

At this point, I can start my research, writing and editing of my article or blog post in Craft. Now, here is what happens after publishing my article:

Mark the to-do item as done in Things 3.
I update my private creator dashboard document by converting my deeplink to a new permalink that I put in the Recently Published section.
I monitor the appropriate RSS feed for quality control. See this article about subscribing to my own RSS feeds.

There you have it. Craft plays a central role in my blogger workflow¹. This blog post exposes what happens at the beginning and at the end of a new post idea. I hope you enjoyed it and maybe learned something.

Not all blog posts start in Craft. Far from it. ↩︎

Combining Craft And Things 3 For My Writing Projects

Tue, 07 May 2024 20:00:00 -0400

This article is about how I’m using Craft and Things 3, which is behind any short or long article I share online. Here is what happens when I get a new post idea.

In Things 3, Create an entry and set priority and desired or expected date of publication if known.
In Craft, I create a new document, set the title and then copy the document’s deeplink to the clipboard.
Still within Craft, I move the newly created document in the appropriate folder.
Still within Craft, I optionally update my private creator dashboard document.
Back to Things 3 and I paste the deeplink in the note field. It’s handy to jump from Things 3 to Craft with a single tap.

At this point, I can start my research, writing and editing of my article or blog post in Craft. Now, here is what happens after publishing my article:

Mark the to-do item as done in Things 3.
I update my private creator dashboard document by converting my deeplink to a new a permalink that I put in the Recently Published section.
I monitor the appropriate RSS feed for quality control. See this article about subscribing to my own RSS feeds.

There you have it. Craft plays a central role in My Blogger Workflow. This blog post exposes what happens at the beginning and at the end of a new post idea. I hope you enjoyed it and maybe learned something.

Sun, 10 Mar 2024 09:55:49 -0400

If you want a peak at my current reading notes management workflow, you might find this video interesting (Craft, Bear 2, Omnivore, Readwise).

My Content Creator Workflow as of 2023-11

Fri, 24 Nov 2023 07:00:00 -0400

My-Creative-Workflow-2023-11.png

My creative workflow as of 2023-11. You can download an higher resolution here.

This 2023-11 version has a few changes and a cleaner and more focused workflow. Before going into specific details, I wanted to remind readers that I support the " POSSE " idea. You can read one post about it here. This workflow presented reflects this. As a reminder, here is one definition of the POSSE principle according to ChatGPT:

“POSSE” is an acronym that stands for “Publish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere.” It’s a content publishing model that first encourages publishing content on your own website, and then syndicating (or sharing) that content on other platforms or websites. This approach is often recommended in digital marketing and personal branding strategies, as it allows individuals to maintain control over their original content while still benefiting from the audience and engagement found on larger, established platforms. The POSSE model is particularly relevant in the context of blogging, social media, and online content creation.

Welcome AI, welcome ChatGPT, Dall-E, Midjourney

AI is making an official entry in my creative workflow. I wrote a long piece stating my guidelines for using AI in my creative work. You should read those and maybe get some inspiration out of them. The header image of this article was generated using Dall-E.

Dropshare coupled with Short.io enables me to share files like screenshots or other things. The setup was documented in detail in a previous article on this meta blog. Behind the scene, Dropshare is configured to use Backblaze to store files in a S3 bucket.

Bye bye to my Digital Garden

I came to the conclusion that a digital garden isn’t something for me. I decided to move some portions into my official about page. You can still access the remains of the garden, here.

A fun experience with Tinylytics

I’ve been using Plausible for my analytics needs but a cool guy (the same who’s also working with Manton Reece on Micro.blog hosting service, developed a lightweight version which I decided to support.

Safari-Personal (Default) — Sites tinylytics@2023-11-23@20.13.49@2x.png

The Tinylytics dashboard

Google Sheets is out too

I was using Google Sheets to save links to every post on Micro.blog via an IFTTT automation. I no longer feel the need to key this in place.

Brief

Brief is now part of my workflow because they also took over Mailbrew, both are forming a powerful content consumption enabler duo. Some of my Mailbrew newsletters contain Brief as a source for news, which is heavily using AI for summarization.

Why It’s So Hard to Make Up My Mind About Digital Tools?

Sun, 07 May 2023 10:00:00 -0400

This article posted back in 2022, was a glimpse at a great moment of confusion. Following the publication of “Things That Don’t Stick With Me”, the next logical thing to do now is to talk about my seemingly permanent state of confusion with my choices of many digital tools.

In short, the problem is that, in many cases, I use different apps to do the same thing. The worst case to come to my mind is RSS feeds readers. After many years with News Explorer, I tried NetNewsWire, Reeder and Inoreader. Oh, I forgot about ReadKit too. The light at the end of the tunnel is in sight because News Explorer is now out. After discovering and experimenting with Inoreader, I concluded that News Explorer no longer fit my needs. One of them being the text-highlighting capability. That is one less app to use or consider. NetNewsWire simplicity makes the app attractive. Reeder’s design is also attractive. I do use Inoreader with Inoreader web service. I’m not decided yet on the next steps: which one should I keep?

Twitter vs Tweetbot was another example. When I was on Twitter, I constantly switched between those two. The funny thing is that for those still on Twitter, third-party apps for Twitter are all dead. This would have fixed my issue! Now, with Mastodon, it’s worst because of the plethora of available apps. There are too many to list here and the list keeps expanding. Thankfully, I don’t use Mastodon much, but if I did, well, you know the drill by now, right?

On Micro.blog, same issue. I’m constantly moving between the original Micro.blog app and Gluon. Both are great but latter is a bit more complete.

Box and Dropbox used to be examples of my indecision before I went all in with iCloud Drive a few years ago. I still use Google’s Drive for storing Google’s Sheets updated via an IFTTT automation. That, I’m no longer sure about its usefulness.

Clipboard managers were another source of conflicting views. There were three apps in that space: Copied, Pastebot and Unclutter. I’ve settled on the latter because it is so much more than a clipboard manager. Yet, it took me way too long before deciding which one to keep. I don’t use a clipboard manager on the iPhone anymore.

Unclutter window on my Mac — Three Areas: the clipboard history, content of a folder and content of a specific text file.

Here’s another one: Apple’s Notes, Notion or Craft. I use Craft 95% of the time, Notes 4% of the time, and Notion 1% for the rest. Oh, I forgot to mention Tot, a nifty tech editor! What is preventing me from settling on Craft for everything? I use Notion for storing information about a sideline project because Craft is not as good for that type of information.
For my photo processing and retouching needs: Acorn 7, Pixelmator Pro, Photomator, Adobe Lightroom CC and Lightroom Classic are installed somewhere on my devices. I should probably drop Adobe Suite, but It would be a mess to retrieve all my photos backed up to the Adobe Cloud. I’m being lazy here. I’m really enjoying Photomator on my iPad and iPhone. This application is better designed than Apple’s Photos for photo editing. Photomator is coming soon to the Mac, too, apparently, to make matters worst, I guess. I’m on the waiting list for a TestFlight invite.
As a computer performance enthusiast, I use utilities like Sensei, iStats Menu, iStatistica Pro, and the open-source project “Stats” available on GitHub. I use iStats Menu on my Mac mini, Stats on my Mac Pro (used for my SDDCbox project) and iStatistica Pro on my MacBook Air. Sensei should probably be dropped.

Image.png

Reddit, Apollo, Slide and Comet. There are all Reddit clients. They all offer nice and different things when consuming or interacting with Reddit content. For example, Slide comes with the best widgets, but is lacking active development and isn’t the best at browsing content. Comet isn’t been updated in two years. Apollo runs on Apple Silicon Macs but suffers from some display bugs.
Password Managers, another story of indecision and laziness: 1Password and Apple’s Password Keychain. I should move from 1Password to Apple’s solution once and for all. Maybe if Apple had a discreet password manager? I’m undecided.
Tasks managers represent another case of spreading myself all over the place. For personal to-dos, I depend on Apple’s Reminders. For my creative workflow, I depend on Things 3 but there was a time last year when I tried using Craft as a to-do manager. It didn’t go well, and I decided to bring back Things 3 in my workflow. I documented my change of heart in this video. One comforting thought, I know that I’m not alone in my quest for the best tools. This documented case with Things 3 and OmniFocus is a good example.

There is hope

I might sound like a tormented person, but I’m not. I would say that I’m not as focused as I should be. But there is hope because I do make decisions from time to time when things become clear or obvious. Let’s see a few examples.

On the publishing platforms front, things are improving. Thankfully, this year, I’m focusing. There use to be WordPress, Micro.blog, Substack, Ghost, Blot and Write.as. WordPress is out. Substack is out. Blot is out. I’m down to two publishing platforms: Ghost and Micro.blog. That’s it. Sure, i cross-post some content to Mastodon, Bluesky and Flipboard. But that doesn’t count.
On the photography side, at some point, there was 500px, Smugmug, Unsplash, Glass, Exposure. 500px is out. I decided to move out of Smugmug by the end of my subscription (next year), so that I can focus on Glass and Exposure.

Image.png

I recently dropped Pocket, Matter and Readwise Reader. So, you see, there is hope!
For bookmarking, at some point, I was using Apple’s Safari Reading List, Pocket, Craft bookmarks, Apple’s Quick Notes, and Mailbrew saved items. I dropped all of these in the last year to focus on Anybox. I couldn’t be happier. Oh, I sometimes use Micro.blog bookmarking feature to archive articles than I can highlight then create a linkpost using these highlights.
Ever since I got my M1-based Mac mini, I bought a M1 MacBook Air. I constantly use both of them. One thing that I like to do is to use on app on one Mac and another competitive app on the other Mac. For example, on my MacBook Air, I use “Stats” and on my Mac mini, I use iStats Menu.
iPad Pro vs MacBook Air: because reasons. I love both but in different usage scenarios. I’m fortunate enough to have both.
My reading workflow was in a state of flux: https://numericcitizen.micro.blog/2022/05/07/my-reading-workflow.html. But, thanks to my decisions to drop traditional read-later services like Matter or Pocket, I’m more focused now in that area.

I should probably update this article occasionally because my digital toolkit is constantly evolving. You probably should keep an eye on my documented toolset that I keep up to date.

This article was previously published on Numeric Citizen Space:

Why It’s So Hard to Make Up My Mind About Digital Tools?

My Content Creator Workflow as of 2023-04

Sun, 26 Mar 2023 07:00:00 -0400

Time for another workflow update (the previous update can be found here). This update probably contains the most profound changes in a long time. My journey with WordPress as a CMS (content management platform) has ended. It started in 2015, after closing my indie developer blog hosted on Google’s Blogger. There are a lot of moving parts. The dust is starting to settle a bit now. Let’s dig in.

CleanShot-CleanShot@2023-03-26@20.05.48@2x.png

As for the diagram, I wanted to make it more focused on digital tools and how they relate to each other, so I removed the devices representation as well as icons of apps that are better documented in my toolset (see down below). I kept the essential making the foundation of my workflow.

Bye Bye WordPress.com

Following the completion of my migration from WordPress to Ghost, I think it’s the right time for an update to my content creator workflow. This WordPress migration forced a reconsideration of many tools that I use to create. This post will highlight most of these changes.

Bye bye Twitter

Up until a few months ago, Twitter was really at the center of my online presence. It’s no longer the case. It’s (nearly) nowhere to be seen (except for searches through Inoreader). With Twitter out from my digital landscape, the following are no longer needed.

Birdbrain, an iPhone app that allowed me to track who was following or unfollowing me.
Buffer, a scheduling service to post content on Twitter. It was used to repost past content to stimulate exposure and traction. If I consider the price of the service, I don’t think the return on investment was worth it.
My @Apple_Observer Twitter account is in read-only mode. My @numericcitizen Twitter account is also in read-only mode but is used in conjunction with Inoreader for searching and scrapping Twitter for specific content using specific keywords.

Changing reading habits

My reading habits are evolving too. Reading is the fuel behind my creative activities.

Speaking of Inoreader earlier, this content consumption service appeared on my radar and was later adopted. It is replacing News Explorer, an RSS reader. Inoreader allows for much more than reading RSS feeds. Reeder (read my review here) and ReadKit are two RSS readers that I use alternatively to consume my content on Inoreader simply because these two apps offer a native experience on the Mac that Inoreader currently doesn’t offer. I’m still undecided as to which of the two apps I’m going to keep. That’s for another content creator workflow update.
Gone is Matter and Readwise Reader. Since I’m mostly reading content through RSS feeds, these two services are no longer needed. I keep Readwise highlights subscription, though. It serves as an archiving service of some sort. All text annotations by Inoreader are saved to Readwise.

A more focused publication channel

Content publishing services were also reconsidered. Medium is out. Spending time there’s no longer viable as readership is stagnant at best. Tumblr is out too. I was cross-posting content there, but it is no longer viable too. Even if it was an automated process, thanks to Micro.blog cross-posting ability and to IFTTT, it doesn’t make sense to maintain Tumblr as this platform is a walking dead.
Back to the WordPress migration, for obvious reasons, all my WordPress plugins, like Yoast, are no longer needed. Many others were dropped, too, saving me quite a lot on recurring expenses. Yoast was useful when writing a blog post to optimize SEO content but added some friction and probably didn’t make a big difference for my SEO optimization aspirations.

Is my Craft usage fading out?

My Craft usage is still important, but a few use cases were dropped. I don’t use daily notes to manage my things to do (as explained in this video “Why I’m No Longer Using Craft Daily Notes”). I went back to Things 3 for this. The other use case that was removed from Craft is bookmarks management, as explained in detail in this video “Why I’m Moving My Bookmarks Out of Craft”. Now, I’m depending on the excellent Anybox bookmarks manager, as I explained in this article: “Anybox – My Experience with a Bookmarks Manager”. Switching to Anybox also means I dropped Raindrop.io too. Even as a free service, it was redundant to keep.

Finally, since my tool set is always changing, I created and shared a Craft document where you can have a complete view of the apps and services I depend on to create things and put them out there on the net. You’ll also see tools that are under consideration and the tools that I dropped in the past. Link: https://world.numericcitizen.io/meta-toolset.

Image.png

My Content Creator Workflow as of 2022-12

Sun, 04 Dec 2022 10:00:00 -0400

It’s been a while since I shared details about my blogger creator workflow. From now on, I’m renaming it to “my content creator workflow” as it better reflects the coverage of my work. As you might expect, a lot has changed in a year. Without further due, let’s begin.

Cleanshot Cloud has been added to my toolset following an update to the Cleanshot application. I think it’s one of the best Mac utilities out there. I even wrote a love letter. The most recent update brings screenshots history which is really nice.
Raindrop.io is making a small comeback using the free tier for storing non-text bookmarks like things to watch. I didn’t subscribe to the service, and I explain why in this blog post “When War in Ukraine Influences My Application Choices - Numeric Citizen Blog.” I rarely use it, but when needed, it’s there.
Notion was dormant since I switched to Craft until recently when I started to use it more often in combination with IFTTT. I use it to store information like popular discussions about Craft on Reddit or YouTube videos that I liked. More details in this YouTube video that I made.
I became a subscriber of write.as as explained in [this article](https://numericcitizen-introspection.blog/friday-notes-63-i-writeas-myself/](https://numericcitizen-introspection.blog/friday-notes-63-i-writeas-myself/). There was a promotion earlier this year for a five-year subscription plan. I decided to make the plunge and give it a try. I’m using Write.as mostly when I’m musing about a very specific subject. The war in Ukraine has been one of those subjects. I like Write.as for its simplicity and its connection to Ghost, albeit without using it for every post.

My write.as page.
Matter is becoming more of a nice read-later service. I like it a lot. But then, the long-awaited Readwise Reader is coming into beta and looks like a serious contender. In Early October, I was finally able to try the Readwise Reader application. I like it a lot too, but it offers a quite different experience than Matter. Which one will stick with me is still unclear, though, like many things as I wrote in [this article](numericcitizen.me/2022/07/0…](http://numericcitizen.me/2022/07/03/things-that-dont-stick-with-me/).
The Reminders app from Apple is removed from my workflow, as I’m trying to focus on fewer tools. Instead, I came back to using Things 3 for my weekly planning instead of relying on Craft’s to-do list and daily notes. What’s better than a task manager to manage… tasks? More details about this change in this YouTube Video “Why I’m No Longer Using Craft for My Daily Notes.”
Vimeo is out, but YouTube is in for hosting a series of videos about Craft. I could see myself creating videos about other subjects too in the future. At the time of publishing, I made 35 videos so far, I currently have a bit less than 500 subscribers. My goal is to hit the 1000 mark within the first year of producing videos.
I settled on using a few Apple shortcuts for storing web clips in Craft Inbox. I discovered MarkDownload, a Safari extension for downloading web articles in markdown files that are easy to import in Craft for reading and processing. CraftClip 1.3 is also in there for use on my iPad when I’m browsing the web and want to save an article for further processing and inclusion in Craft. My reading workflow is still in flux, though. I’m thorn between Matter and Readwise Reader. As described in my YouTube video, Craft plays an important role too as explained in this YouTube video “My Reading Workflow Using Craft”
I closed my Blot.im account and move to Craft for hosting the Numeric Citizen I/O website, representing a 60$ savings that will serve to pay for the Craft Business plan. What if Blot.im disappeared? I asked myself this question recently.
- A side-effect of moving to Craft for hosting my content is the loss of RSS feed support.
- Blot.im was based on a GIT repo and for publishing I needed Nova, it has been removed from my workflow too as well as WorkingCopy for the iPad.
- Commento was disabled and closed on all my blogs after closing my Blot.im account (another 260$ of yearly savings) and when Ghost introduced native comments. I was never or very rarely used by visitors to post comments anyway. What a waste of time and money.

Instapaper vs Pocket — Which Read Later Service is Better for Me

Sat, 03 Dec 2022 08:00:00 -0400

As much as I love Craft, its current version is unsuitable as a read-later solution. I do keep a list of bookmarks within Craft, but the article’s content is not fetched and saved into Craft, something Notion is able to do. This list is kept for other purposes, like helping me build my newsletter and other long-form articles. I need a better reading solution.

Reading is something that requires the least distraction possible. Safari reader mode is great. I use it quite frequently to remove the noise from a webpage, but it lacks the highlighting feature of Instapaper or Pocket. Using a shortcut to save a text highlight is possible but distracting. This is where an app like Instapaper or Pocket comes into play. But which one is the best? For me, it is Pocket¹, here is a quick comparison of both solutions.

Pocket design is richer, while Instapaper’s is minimalistic, which could be seen as an advantage. Yet, Pocket is still frictionless for reading.
Pocket updates are more frequent.
Pocket is more expansive than Instapaper.
IFTTT support is more extensive with Instapaper than it is with Pocket.
Instapaper allows quick notes to be created next to the highlighted text. This could prove useful. Think of it as meta-highlighting.
Instapaper seems stuck in the past when it was created by Marco Arment.
Instapaper allows you to organize bookmarks into folders, something I wish Pocket would support. I’m a bit compulsive about organizing my content.
Pocket supports iOS widgets, not Instapaper.
Share sheet allows tagging with Pocket, which makes me more efficient.
Page rendering seems better in Pocket.
On the Mac, Instapaper Safari extension doesn’t work. It keeps asking me to authenticate with the application, which I did. See next observation.
Both Pocket and Instapaper don’t support Sign in with Apple within the macOS application; only on the website. Because of this, the Instapaper is useless on the Mac, while Pocket supports creating a password for the account, which fixes this issue.
Pocket offers a public profile page where article recommendations can be shared.
I have more confidence in Pocket’s future and sustainability than in Instapaper’s.

The following screenshots are page rendering examples of the same article from both services.

Instapaper page rendering example.

Pocket page rendering example.

If Craft is ever updated to extract an article from a website, allows tagging and highlighting, I’ll probably reconsider my use of Pocket. For now, I’m a very happy user of Pocket, a service which helps me read more and better.

My Pocket profile. My Matter profile.

I used Pocket when the service was first started, but somehow, I stopped using it, maybe because of Apple’s introduction of the Read Later feature in Safari. ↩︎

A Peek At My Photo Processing Workflow

Mon, 21 Nov 2022 12:00:00 -0400

This meta blog is mostly about my content creation workflows. Photography is a big part of it, so I posted an update last week-end about it, after a two-year period.

My last photo processing update is more than two years old. Quite a few things have happened since 2020: many things are in, but many things are out too. I learned to use new services while dropping those that don’t fit my content creation journey. Let’s see what’s in and what’s out.

What’s in

Glass, the new kid on the block of photo-sharing services, is in, and I like it a lot, as I wrote in “my experience with the service.”
Exposure is in, and I love it so much that it will replace Smugmug as my official home. The main reason is the possibility of a great mix of images and text forming beautiful posts. All posts published on Exposure are cross-posted to Micro.blog.
Adobe Spark was renamed to Adobe Express recently. I’m rarely using it, but when I do, I like this creative tool.
On the hardware side, my iPhone 11 Pro was upgraded to an iPhone 13 Pro back in the fall of 2021, and I wrote in detail in Upgrading From the iPhone 11 Pro to iPhone 13 Pro — the Love Story Continues – Numeric Citizen Blog. In summary, it was a great upgrade for my photography creativity.

What’s out

I guess the following items should be added to my long list of “Things that don’t stick with me” article. Let’s see one by one the ousted service or app.

My iPhone 13 Pro played a major role during my trip to Italy last summer. Two-thirds of my shots came through my iPhone 13 Pro device, one third with my Nikon D750. The trend is worrisome. Is my Nikon D750 on the way out? Not yet, but… I know it won’t be part of my next trip to South America this coming December.
500px is out (it previously replaced Flickr) and eventually was, in turn, replaced by Smugmug. The latter is on the way out too, and will be replaced by Exposure. The process has already started (read my Experience using the service recently published).
Universe was a one-year experience but was later abandoned. It gave me the unique experience of building a simple website showing my urban exploration photographic work.
Gurushots, a photo contest community, is out of my digital life. I still have an account but I no longer spend time on this website. It’s a big waste of time as fully documented GuruShots Tips and Tricks Guide — The 2021 Edition — Part I – Numeric Citizen Blog and in GuruShots Tips and Tricks Guide — The 2021 Edition — Part 2 – Numeric Citizen Blog.
Camera+ is another victim of my workflow constant optimization. It was briefly replaced by the excellent Halide, but again it was dropped in favour of Apple’s stock Camera app. If I had an iPhone 14 Pro, I would probably switch back to Halide as it offers an easy way to turn on and off the 48-megapixels camera mode.
Also out is my content on Adobe Portfolio (I wrote a small review about the service a while back). While the tied integration with Adobe Lightroom is nice, it wasn’t easy to create a website to my liking, and I eventually dropped the service. Exposure is a photo-sharing service that goes way beyond Adobe Portfolio.
My use of Adobe Lightroom Classic has significantly decreased since my last workflow update. My go-to photo editing app is Adobe Lightroom (both on iPad or M1 MacBook Air), and Pixelmator Photo on the iPad comes in second. The latter was extensively used during my summer trip to Italy.
I also stopped using Skylum Aurora HDR & Luminar as my need for HDR is nonexistent (it used to be the case when I was doing urban exploration, which is no longer the case, sadly).
On the hardware side, I sold my 2017 4K Retina iMac (read “Remembering My Story of Owning The 4K Retina 21.5 inches iMac — 2017-2021 – Numeric Citizen Blog”) and bought an M1 Mac mini shortly after it came out on the market. I wrote a must-read article on how to migrate Adobe Lightroom Classic from one Mac to another. A few months later, I got an M1 MacBook Air. Both of these machines are simply incredibly mighty.

Miscellaneous

I’m still using Unsplash for selecting photos for addition to my content when it makes sense. I contribute from time to time, and that ok. I’m not investing much time in selecting photo content for publication on Unsplash. Sometimes, less is more.

I used to have an Instagram account (The Perfect Imperfctions) and mostly stopped posting on it. Time is a finite resource, and I have to make choices on where I spend my time creating new and meaningful content. One thing is for sure, Instagram is not what it used to be for photography lovers like me.

Concluding words

My photography workflow is constantly changing but maybe not as often as my blogger workflow. It has been more than two years since my last workflow update, and a lot has changed in two years. I don’t see major changes in the future, as I’d like to keep things a bit more stable for now and use my creativity to make good use of my toolset.

Making YouTubes Videos - Observations & Notes

Fri, 29 Jul 2022 08:00:00 -0400

I’ve been making videos since early June of 2022. I wasn’t destined to produce content for YouTube as I’m more of a “written words” type of guy. So far, I have made 18 videos totalling more than two hours and a half of viewing time. Along the way of producing those videos, I learned a lot, and at this point, I feel pretty satisfied with my workflow. Here are my gathered observations and notes about my endeavour.

Craft is a great application for helping me stay organized and support my video creation workflow. I’m using a template for each new video with things to do, research notes, documentation, video script, and post-process steps are all part of the template. I also maintain a table of past and future videos. I’m very happy with Craft in that respect.
I did learn a few things about Craft along the way of producing these videos, for example, while preparing the video about explaining the differences between a document and a page in Craft, I learned that dragging a page to the navigation pane on the left portion of Craft main window, the page gets converted to a document.
As much as I love my M1 MacBook Air, exporting videos using ScreenFlow can take up to an hour. It’s the use case that makes me wish I had a more powerful MacBook Pro.
At Episode 15, I decided to use an external 1TB SanDisk SSD drive to store all my past and present episodes instead of my MacBook air internal drive. This way, I can plug the drive on my M1 Mac mini when I’m ready to export a finished video. Remember that a MacBook Air has no fan, and after 10 or 15 minutes of intensive use, the Mac will throttle down the CPU to prevent overheating. There is no such thing on the Mac mini; the CPU can run at max power for as long as needed, shortening the video rendering time.

Having an external drive to store my videos also enabled me to use my Mac mini which uses an Apple Studio Display which brings much more space to work with while doing video editing.

Doing the video montage on the Apple Studio Display helps a lot and helps me reduce the time it takes to create a new rendering.
A typical folder containing a recorded episode contains the Screenflow document, the episode header image in full and lower resolution and the resulting .MP4 video file, ready for upload in YouTube Studio.
Speaking of Screenflow: it’s a great application, but it is afflicted with a few bugs here and there. Updates to fix those are slow in coming. At some point, I contemplated the idea of switching to Final Cut Pro but doing so would still require me to keep Screenflow. So I’m sticking to it. Oh and I don’t like iMovie. Maybe I should look back at LumaFusion? But I don’t want to do production on the iPad.
With each video, I’m perfecting something in my process or in the final product. My best montage can be found in Craft Doesn’t Need to be Notion and “Learn the Differences Between Documents and Pages.” I’m recording with a 4K Logitech Brio webcam, but I’m planning to use the Opal C1 webcam when the software gets more mature, and bugs are fixed. I’ll update this post after putting it to work and compare it with the Logitech.
It took me a while to understand how chapters on YouTube work. Publishing from within Screenflow doesn’t export chapter markers (another Screenflow bug?). To get my markers exported, I need to first export them to an .MP4 file, then manually upload them to YouTube. That’s annoying.
Google, unsurprisingly, offers a comprehensive plethora of analytics. It’s really a rabbit hole for those like me who love numbers. So far, I’m happy with the numbers, except for people retention. Surprisingly, people don’t stick around for a long time at my videos. Is my content that bad? Is this a major trend on YouTube or something that is closely tied to my content? Looking at my comments and likes ratio, these are vastly positive and aren’t indicating a problem with the content and the visual quality of my work. The retention time tends to increase as I produce longer videos.
It makes a noticeable difference when posting a new video is coupled with a post on Reddit, Circle and Slack, as well as Buffer on Twitter.
Being active on Reddit, Slack and Circle helps a lot to increase awareness about my videos, and I’m getting many new subscribers each day. On average, I’m getting about three new subscribers per day, which could mean that by the end of my first year of publishing content on YouTube, I could reach close to 1000 subscribers. This looks unrealistic. If I ever get past 500 subscribers, I’ll be happy.
When I’m referring to one of my blog articles in the episode notes, I do get visitors. YouTube seems a great way to help grow visitor traffic.
According to my Linktr.ee analytics, I can see positive impacts on visitors and conversion rates.
Credibility seems to be building over time as I’m posting on a regular basis new content. I’m getting a score of close to a 100% likes ratio, which is a good indication that I’m doing good, but is this sustainable?
I don’t pay too much attention to time release timing of a new video. YouTube processing into 4K takes forever. I tend to release a new video on the day after it has been uploaded and transcoded by the YouTube back-end.
Most popular video: “Planning my week ahead using Craft Daily Notes.“ People are looking for productivity hacks, and I should probably do more of these videos in the future.

You can view a behind-the-scenes video here.

My Blogger Workflow as of 2021-12

Sat, 18 Dec 2021 17:00:00 -0400

My previous blogger workflow update was in March 2021. Quite many things have happened since then. It’s time for another update. Buckle up because this is a big one, and enjoy the ride!

My blogger workflow as of 2021-12.

What’s in

For 2021, I was expecting a year without many changes to my blogger workflow, and yet, I was in for quite a few surprises.

Probably some of the most important additions this year are Toggl, Timery, and Focused Work to track my time while creating content (consider bookmarking and reading “Why and How I’m Tracking Time With Toggl” if you want to know all the details.) Tracking my time does take some time, but I like the results.
Hello Ghost (again)! I started experimenting with Ghost during the 14-day trial period, during which all features were available for testing. I started building automation with the Zapier integration. After the trial period ended, the integration with Zapier stopped working for some reason. I quickly found out that many features like custom themes, custom integrations, and commenting support are only available with certain subscription tiers. Commenting on each blog post isn’t available by default unless I’m on the Creator tier and customize one of the provided themes. To use Commento, I needed an API key, as well as a custom theme and a custom integration. And moreover, a custom version of Casper with some script invocation was added to enable Commento integration. Forking such a built-in theme requires staying in sync with the official theme, as Ghost updates them from time to time to benefit from all Ghost’s additions. Finally, I visited Google Search Console to add my Ghost website for better SEO management and optimizations. I became a subscriber at the entry-level tier for $9 per month, but I quickly realized that the $25 was the one I needed (consider bookmarking and reading “Moving From Substack to Ghost–My Experience” for more details.)
iPadOS 15 introduced support for Safari extensions. Working on the iPad now feels less and less a compromise, as Grammarly support and many other extensions are now available. For people depending on the iPad, it is a much-welcomed addition. Unexpectedly, in 2021, my workflow shifted towards the MacBook Air (read “Coming Out of a Rabbit Hole and Buying Two MacBook Air”).
Pocket made a comeback in addition to Readwise (consider bookmarking and read “Instapaper vs Pocket — Which Read Later Service Is Better for Me”). Pocket is well-known and doesn’t need much introduction. According to Readwise website: “Readwise makes it easy to revisit and learn from your ebook & article highlights.” Resurfacing previously highlighted text snippets is fun and helps build a lasting memory of past readings. I added Readwise as a source to my weekly newsletter built using Mailbrew.
Using the Readwise sharing feature to repost quotes on Twitter is handy. I don’t use it too often, though.

Sharing a Readwise highlight.

WordPress plugin: I’m using the paid version of “WB to Buffer” for reposting previously published posts to Buffer. With another WordPress plugin named “Feedzy” it imports RSS feeds from Substack and Microblog and creates “Also on my …” type of blog posts automatically. It didn’t generate much traction and added too much noise to my original content feed. This was disabled after a few months when I moved out of Substack.
I unexpectedly started using Matter when Matter officially became public. Matter seems to have gained some traction over Pocket as the best read-later service. Compared to Pocket, it creates great link posts that can be saved or shared online, just like Readwise and Pocket.
I became a subscriber of Typefully (typefully.com), a web application for writing threads on Twitter. Some features of Typefully are similar to Buffer’s, like being able to schedule tweets. I use it to write threads to complement some of my articles. The latest example of things to watch in 2022. Finally, Typefully brings great engagement analytics.

Typefully analytics.

What’s out

My experience with HEY World didn’t last long. I’ve been moving out of HEY World to go to Substack for my Friday Notes* and Photo Legend* Series (consider bookmarking and reading “Migrating My Content From Hey World to Substack”). I can say the same thing about my Substack experience. These services, while attractive, didn’t stick in my workflow.
HEY is no longer on the workflow diagram. HEY doesn’t really contribute to my blogger workflow. Most of my readings don’t happen there anyway, even if HEY provides newsletters dedicated feed, one of the tent pole features of the mail client.
As mentioned earlier, Substack is out. The popularity of a platform doesn’t guarantee the popularity of your content.
I closed my Telegram account. Read more here to learn why. I’m contemplating Signals instead.
WordPress Plugin: Coblock was disabled to remove overhead in webpage processing. It didn’t make a difference, though.

In progress

I do spend more time maintaining my digital garden in Craft all year long. You can find a lot of stuff in there.
I’m still trying to figure out how to use Apple’s Quick Notes feature in iPadOS 15 and macOS Monterey. I may end up having no use for this after all, which is too bad because, on paper, the idea is cool.
I’m always thinking about using Apple’s Reminders in my workflow. Reminders have improved quite a lot over the years, but occasionally, I think Craft could take over if table support was better (sorting, tagging, etc.). The more things I’ll do with Craft, the more synergy it creates. I’ll watch Craft’s evolution in 2022, and maybe make a move.

Things to improve

Adding text clipping in Craft would be so helpful. There are shortcuts that work with Craft that do just that, but I don’t find the experience very satisfying.
Speaking of Apple’s Shortcuts, I do find more use cases for them to speed up a few key tasks, like setting up my work session after logging into my account on macOS.
Templates in Craft to kickstart the creation of a new article would be very handy. It is expected in 2022, in an upcoming update in 2022 or via an extension.
As much as I would like to see the addition of tags in Craft, implementing this feature could be tricky. Where should we be able to tag things? In a page’s properties, inline in the page’s content?
I have to work on my reading workflow and decide what I’m going to do with Pocket, Readwise and Matter. Pocket will probably go as it is entirely covered with Matter.

Miscellaneous

My usage of ** Craft ** has significantly increased this year. It is becoming my second brain (Fun fact: find out the name of my MacBook Air). Lately, I decided to use the Craft calendaring feature to prepare a weekly plan containing my content creation objectives. As the week progresses, I keep it up-to-date and check items off the list. It’s a satisfying experience, trust me.
I’m still using Notion to keep my old data and connect Matter to Notion to save my reading highlights automatically. As soon as a Craft extension allows me to pump my data out of Notion, I might be done with Notion once and for all. Notion is not shown on my workflow diagram but will be in an upcoming post covering my reading workflow.
Twitter Revue: I had a Revue account before Twitter bought them. Now that it is integrated into their platform, I experimented with it (read a sample issue here). I love Twitter Revue, but I have yet to find a unique and useful use case for it. I currently have five subscribers.
Furthermore, I should consider closing my Flipboard account. I never go there; it’s not what it used to be, and I don’t get any traffic from this platform.
Google News, where I cross-post my main blog content, could also go down the drain. I don’t get any traction there.
Finally, Tumblr is another place where I cross-post content. Tumblr has become a ghost town in recent years, and it doesn’t help at all. Even if cross-posting is done automatically using WordPress’ built-in feature, I should consider stopping using this platform.
In my previous workflow update, I considered moving my Photo Legend Series to Hey, which I did for a short while. Now, it is hosted on Ghost, along with my Friday Notes Series and monthly newsletter. I like consolidating stuff sporadically.
Since getting a MacBook Air, my iPad Pro usage significantly dropped. The Mac is the power user tool. I cannot be as productive on an iPad.
I worked a lot on my WordPress blog to improve its score on Google’s PageSpeed Insights, as documented here. Did it make a difference? According to my blog visitor statistics, the answer is no. Here is a strange thing: if I run PageSpeed tests twice in a row, the final score is quite different. Usually, the second try gives much better results. How much trust should I put in these results? Another observation: my score for this blog, a static website, is the worst. Is Blot hosted on a low-end performance tier in the cloud?
I’ve been using Commento with Blot to add comments support on this blog. I never got a single comment! It’s a high price to pay for a service that nobody takes advantage of. Maybe it will be a better fit with my newsletter website on Ghost? Time will tell.
IFTTT still plays an important role in my publishing workflow as it works with Buffer to help me control the cross-posting flow. Each day, I spend some time managing the Buffer queue to spread out posts to be published. I also use IFTTT to cross-post anything I post on Reddit to my Twitter channel on Buffer. Buffer has a new calendar view that helps you see a timeline overview of all future publishing. Buffer isn’t cheap, but I like what it does for me. Cross-posting content does help create traffic and improves engagement.

Well, that was a long one. I want to walk you through my reading workflow for an upcoming article. I read a lot of stuff online, and many applications and services are involved here. Reading is the source of my inspiration for most of my work as a content creator. I think there are some interesting things to write about. Stay tuned, and see you in 2022.

Getting Ready for Google's May 2021 Algorithm Update

Sat, 17 Apr 2021 10:00:00 -0400

Getting ready for the upcoming Google May 2021 algorithm update. See how I improved my Page Insights score by more than 225%.

My blog visitors traffic from 2019 to 2021.

In May, Google will tweak its ranking algorithm again by including new experience metrics into the equation. Those changes were first announced back in May 2020. According to a recent post on Yoast’s blog:

In May 2021, Google will add Core Web Vitals as ranking factors in its algorithm. This means your site’s page speed and page loading time will impact your rankings.

And, from Liz Moorehead of ImpactPlus:

…these “page experience signals” will be rolling out in May 2021 as part of an algorithm update, meaning how well you measure up against these page experience factors will positively or negatively affect your rankings after this update takes effect.

After reading this, I was expecting the worst. I felt like it was like a storm waiting to strike. The feeling is not really cool, a feeling of “deja vue”. In November 2019, something happened to my blog visitors analytics: it dropped by more than 50% in just a few days. I was astonished and didn’t really know what happened or if I broke something with my blog. I did some research and found out that it was the consequence of a ranking algorithm change by Google¹, an update that put my blog at a disadvantage².

Preparing for this upcoming change, I had to find ways to minimize the impacts on my main blog, fearing I would lose traffic again.

The starting point

At first, when I started to look into this matter, I discovered the pagespeed insights tool from Google³. Don’t miss this insightful article about why PageSpeed Insights is an important tool. As you might expect, I tried it against my websites. According to this tool, my main blog didn’t score well, both from a mobile user perspective and a desktop user perspective, albeit it did a bit better for the latter. Both scores weren’t in the “green range”. I ran the test many times, and sure enough, on average, the scores were bad. Consider the following two scorecards.

Initial scorecard for the desktop version of Numeric Citizen Blog.

Initial scorecard for the mobile version of Numeric Citizen Blog with AMP pages enabled.

That’s not good, but it serves as the starting point. I had to make improvements on all fronts. Does all WordPress websites need to be slow? They certainly have a bad reputation in that respect. As a Business Plan subscriber on WordPress.com, I get to run my website on its own virtual instance. This makes a big difference. Yet, the next steps weren’t clear to me.

Improving the mobile experience

The worst score shows that mobile users were the most affected. How many visitors come from the desktop, and how many come from mobile devices? According to my Plausible analytics, surprisingly, most of my visitors come from desktops, not mobile devices, as shown in the following table. Yet, the score needed some improvements.

Blog visitors by device types.

A big change was to remove support for Google’s AMP page format. AMP pages aren’t the best idea for the open web and, according to my testing, made my website run slower. Disabling AMP support in WordPress.com is as simple as turning off a switch. After doing so, I could already observe big improvements in loading time, but that wasn’t enough to get my score into the green zone. What else could I do?

Revisiting my WordPress plug-in usage

WordPress is well-known for its support of plug-ins. The more plug-ins installed, the higher the possibility of a slower-than-normal website. It’s easy to have a plug-in overload. For my optimization work, I had to revisit the usefulness of each of them.

I simplified my blog’s main page a bit by removing a rarely used footer widget. This widget allowed people to subscribe to my Mailbrew newsletter. This change improved response time quite a bit. For some reason, the Mailbrew widget contained many scripts calling Mailbrew’s home, which increased latency.

The Twitter timeline widget was also removed; I don’t think people cared much about my latest tweets showing up there⁴. By removing the sidebar on the main page, content retakes the center stage in a cleaner page layout.

The IndieWeb support plug-ins (three in total: IndieWeb, Micropub, IndieAuth) were disabled because I suspected they could negatively impact the performance. After re-testing the website, the speed didn’t change much; those plugins were re-enabled⁵. Media Cleaner and Mailchimp support were no longer needed and were removed, too, but I don’t think they negatively impacted my website loading time.

Other plug-ins like CoBlocks, add a richer set of block types in the WordPress editor. This plug-in adds a few scripts and CSS according to my research. By disabling this plug-in, some of my posts would break, not that there are many of them but still, some care is required here.

Adding two optimization services to my toolbox

In “How to speed up WordPress”, I discovered two paying services: the first one is WP Rocket, to optimize many internal aspects of my WordPress website and Imagify to optimize images.

After reading about WP Rocket’s capabilities, I installed the plug-in. After installing the plug-in, WP Rockets does many optimizations behind the scenes without any intervention. Then, I poked around the provided features and started to enable options one by one, carefully testing my website at each step, as suggested in the plug-in documentation, to see if anything was broken. At each step, everything was loading perfectly. At the end of this process, I did a new round of performance testing using the page insight tool, and to my delight, my score went up even more.

In summary, the following options in WP Rocket were enabled:

Cache / Enable caching for mobile devices
Cache / Enable caching for logged-in WordPress users
File Optimization / Minify CSS files
File Optimization / Optimize CSS delivery
File Optimization / Minify JavaScript files
File Optimization / Load JavaScript deferred
File Optimization / Delay JavaScript execution
Media / LazyLoad for images
Media / LazyLoad for iframes and videos
Media / Add missing image dimensions
Preload cache

All in all, I’m pleased with WP Rocket. The optimizations may not provide a night and day difference, but they do add up to make my website a better web citizen.

Next up is a companion service to WB Rocket, Imagify. It is simple to install and configure. The free version allows for optimizing 500 MB of image content. I went with the unlimited version so I could process all my published content. It took 12 hours to process about 5 GB of images. The end result is that my image library size was reduced by 62%. That’s a big improvement. As expected, optimized images look pretty much the same as before.

Other considerations

I considered using a content delivery network service (CDN), but after much thought, some internet research, I decided not to do so. My blog doesn’t use a lot of heavy content like videos, only some pictures and many screenshots. I don’t think this would have made much of a difference⁶ for most of my visitors⁷. The following is a Lighthouse test result for speed access according to geographic locations. The next graphic shows where my visitors are coming from.

_Imagify-optimization-results.png

My website performance by geographic locations

_Speed-access-by-geo-locations.png

My website visitors’ origins

My WordPress theme is flexible and allows for many customizations. This means a lot of CSS is involved. I’m also using custom fonts that add some weight to the website. According to SolarWinds’ Pingdom tool, the main page of my blog weighs about 784K, where 40% is for the fonts, 27% for images and 26% for scripts and CSS. Repeated tests show the main page loads in about 3 seconds or less. This doesn’t fit with my observation when I’m visiting my website from my machine, which seems to load faster than in 3 seconds. Three seconds isn’t bad, isn’t it? Anyway, I’m not planning to undo my font selection, as the standard ones are ugly as hell.

Another step was to look at Google-related stuff. Since I’m using Plausible Analytics, references to Google Analytics were no longer needed and were removed from WordPress.com configuration settings found in the JetPack settings. Good riddance.

Final scores and looking forward

Final scorecard for the desktop version.

Final scorecard for the mobile version with AMP pages enabled.

I’m happy with all the improvements I’ve made to my website. The improvements were the most impressive on the mobile version. It could be better, but I’m utterly happy with where the score stands now.

Keep in mind that WordPress-based sites are dynamically generated. A lot of processing happens behind the scenes when hitting the homepage with a browser. My microblog and the site you are reading are static-generated and fast to load. But, if you compare the loading times of all these sites, you’ll find that they are comparable.

Now, the big question: Am I ready for Google’s 2021 algorithm update? I think so. Will my optimization efforts be rewarded? Who knows? Google is like a beast that we have to feed, and please, who knows if he will like the meal served this time.

By increasing my website’s score for mobile users by as much as 225% and by more than 25% for desktop users, and by meeting most of Google’s requirements for “website providing a great user experience,” I hope that the upcoming Google changes in May will be beneficial.

I wasn’t the only victim of Google’s action. ↩︎
This change prompted me to change the type of content that I post on my main blog: longer posts with more meaningful content. ↩︎
Another useful tool is GTmetrix. ↩︎
Anyway, I recently reduced my Twitter usage by a lot, as fully documented in this blog post. ↩︎
IndieWeb plugins provide a useful integration of comments from other websites. ↩︎
According to my research, my blog is hosted on WordPress.com in the US, where most of my visitors come from. ↩︎
WP Rocket offers a CDN service for 7$ a month. I’m not willing to pay for that. ↩︎

Which App or Service is Best?

Thu, 25 Mar 2021 07:45:00 -0400

Recently, I had a chance to read and participate in two different discussions about which app, feature or service is better for a specific task or use case. In the first case, someone was asking about Ulysses handling of Markdown links. The question triggered a really enlightening discussion about how Ulysses, and many more writing apps for that matter, was good or not at certain things like Markdown handling in general¹. In the second case, Lee Peterson exposes his disdain for being forced into using the block-based Gutenberg editor, replacing the venerable classic editor. Again, a simple blog post triggered a great exchange about where WordPress seems to be heading².

Regarding Ulysses, I’m a fan of its Markdown handling. The fact that I don’t see Markdown tags while writing is a big plus for me. However, I wouldn’t mind having the option to toggle this feature on and off so I can appreciate Markdown in all its glory. As for the Gutenberg editor, I admit I wasn’t a fan at first. But over time, it grew on me to the point where I wouldn’t consider going back. The block-based editor is also the approach Craft is taking, and it’s working its magic.

Ultimately, the beauty of these discussions lies in the diversity of opinions. It’s not about who’s right or wrong but about each of us finding the app that best suits our needs and preferences for the task at hand.

I’m a big fan of Ulysses, but there are definitely areas where improvements would be welcomed. One such area is the publishing workflow. ↩︎
The idea of introducing Stories on WordPress.com is simply stupid. I don’t want WordPress to copy Snapchat or Instagram. ↩︎

My Blogger Workflow as of 2021-03

Sat, 20 Mar 2021 10:00:00 -0400

This is the first post on Numeric Citizen I/O about my blogger workflow. This website’s mission is metablogging, which means writing about the tools and services that I use as a blogger and content creator. I hope you enjoy the ride here. This is the most comprehensive update yet. In this workflow release, as of 2021-03, there are many important changes. Here is a run-down, in no particular order.

My blogger workflow as of 2021-03.

First, as stated earlier, I created a new website about meta-blogging. It’s called Numeric Citizen I/O, which is hosted on Blot¹. That’s where I’m talking about the tools and experience as a blogger and content creator. The domain name is hosted on GoDaddy. Domains ending with .io aren’t cheap, here are possible reasons why. I’m super happy with Blot. Their support is excellent. I learned how to properly use Git in my endeavour. I’m using Commento as a commenting service which is privacy friendly.
Linktr.ee: is now my virtual visitor card. Super easy to set up. Lots of formatting options. Not cheap, though. In the past, I had an account on about.me which I closed because of its lack of formatting features. I’m pleased with Linktr.ee.
Gone is the venerable MarsEdit on my Mac. Ulysses version 22 supports publishing to Micro.blog². I do like MarsEdit, but I prefer Ulysses which is available on all Apple platforms.
Gone is Linky, from my iOS devices. Used to be a great app for sharing links on Twitter and text highlighting. As my Twitter usage has dramatically reduced in recent months, I no longer need it. The app is no longer being updated, apparently, which is also contributing to its demise.
Now in: Nova and Working Copy for publishing to Blot. Nova was recently reviewed on MacStories.net. I think it is important to show support for those developers who care to create real Mac software, not just ports of Windows apps.
Now enabled is the automatic archive of my Micro.blog content to a Github repo. I like the idea of having my content available on Github. Using Nova, I cloned the repo on my Mac too. From time to time, I make pull requests to update my local repo.
Craft is my new note-taking application, replacing Notion. Read my recent article on Craft. I still have content on Notion and I don’t know ye how and when I’ll be able to take it out. I’m waiting for their APIs release. I’m in no rush.
Speaking of Craft, I’m using it to maintain a digital garden which can be found here. It’s super easy to nurture and the extensive formatting options of Craft allows me to have a decent website. You can leave comments by the way!
Apple’s shortcuts, not shown here, play a small part in my workflow. One of them is to generate quotes from a web page by selecting the text that I want to quote. Another one is to create a page in Craft from a website. It’s very handy and covers a use case not available in Craft but which is available in Notion.
I restarted my Vimeo page as an experiment and for storing short clips of user-interface micro-interactions from apps that I use and like a lot. You’ll find many examples from Craft. Vimeo is not cheap. Microinteractions are created using the screen recording feature of iOS, but are converted to GIF when needed in a blog post using IMGplay, an excellent GIF maker available on all Apple platforms.
I’m still super happy with Plausible, a Google Analytics replacement. You can have a look at my visitor statistics for this site, for example.

From an idea to a blog post.

Under consideration

Reeder for maintaining a list of read later articles. I could use Craft for this instead. I created a page that contains all the bookmarks. This page is accessible from my digital garden, too. I like Reeder’s design for reading, though. Maybe there is a more profound problem: read later features like the one with Safari or with an app like Reeder don’t make me read more. I tend to forget about things I save in these lists. So, why give a damn about those app and service? If I don’t read an article that I find interesting in the first few hours or days, I’ll never read it. I’ll give myself some more time to think about this one.

Readwise: It is a fascinating service, but as my Twitter usage has dropped significantly, its usefulness is uncertain. Syncing highlights from Medium is interesting, though, because I’m a big reader of Medium content. The iPad app is lacking in certain areas. There is no Safari Extension that I’m aware of. Let’s see where it all goes from here.

A return of Things. Craft is able to export and import data to and from Things but not from Apple’s Reminder. The problem is that Things doesn’t have an URL field, which I depend on in Apple’s Reminder. I asked the Craft developers if support for Reminders was coming. It is coming. Things won’t make it back, I think.

Using Square on Linktr.ee to enable tips from my readers. Too bad only Square is supported, I would have preferred Stripes on which I already have an account setup to receive Medium payments. Furthermore, my experience shows that people don’t tip bloggers. Nobody really cares to support marginal content creator like me. Oh well, getting my rewards from the journey, instead.

Moving my Photo Legend Series to HEY World. I think it would be interesting to restart this photo series but this time on HEY World. It is super easy to publish, much easier than WordPress. That’s enough to consider this move.

Closing remarks

That’s it for this blogger workflow update. Things are starting to settle a bit. I don’t see major changes in the foreseeable future. I hope you made some discoveries with this blog post. Let me know in the comment section.

That’s the website you are currently reading! ↩︎
The exact date of Ulysses version 22 is still unknown at the time of publishing this post. ↩︎

Showing Support for Real Mac Software

Thu, 18 Mar 2021 08:00:00 -0400

I bought Nova in support of real Mac software developers

Nova’s main windows.

So, I decided to buy Nova, the best client for editing and publishing content to this Blot website using Git and Markdown. MacStories published a review of Nova just yesterday, emphasizing that Nova feels like a real MacOS application. I felt the need to show my support to Nova developers. We should celebrate great Mac apps. There are free alternatives like Atom or Visual Source Code, but they feel weird on the Mac.

Update: 2024-05-20: I no longer use Nova since I migrated from Blot to Craft & Micro.blog. I no longer need this type of editor.

A Really Useful Git Beginner’s Guide

Sun, 14 Mar 2021 09:00:00 -0400

I’m using Git to maintain this blog, which runs on Blot. Up until now, my Git knowledge has come from YouTube. Today, I came across this Git beginner’s guide that I wish I had on hand before starting this blog. The nice thing about this guide is that it covers the command line commands plus a GUI-based tool, Atom, in that case. I’m mostly a GUI type of guy, but it’s always interesting to see what happens behind the scenes when interacting with Git.

Editing on the Go Is a Must

Sat, 13 Mar 2021 08:45:00 -0400

Editing and publishing on the go is a must, after all.

This weekend, I’m away from home. I thought I could get away with it and skip editing Blot posts on the go on the iPad. I was wrong. As I wrote at length here, the jury is still out on the best way to achieve this. For now, on the iPad, Working Copy is the best GIT client, and Ulysses is my preferred text editor. They have to work together.

So, I sat down and cloned the Git repo from Blot to my iPad using Working Copy. It took about a minute to complete. After confirming everything was set up correctly, I created an empty text file with the .md extension in Working Copy. From the Files.app, I tapped on it, and sure enough, Ulysses was launched. The file is shown in the “External Files” section in the library view. The publishing process went smoothly via a Working Copy commit followed by a push¹.

This blog post was not just created, but also edited, previewed, and published from my iPad, away from home. I guess I found a satisfying solution, and it feels great to have accomplished this.

When I get home, I’ll have to update my local repo on my Mac with a pull request with Nova (better than a fetch request; I don’t have any pending changes on my Mac). ↩︎

Thinking Again About Text Editors

Fri, 05 Mar 2021 08:00:00 -0400

Thinking about text editor apps. Following a recent article from Jason Snell about finding the best markdown editor for the iPad, I started thinking about using Ulysses for all my text editing needs. Is it the best tool for all use cases? Probably not. But it is cross-platform, and for me, it’s a must. As I write this blog post, I’m using Nova text editor on my Mac to start editing, finishing in Ulysses. It depends. I’m unsure how my text editor selection happens when I start writing a new blog post. Maybe I should do the same as Mr. Snell, build a table of much-needed features, and see if Ulysses still fits my needs. On my to-do list, I plan to write a blog post about GIT clients for the iPad. Working Copy is a very popular one and includes a text editor. Jason Snell’s article refers to Textastic too. They compete against Ulysses, but the latter doesn’t do Git stuff. Like many blogs, it may be okay to use a different text editor, depending on the platform. I could use iA Writer on the iPad for this blog and Ulysses for the rest. Or maybe Working Copy would be a better choice because I’ll need to use it to push updates here anyway? As you can see, I’m constantly reflecting on the tools I use or plan to use and my workflow. It’s a never-ending process. Back to Ulysses. For now. Update #1: I’m not alone in rethinking my text editor choices. Chris Hannah, too.

Documenting Blog Changes

Tue, 02 Mar 2021 15:00:00 -0400

Using Git instead of Dropbox for Blot content syncing provides an unexpected benefit.

As I recently wrote, Blot supports two mechanisms for synchronizing content from my Mac to the web: Dropbox or Git. I chose Git. As I write this, I’m still testing Nova as the Git front-end (I’m a GUI type of guy). One of the great benefits of using Git is the built-in history of commits that is at the core of any Git repo. As shown below, as I push updates to my Blot-based website, I make sure to write a short comment in the commit action to document the commit action. I think this is an important asset in managing a blog and owning its content.

Commit history to the blog report using Nova

A better view at the GIT panel in Nova:

Nova GIT panel with commit message area

The Initial Blot Setup

Mon, 01 Mar 2021 08:00:00 -0400

Setting up this blog with Blot was pretty straightforward.

It all started as an experiment. But now, it’s not. It’s something permanent¹. In less than a day, everything was set up and running. From the setup of the domain name (with GoDaddy) to having an actual site available for browsing. This is the very short story behind setting up the Numeric Citizen I/O website with Blot.

Blot’s dashboard page for this blog.

My interest in Blot came from the desire to have better control over the visual appearance of my microblog, which is hosted on Micro.blog. Micro.blog supports some customization but it’s too demanding as you have to have some knowledge of HTML, CSS and Hugo templates inner working. Another goal was to own my content.

Blot is a nice solution to my objectives: owning the content, easy visual styling, and easy publishing. Blot allows me to keep using my current applications like Craft for initial post writing Ulysses on the Mac, which supports Markdown files for editing. I had to select a GIT client to complete my workflow for publishing blog posts.

Opening my account on Blot was super easy. Before going further with any of the Blot settings, configuring my GIT client was mandatory. Cloning the Blot repo on my machine was quick and easy, too. Any non-fixable issues at this stage would have jeopardized the whole initiative.

The Blot settings page for this blog.

Next up: setting up analytics, page structure, support for commenting blog posts, and closing a link format. All of this was dead simple to set up. But I wasn’t done yet. The next step was to select a visual theme. I wasn’t satisfied with the available themes, so I asked for support for help as I knew there were other themes available. After describing what I was looking for, the guy behind Blot agreed to bring back one of the decommissioned themes (for an unknown reason). In fact, it was the previously available default one. This closed the loop. I’m a happy camper now. I like this theme because it gives this blog a “scientific paper” look, and I love it; it aligns with the blog’s purposes.

As I’m porting this content to my Micro.blog hosted metablog, I recognize that nothing is permanent. ↩︎

Selecting a GIT Client

Sun, 28 Feb 2021 17:00:00 -0400

Selecting a GIT client for the Mac is a bit harder than I thought. When I decided to create this blog using Blot.im, I had to select the synchronization mechanism between my Mac and the Blot.im service. Blot.im offers two choices: Dropbox (easy, seamless, but too invasive and bloated software) or GIT. I decided to use GIT, for a few reasons.

First, GIT is geeky. I like geeky stuff. This blog is about being geeky, so why not! More seriously, using GIT means that I have to select a GIT client on my Mac (and eventually on the iPad, too, for on-the-go publishing). The leanest way to manage content sync could have been to settle for the command line only. It is super easy to install GIT in the command line on the Mac. But, now, that’s too geeky to my taste. I prefer going GUI, being able to preview commits, file content, etc.

Here is a list of GIT clients for the Mac that I more or less tested with my impressions for each.

GITHUB Desktop Client. I think this one is mandatory as it is the official Github client. Works fine as a GitHub client. Super easy to use but limited in editing functionalities, but I can configure it to open files in Nova¹. But it cannot connect to Blot.im GIT remote repo. Yet, it’s a keeper because of Github. It’s free.
Microsoft Visual Studio Code. This one is impressive but also overwhelming. Do I need this complexity? Probably not. I don’t like its look and feel either: too Microsoft, not enough Apple-like. It’s still not optimized for my M1-based Mac mini, which is not good! It’s free. I will probably delete it from my machine.
Tower. This one was mentioned by someone I follow on Micro.blog. It’s not free. I like the look and feel of this app. It’s clean. Works great on macOS Big Sur. But somehow, I find it less intuitive compared to Nova. It’s a fully native application (not Electron-based). Will be deleted.
Sourcetree. Another GIT client but for Gitlab only (could not find a way to connect to Blot.im GIT repo). Still Intel only, not optimized for M1-based machines. No go. Deleted. Thanks to App Cleaner.
Atom. It’s still Intel-only, sadly. It looks good, but I cannot connect to Blot.im GIT repo. It only supports Github.
Nova. This app is well-known in the Mac community. They recently released version 5.0. It looks great: a tad busier and crowded interface and costs more than Tower. It comes with a local web server, so I can preview my Markdown file edits effortlessly. It also supports many file types (HTML, CSS, to name a few). It does support extensions to augment its features which is cool. I installed a few of them (Prettier, for example). Finally, Nova supports connecting to many types of servers (FTP, SFTP, WebDAV, etc.). I feel Nova will serve me better in my blogger workflow in the long run or could be used if I ever want to test a local installation of Hugo. Who knows.

As I write this blog post, I choose to settle on Nova for now. I’m still on the trial period. I have 18 days left. I can still change my mind. Meanwhile, if you have any suggestions, feel free to post a comment at the end of this blog post (not from the main page but by hitting the date & time of the post, which will bring you to the post page where you can comment).

In a future post, I’ll explore GIT clients for the iPad. WorkingCopy seems pretty popular.

Nova does both, GIT and file editing. ↩︎

Apps on Numeric Citizen I/O — A Blog About Blogging

AI made me replace another subscription: Ulysses

Publishing from Craft to Micro.blog with a Single n8n Workflow

What it does

Trigger and input

Flow overview

The interesting problems

1. Title matching against a full-text search

2. Converting Craft blocks to HTML

3. Rehosting images across services

Why Micropub

Error handling

Credentials and configuration (redacted)

Takeaways

The Numeric Citizen Digital Ecosystem — Edition 2026-04

What’s in, what changed since last fall

My automated n8n workflows

RSS & News Aggregation

Content & Publishing

Newsletter & Email

Maintenance

What’s out since the last update

Still pondering about these

Risk management

Concluding thoughts

My Content Creation Ecosystem - Fall 2025 Update

Screenflow + Screen Studio

An Update About My Journey with Realmac Software Elements

A Mandatory Update to my Content Creation Ecosystem

What is POSSE

My Content Creator Workflow & Digital Tools — Edition 2024-12

Until next time

Combining Craft And Things 3 For My Writing Projects

Combining Craft And Things 3 For My Writing Projects

My Content Creator Workflow as of 2023-11

Welcome AI, welcome ChatGPT, Dall-E, Midjourney

A new setup to share files easily

Bye bye to my Digital Garden

A fun experience with Tinylytics

Google Sheets is out too

Brief

Why It’s So Hard to Make Up My Mind About Digital Tools?

There is hope

My Content Creator Workflow as of 2023-04

Bye Bye WordPress.com

Bye bye Twitter

Changing reading habits

A more focused publication channel

Is my Craft usage fading out?

My Content Creator Workflow as of 2022-12

Instapaper vs Pocket — Which Read Later Service is Better for Me

A Peek At My Photo Processing Workflow

What’s in

What’s out

Miscellaneous

Concluding words

Making YouTubes Videos - Observations & Notes

My Blogger Workflow as of 2021-12

What’s in

What’s out

In progress

Things to improve

Miscellaneous

Getting Ready for Google's May 2021 Algorithm Update

The starting point

Improving the mobile experience

Revisiting my WordPress plug-in usage

Adding two optimization services to my toolbox

Other considerations

Final scores and looking forward

Which App or Service is Best?

My Blogger Workflow as of 2021-03

Under consideration

Closing remarks

Showing Support for Real Mac Software

A Really Useful Git Beginner’s Guide

Editing on the Go Is a Must

Thinking Again About Text Editors

Documenting Blog Changes

The Initial Blot Setup