Context & Reality
Changing your Personality, Carpignano’s Work and Thoughts on Character and Storytelling, Bookmarking Apps, Using Whisper with Just Press Record
Hey guys, here’s some things that stood out from my previous week:
On Articles
I read THIS ARTICLE about how to make positive changes to your personality traits. The text challenges the belief that “you can’t change your personality,” while at the same time discussing both the good and bad sides of traits like extroversion, openness, and empathy. Overall a nice article with some solid advice on how to be a better you.
A few highlights:
Gratitude is so magical because you don’t need to accomplish anything, acquire anything, or really do anything. It’s just a shift in perspective.
Don’t just “be yourself.” Be the best you that you can possibly be.
Having more self-control is less about increasing willpower and more about removing temptations that distract you.
On Directors
I watched THIS MASTERCLASS by director Jonas Carpignano. I don’t speak Italian, but with the help of MacWhisper, I easily transcribed and translated the video into English. Then, I emailed the text to my Reader email and listened to it using TTS. I’ve been following this director for about a year now, and I’m amazed at how he creates a very realistic fiction in his films. I love listening to his talks because there’s so much to learn about his ideas on storytelling, reality, documentary, and the human condition.
A few highlights:
This way of making a cinema in which the public, the spectator, discovers the context through a character. This is something that has formed me. My starting point is never the context or the reality that we want to bring to the viewer. The titles don’t interest us anymore. They are the characters that live in this community, in this reality. So when we think about what we want to do at the beginning, the world we want to discover, we never feel ready to face important issues if we don’t have a working and affective bond with the character.
The idea is not only to find a character that makes us see this world, but to make an encounter between the public and a character who must understand how he wants to stay in this world.
I always want to give more weight, more thickness to the point of view of the protagonist than to my point of view. Very often in these films the protagonists do things that maybe I don’t share, they make choices that maybe I don’t share, but it’s not my job to enter these worlds to judge their choices or to present a fable to you, in the sense that for me it is very important to respect the choices of people. and even if the people’s morale don’t match mine, I would never want to change what they do.
On Bookmarks
It’s been a few weeks since I moved from Raindrop to Anybox for managing my bookmarks. Overall, I’ve been happy with this change. There have been a few moments when I felt the app could be improved, particularly regarding advanced search filters. However, it’s fast, convenient, and offers plenty of customization and automation opportunities.
Anybox allows saving text and includes an iOS keyboard for quick access to links and saved text clips. I’ve even considered dropping my use of Paste—which I have and give feedback through their Beta program—because of this Anybox feature. Since clipboard managers have limited functionality in iOS, I think Anybox can serve my needs just as well as Paste.
One downside of Anybox, though, is its looks. While it’s not bad by any means, it just doesn’t match the clean design of Paste. Amid all this, there seems to be another promising native alternative on the horizon: Artifacts. If you sign up for their newsletter, they’ll invite you to their beta :)
Artifacts looks much better than Anybox but it also appears more limited in functionality. I’m not thrilled about it probably being subscription-based; however, it might be one of those apps that start cheap and could be worth signing up for if it’s good enough, even if just to lock that original pricing. Not sure yet! Something to keep an eye on.
On Whisper AI
I love using my Apple Watch for convenient audio memos recordings. The quickest app I knew for this was Just Press Record, but its transcription quality is way off compared to something like Whisper AI. So, while I do record memos with it, for the most part I end up transcribing the files with MacWhisper.
This past week I discovered Whisper Memos and was happy to find that their Apple Watch complication allows one-tap recording (just like Just Press Record!). You record your audio, and a few seconds later you get an email with your Whisper transcription. It even runs the text through AI to separate paragraphs (something Whisper doesn’t do by default). It’s great, but the $40 USD yearly pricing is hard to justify for my needs.
It gave me an idea, though. I set up a Keyboard Maestro macro to watch my Just Press Record iCloud folder. Whenever I record anything from my watch or phone, it grabs the recording and transcribes it using Whisper. Since I’m using Kiki for this, it’s easy to run the transcription through AI presets to break it into paragraphs. Then Kiki triggers another Macro which grabs the result and creates a new Bear note with it. It works great!
On Updates
I usually use a mix of Apple Store Command line, MacUpdater, and Cork to keep my apps updated. I recently found Topgrade and it looks like it might do what Cork and the App Store CLI were doing. Still testing, but I’m always happy to find ways to simplify things.
Also, in case you missed it, last week I shared PasteFlow, a paste stack for Alfred. The workflow has had some updates since its release, so be sure to update to the latest version if you haven’t already.
On Cinema
Hold Me Tight (2021) Kept me guessing until the very end. Smart, and moving. Synopsis: At dawn, Clarisse takes a last look at her husband and two sleeping children, hesitates to leave a note, and hits the road. A desperate escape that gradually reveals its layers as Clarisse — who seems to have an extra-sensory connection to the family she has left behind — loses herself in the world.
Kinds of Kindness (2024) Reminds me of the earliest films by Yorgos Lanthimos. A bit absurd, but with absurdity that reveals a lot of truth. I really liked it. It may be my favorite of his in the last few years. Synopsis: A triptych fable following a man without choice who tries to take control of his own life; a policeman who is alarmed that his wife who was missing-at-sea has returned and seems a different person; and a woman determined to find a specific someone with a special ability, who is destined to become a prodigious spiritual leader.
Love Life (2022). A drama that is all about the emotion of people who don’t know very well how to deal with emotion. Tragedy everywhere. I really liked this too. Synopsis: Taeko and her husband, Jiro, are living a peaceful existence with her young son Keita, when a tragic accident brings the boy’s long-lost father, Park, back into her life. To cope with the pain and guilt, Taeko throws herself into helping this deaf and homeless man.
Dìdi (弟弟) (2024). A coming of age film that follow the life of a teenager who feels lost, confused, and lonely. Synopsis: In 2008, during the last month of summer before high school begins, an impressionable 13-year-old Taiwanese American boy learns what his family can’t teach him: how to skate, how to flirt, and how to love your mom.
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