Google released Imagen 4, its latest image generation model, which promises better quality, finer details, advanced spelling and typography, and diverse art styles than previous models.

One day, a new technology will make passwords go away.

Passkeys and biometrics are alternatives, but it’s not certain they are the final solution.

How far off that technology is or what it will look like, I can't say.

But I'm sure we'll eventually eliminate the nuisance of secret phrases and security codes.

Carrying the latest iPhone with you everywhere has advantages: a great camera, a fast processor, and the ability to perform dozens of tasks from a single device anywhere.

The downside is that our brains are wired to steer us toward what feels good—not necessarily what's good for us or for building better habits.

For instance, if I'm stuck on a thirty-minute wait, I often check email, Hacker News, or WhatsApp. But I'd read if all I had with me were my Kindle. I'd draw if I only had my sketchbook.

Every action that adds friction and steers behavior in the right way feels like a hack—a tiny trick we always find ways to work around.

I've identified three friction levels I use intentionally on the iPhone.

The first level is hiding apps I want to keep but don't want to use often inside a folder. If that folder is visible in the app group's thumbnail, I will likely tap it. So, I hide apps I don't need daily or don't want to use often deep inside a folder.

The next level is offloading the app. On iOS, this keeps your data and login state but removes the app itself. Tapping the icon re-downloads it before you can use it again. It's also a way to free up storage.

The last resort is to delete the app, which will wipe your session and preferences. So, you'll need to download, sign in, and set up the app from scratch.

I spent years without email on my phone, and it worked great. Eventually, your brain stops seeing it as an available distraction. I built the habit of checking email only on my computer.¹

Today, I use Gmail and Outlook and often check them out of habit.

I'm doing the same with Instagram now—I don't use the app on my phone, so at least it's no longer one of my time-fillers.

The point isn't to use an app less but to make room for quality time doing meaningful things you value and being present with the people you love.²

Sometimes, the easiest thing is leaving your phone behind, even for a few hours.

Information Architects (iA)—the studio that makes iA Writer—published a write-up on Writing with AI in November 2023.

From that post, I took away a prompt to use large language models (LLMs) for writing with their help. We can use AI as a dialogue partner instead of a ghostwriter in a clever inversion of the prompting role. "As writers we can not allow AI to replace our own thinking. We should use it to simulate the thinking of a missing dialogue partner."

Here's the prompt I've been experimenting with in some of my writing.

Ask me questions about my article on [topic]. One at a time. Begin with the most important one and go on until I tell you to stop.

This text prompt instructs the AI to ask you questions, prompting you to write to answer and clarify key questions about the topic you've told it to write about.

I often feed it my writing draft to give it context about the topic I'm writing about.

Ask me questions about my article on [topic]. One at a time. Begin with the most important one until I tell you to stop. Below is my writing draft.

[Writing draft.]

I've often struggled to sit down and write about a topic, only to find that messaging with a friend over email or WhatsApp triggers a writing spree with practical details and ideas to develop the topic.

While a little sad in principle, chatting with an LLM instead of messaging with a friend is a practical way to get you going articulating your ideas.

This technique reminds me of the rubber duck debugging technique, in which software developers explain their code to a yellow rubber duck in hopes that this will help them clarify their problem and find a solution.

Workflows like this one are a great way to use AI systems to help you write and clarify your thinking instead of writing for you. You're still in control, and authorship is yours. The AI doesn't replace you as a writer—it guides you, prompting you to ask yourself specific questions.

As the iA blog post states, there's a spectrum of AI use, from using it as a discussion partner to having it read and write everything for you.

The sweet spot will likely be using AI for brainstorming and thinking, as a spell, grammar, and fact checker, while staying in control and doing the thinking and writing.

I can walk.
I can write.
I can sketch.
I can podcast.
I can livestream.
I can work.
I can present.
I can dream.
I can love.
I can feel.
I can share.

I'm alive.

Catching up feels great.

Though you can choose not to catch up with certain things, ever. After all, there's no time to stay up-to-date with everything.

Reaching inbox zero, cleaning up your phone's camera roll, or clearing your Desktop's files may not be important in your life, yet we're still doomed to behave the way digital systems want us to.

So, deciding which things matter helps you focus your energy there.

Catching up with my blogging schedule was one of those things for me.

I missed the deadline once, and my brain figured I could skip it twice. Now I'm back on schedule, and the posts for the previous weeks are live.

If you put your energy into the wrong things, you risk getting a false sense of productivity by doing things that didn't need to be done in the first place.

Mr. Alonso!—that’s how some Americans would formally address me when I, for instance, arrive at a hotel. Martínez, they assume, is my middle name. Alonso, my last. The thing is, I don’t have any middle names.

In Spain, the legal convention is to hold two last names—mine are Martínez Alonso. Traditionally, these come from the father’s and then the mother’s first surnames. Nowadays, you can choose which one goes first. We chose my wife’s first surname to be our son’s first.

This confusion tempted me multiple times to join my last names with a dash in my online presence and international use. Martínez-Alonso would minimize the confusion.¹

Is that it? Not really. The story doesn’t end there.

I was often greeted as Mr. Alonzo.

Why on earth would people misspell my second last name while holding my identification document in their hands?

A recommendation letter that said Martinez Alonzo.
A work badge labeled Nono Martinez Alonzo.
A hotel welcome letter addressed to Alonso Martinez.

It turns out that Alonzo is nearly as common a last name in the U.S. as Alonso.

Now I’ve got the context for when someone calls me Alonzo.

Written with ChatGPT 4o.

I recently ran into a workflow challenge while recording video content: I wanted to capture both my camera feed and my screen display, but instead of overlaying them in OBS (as is typical for live streaming), I wanted to record them separately so I could later compose them freely in DaVinci Resolve. My goal was to keep both sources clean and flexible for editing—ideal for adding effects, cuts, or repositioning in post.

This post is the result of a conversation I had with ChatGPT 4o, and it really helped me streamline this process.

Here's what I wanted to do.

• Record both camera and screen in OBS.
• Avoid overlaying them live.
• Import both into DaVinci Resolve as separate video sources.
• Compose freely in the timeline (resize, reposition, etc).

And here's the solution proposed by ChatGPT.

There are two main ways to approach this, depending on how much control you want:

Option 1: Record Side-by-Side in OBS, Split Later with FFmpeg

1. Set up OBS canvas with camera and screen next to each other (e.g. camera on the right, display on the left).
2. Record the session as a single video file.
3. Use ffmpeg to split that file into two separate videos.

Example FFmpeg command:

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -filter_complex "[0:v]crop=960:1080:0:0[left]; [0:v]crop=960:1080:960:0[right]" -map "[left]" display.mp4 -map "[right]" camera.mp4

Adjust the resolution and crop values depending on your canvas layout.

Option 2: Record Each Source Separately Using OBS Plugin

Use the Source Record plugin for OBS:

1. Install Source Record.
2. Add it to your camera source and configure it to record to a separate file.
3. Do the same for your display capture.
4. You can still record a full composite if you want, but each input gets its own clean file.

This approach is cleaner and better if you plan to edit often.

🛠 Bonus: Compose in DaVinci Resolve

1. Import both resulting video files.
2. Drop them into your timeline on separate tracks.
3. Resize, crop, and position however you like.

That’s it! This workflow gives me much more flexibility when editing content—especially for tutorials, interviews, or any scenario where I want to fine-tune the composition in post. Hope this helps!

Running in a group, your position shapes the experience.

A few steps ahead? You're in front.

A few behind? You're last, which feels like you're lagging, struggling to keep up. You're running behind.

Start a few moments earlier or sprint to pick up the pace, and suddenly, you're leading the group.

Deadlines work the same way. You'll produce the same amount of work either way, so I remind myself: Start early. Avoid running behind.

A day you wouldn’t mind repeating because you did what you wanted to do in the right order.

Not Groundhog Day—reliving the same day over and over—but a day filled with the same meaningful activities and effort—time with your loved ones, deep work, a disconnecting evening.

There's no perfect day, but you may get quite close.

I split my journal into volumes of around 7,000 words. The content is defined by a loose word limit, not dates, because I may go on a writing spree for several days and write thousands of words but then write less in the following weeks. What matters for printing is not going over a word count that would make the content too long. This helps identify different time periods and allows me to print and review each volume as a zine.

"Giving yourself time to re-read what you've written lets you view your writing from the lens of a reader," I wrote in My journals. "There are facts you forgot about and stylistic resources you don't remember using."

It's also a great way to capture thoughts and memories, like Stories are the answer, an essay in memory of Patrick Winston.

However, I haven't been printing them lately and have opted to highlight and read them on my laptop. Sometimes, I've sent them to my Kindle to read in the same medium I read books and long-form articles.

Same typeface, screen, and feel. But written by me.

I bookmarked this comment from archerx on Hacker News in this Gemma3 post.

I have tried a lot of local models. I have 656GB of them on my computer so I have experience with a diverse array of LLMs. Gemma has been nothing to write home about and has been disappointing every single time I have used it.

Models that are worth writing home about are;

• EXAONE-3.5-7.8B-Instruct - It was excellent at taking podcast transcriptions and generating show notes and summaries.
• Rocinante-12B-v2i - Fun for stories and D&D
• Qwen2.5-Coder-14B-Instruct - Good for simple coding tasks
• OpenThinker-7B - Good and fast reasoning
• The Deepseek destills - Able to handle more complex task while still being fast
• DeepHermes-3-Llama-3-8B - A really good vLLM
• Medical-Llama3-v2 - Very interesting but be careful
• Plus more but not Gemma.

In Year, month, day, I shared how I date my sketches. Long story short, I use the yy.mm.dd format, which would turn today's date into 25.03.18. When I posted my mini-essay on Hacker News, ‌blenderob shared this XKCD illustration.

Public service announcement:

Our different ways of writing dates as numbers can lead to online confusion. That's why, in 1988, ISO set a global standard numeric date format (ISO 8601).

This is the correct way to write numeric dates:

2013-02-27

The following formats are therefore discouraged:

02/27/2013, 02/27/13, 27/02/2013, 27/02/13, 20130227, 2013.02.27, 27.02.13, 27-02-13, 27.2.13, 2013.II.27, [and a long etcetera].

It's probably too late to rethink my strategy. But, who knows, I might change it to comply with ISO 8601 at some point.

Humans perceive the world through sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste. We experience images, sounds, textures, scents, and flavors in three dimensions, yet much information gets filtered out.

Machine learning tries to mimic these processes by digitally encoding information as lists of numbers in high-dimensional spaces that only computers understand, and humans can't intuitively grasp unless projected back down to two or three dimensions.

Here's a one-liner to download the MNIST dataset as PNG images, white over black.

python -c "from tensorflow.keras.datasets import mnist; import os, matplotlib.pyplot as plt; (x_train, y_train), _ = mnist.load_data(); os.makedirs('mnist_images', exist_ok=True); [plt.imsave(f'mnist_images/{i}_{y}.png', img, cmap='gray') for i, (img, y) in enumerate(zip(x_train, y_train))]"

Run this in the command-line interface with a Python environment with the tensorflow and matplotlib packages.

I have two Synology DS923+ NAS devices, one running at home and the other remotely. I backup specific folders of each NAS to its remote location with Hyper Backup and Tailscale, running DSM 7.2.2¹. Tailscale puts both machines in the same network, removing the need to expose my networks publicly and letting Hyper Backup find the remote machine by its Tailscale IP address. This workflow works great, but yesterday I noticed Hyper Backup couldn't find the remote machine, marking it as Off-line.

Before you test my solution below, try restarting both machines from the DSM interface.

If that doesn't work, here's how I fixed the issue and restored my backups.

I uninstalled and reinstalled Tailscale on both Synology DSMs and restarting the machines. Note that this changes the Tailscale IP address of the machine and requires reauthentication, which isn't straightforward for a remote machine because you'll lose the ability to connect via SSH (the machine isn't in the Tailscale network anymore). I had to run scheduled tasks with logging on to (a) enable Tailscale, (b) update it, (c) start it, and then (d) see the authentication URL for me to log into the browser.

These are the commands I triggered manually, and the first two are scheduled to run on boot and daily, respectively.

# Start Tailscale's service.
# Scheduled to run on boot.
/var/packages/Tailscale/target/bin/tailscale configure-host; synosystemctl restart pkgctl-Tailscale.service

# Update to Tailscale's latest version for Linux.
# Scheduled to run daily.
tailscale update --yes

# Start Tailscale, which requires authenticating via browser.
tailscale up

The last command will output a URL to your task's logs (so you need to set up a logging file first) which you need to open in your browser to authenticate the machine to your Tailscale network.

Voila, you can now go to your Tailscale admin page to see your machines' new IP addresses and set that as your Hyper Backup task's target.

One machine did not find the other because they pinged the other machine's Tailscale IP before the NAS was on the network, which mapped the IP to a non-existing source. Restarting, it seems, flushes the DNS cache, letting the machine resolve the other machine's address correctly.

If this helped you in any way, I'd love to know. You can message me here.

Tim Urban wrote an essay on Life Weeks in his Wait But Why blog in 2014. Recently, Gina Trapani—a software developer known primarily for her time as a Lifehacker writer—created her own Life Weeks page, which made it to the top of Hacker News. Within weeks (maybe days), somebody created lifeweeks.app, where anyone can make their own life weeks page, which also made it to the top of Hacker News as a ShowHN post.

Here's what the lifeweeks.app's Life Weeks sample by its creator, Cory Zue, reads.

This project was inspired by Wait but Why, and heavily influenced by Gina Trapani's adaptation.

You can make your own Life in Weeks by going here.

The internet is crazy, and it moves fast.

Last week, I wrote that the only thing you could do if you didn't have time to do everything you wanted was to "want to do less." But that was a somewhat reductionist point of view, likely in response to an unusually hectic week on my end.

You can prioritize and plan for what matters. You might be able to say no to things that steal your time and that you'd rather not do. You can focus on not wasting time and ensure what you care about happens.

"One of the biggest changes that you could make to get more of what you want is to set higher expectations, even if you don't achieve them," say Margaret A. Neale and Thomas Z. Lys on Getting (More Of) What You Want (2015). "Setting higher expectations will change your behavior, and can lead to better performance."

Aiming for less makes room for quality time with the rest, but we risk doing nothing if we aim too low. On the contrary, aiming higher works.

No time to do everything you want?

That will always happen.

And the only thing you can do is want to do less.

According to the 2024 AI Index Report¹, hundreds of machine learning papers were published in 2022 every day. That's a lot of content to keep up with. At most, if you were one of those people who read papers, you could skim through a subset of the papers published every day and pick a few to review more deeply. Being selective is key.

In an era of information overload, it can be challenging to stay up-to-date and decide what to pay attention to.

FOMO invites us to pay attention to the hype, but that's a trap to constantly stay in shallow waters, never diving deep into any areas.

There's always someone, somewhere, willing to put time and effort into exploring the adjacent possible in a specific field or topic.

That could be you.
Pick a topic.
Stick with it.
Don't look elsewhere.

Recently, Bitbucket announced changes to Bitbucket Cloud's free plan "that will go into effect on April 28, 2025."

Repository storage limit: free workspaces will now have a total storage limit of 1 GB.
Snippets and downloads: these features will no longer be available for free workspaces.
Pipelines logs: the retention period for Pipelines logs will be reduced to 90 days.

These changes only affect users on a Free plan.

If you do not reduce the size of your workspace or upgrade your plan, your workspace and its content will be put in read‑only mode on April 28, 2025. You will have to make sure your workspace is within the new storage limit if you want to remain on your Free plan.

I've archived unused repositories on my Synology NAS. It had been years since I accessed some of these projects, and some are old versions of active projects that I'm unlikely ever to use.

When I first bought Elgato Prompter, one of my main uses would be presenting online, sharing my main screen while looking at my Presenter notes on Elgato Prompter. This workflow stopped working after a Keynote update some time ago.

Just today, I found an unchecked box in Keynote's settings, Show presenter display window in other applications.

I went ahead and checked that box, and, voila, the Presenter Display is visible again in Elgato Prompter.

You'll see a detailed description if you hover over that checkbox's text.

Select to allow the presenter display window to be viewed in other applications when you share your screen.

What happens is that Elgato's teleprompter isn't like other monitors connected to your computer. It receives a "shared screen" from your Mac via DisplayLink Manager.

I hope this helps!

We tend to idealize how our lives will be after a change or acquisition, but we’re back to the present whenever those novelties arrive.

Our mind tries to fool us, but the moment is not a time in the future. It's happening now.

Being in “the moment” means being present right now, paying attention to what you are doing and what's happening to you—your emotions, your experience, your feelings.

Experience this moment as if you could never return to it—because you can't!

It’s hard to be present all the time, but it’s worth trying.

The point of planning is to ensure that, in the future, you can be present.

Before parting ways at the boarding gate of Tenerife North Airport, José Luis and I recorded our first impressions after a week of freediving classes using two microphones and a recorder—what we learned, what we loved, and what we thought we knew but didn't.

If you listen to our conversation, you'll understand what it feels like to dive deep underwater, relying solely on your breath, and the most common reasons people lose their lives practicing this sport. However, you won't truly know what it feels like unless you've done it yourself.

The only way to understand how something feels is to experience it. The best way to remember what you felt is to capture your emotions as they happen or shortly after.

That's why non-fiction writers do immersions and dive into the activities and niches they want to write about: Writing about things you have never experienced is hard. (It helps to have jumped from a plane to write about parachuting.)

Still, nobody truly knows what you're going through, and they won't be able to relate to it unless they've been through the same thing. They can't feel your happiness or sadness, your satisfaction or frustration, your pain or pleasure. They aren't you, and you aren't them.

We may never know what certain people are going through.

Immersion makes the difference.

2025.03.17 Update: The BenQ PD2730s is now available to order in Europe.

I've been waiting for BenQ's new monitors since they announced them at Adobe Max 2024.

People on Reddit wondered why BenQ had announced these monitors without talking about their release date or price.

I subscribed to receive news about the launch of these monitors. Today, I got an email announcing the price point and release date.

The PD2730S is BenQ’s first ever 5K monitor, featuring 98% P3 color coverage, Thunderbolt 4 connectivity, and Mac compatibility, providing Retina-like clarity and precision in your creative work.

I have been considering buying BenQ's PD2725U 4K display for some time. But the PD2730S has me waiting because it features a 27-inch 5K display, covers 98% of P3 color space with 10-bit color simulation (using a technology known as 8-bit + Frame Rate Control, or FRC), two Thunderbolt 4 ports, two USB-C, and three USB-A, which renders an extra hub unnecessary. It's a great monitor for color grading with DaVinci Resolve, for instance.

The PD3226G is a 32-inch 4K 144Hz display with 95% P3 color space.

Both BenQ monitors are available for pre-order in the US today and will be released on March 1, 2025. The PD2730S will cost $1199.99 and the PD3226G $1099.99.

According to Pareto's Principle (the 80/20 rule), eighty percent of the results will come from twenty percent of the effort.

Moving to my new studio took much longer than I initially thought, and I'm past that initial eighty percent. The never-ending task remains of giving a home to rarely used items I should get rid of and finishing small details.

Optimization can lead to frustration when you don't know when to stop.

The same principle applies to other contexts, such as organizing your digital life, processing your inbox, sorting files, or cleaning your Desktop.

The key is to identify when the returns start to diminish and move on to something else—the remaining work could take four times as much time and effort as you've already accomplished.

We all have different circumstances, and it's hard to generalize what prevents us from being creative and making.

Here are six things to watch out for to keep creative friction away.

Lack of time. We have so much on our plates that we don't get enough time to work with focus. Reserve time slots to ensure you dedicate time to specific activities.

Lack of energy. We tend to be more rational in the morning and more creative in the evening, but you better allocate time to do the things that need to get done in the morning as you may be exhausted by the end of the day.

Lack of clarity. Define what you want to spend your time on in advance. You'll waste less time and gain in efficiency.

Lack of tools and materials. Investing in the right equipment and supplies can make your work easier, faster, and more enjoyable.

Friction to engage in your craft. The less effort you exert to enter creator mode, the more prone you are to engage in your craft.

Distractions. Likely the worst enemy of any creator, distractions take different shapes and can be hard to recognize but are everywhere.

What pushes you away from making?

Today, I want to share a recent comment on one of my posts¹ from Frank Harmon.

Sketching is a meditative practice. Sketching allows us to focus on what is in front of us, clearing away all the busyness of our mind.

Perhaps that temporary escape from reality is what draws us to sketching.

As I mentioned last week, I published 53 stories and sketches in 2024.

Here are the ones with the most views (in descending order).

1. Three levels of artificial intelligence
2. A conversation with Andy Payne
3. Announcing events on Luma
4. A daily word counter
5. A fuzzy timeframe
6. Before and after
7. Systems not goals
8. Time or priority
9. No such thing as easy steps
10. Types of deadlines
11. The password-management promise
12. Seven months using ChatGPT 4
13. Writing in public
14. Every Monday
15. Scatter-hoarders don't like risk
16. Wait and save
17. Most-visited stories of 2023
18. Bits of advice from Kevin Kelly
19. Commissions may be earned
20. Where's the creative friction?
21. Need or want

No such thing as easy steps, Stick to it, Bits of advice from Kevin Kelly, and More and less are among my favorites.

What stories did you enjoy the most?

Hi, Friends.

Here is my last publication of the year.¹

In 2023, I slowed down my YouTube channel, podcast, and blog due to a job change, a wedding, and a house renovation.

In 2024, I took a break from sharing videos and podcasts to enjoy the arrival and early months of Manuel's life, our first son (!).

I plan to return to podcasting and streaming in 2025.

Here are some highlights from 2024.

• I recorded the first podcast episode with three camera angles with the help of Daniel Natoli.
• I wrote and sketched daily (and published 53 mini-essays)
• I live-streamed 10 times
• I released two long-form video podcasts with Andy Payne

The end of the year is a great temporal landmark to reflect on what we did over the past year and rethink our practice. Yet, it’s best to conduct similar reviews throughout the year instead of waiting for New Year’s resolutions.²

If you're thinking of starting a blog or a personal journal, I invite you to read One Word per Day. I agree with Seth Godin that "everyone should have a blog and write daily, in public." It's a great and free way to establish your tone before anyone cares about your writing.

If there’s anything you’ve learned or enjoyed from my content, I’d love for you to send me a note.

I look forward to sharing more with you in 2024.

Thanks so much for being there!

Goodbye, 2024.

Happy New Year!