- Site: manuelmoreale.com - By: - Date published: 2024-06-07 - Date read: [[2024-06-09]] - [Read Original](https://manuelmoreale.com/pb-numeric-citizen) - [Read on Omnivore](https://omnivore.app/me/https-manuelmoreale-com-page-i-0-h-dg-48-j-z-inr-ul-aw-18ffbde3db6) - Tags: #Interview #Technology - Notes: **Note:** Below is the text from the article, with any ==highlights== done by me. None of the writing below is by me. # Article text This is the 41st edition of _People and Blogs_, the series where I ask interesting people to talk about themselves and their blogs. Today we have JF Martin and his blog, [blog.numericcitizen.me](https://blog.numericcitizen.me/) To follow this series [subscribe to the newsletter](https://peopleandblogs.com/). A new interview will land in your inbox every Friday. Not a fan of newsletters? No problem! You can read the interviews here on the blog or you can subscribe to the [RSS feed](https://manuelmoreale.com/feed). If you're enjoying the People and Blogs series and you want to see it grow, consider supporting on [Ko-Fi](https://ko-fi.com/manuelmoreale). --- ## Let's start from the basics: can you introduce yourself? My name is JF Martin, a.k.a. Numeric Citizen in the digital space. I'm 56 years old. I live in Montreal, Canada. I’m a French Canadian. I have a master’s degree in computer science (1993). My research field was user experience and user interface quality assessment. I credit my passion for Apple for this choice of research field because at that time, in 1990-1993, there was a hot debate about which was better, the PC or the Mac, and I advocated for better user interfaces. I’ve been working in the information technology field for thirty years. I wrote about that [here](https://numericcitizen.me/celebrating-reflecting-on-my-30-years-career-in-it/). My first job was to work for an Apple dealer. I eventually moved to a more traditional IT type of work, doing things in IT infrastructures, first with PC deployments in small and medium enterprises, then in data center related technologies deployment and management. Apple played a significant influence in my life since 1983\. I have always preferred creative people and Apple has attracted them more than any other computer brand. I always felt at home in this user community, even though I'm a rather analytic guy professionally. Yet, I consider myself a compulsive creator. Creating something has always been part of my life. When I was a young boy, I was building something with Legos. Then, it was replaced with photography. Then, computers came to my life, first with a Commodore and then with an Apple Macintosh in 1985\. Since then, computers, i.e. the Mac, the iPad, have always been central to any creative project. One of them being an indie iOS developer from 2009 to 2013 when I was developing apps for the iPhone. Since then, I mostly spend my time as a blogger and a writer. Photography is also one of my creative hobbies, and you can find my work here on [Pixelfed](https://pixelfed.social/numericcitizen) and [Glass](https://glass.photo/numericcitizen). ## What's the story behind your blog? First, let’s clear something out of the way: using the Numeric Citizen name. To me, Numeric Citizen was evocative of a citizen living in cyberspace, sharing things with it, learning things from it, etc. I thought it was a good parallel with real-world citizenship. But eventually, I found out that in English, the more frequent word for this would have been “Digital Citizen”, but I couldn’t get the right domain name for it, and it was too late, so I decided to keep the Numeric Citizen moniker. Now, about my blog. Well, I have a few blogs and websites. Four, to be precise. But let’s go back in time. In 1994, I had a Mac and created a website about meteorology. It was a science-related educative project. This lasted a couple of years. Next, in 2006, I experimented with Apple iWeb, part of the iLife suite. Sadly, I can’t remember what my website was about, but I do remember that I preferred the version of Apple where RSS was still a thing in Safari and iWeb let anyone own a blog for a MobileMe subscription. It’s too bad that Apple dropped iWeb. I started blogging in 2009 using Google’s Blogger platform. This time, it was about sharing my experiences and discoveries while developing apps for the iPhone. Eventually, I stopped doing that and kept the blog running until 2013\. That was it for Blogger. Then, in 2015, I went back to blogging, this time on [WordPress.com](http://wordpress.com/), and it was a more general-purpose blog where I was sharing my thoughts about Apple, among other things. Since then, I’ve been writing about Apple, technology, and photography. Last year, I completed a migration out of [WordPress.com](http://wordpress.com/) to [Ghost.org](http://ghost.org/). I couldn’t be happier. Ghost is much simpler to use and manage (no plugins!). But that’s not all. Starting in 2018, I opened a blog on Micro.blog. Since then, I’ve been blogging regularly, and I love it. My website on Ghost is more dedicated to long-form articles, which require more research and writing work. My blog on Micro.blog is about sharing short thoughts and comments about the same subjects. I often consider myself a digital nomad (or a numeric nomad?). I frequently try different things and don’t hesitate to move from one place to another if I see better value and functionality. Last year, I was really on the move, but I think I will settle for a while once I finish my migration from SmugMug to PixelFed. ## What does your creative process look like when it comes to blogging? I’m a highly iterative type of guy. I rarely start writing an article and finish it in one stretch. It’s way too demanding for me. I have a few parallel ongoing research and writing projects and do round-robin writing across them. I'm using Craft Docs for most of my writing needs, an app I love dearly. I developed a rather sophisticated template for my research needs. This template helps me organize my research and support my writing efforts with Craft. When I’m ready to publish, I export to Ulysses, do the final proofing using Grammarly, select the destination and hit publish. I wish I could do all this from Craft, but it’s currently impossible. Inspiration comes without warning. I often go for a walk and think about so many things. I usually come back with an idea about a new article or a tweak to my creative workflows and start working on it as soon as possible. My creative hobby is what makes me thrive in life. Without it, the last three years with the COVID pandemic would have been so hard on me. I write a lot about my creative process and the tools that I use all the time. Occasionally, I’ll share an update about my creative workflow when there are enough changes to it. You can read about my last update right [here](https://world.numericcitizen.io/content-creator-workflow-update-as-of-2023-11). These articles are posted on what I call: a blog about blogging. It is currently available as a series of shared documents built-in Craft, but I recently started re-publishing them on a [new Micro.blog website](https://meta.numericcitizen.me/) so that I could let people follow my updates using RSS, which Craft doesn't support. ## Do you have an ideal creative environment? Also do you believe the physical space influences your creativity? My creative environment is relatively simple: my home. I do like to go to coffee shops. I [wrote about these](https://numericcitizen.me/on-creative-work-in-a-coffee-shop/). I also love to write on my terrasse outside during summer. Bird noises and the wind are indeed delightful while writing. The best triggers for my creativity come down to the time of the day. I love working early in the morning and during the weekends. At night or late in the evening, I’m less into it and find it hard to focus. One thing is clear: many of my ideas come when I do something other than creating, like while taking a walk or... taking my shower. 😅 ## A question for the techie readers: can you run us through your tech stack? I depend on three hosting solutions: Ghost, Micro.blog, and Craft Docs. I don’t self-host anything. I don’t have time for that (and I’m probably too old, too). At some point, I contemplated the idea of self-hosting a Hugo instance, but when I started to dig a bit into Hugo’s inner workings, I quickly changed my mind. I’m a « SaaS » type of guy, I guess. My main domain name is “[numericcitizen.me](http://numericcitizen.me/)” and I use a subdomain for each of my publishing space or “channel”. Publishing on Ghost goes to “[numericcitizen.me](http://numericcitizen.me/)”, but sharing on Micro.blog goes to [blog.numericcitizen.me](https://blog.numericcitizen.me/) while my metablog goes to [meta.numericcitizen.me](https://meta.numericcitizen.me/). Photos shared on Pixelfed photos can be seen by visiting [photos.numericcitizen.me](https://photos.numericcitizen.me/).You get the idea. I have so many small websites (too many?) and so I created a hub page that can be reached via, you guessed it, [hub.numericicitizen.me](https://hub.numericcitizen.me/). The latter is hosted on Micro.blog. But what about newsletters for those who prefer the email experience? I tried Substack and was happy with it until I wasn’t. I tried Buttondown but eventually settled on Ghost. It was one of the many reasons I decided to leave WordPress behind. Under Substack, I used to have the [Introspection newsletter](https://numericcitizen.me/numeric-citizen-introspection-24/), which wasn't about introspection but rather a collection of thoughts and links divided into sections. I stopped publishing this newsletter in September 2022\. One year later, I started a new one covering [my creative week](https://numericcitizen.me/my-weekly-creative-summary-for-the-week-of-2024-08/). And I hope to continue publishing this one for a long time because of the pleasure I get while putting it together. ## Given your experience, if you were to start a blog today, would you do anything differently? It’s a hard question. We can always do things differently but the way I see it is simple: my current state is essentially the culmination of all my past experiences, good or bad. It’s an infinite learning process, always feeding the future “me”. I often wonder if a single “big” website would be better than having so many small ones. I could achieve similar results by using categories and tags with each post. But in the end, I prefer dedicated and more focused but connected silos. Regarding RSS feeds, I wish I had known about FeedPress earlier so that my readers wouldn’t have to change their subscriptions each time I moved my stuff from one place to another. It’s a great way to centralize feeds from different places where I publish content. Someone can subscribe to my megafeed to see everything I share online. I wish I had done one thing: each time I made a significant design change to one of my websites or moved from one platform to another, I wish I had kept a screenshot of the previous design. I don't have a visual memory of my journey as a blogger. I find this a bit sad. And yes, I still prefer Digital Citizen over Numeric Citizen. 🤷🏻‍♂️ ## Financial question since the web is obsessed with money: how much does it cost to run your blog? Is it just a cost or does it generate some revenue? And what's your position on people monetising personal blogs? Ghost isn’t exactly cheap (300$ per year), but their support is stellar. Micro.blog is a bargain (120$ per year) for everything you get. Craft is rather a cheap option, too (at 116$ per year) if you do more than note-taking with it, which I do. All in all, if you do the math, my online presence comes at a cost. I’ll let you do the math. I didn’t count domain name registration and other stuff like apps and other services making [my digital toolset](https://world.numericcitizen.io/meta-toolset). You can see the full details right [here](https://crafted.numericcitizen.me/current-subscriptions), on my “Subscriptions" page. Now, I want to share a few words about monetization possibilities. I have tried many times, and it’s tough. Over the years, I slowly learned that when someone shows support with a subscription to my website or sends me money, I consider this a gift. Visitors to my main website on Ghost can subscribe for free or pay a small fee to show appreciation. That’s about it. I don’t make money with my YouTube channel because I haven’t met the requirements yet. I'm looking to make money there. I did receive some money via PayPal once or twice. I wasn't expecting that. It's cool. I said a big thank you. ## Time for some recommendations: any blog you think is worth checking out? And also, who do you think I should be interviewing next? I think you should give a try with [Maique](https://maique.eu/about/). He’s from Portugal. He is passionate about photography and shares a lot of creative content on different platforms, mostly open ones. I think he could share a lot as a blogger who constantly tries new things. We're cosmic brothers. ## Final question: is there anything you want to share with us? Oh, did I mention my YouTube channel? It’s a complement to my blogs. I know I’m spread everywhere, but it is still manageable. You can find it [here](https://www.youtube.com/c/numericcitizenvideos). I also have a podcast because I wanted to test the medium, and I quite like it, too, but I don’t produce new episodes often enough. And yes, I’m an amateur photographer with a Glass [profile](https://glass.photo/numericcitizen). I don’t read books. I don’t play games, but I prefer experimenting with modern media (words, audio, video, images). This text was written using my brain and an iterative process on recycled electrons. 🤓 Thanks for having me on People & Blog series! --- This was the 41st edition of _People and Blogs_. Hope you enjoyed this interview with Num C. Make sure to [follow his blog](https://blog.numericcitizen.me/) ([RSS](https://blog.numericcitizen.me/feed.json)) and get in touch with him if you have any questions. ## Awesome supporters You can support this series on [Ko-Fi](https://ko-fi.com/manuelmoreale) and all supporters will be listed here as well as on the [official site](https://peopleandblogs.com/) of the newsletter. [Jamie Thingelstad](https://www.thingelstad.com/) ([RSS](https://www.thingelstad.com/feed.xml)) — [Piet Terheyden](https://some.studio/) — [Raul Montala](https://minim.blog/) ([RSS](http://github.com/rmontala/minim/commits.atom)) — Eleonora — [Carl Barenbrug](https://carlbarenbrug.com/) ([RSS](https://carlbarenbrug.com/feed/rss)) — [Steve Ledlow](https://tangiblelife.net/) ([RSS](https://tangiblelife.net/feed.rss)) — [Paolo Ruggeri](https://www.feadin.eu/) ([RSS](https://www.feadin.eu/en/posts/index.xml)) — [Nicolas Magand](https://thejollyteapot.com/) ([RSS](https://thejollyteapot.com/feed.rss)) — [Rob Hope](https://robhope.com/) — [Chris Hannah](https://chrishannah.me/) ([RSS](https://chrishannah.me/index.xml)) — [Pedro Corá](https://blog.pcora.eu/) ([RSS](https://blog.pcora.eu/feed.xml)) — [Colin Walker](https://colinwalker.blog/) ([RSS](https://colinwalker.blog/dailyfeed.xml)) — [Sixian Lim](https://softlandings.world/) ([RSS](https://www.softlandings.world/feed.rss)) — [Matt Stein](https://mattstein.com/) ([RSS](https://mattstein.com/rss.xml)) — [Winnie Lim](https://winnielim.org/) ([RSS](https://winnielim.org/feed/)) — [Flamed](https://flamedfury.com/) ([RSS](https://flamedfury.com/feed.xml/)) — [C Jackdaw](https://skyhold.org/) ([RSS](https://journal.miso.town/atom?url=https://skyhold.org/index.html)) — [Kevin Humdrum](https://tiv.today/) ([RSS](https://tiv.today/feed.rss)) — [Fabricio Teixeira](https://www.doc.cc/) ([RSS](https://www.doc.cc/feed.xml)) — [Rosalind Croad](https://rosalindcroad.com/) — [Frank Meeuwsen](https://frankmeeuwsen.com/) ([RSS](https://frankmeeuwsen.com/feed.xml)) — [Mike Walsh](https://www.elmike.me/) ([RSS](https://www.elmike.me/feed.xml)) — [Markus Heurung](https://www.byzero.de/) — [Juan Villela](https://cleverlaziness.xyz/) ([RSS](https://cleverlaziness.xyz/posts/index.xml)) — [Michael Warren](https://mwarrenarts.com/) ([RSS](https://mwarrenarts.com/rss)) — [Chuck Grimmett](https://cagrimmett.com/) ([RSS](https://cagrimmett.com/feed)) — [Robin Harford](https://eatweeds.co.uk/) ([RSS](https://www.eatweeds.co.uk/feed/)) — [Bryan Maniotakis](https://bryanmanio.com/) ([RSS](https://bryanmanio.com/feed/)) — [Barry Hess](https://bjhess.com/) ([RSS](https://bjhess.com/posts%5Ffeed)) — [Chris Jung](https://chrisjung.xyz/) ([RSS](https://chrisjung.xyz/feed/rss)) — [Ivan Moreale](https://ivanmoreale.com/) — [Khürt Williams](https://islandinthenet.com/) ([RSS](https://islandinthenet.com/feed/)) — [Ben Werdmuller](https://werd.io/) ([RSS](https://werd.io/feed)) — [Cory Gibbons](https://corygibbons.com/) — [Luke Harris](https://www.lkhrs.com/) ([RSS](https://www.lkhrs.com/blog/index.xml)) — [Lars-Christian Simonsen](https://lars-christian.com/) ([RSS](https://lars-christian.com/feed/)) — [Seth Werkheiser](https://sethw.xyz/) ([RSS](https://sethw.xyz/feed/)) — [Cody Schultz](https://www.codyschultz.com/) — [Brad Barrish](https://bradbarrish.com/) ([RSS](https://bradbarrish.com/feed/)) — [Nikita Galaiko](https://galaiko.rocks/) — Erik Blankvoort — [Jaga Santagostino](https://jagasantagostino.com/) — [Andrew Zuckerman](https://andzuck.com/) — [Mattia Compagnucci](https://www.mattiacompagnucci.com/) ([RSS](https://mattiacompagnucci.com/feed.rss)) — [Thord D. Hedengren](https://tdh.se/) ([RSS](https://tdh.se/feed/feed.xml)) — [Fabien Sauser](https://fabiensauser.ch/) ([RSS](https://fabiensauser.ch/index.xml)) — [Maxwell Omdal](http://dizzard.net/) — [Numeric Citizen](https://numericcitizen.me/) ([RSS](https://feedpress.me/numericcitizen-feeds.xml?ref=numericcitizen.me)) — [Jarrod Blundy](https://heydingus.net/) ([RSS](https://heydingus.net/feeds)) — [Andrea Contino](https://gwtf.it/) ([RSS](https://gwtf.it/feed)) — [Sebastian De Deyne](https://sebastiandedeyne.com/) ([RSS](https://sebastiandedeyne.com/index.xml)) — [Nicola Losito](https://koolinus.net/blog/) ([RSS](https://koolinus.net/blog/feed/)) — [Lou Plummer](https://amerpie.lol/) ([RSS](https://amerpie.lol/feed.xml)) — [Leon Mika](https://lmika.org/) ([RSS](https://lmika.org/feed.xml)) — [Veronique](http://veronique.ink/) ([RSS](https://veronique.ink/feed/)) — [Neil Gorman](https://surplusjouissance.com/) ([RSS](https://www.surplusjouissance.com/rss/)) — [Reaper](https://reaper.is/) ([RSS](https://reaper.is/rss.xml)) — [Matt Rutherford](https://www.mattrutherford.co.uk/) ([RSS](https://www.mattrutherford.co.uk/rss/)) — [Adam Keys](https://therealadam.com/) ([RSS](https://therealadam.com/feed.xml)) — [Aleem Ali](https://aleemshaun.com/) ([RSS](https://aleemshaun.com/feed)) — [İsmail Şevik](https://www.ismailsevik.com/) ([RSS](https://www.ismailsevik.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss)) — [Nikkin](https://nikkin.dev/) ([RSS](https://nikkin.dev/feed.xml)) — [Jeremy Felt](https://jeremyfelt.com/) ([RSS](https://jeremyfelt.com/feed)) — [Hans](https://hansfast.net/) ([RSS](https://hansfast.net/everything.rss)) — [Mark Pitblado](https://www.markpitblado.me/) ([RSS](https://www.markpitblado.me/feed.xml)) — [Matt Katz](https://www.morelightmorelight.com/) ([RSS](https://www.morelightmorelight.com/feed)) — [Ilja Panić](https://iljapanic.com/) — [Emmanuel Odongo](https://odongo.pl/) ## Want to support P&B? If you like this series and want to help it grow, you can: 1. [support on Ko-Fi](https://ko-fi.com/manuelmoreale); 2. post about it on your own blog and let your readers know about its existence; 3. [email me](mailto:[email protected]) comments and feedback on the series;