I am one of the early adopters. One of those people who vehemently signed up to every single online service as soon as they became available to me.

My twitter account is dated December 2006, and I was among the first 100 accounts in Italy.

Many other accounts I have were born pretty much at the same time: late 2006, early 2007.

It was a great time for the early adopters. We felt we were the avant-garde of the so-called Web 2.0.

I’ll spare you the details, but we were wrong on so many things.

One and for all, we were wrong in believing that online conversations and direct interaction were only bringing positives.

We thought that online conversations were the purest form of debate, and the collective wisdom was far superior than any previous form of knowledge.

There were pros, I don’t doubt that, but we dramatically overlooked the cons.

Over time, the negotiated truth, the concept that every opinion matters in the creation of a collective knowledge, allowed the establishment of anti-science movements. Propaganda is stronger than ever. Armies of uninformed people pretentiously want to argue on complicated matters with the experts who spent their lives studying such things. Nonsense.

For this reason, in the last few years, my information diet has changed, and so my online presence has too.

The Twitter account that I used and abused for years, lays abandoned.
With the exception of a few automated services, I almost never post anything there. I don’t even read on Twitter. Too much noise, too little signal.

Facebook is one of those things I open every now and then to keep up with my close friends, and forget about it.

I deliberately quit interacting on Facebook three years ago.

At some point I realized that nobody has ever changed their mind about anything, reading a Facebook comment.
So, why bother commenting at all?

Instagram is a little better, but I don’t engage much.

I still read blogs, trying to post on mine every now and then. I’ll probably try to do it more often and with more dedication going forward.

A couple of days ago, Automattic announced the acquisition of Tumblr. I logged into my account to check things out and while I was there I cleaned it up a little. I removed the old posts with broken links and old content, brushed it up and brought it back to 2019.
My latest post on tumblr was 12 years old. Wow.

If you are reading this post, you pretty know where to find me: here on my blog for the serious stuff, and on my tumblr for day to day activities.

Thanks for reading, and feel free to drop an old fashion comment. I would really appreciate that!

How awesome is the current technology that blends real life scenes with computer generated landscapes? Super amazing!

I liked reading this featured article by Claudia Rankine. Check it out!

I’m on my way to Ōsaka, where I’m spending 10 days until the end of July.

I’m planning to work unusual hours at UTC+8 timezone, eat a lot of ramen, yakitori, and obviously sushi.

I’m also planning to visit Kobe and try the world famous beef.

またぬ！

I have been practicing meditation in and out for a few years.
To try something new, I followed the advice of my friend Bernhard and got myself a Muse 2.
This device measures a few signals during the sessions, and provides real-time feedback.
I have been playing with it only for a few days and so far, so good.

More about it on this CNBC video.

I’ll keep testing it for a while and publish my own experience. Stay tuned!

That’s why inclusive representation matter so much. Don’t miss this amazing article on the “The Racial Bias Built Into Photography” on The New York Times.

Let’s say you publish a text on your WordPress site, but you also like Instagram, which only works for pictures. Let’s say you noticed that more and more Instagrammers publish text content as pictures but it’s just too annoying to take a screenshot of every new blog post you publish.

There must be a better way, right?

Right!

Here’s how:

Step 1: Get The Right Tools

This guide is based on the Apple platform. I’m sorry Android friends, I’ll see if I can find a similar solution for you eventually. But let’s get started.

You need:

Bear Editor (iOS and Mac)

Bear is a beautiful, flexible writing app for crafting notes and prose.
It’s awesome, and it automagically syncs all of your notes across all of your devices. It’s sleek, beautiful, and powerful.

I know there are many other note apps out there, and they are free, but a couple of features of Bear are key to this workflow, so give it a try, your little investment will be well rewarded, trust me.

WordPress (iOS)

You can manage your WordPress site right from your iOS device. This app is Open Source and free (both in spirit and in price).
It’s a must-have app, in any case.

Instagram (iOS)

We know Instagram, no need to explain further.

Step 2: Set up the Integrations Between the Apps

Bear and WordPress are beautifully integrated on iOS and they work well with each other. Just make sure that on your sharing options on iOS include WordPress and Instagram.

Step 3: The Workflow

This is the most amazing part, check this out:
You take advantage of the amazing writing experience on Bear to write your blog post. You can start it on your iPhone while waiting for the bus, continue it seamlessly on your laptop, and edit even more on your phone. Your content is available on your devices, all the time. Feel free to add links, of any formatting you like, it will be preserved flawlessly in your public post.

When you are happy with your post, pick up your iPhone and click share. Then pick WordPress. The magic now happens. WordPress for iOS will now ask you which of your site you want to publish your post on. And boom, the post is published.

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Now, staying on Bear, click the info button, pick Jpeg, then export, then Instagram. And once again, the magic takes over and your post is live on Instagram too! Don’t forget to add your caption and hashtags, of course.

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Try It Out and Let Me Know!

There are posts that work better than others, because of the limitations of square formats on Instagram, but this is a better experience than taking screenshots, in my opinion.

Give it a try, and let me know how you like it!