coralie's contemplations in markup

The good things about my Mastodon clients

For a few years I was a happy and fulfilled user of the iPhone app Metatext, a client for the federated social network Mastodon. When Metatext stopped being developed, I spent days reading comparisons, trying other clients, and settled on two which eventually matched all of my criteria:

Ice Cubes for Mastodon (free), an open source, collaborative, SwiftUI Mastodon client made by @dimillian
Ivory for Mastodon by Tapbots (subscription), a Mastodon Client for iOS & Mac.

I donate 0,99€ per month to the developer of Ice Cubes for Mastodon, and I pay the yearly subscription for Ivory (which costs 1,50€ per month.)

There are a 8 features specific to #IceCubesApp and 7 features specific to #ivory that I am really keen about. Since neither implemented them all, I continue to use both.

Ice Cubes	Ivory
Quote post transforms the quoted post into a card with embedded content	Boost/favorite from/as a different account
~~Featured hashtags surfaced on our own profile + clicking them filters only our own posts using that hashtag~~ (Ivory’s implementation in v. 1.7)	~~Label in the timeline to denote posts displayed as a result of following a hashtag~~ (Ice Cubes implements it as of 2023-12-04)
Add/edit filters via our own profile	App-integrated statistics for the rolling week, with bar graphs, directly in the tray
Private messages button in the tray	Ungrouped notifications
Filtering notifications in the notifications pane	Date format choice between relative & absolute (I’m a sucker for the latter)
Collapse long posts	Option to get a missing Alt text reminder
Auto-detect language when posting	Can send iPhone “stickers”
Displays all posts for a given followed hashtag (whereas Ivory apparently displays only a portion)

comparison table of features I love that are specific to each application

Art: inktober2023

I drew again in my small sketchbook Canson art book universal (14×21 cm / 4×6 in), using individually or together a black Pentel brushpen, a grey Pentel Brushpen, Sakura Pigma Micron 003 black fine liner, Kuretake light grey Brush Writer, and a Staedtler 0.3-2.0 black pigment liner.

6 drawings are tributes to Moebius, 4 were Japan-inspired. I had fun doing all of them. It was a bit tough the last week, and for the first time I think, I was counting the days until the end.

Black ink drawing of a dream catcher against a grey background — Day 1 – Dream

Black and grey ink drawing of the “Maman” sculpture by Louise Bourgeois which is a giant metallic spider. Someone is standing up under it and someone else is crouching to take a picture. — Day 1 – Dream

#Inktober2023 week 4-5

It’s the 8th year in a row I’m participating in Inktober. The rules are simple: A different prompt every day. Use ink. Enjoy. Learn new techniques, or not.

Some choose to not use the prompt list, or create their own, or follow a different list. I prefer to stick to those proposed by Inktober creator Jake Parker, because I find it easier, even though some prompts are less inspiring than others!

Day 22: “scratchy”

Grey ink drawing of a cat with closed eyes being scratch under the head

A tabby cat being scratched under the chin, basking in the moment. I used a light grey Kuretake BrushWriter, a Sakura micron 003 black pen and Pentel black ink and grey ink Brushpens.

Day 23: “celestial”

Black and grey ink drawing of a cosmonaut seen from behind next to a flag with a peace sign, on a small planet, waving at the dark space and a distant planet or moon.

A tribute to Tom Haugomat. This represents an astronaut on the moon next to a peace flag, waving at a planet. I used the Sakura Micron 003 black fineliner, the Kuretake light grey BrushWriter, and the Pentel black ink and grey ink Brushpens.

Day 24: “shallow”

Black and grey ink drawing of a Japanese crane standing in shallow water next to a branch laden with snow

My second least favourite in the series. This is a crane in shallow water next to a branch laden with snow and some reed. I used the Pentel black ink and grey ink Brushpens and the Kuretake light grey ink Brushwriter. And I touched up the feathers with white acrylic.

Day 25: “dangerous”

Grey and black ink drawing of a tiger crawling forward

A very graphic tiger. I used the micron 003 black fineliner, Kuretake light grey BrushWriter, and the Staedtler black ink 0.3-2.0 pigment liner.

Day 26: “remove”

Black and grey ink drawing of the top of a marble sculpture by Bernini, of Pluto abducting Proserpina. The woman is being held at the waist and thigh and her arms are raised in protestation.

This is the top of a marble sculpture by Bernini, of Pluto abducting Proserpina. I used again the same light grey Kuretake BrushWriter, a Sakura micron 003 black fineliner, and Pentel grey ink Brushpen.

Day 27: “beast”

Grey and black ink drawing of the top of the body and head of Toothless, a silly-looking dragon, with tongue sticking out a bit.

This is Toothless from the movie “How to train your dragon”. I used the Sakura Micron 003 black fineliner, and the Pentel black ink and grey ink Brushpens.

Day 28: “sparkle”

Black ink drawing of a night scene of the Statue of Liberty seen from underneath. The torch is shining like a star.

The Statue of Liberty at night seen from underneath it. I used the Pentel black ink and grey ink Brushpens and the Kuretake light grey ink Brushwriter.

Day 29: “massive”

Grey ink drawing of a character in military costume and helmet, with a hand in his pocket, standing in front of the fallen head of a very large statue.

Another tribute to Moebius. I used the Sakura Micron 003 black ink fineliner and layers of the Kuretake light grey ink Brushwriter. Contrary to the theme, the size of the character is really small (as tall as the last knuckle of my little finger.)

Day 30: “rush”

Black and grey ink drawing of a young woman surfing. She has long black hair flowing after her and wears a white bikini.

I had a lot of fun drawing this surfer girl. I used as a reference a travel poster advertising Ceylon, Sri Lanka – Ceylon ‘A Wave of Your Own, Talpe Beach 1970s. I used the Pentel black ink and grey ink Brushpens and the Kuretake light grey ink Brushwriter.

Day 31: “fire”

A graphic dragon. I used the Pentel black ink and grey ink Brushpens and the Kuretake light grey ink Brushwriter.

(See the posts for week 1, week 2, week 3)

I made straight lines & cover page labels for my #reMarkable

2023-11-16 update: since release 3.8, which happened yesterday on my tablet, straight lines are now available as a new feature!

I recently acquired a second-hand e-ink tablet. The reMarkable2 comes with very little but specific features which optimize for efficient note-taking mainly, and for some sketching.

For the latter, the only assistance available is a few templates that afford guide lines, and the possibility to work with layers. In both cases the handling tools consist of a couple of erasers and a selection tool which lets you resize, rotate, copy and paste (except for what you typed as text, it only works for what you put on “paper” with the “pen”). No warping, no inversion, no tool to create any common shape or make a straight line.

Yet it knows of straight lines because when you use the highlighter on a PDF or EPUB file, it can “snap to text” and your highlighter strokes are transformed into straight lines.

I don’t know how others manage, when they prefer not to “jailbreak” (for lack of a better term) their tablet, but I don’t care whether I can display a custom image while my tablet is sleeping, but I do care about straight lines and shapes that are scalable. So I drew some and made a PDF of the pages.

lines-shapes Download

How I use them

Note: the illustration pictures are post processed with a filter to give them a slight background that changes the colour (the eggplant colour should in fact be black, the red is in fact much more vivid.)

Horizontal and vertical lines of various thickness and lengths, and one rectangle

I made horizontal lines of varied thickness and length, a few vertical lines too, and a rectangle.

When I need a line, I navigate to this page in my templates folder, use the selection tool to copy it, navigate to my destination page, and tap the pen. Then I drag it where I want, stretch it or shrink it, rotate it if I need. And repeat as often as needed.

Oval black label with hand-written text in white reading: Notes & thoughts

For this cover page label, I used one of the black oval shapes I hand-drew, copied it with the selection tool, navigated to my notebook page, pasted it, and gave it the size I wanted.

Then I added a new layer. I chose the calligraphy pen, thick size, and white ink and wrote. The layer protects the oval if you erase or select and move your words.

Black rectangles of various sizes stacked on top of each other with white hand-writing inside to look like a cover

This is exactly the same instructions as the oval label, but selecting all the black boxes of various sizes and using the medium-sized calligraphy pen nib.

In this particular notebook, I used the same cover page for each of the modules. I duplicated the first one, moved it to the right place, selected the layer where I wrote and made changes.

Large red circle and red outer outline within which is hand-written in white: My evil schemes, and in block black letters underneath: Book 42, year 2023

This is page 14 of the PDF I made. I duplicated the whole page and moved it as cover page of a new notebook. I could have selected the shape, copied it, and pasted it elsewhere, but I wanted the circles at exactly the same place.