What I Actually Got Done This Quarter
Looking back at my task list, I’m honestly surprised by how much stuff I managed to knock out.
Real Life Things That Matter
This is the stuff I’m most proud of: got my geranium cuttings to work (after the scented ones failed), planted peppers that actually sprouted, and helped plant Lolo’s herbs. Made kvas and cider (two batches with different yeasts), and got to make proper pasta from scratch.
Adminish too - fixed the flats issues (leaks, painting, …) that had been bugging us forever. Got new glasses after putting it off way too long.
Saw friends as well! Even if work was quite.. intense, we still managed somehow to get time with friends. And do stuff together.
Work and Professional Stuff
Delivered a bunch of presentations - with CEREMA for AI, delivered classes at HEC. And met with great colleagues in Paris including Joe, Sam, and Maria. Visiting Dublin and Grenoble for colleagues (and London, obviously).
Plenty of people moving - or leaving - but not necessirily the business.
PROBONO still progresses, we’re getting work done, including a paper about the Maptivity, and getting ISO mapping corrections.
The Tech Stuff
Been working on the Futures stuff - both for the newsletter and for other stuff. I’ve built a decent vectorDB with some interesting content and got PDF support working; and added link gathering and set up caching for embeddings. It just works and helps.
Also spent way too much time on hardware projects - got the Pico2W + MUX code working (after debugging a short circuit that drove me nuts), updated my Tindie shop
Another hardware/software project was a FrugalAI challenge - and somehow got a 12k model running on a rp2040. Measured power consumption when inferring because, you know, frugal.
Alsp, joined the OSII board.
The Fun Stuff
Watched a bunch of movies including some terrible ones (Morbius, really?), read some good books (Scalzi, l’Agonie de la lumiere, l’anthologie des utopailes ..), went to Dublin for a few days, and caught up with friends over meals and drinks.
We actually did some stuff around (organic, vegan) leather workshops - and chocolate. Playing with Jigsaws, and went to some good food with family. Celebrated the pokemon day with random people.
What I Learned
Most of this stuff wasn’t urgent, but doing it consistently made a difference. The gardening projects still show time passes. The hardware debugging taught me to check for shorts twice. The social events reminded me that showing up matters more than being brilliant.
Nothing here was groundbreaking, but it was real work that moved things forward. Sometimes - enough?
