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2025 Q4

Wed, 31 Dec 2025 02:03:03 +0000

Autumn Into Winter: Keeping the Machine Running While Living Inside It

This stretch—October through December—felt different from the summer. Less exploratory, more about consolidation. Fewer new threads spun up, more existing ones tightened, maintained, and brought to something that actually resembles closure.

On the personal maintenance front, a lot of quiet but important things happened. Medical appointments were booked, attended, and completed without drama. Paperwork moved. In the same vein, small cultural anchors were put in place: a ballet booked, exhibitions visited, a conscious effort to keep some beauty and curiosity in the calendar while everything else kept moving.

Food and making stayed present, but grounded. Wine was bottled, corks replaced, and Montmartre’s harvest became less of a postcard idea and more of a lived moment. It wasn’t about “projects” so much as keeping continuity with things that take time and repetition to mean anything.

Work-wise, this period was unmistakably about density. On the main activyy alone, the cadence was .. intense, but transforming into something structured and documented.

In parallel, PBN kept maturing rather than expanding. Ontologies were refined, visualised, cleaned. Deliverables were narrated properly, not just shipped. EVA was cleaned, documented, and published. Zenodo became a real distribution channel rather than a checkbox. Bots, explorers, articles, and sites were pushed into public existence with enough context to be usable by someone else. Less “look what we built”, more “here’s how this fits”.

On the hardware side, work with the W project went deep. This wasn’t a quarter of sketches—it was boards, adapters, piezos, FPGA layouts, schematics, pulser and AFE work, testing, fixes, and retesting. Code was exercised with real people, real setups, real constraints.

pic0rick followed a similar pattern: fewer changes, but the right ones. Markings fixed. Pinouts corrected. IOs remapped. The kind of work that only shows up when someone else uses the board and doesn’t have to ask questions.

Alongside all that, life continued to be lived deliberately. People were seen. Meals were shared. Games were played—sometimes complex, sometimes absurd. Trips happened: London, Marseille debates, seaside breaks. Family events anchored the calendar. Evenings filled with Werewolves, Faraway, MTG, Tiermondopoly. Advent of Code quietly started in December, because some rituals are worth keeping even when time is tight.

Reading and watching followed a similar arc: fewer items than in summer, but denser ones. Noon, Le Guin, overload and systems thinking echoed what was happening elsewhere. Films and series landed less as escapism and more as texture.

If the summer was about momentum, this season was about holding form. Making sure things didn’t sprawl, didn’t rot, didn’t stay half-said. It was about tending systems—technical, professional, personal—so they remain usable.

2025 Q3

Tue, 30 Sep 2025 02:03:03 +0000

A Quarter of Making, Fixing, Shipping, Playing, and Showing Up

This past quarter was one of those stretches where, looking back, the sheer variety of things done is more striking than any single milestone. It was less about one big deliverable and more about steady motion across work, side projects, logistics, people, and a fair amount of real life.

On the making-things side, hardware and engineering were a constant background hum. The pic0rick ecosystem kept evolving: a full DVI variant designed, iterated, ordered, received, and debug-friendly tweaks added along the way. Copper markings, extra test points, pinout changes, VGA repair code, fast SD testing—none of it glamorous, all of it necessary. Alongside that, phADC moved into a cleaner card-format design and WASP engineering progressed through specs, pinouts, quotes, board orders, testing, and invoicing. A few boards shipped out, a few came back thicker than expected, and progress happened the old-fashioned way: iteration plus patience.

Parallel to that, AI and data work quietly expanded. Multiple AI use cases were defined, reviewed, and shared; audits and cost analyses were done; clients’ actual use (as opposed to marketing slides) was examined; and bridges were built between tech, AEC, and governance contexts. On the PBN side, this turned into a long sequence of concrete outputs: documents reviewed and published, standards like ISO 37128 wired in, RAG systems built and deployed, FastAPI integrations shipped, Keycloak integrated, prototypes tested, and reviewers onboarded. By the end of September, a lot of “this should exist” ideas actually did exist, publicly and reproducibly.

There was also a very real people-and-process dimension. Project onboarding, training, mockups, interviews, personas, updates, stakeholder meetings, onsite sessions in London—less visible work, but essential. The same goes for the steady drumbeat of calls, feedback, coordination, and follow-ups that don’t leave a Git commit but do move things forward. Some calls were productive, some were simply necessary to get them out of the way.

Outside of work, the quarter was unapologetically full of life admin and joy mixed together. Real estate moved—sales, expert visits, follow-ups, and paperwork finally closing loops that had been open for too long. Homes got maintenance: gas reviews, vases changed, energy checks done. Orders arrived (and kept arriving). Cloths repaired instead of replaced. Plants were replanted. A few things were deliberately removed too—uninstalling COD felt oddly symbolic.

There was plenty of play and culture, the kind that keeps everything else sane. Board games, card games, movies stacked across genres, books ranging from Murakami to Abercrombie to Le Guin. Trips, dinners, guinguettes, birthdays, weddings, weekends with family, cafés with friends. MTG decks built, boosters cracked, and commander boxes picked up—not productive in any measurable KPI sense, but deeply restorative.

If there’s a theme to the quarter, it’s probably this: progress didn’t come from one big push, but from showing up repeatedly across many fronts. Shipping boards. Publishing docs. Making calls. Fixing small things. Playing games. Eating well. Taking the time to both build and disconnect.

2025 Q2

Mon, 30 Jun 2025 02:03:03 +0000

Q2 Updates: More Stuff Actually Done

Another quarter down, and looking at this list makes me realize I kept busy with the usual mix of productive work and random life maintenance.

Gardening Got Serious

The plant game stepped up this quarter. Got the glycine growing fast, planted sunflowers that actually grew, got non-food asparagus, and bottled my first two cider batches. We added a new jasmine and tried to add a eucalyptus baby blue to the collection, but.. this one did not want to join. Added sunflowers too. Made another batch of kvas and a third cider lot using organic supplies.

A couple of magpies nested in front of the kitchen - and we’re getting them to like cat kibble (?).

Travel and Conferences

Hit London for BSI meetings and Edinburgh for the OSHWA conference. Both trips were worth it - the Edinburgh one especially since I got to present the hardware work to people who actually cared about open source hardware. And of course, it’s been a great first time in Scotland, going as far as the Isle of Skye!

Flats maintenance

Finally got the apartment stuff moving - did the DPE redo, launched other diagnostics, and signed the compromis. Also helped with two different moving situations and some état des lieux. Real estate paperwork is still terrible, but it’s done. Soon close. One is already busy.

Hardware and Technical Work

Fixed the hardware code issues (v3 finally works properly), refreshed the website, and got the 16-element version request in. Did client presentations including one for John Farrow on edge sound detection that went well. Invoiced properly and kept the technical documentation updated.

Pro Bono and Standards Work

Got the ISO standards mapping finished, published the social media post, and submitted the Fresk paper (finally got it approved). Added Zisis data to the pbnbot and connected it to the new ISO37100 series standards. The knowledge graph is in its final version now.

Entertainment Overload

Watched way too many movies - highlights include Civil War, The Menu, Total Recall, and a bunch of terrible ones that were fun anyway. Read Adrian Tchaikovsky’s “Children of Memory” which was excellent. Caught up on Love Death + Robots 2025. Ashamed to say I’ve just closed Croque’s book, but hey, it was good!

And a bit of fun with hacking the ‘Invaders’ game.

Kept up with friends through dinners, drinks, and random hangouts. Did the Deep Sea Adventure with work colleagues, attended birthday parties, helped with moving, and made time for the usual MTG sessions with Filip (the gobs are done, slivers back, cats are OK, a nice blue one too, and we have now toxic and poison added - plus some combo deck).

Some lasergame sessions too! A nice complement to the CSGO sessions, and cheering racing colleagues at the Paris 10k.

And good restaurants, like at the Ogata (was delayed but finally, we did it!), saw la Zaz with SBO, Jiji, Féfé too, bday with Nes, went to see FabCaro.

What Worked

Breaking big projects into weekly chunks actually works. The apartment sale moved forward because I did one piece each week instead of procrastinating on the whole thing. Same with the hardware - steady progress beat bursts of frantic coding. The gardening stuff taught me patience again. You plant things, wait, and sometimes they grow. Sometimes they don’t. Either way, you learn something.

2025 Q1

Sun, 30 Mar 2025 02:03:03 +0000

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?

W48

Sun, 01 Dec 2024 02:03:03 +0000

Last week in this space! Administrative with invoices and tax-related tasks dispatched, along with the start of a proposal. D3.14 is normally accepted, so that’ good too. Something less to worry about.

The week began with high-energy commitments, including a full day in London with the DSA and the two-part PROBONO meetings. The DSA socials was good fun, and a good warm-up before next week! Plenty of collaboration and strategic energy. Social and community connections were also in focus, with meeting with the neighbour, and friends, as well as coffee with family. Just missed the brother =)

Some progress too with the Zenodo dataset and adjustements to the ISO37k paper. And tweaks to the EVA bot. And further tweaks to the Futures assistant. Did a piece to get to extract easily 8x8 sprites, for a project (QRcode reader + esp32) I have in mind for fun. Plus that was the start of the Advent of Code 2024!

Projects in hardware too - updates to the phADC were done, and some MUX/pic0/pulser boards got started at the fab.

Plenty of movies too Renfield, KungFu Panda,Wedding Nightmare,Shadow strays, 13 hours, gemini man, the hunt, Arcane Season 2. Plus testing Necrohamster =)

W47

Sun, 24 Nov 2024 02:03:03 +0000

A lot of closing stuff before December!

Got the teaching contract signed, and closing commissions before end of the month. And even if I could not do the kids book I wanted, I did a couple of shopping bits for the holiday season drew closer. And got last steps of works (hopefully) - window. Good timing as Thursday was the day we got pleeeenty of snow in Paris.

This was a bigger week for hardware, and even spent some time in south-west - for a day. It did go well, but I hoped for a bit more. Well, let’s wait for the next iteration! The phADC sort of worked, but usual mistakes.. swapping i2c lines. I’ll need also to get rid of the power supply for reference, as the components did not work. Also plenty of good examples, with Prem, Ed, Eli .. discussing future directions and projects in a lot of possible spaces. The un0rick seems to have been used in fancy ways but let’s see about sonar and pipe checks! Some presentation too with OSHWA, talking about the pic0rick community, and hopefully getting a seat to go to Scotland for the Open harware summit in 2025. And in terms of design, the pic0mux is done, and boards ordered with the usual fab. Looking forward to it. Checks of older designs.. well, apart from phADC which needs a revamp, I got the DAC working on the MSI board (mirics) but I’m not getting what I want. Weird. So I guess I’ll just zombifie this design in case someone wants to start from fresh on it.

On the software side of things, I tried and refined the ISO database , with a polished app interface, cleaned-up code, and firm publication plans tied to ISO37k. Not had the time to go to the EVA bot, but I tried and get something for the DSA pitch next week, and tried and discussed with a possible client about their digital strategy needs a bit ahead of time. That means.. a proposal soon.

Some chill too, even if I’m not going the full Ermite-mode as I wanted to, in particular with a good game with the France vs. Argentina rugby match at Stade de France. And a coffee break at the wise ones! A bit of learning too (tried the Ethan Mollick Coursera class for educators). And some leisure time, ending Matter by Iain M. Banks, plus a quick Le sang des immortels by Gennefort, and netflixing of Predator, The Irishman, and Les enfants sont roi.

W46

Sun, 17 Nov 2024 02:03:03 +0000

Some more socials - off with a cozy raclette evening with neighbors and sharing plants Claire, plus S’s bachelorette plus prepping for holiday travels added a warm touch to the week. Still non negligeable admin, around followups of October invoices, new commissions and CAF paperwork were completed, while preparations for home improvements in both places in Paris moved forward (but did not go anywhere yet, sigh).

Progress on work too, refining tools and progressing on projects, from adding a Chainlit app to the Substack bot (exploitation of prospective seeds) to upgrading hardware initiatives like the PICO-ADC project and PMOD for the max14866 mux (got layouts, schematics, and test boards) for hardware, while the getting new quotes for fab plans. North America too with Toronto for more international connections! Same happened in FR for a (last?) commission till the end of the month, and a first great discussion (plus plans?) with Noemie. Client projects focused on high priority items (not so much time left!), such as working on a BREEAM/LEED comparisons using the 37101 mapping approach, and enhancing the corresponding tool.

Kept on learning - got the IBM’s AI Foundations for Business course.

Got some books a bit late (Bankgreen, Cybergypsies) and some time with Thor: Love and Thunder, and managed to close Bank’s Matter book (weird ending though ^^).

Two weeks to go, and preparing too coming back to the old place, preparing a few engagements both in FR and in the UK. A bit of stress, but let’s take a step at a time :)

W45

Sun, 10 Nov 2024 02:03:03 +0000

Another full week – and three more to go. Time flies, even without admin (that was the time for corporate taxes, but also preparing tenants admin).

A bit of prospective, meeting with old projects partners (as well as new prospects in Brest!), and discussing new ways of looking at things - and these are taking shape, maybe for a last project on this stretch? Internal prospects, too, meeting Simon for the first time - and interesting approach and a clear way to it. And some LLM work on using the SFIA framework to job reqs.

Research-wise, productive steps on the API paper, which is now out on arXiv (but still needs an update with the latest dataset), and the D3.14 paper was officially submitted with solid updates, while presenting to the wider team.

Also some more hardware, projects moved forward with tests on the 8x8 matrix (ESP32-S3), I als got the new FT600 boards (but weirdly they don’t work, the 1.0V source isn’t outputting 1V..), getting some more teardown work on old probes, and addressing issues with the phADC project. That’s hardware for you - freezing boards to see where shorts happen =) And having no good explanation as to why a certain component generates a short.. I also refreshed some of the pic0rick documentation, images and video.

Personal time was productive, too: I refined a kefir recipe, enjoyed some books (Assassin Royal 3 and Scarlett et Novak), and checked out Le Crabe Tambour with an amazing Rochefort. Plus some Netflix with The Age of Adaline and Sauver ou périr. Not to mention the start of the Vendée Globe, including the fantasy sailing game Virtual Regatta!

W44

Sun, 03 Nov 2024 02:03:03 +0000

This week was (again) a mix bag of of travel, creative presentations, and solid deliverables.

I kicked off with a piece of work in London over the first day, then followed by a session with the right people to present the progress over the use of the ISO37101 standard (plus some testing and finetuning of guardrails). Project-wise, I advanced the D3.14 paper by integrating new screenshots and did the same for the D3.2 documentation for the task lead. We also prepared the Fresk comms piece specifically for municipalities and crafted a version for sister projects. I also got a draft in the pipeline for prepublication (API!) and continued pushing some hardware updates, including an update and marking for the pic0rick.

That was also the time for admin, invoicing time again, but the taxes stuff will come next week. A bit of invoice management too with the maintenance piece for tenants.

BUT .. the big event is heading to Les Utopiales, the sci-fi festival in Nantes (and a side visit to the Machines workshop in Nantes, quite fantastic. It was a refreshing break - quite intense though, but mostly, quite motivating. The authors at the conference were awesome and wholesome =) In downtime, I dove into Catherine Dufour’s Je ne suis pas une légende (and the lady was there!) and finished a few classics and cult favorites like The Lord of the Rings, Mad God, Repo Man, and Tetsuo. Nothing much to say there, except there was much good stuff.

W43

Sun, 27 Oct 2024 00:01:01 +0000

Some socials again! I started with a lunch catch-up with Sarah, before she hops back into .. IT. As always - a good time and good chats. And capped it off with a movie night at the Rocky Horror Picture Show with both friends in family, in the super Studio Galande in Paris. Before that was nice win and proceco! Family time too with resarch work with the dad and a family dinner with parents and brother. Neat!

I got a number of calls about the MM project(s), and, development-wise, I implemented updates for the OSO, including UX adjustments, guardrails, and preparing for a workshop early next week in the UK. Not to mention a DSA update and first official call with the team.

On the technical front, I resolved final snags for the tenants, and tried to get some of the taxes admin sorted out. There will be complications too around the load we got rid of, but that’s good complications! For hardware, progress continued with the MSI-based SDR board testing, though the DAC2932 control showed some glitches. I also received OSHWA numbers for the pic0rick project, so the work for the update of the boards and their marking has beung.

And I finally got an endorsement for cs.CY, so I’m finetuning the paper, and working on my bibliography on the ISO bot. Also got to progress the WP2 Bot by adding UI updates, and completely revamped the D3.14 dataset, integrating risk mapping and ISO lookups for better functionality. I’ve been quite happy with the update of D3.14 datasets, as I was expecting it to take longer, but it seems to be closed (though pretty sure there will be snags to kill).

Top this with a few logistical items rounded out the week, like getting new shoes, new clothes, and a Vinted package, while also managing a card sale from my MTG collection. Tried to get back to chess.com but suffered from a big series of defeats, so maybe time to be back to MTGA and CODM =)