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2026 Q3

Wed, 30 Sep 2026 02:03:03 +0000

Summer: Milestones, Moving Boxes, and a Very Long Hardware Queue

Summer is supposed to be quiet. This one had a beach, a guinguette and an eclipse, but also the most hardware I’ve ever had in flight at once, a new home moving from “offer” to “works have started”, and a lot of cardboard.

On the making-things side, it was a relay race. Most of the hardware work this quarter was done with a small group of friends, and my job turned into specifying, reviewing, testing and chasing (a skill in itself). The IMU worked in Verilog by mid-July, and then the boards just kept coming: a SEPIC HV supply, a USB3 bridge board (GL3224), a storage board v2.3 with the BNO055, an intermediary AFE/pulser rework, an RP2350B board, and ultr4rick, the high-end big sibling of pic0rick. On the firmware side, the RGB I2C display, I2C scanning, and DSP running on the RP2350. On the FPGA side, a friend took the gateware forward milestone by milestone, a bigger LUT design, then a ROM trick to bring the LUT count back down. By the end of August a batch of repos were pushed to GitHub and an initial dump went to Zenodo. September added the first GL3224 v5 panels, the start of minUS (a smaller, simpler take on pic0rick), and a fresh batch of boards back from the fab.

pic0rick, the old ultrasound side project that refuses to retire, kept going around the world: Germany, Singapore, Denmark, Norway and Mexico this quarter. The Tindie shop got a proper Stripe setup, then went on pause for August (holidays apply to shipping too). And a couple of new toys: an ESP32 listening to C-ITS traffic signals, and a look at the CH569 “phantomdrive”.

Work kept its own momentum on the project at work: OIR decks for the safety case and sustainability, a documented ontology and its graph, the MIDP loop, a trip to London in July and another in September, quarterly check-ins with the team. The HEC presentation in mid-September (project finance, as ever) was a nice way to restart the academic year. On the PBN side, the Maptivity paper came back from reviewers, comments were addressed, a v2 went in, the final proofread went off at the end of July, and it’s now accepted and out in Sustainability (MDPI). Yeay! I also gave Formed Not Prompted a major rework in August.

Life was full, in the best way. The home project moved fast: paperwork, signatures, kitchen designers, insurance, and works officially starting in late September (I even used Claude Code to build a small 3D view of the flat to follow the works, very satisfying). Moving boxes have been ordered, cables sorted into little transparent bags, six bags of junk out. The new place is going to be worth it =)

Plenty of play and culture too. System of a Down with the neighbours in July, Brest and the beach at Cléder, Saumur, a guinguette, a food truck festival, the eclipse in August, an Unlock game with the family, homebrews tasted (cherry-ginger holds up, the Milly wine too), drinks with friends, cards with friends. MTG had a big summer: Commander decks updated, lots bought and packs sold. Kingdom Come: Deliverance II got its monastery DLC finished. Reading: L’Assassin royal (BD), L’Anniversaire du monde, Dungeon Crawler Carl 6 and 7, Afterburn and Di Rollo’s Bankgreen, with Lies Weeping waiting next. Watching: Godzilla Minus One, L’Odyssée in the cinema, Midsommar, Castlevania S4, Overlord: The Sacred Kingdom, Vox Machina S4, and Screamboat Willie, which is exactly as silly as it sounds. And Utopiales tickets are booked.

Travels: Brest and the beach at Cléder, Saumur, Île de Ré, the Moselle, and London (twice).

If there’s a theme to the quarter, it’s orchestration. Less soldering myself, more making sure many hands pull in the same direction, on the boards, at work, and at home. It’s a different kind of building, and summer was a crash course.

2026 Q2

Tue, 30 Jun 2026 02:03:03 +0000

Spring: Shipping Papers, Boards, Agents, and House Hunting

This one was dense. Looking back at the list, it’s the quarter where a lot of long-running threads finally turned into things that exist outside my laptop, and where house hunting joined the mix.

On the home front, we started hunting for a new place: visits, a second visit, an offer, and a surprising amount of paperwork. It gave the second half of the quarter a very different flavour, and taught me a whole new vocabulary =)

On the AI and side-project front, spring was the season of building with Claude. I installed NanoClaw and set up a handful of small agents (todos, birthdays, newsletter, a bit of house hunting), then used it on a run of weekend projects: an OSINT toolkit for “dark” ships in the Strait of Hormuz, a CV-to-RDF pipeline, a FIFA 2026 predictor, and learn-bangla, now closed. The ESP32 MUD got a v0.5 revamp too, and the website got its new project pages. On the writing side, a first full draft of a thesis-style paper on the proletarianisation of advisory (reviewed with Fable, which was humbling), lay-reader docs for Formed Not Prompted, and a companion doc to AI and the Art of Being Human.

Hardware didn’t slow down: the 32-channel MUX tested, HV modules and USB3 boards ordered and received, a storage board with the SD holder the right way round (second attempt…), PRF pushed to 10 kHz, acquisitions with a new piezo, and a lot of design reviews on the USB3 (CH569) and AFE/pulser boards, plus the FPGA/gateware work getting back on track. For pic0rick, a dedicated NDT library, boards sent to Taiwan, India and (via a revived Tindie shop) the US, and a fresh SEPIC + CH569 v1.3 order at JLCPCB.

Work and teaching had their own rhythm: London (several times), Manchester, a strategy meeting, an AEC event hosted at the office, joining the internal AI club, and, on the project at work, pushing information requirements towards case studies, knowledge graphs for sustainability and the first OIR workshop. The project finance course at HEC wrapped up with scoring, a debrief and an alumni evening. And on the PBN side, a milestone: we worked in Athens in April, the article was restructured (faces blurred, ORCIDs in), and the Maptivity paper was submitted to Sustainability (MDPI) in June. We also released the open dataset behind the Maptivity website. Very happy about that one.

And yes, still play and culture. Trips to Athens and Prague (postcards sent, cakes for the neighbours on the way back), plants planted for Plantes pour tous, a cherry-ginger homebrew finally bottled, a friend’s wedding, a dance gala, La Bayadère, MTG and CS sessions. Reading went on a run: the rest of Abercrombie’s First Law, Spaceman of Bohemia, This Is How You Lose the Time War, Pratchett’s Pyramids, Wayfarers 2 and 3, Les sentinelles, La Guerre du Pavot, and a binge of Dungeon Crawler Carl (2 to 5, no regrets). Watched: Nosferatu, Anatomie d’une chute, The King, Magnetic Rose, Planète B, Projet Dernière Chance in the cinema, Disclosure Day and Vox Machina S3.

Travels: Athens (PBN work), Prague, Manchester, and London (three times).

If there’s a theme to the quarter, it’s things making it out the door. A paper submitted, a dataset published, repos public, boards shipped to four countries, and a home search well under way. The work was the same as always; this time more of it shipped.

2026 Q1

Tue, 31 Mar 2026 02:03:03 +0000

Winter Quarter: Benches, Boards and a Lot of Information Requirements

The year started gently: a stack of half-read books finished over the break, a couple of project pages written (cyanotypes, because Blue January is a thing now, and the Futures one), and the vague feeling that this would be a calm quarter. It wasn’t =) But it was a good kind of busy.

On the making-things side, hardware set the pace. It started with a proper test bench: four piezos, a bit of documentation and, yes, Legos to hold everything in place (best mechanical engineering tool ever, innit?). Then came MUX tests driven from the CLI, chip recommendations, specs for a bigger tool, and the first look at the ECP5 boards with and without the FPGA. The AFE got rerouted, boards got ordered, the RP2350 boards got a new pulser, a v1.2 AFE and a v1.1 MUX, and direct sampling between 10 and 35 µs started to give something sensible. By March the repos and branches were up, the first lines of Verilog for a CLI were written, and boring-but-vital things landed: autodocumentation, the git head injected into builds, autobuild and releases. Meanwhile pic0rick kept travelling, this time to Japan.

Work-wise, the quarter was all about structure. On the project at work, lots of time on information requirements: knowledge maps, process maps, flowcharts, decks, workshops (in French and in English), and a series of interviews to understand what people actually need, as opposed to what the templates say they need. Several trips to London, a training session there too, and the first round of quarterly check-ins with the team. Less visible than a board coming back from the fab, but just as much iteration.

The teaching and PROBONO threads kept going in parallel. My project finance sessions at HEC restarted in March, with the usual mix of preparation anxiety and fun once in the room. On the PBN side (PROBONO, the EU-funded project), comments on the placemaking articles, slides, and a day booked in Porto. Also a first meeting for a Data4Good-type collaboration, and a small personal system of “people cards” to stop forgetting who’s working on what.

Life admin was there too, of course: flat paperwork that finally moved, a new jacket after putting it off way too long, sorting out the medicine cabinet. Not glamorous, all necessary.

And plenty of play and culture to keep the balance. Books: the end of the Belgariade (3 to 5, back to back), The Wee Free Men, Gogmagog (twice, two volumes), Silent Jenny, Les mains vides, Genefort’s Points chauds, the first Wayfarers by Becky Chambers, and the start of Abercrombie’s First Law. Screens: Stranger Things S5, Wake Up Dead Man, Platoon, Dark Star (before Alien, it shows), Bambi (yes), and a lot of The Office, both US and UK. Out and about: Dakh Daughters, Boléro, a Sherlock game with the neighbours, a race around Montmartre, momos with friends, CS2 evenings, cousins in London, a Winota deck built for MTG, and the first plans for Prague.

Travels: London (four times, including a training session there), and the Moselle.

If there’s a theme to the quarter, it’s probably foundations. Test benches, build pipelines, process maps, information requirements: none of it is the final thing, all of it is what makes the final thing possible. Slow to show, quick to pay back.

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, the bigger ultrasound engineering work 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 a bigger ultrasound engineering effort progressed through specs, pinouts, quotes, board orders and testing. 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 :)