Weekly Notes, January 16, 2026

On the writing front #

This is new, I just found out. From now on, requesting additional ISBNs is no longer free. AFNIL has published its pricing. Previously, only the first request was paid, and authors who already had a segment could obtain new numbers for free. Now, you’ll have to pay each time. It’s worth noting that an ISBN identifies a book in a specific format, so if you want an EPUB, a MOBI, a PDF, and a printed book, that’s four ISBNs per title. For now, I still have nine unassigned ISBNs. For my next publications, I might just stick to EPUB and print formats to avoid using them up too quickly.

Le Cabinet des mauvais souvenirs :

« L’humidité qui imprègne la manche de sa veste commencerait presque à lui donner froid. En réponse, il laisse sa propre chaleur s’intensifier. C’est agréable. La sensation du bois sur ses paumes, le silence de la forêt et des lacs, la chaleur dans ses membres, l’amas de nuages blancs dont les formes nourrissent son imagination, la quiétude. C’est un beau moment ; un bel avant-goût du calme qui l’attend. Ses pensées tentent de l’attirer vers le boucan de ses souvenirs. Il s’efforce de les chasser. Il ne veut penser qu’au silence. »

On the web front #

Since I’ve been quite exhausted this week and couldn’t invest as much time in my work as I’d hoped, I’ll share three small tips from the collection I’ve built up since I learned how to use a computer.

• Tip 1: You can add multiple remote repositories to your Git project, not just the usual origin and upstream. With git remote add {username} {repo-url}, you can directly access the commits of a contributor who worked from a fork, create branches integrating their work, and so on.

• Tip 2: On Mac, man cmd displays the manual for the command cmd. For example, man mv will show and explain all the options available for the mv command, which is used to move a file.

• Tip 3: The barrel file is an export pattern that consists of importing from multiple files using a single path.

// barrel.ts
export { something } from './somewhere';
export { somethingElse } from './somewhere-else';

The downside of this approach is that the barrel file depends on all the re-exported files: tree-shaking mechanisms won’t exclude potentially unused files, and all re-exported files will be fetched, even if you only import a single symbol from the barrel.

In the garden #

The National Garden Bird Count (in France) will take place on January 24th and 25th. To participate, you first need to choose an observation point and register it on the “Oiseaux des Jardins” participatory observatory website, as explained in the instructions. The only difference between the national count and a spontaneous count is that the observation must go on for a full hour, which you can schedule anytime during the weekend. I encourage you to read the instructions carefully to understand how to count birds and enter accurate data.

Just to clarify, here’s what “maximum number of individuals of each species observed during the time slot” means: three house sparrows land in your garden. Two more join them, making it five. Suddenly, they all fly away, and there are no more sparrows. Later, four sparrows return. For this observation slot, you should record “five sparrows”, as that’s the maximum number of individuals present in your garden at a time (perhaps the four that returned later were the same ones).

For what it’s worth #

I started swimming in 2023. I thought improving my physical fitness with a low-impact sport would help me recover from my intercostal pain. Well, it didn’t work at all, but I kept going at a pace of one session per week. I occasionally skip a session for one reason or another, but overall, I stick with it. At first, it was tough. I could barely manage four hundred meters and was exhausted after twenty minutes. My goal for each session: do at least as much as last time. Over time, my performance began to improve, and I gradually swam longer distances by training for longer periods. It’s been three years now. Today, I swim about 1.2 kilometers in fifty minutes during each session. Perseverance pays off, but you have to be patient and travel far enough to make looking back meaningful.