Weekly Notes, July 30, 2026

On the writing front #

LaTeX is giving me a bit of a hard time. To improve the rendering of my novel, I’m revisiting the word-breaking parameters in the justification settings so they remain somewhat penalized but not entirely absent, as they are in my current version.

Beyond saving a few pages, the issue I’m trying to solve is the inconsistent spacing between my dialogue dashes and the first word. The rendering looks better when this space is fixed, and it seems fixed in every novel I’ve come across. In my novel, however, this spacing sometimes varies visibly because, unfortunately—and contrary to what some documentation sites claim—non-breaking spaces in LaTeX are justified, and even using precise spaces with \hspace doesn’t solve my problem. The justification always takes precedence in the final rendering.

So far, I’ve searched high and low but haven’t found a satisfying solution. To be continued.

On the web front #

Disappointed with Hugo, I’ve started rebuilding this blog with my beloved Ember.js, which I just can’t seem to quit. After all, there are only two types of frontend developers: those who love Ember and those who haven’t tried it yet.

The framework includes a blueprint system that allows you to use the ember generate command to create new files for the application based on a specific template that can include variables. This system is initially designed to easily generate new routes or tests directly with the correct imports and hooks, but its power also lies in the ability to create custom blueprints.

I combined a Node script with Ember’s blueprint system to automatically generate routes and tags for my blog based on the initial configuration and my folder of Markdown articles. Essentially, a pre-build step allows me to generate a bunch of new files in the Ember app, which is then built by Vite. It’s almost a static site, except for the route displaying a given tag.

I’ve made good progress—just a few routes left to finish, the RSS feeds to restore, and then I’ll finally be able to tweak the structure and styles to my liking.

In the garden #

My apple tree is starting to produce a few fruits. The apples are slightly tart, a bit mealy, but overall quite good. I have some Swiss chard regrowing after the first late-spring harvest, and cherry tomatoes beginning to form.

On the other hand, my beans have completely fried; my eggplants, bell pepper, and zucchinis haven’t grown, and I still haven’t gotten the hang of radishes and strawberries. All in all, it’s been a pretty bad year, but I have a few ideas to improve things. In the meantime, my organic market gardener, who grows her vegetables just 500 meters from my home, provides me with plenty to eat.

On the culture front #

I’ve started playing Pokémon Pokopia, which I bought secondhand at a more reasonable price than new. Not the best idea for my productivity, as it’s quite engaging. I share the same criticisms as those mentioned on the French Wikipedia page: “the tedious nature of building with the controller and the mind-boggling inventory management”, but the concept is still very fun, there’s a lot of content, and it keeps you wanting to progress. I’ve spent a little too much time on it these past few days.

For what it’s worth #

My first attempt at freezing and later thawing small pieces of squash to eat squash in the middle of summer went very well. I gently heated my frozen block in a pan until all the pieces separated, then slightly increased the temperature and added spices. It tasted just as good as fresh, in-season squash.