On the writing front #
The revised interior of L’Enfant des Esprits is ready!
For this print, I decided to abandon an old editorial convention I see less and less these days: chapters always starting on the right-hand page. Right-hand pages are the “recto” pages, the “beautiful pages”, which have odd numbers and catch the eye when reading a book from left to right. Traditionally, new chapters are displayed on the right-hand page.
That’s all well and good, but it can waste a lot of paper. In the first version of L’Enfant des Esprits’ interior, for example, I had many chapters ending on odd-numbered pages, followed by a blank even-numbered page to display the next chapter on the following odd-numbered page. The result? A 584-page paper proof. By removing the rule that chapters must start on the right, we’re down to… 558 pages, saving 26 pages and 3 millimeters of spine thickness.
The only traditions worth keeping are those that make sense.
On the web front #
This week was EmberFest in Prague. Unsurprisingly, AI took center stage in many of the talks.
The talk I enjoyed the most was by Edward Faulkner, who offered a reflection on what AI preserves and removes from the human creative process, helping us answer the question: “Should I or shouldn’t I use AI in this case?”
Ed also boldly pointed out that we can’t decently judge AI as it exists today in tech companies without questioning its ties to fascism—a “detail” often overlooked by CTOs who endlessly proclaim that AI is inevitable progress and that resisting it would spell doom for the company.
An alternative: Look into lightweight, open-source models that can run locally and invent our own healthy ecosystem for these tools, if that’s even possible.
In the garden #
Last weekend, as I occasionally do, I participated in the bird count at the lakes of the Forêt d’Orient in the Aube region.
In mid-September, you can still spot a few groups of black storks. By looking closely at the legs of some, you might even see an identification ring. The ducks, still relatively few in number, have almost finished molting and have taken on their eclipse plumage, making the species a bit harder to distinguish.
Among the new arrivals disrupting the lake’s ecosystem, I spotted the dorsal fin of a catfish and the carcass of a Louisiana crayfish.
For what it’s worth #
I usually don’t make New Year’s resolutions in January but in September: a month that marks the end of summer vacation and the return to routine. This year, I decided to create a schedule for myself, like the ones we had in middle or high school to keep track of which classes we had on which day and at what time.
My adult schedule has me waking up earlier in the morning and condensing my work hours to finish my day by late afternoon. As a result, I’ve been able to include naps, rest times, and other one-hour free slots that help me feel less tired.
The advantage of this tool is that it can be difficult to track your hours when no two days are the same. For example, if a weekly meeting forces me to work late, my schedule compensates by giving me a dedicated writing slot in the morning. Having it written down in black and white helps me resist the temptation to log into my work computer at the same time as other days, which would end up making me work more than is wise.