It’s back to school! And with that, the return of weekly notes!
On the writing front #
My partner’s (whom I’ll now refer to as Techie Belette, in reference to my own alias, Indie Belette—also because, deep down, he’s more of a techie than I am) outside perspective helped me find the stupid mistake causing the justifying spaces in my LaTeX version of l’Enfant des Esprits. I had used the \hspace command with a unit in em instead of pt. This time, it’s fixed. I should really have my stock ready by Christmas—no joke.
On the web front #
“Les ingénieurs sont en train de devenir complètement cons.” A little rant on Mastodon—I don’t do this often, but sometimes I need to express myself spontaneously. Plus, it introduced me to the term meat proxy, which seems wonderfully fitting.
Here is the translation of the post:
Engineers are going completely nuts.
Yesterday, a colleague contacted me and said, “Hey, we’ve identified a regression risk in [this thing] that falls under your expertise.” Then he sent me a link to a topic that had nothing to do with my expertise.
I told him: “I think you’ve got the wrong person.”
He replied: “Oh, sorry, Claude made a mistake.”
And this isn’t an isolated case—it’s part of a broader trend where, in a large team, there are always a few engineers who do great work, but also a whole bunch of people who are turning into Claude proxies, just regurgitating the results of their prompts. At some point, if that’s all you’re good for, bosses won’t be wrong to get rid of us, you know?
(Just to clarify, the guy in my story doesn’t work at Mainmatter—we still know how to do our jobs.)
In the garden #
To prevent a massacre during my vacation, I temporarily installed two porous T-shaped pipes connected to my water supply via an irrigation timer that automatically opens the water every evening for several minutes. The results are mixed depending on the plants. My potted santolina is thriving, but one of the dogwoods meant to form my new bird-friendly hedge suddenly gave up the ghost. Other plants, battered by the heatwaves, remain in a somewhat worrying but stable state.
On the culture front #
We watched Toy Story 5. I chronically forget just how good the Toy Story animated films are—until I see the latest one and think “Toy Story is so great, right?” This one’s theme: Can old-school toys still hold their own against the rise of screens in children’s hands?
For what it’s worth #
Did you know? In France, you’re not required to build something on a buildable plot of land. However, local regulations may apply, introducing a construction obligation—especially in subdivisions.