Who Vibecoded This Upgrade? [en]

Unverified AI transcript (22.07.2026):

Lausanne, 16th July 2026, 21:10

I’m on the balcony, Juju by my side. He’s not afraid of the storm, after all his years outside. He’s more afraid of people, moving objects, loose cloth and phone lights in the dark. It’s nice that the temperature is bearable again. It rained yesterday evening.

I’m trying to figure out how to get my life back. It feels like my “life energy” is the product of a lot of moving parts, a complex dynamic system that feeds it, in a state of delicate equilibrium that got toppled when I had my accident, and that I’m struggling to put back in movement although almost all the individual pieces are now repaired. But it’s one of these 3D mobile puzzles which only manage to stay together when every single piece is in place and moving right.

If anything is missing, the whole thing collapses. Not because anything is fundamentally broken, but because there is no easy path to putting everything back together at the same time.

It’s a scaffolding held together by routines, habits, ongoing motivation, exercise, fun and challenges, the right amount of social contact and rest, a sprinkle of urgency and pressure.

The trap is to try to rebuild what was. That ship has sailed. As with any crisis, loss or transition, what comes after can be good, as good or even better, but it will not be copy-paste from before. “Time waits for no-one”, sang Cat Stevens, I think.

Today’s struggles and challenges look a lot like my old ones. Some I recognize from the times preceding the accident. Others — and that is a little more demoralizing — carry me back to my pre-diagnosis years, a sense of being untethered that I thought I had left behind me for good.

I can’t just pick up the pieces and put them back the way they were. I need to rebuild. Re-solve issues I thought I had dealt with. That’s where patience comes in. If my ADHD diagnosis and treatment gave me the user manual and admin rights, the accident “upgraded” the system. There are regressions. The user interface has changed. And I’m the one who has to update the manual.

Right now I’m trying to work out the new usage limits and understand which runaway processes are hogging the resources. I’m spending a lot of time using workarounds, and monitoring, and doing trial-and-error.

A few things are becoming clear: lack of physical exercise is definitely an issue. It has to be reintroduced progressively. Lack of social life and fun activities, too. These will increase available resources in time, but right now they are limited and need to be carefully allocated. Certain activities that require excessive executive function are now placing a visible burden on the system, when before, the extra expenditure was just background noise… So I need to track them more carefully and spread them out over the day and the week. I need to make sure I can exit certain activities early, press pause regularly so the system doesn’t overheat.

I’ve looked at a bunch of habit or symptom-tracking apps. No surprise, none of them does precisely what I need. I took Claude’s suggestion and set up a very simple Google form that allows me to checkbox-capture the various dimensions and signals I think are useful. It all goes in a Google spreadsheet, timestamped, data to be tortured in any way I see fit.

As I have been writing night has fallen, it has almost become cold, and rain started threatening my words of ink. I have retreated inside, escorted by rolls of thunder and discreet flashes of lightning. Juju followed close behind and is now working on his kibble.

This week has been up and down. Lewis Capaldi in Montreux two days ago. Learning the death of a young colleague yesterday. A pit of discouragement this morning. Calm and hope tonight.

Making the Bees Walk in Line [en]

Unverified AI transcript (22.07.2026):

Lausanne, 11th July 2026

It’s too hot. Is this the second or the third heat wave? I’m losing count. I think it’s the third, because we’re already hearing about the fourth, right on the heels of the third. So it’s the third, but it’s also just a blur of trying to function day after day in a building that definitely wasn’t designed for this type of weather. Between seven and eight I can enjoy my balcony with Juju. Before it got too hot, I tidied the kitchen, but by the time I was done, somewhere between 8:30 and 9:00, it was already too hot to move. Check the various temperature sensors, close windows, head downstairs for a more static activity.

In addition to figuring out how to function with less energy — still a problem following my accident — I have to figure out dealing with heatwaves. We’ve had them all these last years of course, but this year is way worse. I am so thankful I don’t have an old, sick cat to care for right now, and that Juju is self-maintaining.

Writing on paper is a more linear experience than writing on-screen. Although I’ve always very much been a “first draft” kind of person (even at school, I never made that many changes in between the first “pencil draft” and the “copied copy” I handed in), when typing I am more concerned about the structure of what I’m writing. Not overly, but more. I generally don’t proofread my blog posts, but I do pause whilst writing to read back up and sometimes make some changes as I go along.

Here, I’m approaching writing much more as a “handwriting exercise” (let’s see what it does to my brain!) and so I don’t start writing with a clear intention. It’s stream-of-consciousness, to a large extent. I sometimes write blog posts like that, but less often. A blog post (nowadays) has a TITLE, it’s supposed to be about SOMETHING. Not this. This is about getting legible words on paper with a pen. So I might as well talk-write about something.

The linear experience of lining up words on a page is funneling my scattered hyperactive mind into one direction. Left to → right (write?), the next word can be written in only one place, and once it is written it cannot be taken back. Lines above this one are dead and gone, set in ink, nothing more can be done about them. The only thing that counts is the next word I will write, following the sentence that is taking shape in my head, with the brakes on, because writing by hand is a slow process. As soon as I try to speed up to catch up with my brain, words become scribbles and hand muscles start to cramp.

So it’s interesting. Slowing down is the point. One can train a lot of things, including things our brain does, and “training”, repeating an exercise again and again, is how you train.

I have a lot of trouble resting, stopping, taking a break — not to mention “doing nothing”. Post-accident, I am trying to learn. Actually, I was already trying before (half-heartedly), but now I HAVE to, or the consequences are severe. Lying down and closing my eyes for just five minutes is often impossible, because it’s just too uncomfortable. Try staying still and “doing nothing” when your head is a beehive of thoughts, ideas, emotions, intentions, and desires. Sadly, I often end up scrolling. It gives the illusion of “stopping”, but it doesn’t help the beehive.

So I have a collection of “rest activities”. Jigsaw puzzles. Listen to a podcast or watch a TV series. Read a book. Listen to a song. Physical activity of course, but that’s off the table, particularly with this heat. I’m going to add writing. Not for the content, but for giving my brain a linear experience without input. Because input feeds the bees.

Bees are good. They produce honey. (Can you see I’m tiring?) But when they’re just buzzing around, agitated or angry, no honey is being made. And that helps no one, especially not me.

I will be the queen bee.

Des mots sur un carnet à Paris [en]

C’est moche pour l’accessibilité, je sais.

Transcription IA non vérifiée (22.07.2026):

1er juillet 2026, 21h15

Ça fait longtemps que je n’écris plus à la main. Encore plus longtemps que je n’écris plus à la main avec soin. Depuis mes TMS en 2002 ou 2003, ce n’est pas confortable. Ça crampe, ça tétanise. Je regarde un peu de haut ces exercices qui disent de faire à la main. Je tape à l’aveugle plus vite que mon ombre. Bref : se passe-t-il vraiment autre chose dans mon cerveau quand j’écris à la main ? Avec mes “petits problèmes linguistiques” depuis mon accident, je me pose la question, à nouveau, de l’utilité de ce genre d’exercice. Pourquoi pas. Écrire à la main, c’est me reconnecter à un rapport plus primitif de mon rapport à l’expression écrite : le seul que j’avais jusqu’au milieu de mon adolescence, quand j’ai appris à taper ; et le principal, jusqu’à la fin de mes études, justement autour de 2002-2003. C’est moins rapide et moins confortable, mais en ces temps post-commotion, je me réconcilie — tant bien que mal — avec le temps lent.

Je suis à Paris. Une semaine pour deux journées de formation à l’IGB. La dernière était aujourd’hui. Mon cerveau est cuit [?], et c’était fascinant et ultra riche, comme toujours à l’IGB. C’est le genre de formation où je prends des notes à la main, relativement illisibles, parce que les schémas de boucles interactionnelles entre les différents protagonistes des situations abordées, c’est quand même assez galère à faire à l’ordi. Avec ma logo la semaine dernière, j’ai évoqué ce que je ressens un peu comme une récalcitrance à l’effort cognitif, parfois. Il y a des articles un peu pointus que je veux lire, mais je rechigne à la perspective de cet effort. Un peu peur d’en faire trop, aussi, bien sûr. On s’est dit que ce serait peut-être un exercice utile de m’y mettre, de façon contrôlée : limité dans le temps, lentement, et — sa suggestion — en surlignant les points clés ou prenant des notes. Ça m’a parlé — et travaillé.

J’ai passé une décennie de ma vie à lire en prenant des notes — quand j’étais aux études. Je prenais aussi des notes de livres que je lisais “en plus”, par intérêt. Prendre des notes m’aide à comprendre. Quand j’écoute aussi, d’ailleurs. C’est ce qui m’a amenée à live-bloguer, en fait. Je peinais à rester concentrée sur des conférences (le TDAH était très loin d’être sur mon radar !) et j’ai fait l’expérience, un peu par hasard, qu’en prenant des notes ça allait beaucoup mieux. Pas très étonnant en fait, après avoir fait ça quasi quotidiennement sur les bancs de l’uni.

Alors oui, si on se dit que je dois peut-être “ré-entraîner” mon cerveau à certaines choses, lire en prenant des notes pourrait être une pratique intéressante à revisiter.

Ce qui est marrant, c’est que je n’ai pas arrêté de lire des choses “difficiles”, après mes études. Mais j’ai lâché la discipline de la prise de notes, en partie je pense car elle n’était plus forcément nécessaire en vue des raisons par lesquelles je lisais, aussi un peu en partie parce que c’est un effort en plus, et parce qu’avec les supports numériques dans lesquels on peut “rechercher”, les notes semblent un peu moins utiles — en tant que résumé permettant d’accéder au contenu.

Mais le travail cognitif de tri de l’information, de synthèse, d’organisation des idées, il se produit. Et au fil de toutes ces dernières années, j’ai parfois senti, en toile de fond, que je pourrais perdre un peu en rigueur, que les choses que j’avais lues et comprises finissaient par manquer de précision, qu’avec le temps il me manquait quelques bouts — rien de très grave — et qu’évidemment je n’allais que rarement replonger dans la source (si tant est que j’étais capable de la retrouver, malgré les miracles de la loupe et des images…)

Alors oui, écrire comme exercice, prendre des notes, pourquoi pas. Je me dis que je pourrais mettre au propre mes notes IGB par exemple. Il y a quelques articles écrits par un psychologue français sur la question de “l’énergie” dans le TDAH qui m’intéressent et qui méritent une lecture attentive, d’autant plus que je suis aux prises avec ces questions de “gestion de l’énergie” de façon criante depuis mon accident — je suis d’ailleurs au milieu d’un programme en ergothérapie sur la gestion.

“Journaler”, c’est aussi une pratique que je souhaite reprendre. Ma mémoire épisodique est souvent un peu confuse, et c’est pire depuis mon accident. Prendre quelques notes en fin de journée m’aide à ne pas me sentir en dérive temporelle. Il y a dix-huit mois, quand j’ai pris deux semaines de vacances pour réaménager mon chez-moi, j’ai eu envie de me mettre au scrapbooking. Peut-être qu’il y a une idée à creuser là. Écrire à la main, c’est peut-être aussi quelque chose qui pourrait être pour moi une forme de “repos”. Le rythme plus lent, la linéarité, je sens en effet que c’est différent de taper ou dicter sur l’ordi ou le tél. Chaque mot écrit est écrit.

On verra.

J’étais partie pour faire une page. J’en ai fait cinq. J’arrête là pour aujourd’hui.

The Podcast With No Name (Steph+Suw), Episode 2 [en]

[fr] Nouvel épisode du podcast conversationnel que je fais avec mon amie Suw Charman.

Long, long overdue, here is Steph and Suw‘s Podcast With No Name, episode 2, February 15th, 2007. Some rough shownotes, with some links. Hope you enjoy it, and let us know what you think. We’re down to 35 minutes! Show notes might suffer updates…

  • conferences: LIFT’07 and Freedom of Expression
  • not everybody has the internet (God, I need to stop laughing so loud when we’re recording)
  • mobile phones in other cultures (e.g. Nigeria)
  • “technology overload” at LIFT’07 turned into “internet addiction” (interesting Stefana Broadbent
  • note-taking on a computer: expected in some contexts, but feels really out-of-place in others (cultural issue)
  • do we end up publishing our handwritten notes? trade-offs: handwritten and rewriting vs. direct blogging (Steph’s crappy workshop notes)
  • scanning vs. photographing written material, document management and shredding
  • GTD status update (inbox zero…)
  • FOWA coming up and other fun London stuff
  • Wedding 2.0 will be blogged on CnV, but will there be a webcast?
  • technology as a way to stretch our Dunbar number, wedding 2.0 with IRC backchannel and crackberries galore
  • the Wedding Industrial Complex, trying to find an affordable venue in Dorset
  • IRC or SL would be cheaper, but is SL a registered venue?
  • physical words for “virtual” places
  • gap between us heavy users, and people who get a few e-mails a day, book holidays online and that’s it
  • exploring how new tools could help us — most people aren’t curious about new stuff
  • winning over new users: finding holes in people’s processes
  • Facebook is really cool, very usable, and for keeping in touch with people you know (has smart walls and smart feeds)
  • who’s on Facebook? on the non-desire to join new social networks…
  • LinkedIn for business
  • Facebook as a mashup to keep up with what your friends are upto — but isn’t that what blogs are for?
  • outlet overload, tools need to talk to each other (holes in buckets), profile multiplication, Facebook share bookmarklet to “push” stuff
  • clumsy wrap-up and episode three when we manage!

Did you miss episode 1?

Note: PodPress seems to have collapsed, so here is a direct link to the 14Mb mp3 file just in case.