2025-06-01: München
Took a little weekend trip to Munich, with the train and all. Followed some of the recommendations from the New York Times article on what to do in 36 hours in Munich, and that turned out quite alright. Tasted some local food (mustard!), and saw a thought provoking installation on the ministry of solitude in the Rathausgalerie, and overall enjoyed the quite different vibe of the city.
I didn’t enjoy the cursed AfD parading through the city and spouting their hateful propaganda. I can blissfully ignore most of what is happening in the country next to us most of the time, but there is still this mix between disappointment and worry whenever I realize that’s a thing again in this year 2025. Luckily there was a solid counter protest going on with catchy chants and flipped middle fingers. Keep it going!
Anyway, have some pics:
2025-03-02: Webastian
During the Winterkongress I was reminded that I still have a blog around here. Some notes on a very inspiring week-end:
There's no ethical LLM under AI — I am still annoyed that for the use cases I can see which involve partial language understanding we have to first download the whole Internet, including the shady part, that we then have to employ data workers to make safe (forcing them to look into the abyss of human depravity).
Cryptography is super fun — there was a lot of discussion about the Swiss electronic ID, and how one would go about not actually disclosing too much data while making something useful. I have some hope that our researchers will still help to make this a sensible solution one day in the far future while our politicians listen to the right people while waiting.
Community is important — it was so good to discuss with like-minded people, and I'd like to foster this community also closer to home. The French speaking part of Switzerland just feels a bit neglected, but then again it's hard to venture out of the suburbs even for me during the week, let alone really interact with my sisters and brothers in Lausanne, Neuchâtel, Fribourg…
2022-11-11: Fever thoughts
Reactivating the blog to mention that I'm on Mastodon.
A lot happened this year, met somebody that I could imagine spending some more time with the next few years, and now the challenge is to stick around here.
That's all for today, I'll post again once I'm in better shape.
2021-12-05: Le vent se lève
Some days ago I decided to finally merge my hosting provider accounts to post an update here.
The last five months I was vaccinated and the last three it was realistic to do stuff again. I had quite the checklist, learn to play tennis at least a bit, take up dancing again, and of course impro.
Glad I got to do all of that (if you know me you know what I left out to manage expectations) before we’re all at home again.
To think that the beginning of my working life was mostly a never ending holding pattern, the turbulence brought forth by this global health crisis may finally have had some effects. Starting with the solidarity and doing what needs to be done while at my wits’ end, followed by a period of euphoria before the damning realization that a big part of the population were not really as intent on being done with all this as I was, I’m in a different place. Let’s hope it’s for the better.
2018-08-12: Bruges
Long time no post. But I had some holidays last week so I thought I’d share.
I already visited Bruges with family a few years ago, but this time I decided to go at it in a different configuration.
In the Groeningemuseum I saw some of the works of Gustave Marissiaux that I quite liked.
Of course there was a lot of beer drinking involved but the problem is that that impacts my energy levels too much, but what can you do, it’s what Belgium is known for.
Those energy levels are also a mayor concern for me right now - the things I need to do right now mostly require to stick around for a long time, something that I only know to do with a laptop and work.