Now

Last Update: August 12th, 2026

What I’m up to now…

📍 Location

Still in Paris, year 7 — and spending this particular week deliberately not leaving it. We booked a proper staycation in the neighbourhood instead of joining the August exodus: same bed every night, tourist energy by day, zero train stations involved. The city is at its emptiest and, honestly, its best.

One unexpected perk of living where we do: The Weeknd played three nights at the Stade de France and we could hear most of the gig with the windows open. Same thing happened with Beyoncé and AC/DC in previous summers. Free live audio FTW!

🏠 Life

🩵 Azul is 2.5 and starts maternelle in September, which is the kind of milestone that makes you recount the years twice just to be sure you got it right.

📷 Shana and I got ourselves some summer toys — a pair of Kodak CharmEra keychain cameras, bought specifically to make things together away from our phones. The first shots are in and they’re wonderfully bad in exactly the right way. They live on my keyring now, next to the house keys.

🚲 New bike, and the best €50 I’ve spent this year: my neighbour was selling her father’s vintage road bike, an 80s/90s steel frame that had been sitting untouched for years. I sent it to the shop earlier this month for a full service and a few upgrades, and I’m genuinely excited about it — solo rides and commutes on a bike with some history to it, all summer and fall!

🏃 🏀 The leg is fully back after the March muscle tear — the first run post-injury went well in May, and Thursday-night pickup basketball is firmly back on the calendar. I’ve been able to play basketball, football, run, …we are SO BACK!

☕ The coffee project is still brewing — quietly, slowly, and still the thing I’ve felt most aligned with in a long time. More on that one day in the future.

📚 The unexpected win of the summer: the network of local public libraries around us. Finding good English-language books here used to be genuinely hard, and the graphic novel selection turned out to be excellent. I’ve read 26 books this year against a goal of 10, almost entirely because I stopped buying and started borrowing.

🌏 Also: running errands in the 13th remains one of my favourite low-effort Paris afternoons. Bánh mì, a can of pandan soy milk, done.

💼 Work

I’m leaving ITONICS later this fall, and going back to my startup roots.

It’s been a genuinely good and interesting run — including when a customer emailed my manager, our CEO and our co-founder entirely unprompted, which is the kind of thing I’ll be taking with me. I’ll share the new role and company later this year.

Until then: /work or LinkedIn.

🛠️ Building

Still using and refining the AI-assisted personal guides — Paris, Berlin, coffee, workout, and the shared recipes page. All one tap away from my iPhone Control Center. The coffee one is the one I actually open every week, which tells me something about which of these was really for me.

🎮 Play

Recent recommendations:

• 📚 StoryGraph — I went through Kieron Gillen’s entire DIE run in three weeks, all of it borrowed from the local Public Library: Vol. 1 (★★★★¾), Vol. 2, Vol. 3, and Vol. 4 finished today — an epic final act, and Stephanie Hans is the queen that she is.

• Also loved In Waves by A. J. Dungo (★★★★¾) and Hmong by Vicky Lyfoung (★★★★¼).

• Currently reading: Sonny Boy, Al Pacino’s memoir, on audiobook and nearly finished. I had some Audible credit going spare and it turned into the best thing I’ve listened to all year — narrated by the man himself, which changes it completely. Hearing him tell his own life and anecdotes in his own voice sent me straight back into his filmography. Also going: Soft Core by Brittany Newell, and Tonight in Jungleland, the making of Born to Run, which I started in January and am 17% into. I usually read at night when putting my daughter down, so ebooks on Kindle are easier than paper, for which I need an additional light.

• Up next, once I finish Soft Core: Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke, the tradwife-influencer satire everyone has been talking about since the spring. I’m not usually one for a book hype train, but Shana read it with her book club and rated it highly, and that’s a far better recommendation than any list.

• 🎶 Last.fm — surprise of the month: Kacey Musgraves is my most-played artist by a mile, mostly Middle of Nowhere and its run of duets with Willie Nelson, Billy Strings and Miranda Lambert. Turns out a lifelong pop-punk head can pivot to country in about a week. Post Malone’s F-1 Trillion and Shaboozey are in the same lane.

  The other half of the month was pure nostalgia: the 15th-anniversary Zoetrope reissue of My Chemical Romance’s Danger Days landed and sent me straight back through The Black Parade and Three Cheers. Right kind of special edition — not a €200 box set.

  

  Also: five Sum 41 albums, every one of Weezer’s SZNZ EPs, a Flobots rabbit hole out of nowhere, and Muse’s The Wow! Signal on vinyl — that copy was launched to the edge of space in March, which I will not be getting over.

• 📺 Trakt — finally finished The Madison season 1, and it was a refreshing blast: This Is Us dropped into a Yellowstone world. Can’t wait for season 2. Its soundtrack quietly became one of my most-played records of the month, which tells you how much it got under my skin. Now deep into a The Wire rewatch — down to season 3.

  X-Men ‘97 season 2 has been the appointment watch; I’m through The Dead Man’s Hand and the finale drops today. Ted Lasso is back for season 4 — welcome back, old friend. And I’m catching up on Your Friends & Neighbors season 2 with Shana too. Next up: For All Mankind / Star City.

  

• 🎬 Letterboxd — two big ones this month, both at my local cinema. In Waves (★★★★½) was the highlight of my whole summer: I borrowed the graphic novel from the library in July, knowing that the movie would be screening three weeks later, down the road. Beautiful animation, touching story, and a genuinely great adaptation. Then The Odyssey (★★★★) — epic scale of the kind only Nolan really attempts anymore, closer to the big 1960s pictures than anything current. Not my favourite of his, but I’m glad I caught it in a theatre in one sitting rather than at home.

  On the other end: Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere got two stars from me. This ain’t it — which stings, given the Born to Run book on my nightstand.

  The Godfather double bill at the end of July (★★★★½ and ★★★★) came straight out of the Al Pacino audiobook above — hearing him talk about making them made revisiting them feel almost compulsory. Scarface & Godfather III are next, and I suspect this becomes a whole run.

  Also up: Spider-Man: Brand New Day, which finally reaches my little local theatre next week, a couple of weeks behind everywhere else. Reviews and ratings all live on the profile.

• 📰 The Athletic, Le Parisien, [L’Équipe], News+. etc…

Live shows:

Recently: Tom Misch at La Cigale in June, capped with a late-night smash burger at Numéro 10, and a solo concert date for Billy Talent at l’Olympia.

Coming up: A$AP Rocky, Simple Plan, J. Cole and Good Charlotte before the year is out.

2027 is already stacking up too: Weezer in May with Taking Back Sunday opening — a genuinely unreasonable bill for anyone who was 15 in 2004, and well timed given how much Weezer I’ve been playing lately. Then Blink-182 at La Défense Arena in June, with Pierce The Veil supporting.

Sports:

⚽️ The World Cup is over, and it did not go our way. France lost the semi-final to Spain, then lost the bronze final to England 6–4 — a genuinely absurd scoreline, Saka hat-trick and all. Spain went on to beat Argentina 1–0 in extra time to lift it. No third star this time. See you in 2030! 🇫🇷

🏀 Paris Basketball into the offseason, still processing: first in the regular season for the second year running, then the Betclic Élite final lost to Monaco in a decisive Game 5. But the rebuild is properly under way and the signings keep landing — T.J. Warren, former Nets guard Tyson Etienne, Alize Johnson in the frontcourt, plus Terry Tarpey and Mãozinha Pereira. Nadir, Jared Rhoden and Captain’Seba are staying. And we just announced a brand new signing today, in the French Prince himself, Frank Ntilikina. Season ticket renewed, obviously.

⚾ Baltimore Orioles sitting a few games under .500 in mid-August. Not thriving, not mathematically dead. Go O’s regardless.

💭 Things I’m thinking about

• Leaving a job you’re actually good at, on purpose, because the shape of the work stopped matching the shape you want your life to have. Much harder than leaving one you hate.
• Which people show up when you make a decision for yourself — the most useful thing I learned in July, by some distance.
• Two cheap keychain cameras doing more for how Shana and I spend an evening than any app has in years. Friction as a feature, not a bug.
• Borrowing instead of buying and secondhand over new. Four DIE volumes in three weeks, none of them mine — and then the In Waves adaptation turning up at the cinema down the road a few weeks after I’d returned the book. A very small, very satisfying loop.
• Azul starting school, and how much of the next decade that quietly sets in motion in one September morning.
• 13+ years of this blog, still the least strategic thing I do, still the thing I’d miss most.