ndb_hugo: A Knowledge-First Portfolio Architecture
How this portfolio models skills as evidence, not claims — and why that distinction matters for building a trustworthy knowledge system.
5 min
·7 blocks
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hugo, architecture, knowledge-systems, ndb
Nicolas de Barquin
Fablab manager, maker community architect, electronics tinkerer. I build things, document what I learn, and let patterns emerge from the evidence.
847 blocks
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12 projects
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4 patterns emerging
LATEST POSTS All posts →
Documented projects, learnings, and technical deep-dives — each backed by timestamped evidence.
Evidence-First Engineering: How I Stopped Trusting My Own Estimates
A shift in how I approach technical decisions — from intuition-first to evidence-first — and what changed when I started demanding proof before conviction.
3 min
·5 blocks
·
engineering, decision-making, knowledge-systems
From Confusion to Contribution: A Docker Journey
What started as networking confusion became a custom bridge plugin. Somewhere in between, I taught it to interns — and teaching is where the real understanding happened.
1 min
·6 blocks
·
docker, networking, teaching
SKILL PATTERNS All patterns →
Extracted from documented work. Each backed by timestamped evidence. Confidence reflects evidence density, not self-assessment.
Manual Content Publishing
8 blocks·1 year·rising
The Hugo-native workflow for authoring posts, patterns, and timeline moments. Manual precision while the backoffice is being built.
Confidence
78%
Commons Governance
14 blocks·12 years·stable
A decade of fablab management, Ostrom's principles tested in practice, working groups and assemblies.
Confidence
85%
Container Orchestration
8 blocks·5 years·rising
Dormant Docker knowledge activated by a teaching project, then converged with infrastructure skills.
Confidence
72%
Electronics & IoT Prototyping
11 blocks·17 years·rising
ESP32 projects, PCB design, sensor networks, smart valve controllers — hands-on making as knowledge creation.
Confidence
78%
MOMENTS OF RECOGNITION Full timeline →
Turning points where accumulated experience suddenly made sense — the moments when patterns clicked.
2026
Writing a pattern about the act of writing patterns. The system is eating itself, in the best way.
Feb 2026
2025
Maps of Making federation protocol reuses the same convergence-detection patterns from spacecraft telemetry. A decade apart, the problems rhyme.
Jan 2025
2024
The Sewer Museum valve controller worked on first deployment. Twelve years of accumulated hardware intuition compressed into a single confident afternoon.
Jun 2024
→ Related post
Teaching Docker to interns forced me to explain things I'd only understood intuitively. The teaching didn't follow the learning — it completed it.
Mar 2024
→ Related post
2023
Reading Ostrom for the third time, I finally understood why her principles felt familiar — I'd been reinventing half of them through trial and error at the fablab.
Sep 2023
2022
Building my first ESP32 sensor network, I kept reaching for patterns from satellite systems I'd worked on seven years earlier. Different scale, identical architecture.
Apr 2022