Unintended computations, sideways thinking, rigorous craft.
I'm a software security engineer. I love hunting for beauty and accidental logic where neither belongs. I turn specs into bugs, printers into game consoles, and Swiss mountains into GPX routes. A few featured pieces:
🖨️ Programming in PostScript and PSChess (2024–2025)
PostScript, normally known as a printer language, is capable of running Tetris in a PostScript interpreter. You can even play chess directly against a printer.
🦄 Unicode's Transliteration Rules Are Turing-Complete (July 2026)
Just three lines of Unicode transliteration rules (UTS #35) can compute Collatz on stock ICU—which ships natively with every major OS. Also included: Rule 110 and a prime number generator.
⚙️ Jira is Turing-Complete (May 2026)
The proof that Jira's automation rules and workflows can simulate a full Turing machine, turning the enterprise ticketing system into an accidental programming environment.
🔊 An AWKward Modem in Paged Out! #8 (February 2026)
Generate audio files containing data encoded as Bell 103 modem tones with 5 lines of AWK, enabling stealthy air-gapped data exfiltration from restricted Unix systems.
💣 Parsing JSON is a Minefield (2016–2018)
Despite its apparent simplicity, JSON parsing is full of ambiguities and edge cases where major parsers disagree, creating real security and interoperability risks.
Contact: nicolas at seriot dot ch.