Day 4

I don’t have much time to write today. The subtitle pretty much says it all. The past couple of days have been catching up with me. I don’t know if it is the mental or physical activity that is absolutely draining me. By the time I get home, I’m ready to melt into the couch. I don’t think my body is used to the amount of cardio I’ve been doing. It was a piece of cake to commute the first day. But every subsequent day my quads have been begging for mercy trying to bike these hills. I could use a bit more sleep so this is why today’s post is shorter than usual.

I started my first work project, which is to design a protective cover for the robot thrusters so thin, silky seaweed doesn’t clog and burn out the motors. In the next few days I’ll probably work with my first test rig and benchmark the thrust put out by the motors. On a related task, I found that I could probably increase the thrust by 30-40% just by raising an artificial limit set in the code.

I setup my own little task manager for myself because I find that I need a little more structure than is typically expected with project management tools. I tend to micro-manage myself at times, but it helps me avoid forgetting what I worked on. I am a big fan of Obsidian which is like a personal knowledge base. I came across the “tasks” plugin which basically allows me to create tasks for myself written anywhere inside my workspace, and then the plugin aggregates it all with due dates in a single area to view. I’ll update this post with a screenshot to explain what I mean.

I need to start thinking about what I’m doing this weekend. I haven’t made any plans. It would be a shame if I stayed inside the whole time despite being so close to lots of great hikes. Hopefully I’m feeling a little less exhausted tomorrow. I have been meaning to go visit the San Francisco library and pickup some reading material. And also I am living very close by to Noisebridge, which is one of the first makerspaces to have ever existed in the country! I haven’t been able to work on my own little projects much. It feels sort of demoralizing and tiring to work on my own projects after work. It seems really unappealing to me to spend 70% of my day doing engineering-y things and then to go home and bend my brain to do even more engineering. Maybe I just need some sleep and I won’t feel so gloomy lol.