day 19: well, i have insomnia apparently so there’s that

alright i’m too lazy to type it like it’s all a big quest.

sailing / pfd

yesterday was what is likely my last sail of the season. feel really fortunate to have been on the water so much this year. probably 30-40 hours.

actually set up my pfd (personal flotation device), came with co2 cartridge that i never inserted. sailed so little after i got it that wasn’t worth it for years. it was literally just depress yellow lever thing on the bottom, slide in cartridge, press down hard against springs, and rotate. Helped a lot to look at the mechanism the cartridge slid into first.

bike

fixed my other mode of transport, my bike, which somehow i have continual issues with. i forgot i have hydraulic brakes so actually fixing the brakes should hopefully be adding some oil. on normal brakes, this feeling would be the pads wearing out or the cable somehow getting completely loose or something bizarre. though of concern is why there is so little oil. learned that my bike does have “oversized” brakes for the size of wheel it has, which is good given that this is 50lb-heavy ebike not bike.

typst

side note: typst is amazing! finally, a latex replacement. sorry overleaf

i am using it to transcribe lecture notes for https://web.mit.edu/6.7920/www/schedule.html

the equations! you don’t have to type \frac{a}{b}, just type a/b. bolding! no \textbf(hello) world, just *hello* world. the compile errors actually are concise and easy-to-understand.

you can even just use unicode directly in the editor, though I don’t show it below since i find it easier to search for “lambda” than λ.

makes me want to learn rust to work with these people…

meche roots

have a pure mechanical engineering interview coming up. feel a bit bizarre about that. i guess i can keep learning software engineering during my side projects?

reverse engineering

talked quite a bit to my friend about projects to do. (is it better to err on side of naming or not-naming people?). i mentioned how i wanted a portfolio project without feeling like i was working on a portfolio project. he brought up the good point of reverse engineering existing products as a way to learn good engineering ! and then try to improve on them.

then he gave me a shimano step ebike motor heh. my place is finally set up enough, with the workbench clear finally, to feel motivated to work on projects. just in time for my interview where hopefully i can explain how this ebike motor works.

i guess that is how i could have improved my coding skills also: reverse engineering existing good software. it feels different though. i don’t really have anyone to talk to about that sort of stuff except at a high level. i guess that was the nice part about miters and the meche ee sphere, there were just objects to stare at together on a bench.

thesis -> publication

have made no progress turning my thesis into a paper. hopefully that will change as sailing drops off (rip) and the lecture notes end (there’s only one month of them). anxious that i will be anxious once i stop having so much work to do.

lecture notes / keeping busy during funemployment

here is why i think the lecture note task has been a great complement to the job application process (which feels a bit like tossing my work into the wind):

• on my own, my side projects are just quirky quick projects that i am not motivated to polish vs. move on to the next idea
  • not projects that scream professionalism, just quirkiness
• but if the project is helpful to someone else, i am motivated to polish it
• it’s immediately useful to others
  • vs. job apps where you can potentially throw infinite work in to no end. my friend said at this point she turns in grant applications and immediately forgets about them until she hears back, then just builds on it for the next application
• there’s a deadline, which prevents me from just thinking about the best way to do it
• there’s a time limit after which it stops being so useful
  • forcing me to focus on getting the core done (a minimum viable product) instead of polishing small sections to perfection
  • then i can go back and polish bits of it

(although it’s dozens of hours of volunteer work, and part of me does think, wow it’s an unfair advantage to (profs here) that there are people willing to just do this stuff for free lol, but the other part of me is like, we went over this, if you turn everything into a societal systems problem you will lose yourself as an object of concern, you decided to give yourself permission to just think about yourself and be happy instead)

the end, mostly because i am tired of staring at this screen.