blog
1/25/2025
tags: robotics
On my lunch break at robotics rn, so, Thunderscout update! It’s going pretty well so far! I’ve settled on using flask for the backend, and after some trial and error, I have a database set up!!! Yay yay! ^^ Now all I have to do is make some frontend stuff work and tie it to the backend so that users of the website can submit data to the database. At that point, Thunderscout will be halfway done. The last thing I’m gonna do is cross reference the TBA API with the user input, et voila! A functional Thunderscout! ^^
01/05/2024
tags: job, robotics, other
Yesterday was so all over the place. First of all, I had robotics practice from 10am to 4pm because the new season just started. I’m really excited to start work on reefscape when we finally get our robot in a state to program, but in the meantime I’ve started working on our new scouting software, Thunderscout 2.0! It used to be an app coded by one of our team members in like… 2017, but it was poorly coded so no one knew how to reverse engineer it, and it was made for an outdated version of android. This time, we’re gonna use a website, since internet connectivity has gotten a lot better at competitions (we used to use bluetooth to connect... ew). Anyways, very excited to start working on this since I looove webdev and have been itching to start an actually useful project instead of just screwing around in codepen.
Anyways right after robotics ended my mom drove me to work for this holiday party we were having. I was working on my college apps in the passenger seat. Stick around to the end of this blog if you wanna see me freak out about college apps.
Ok so the holiday party was actually kinda nice. All the food was cold, but it was nice to actually be able to talk to my coworkers candidly, instead of just small talk in between helping kids. Also we had cake from this nearby bakery and it was actually to die for omg it was so good.
OK TIME TO PANIC. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA. I was submitting my supplemental submissions for my dream school, and the supplemental portal is called “STEM Portfolio”, which I thought meant I could put multiple things on there as a portfolio. NOPE! As it turns out you submit one(1) thing, and then it gets reviewed by a bunch of professionals. My plan was to submit my USC research as one thing in the portfolio, and this site as another. I only submitted the first one before the portal said “no actually that's all we wanted.” So now I have to decide if this site is professional enough to warrant reaching out to the school to see if I can correct my mistake. I really wanna submit this site since I’ve spent so long working on it. Anyways, if I decide no, I can submit this site as a “personal supplement” which I don’t think carries as much weight as the STEM ones, but IDK. If I decide yes, it can go one of two ways. Either I can change my submission and all is happy and joyous, or I get told “sorry dude best we can do is personal supplement”. Anyways this is the pickle I’m currently in. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.
12/21/2024
tags: other
HELP! Aghhhh! I went to Caltech a few days ago and I literally just found out theres a supplemental submissions portion of the application! AAAAAGHHHH I need to get this site in order IMMEDIATELY! I haven't touched the code for this in months because of college apps and all of a sudden I'm rushing to rewrite all of the descriptions on here so that I look like a professional buisness man instead of the hude nerd I really am. Not gonna rewrite the blogs obvs, so uhhh if you're a college admissions officer reading this, uhh first of all, hi, and second of all, if it wasn't evident by the fact that I'm going into comp sci, I am a huge nerd. Third of all you should watch the 1981 Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy show. It's really good.
10/19/2024
tags: robotics, other
Breaking news: local man visits Ventura for Tidal Tumble. Yesterday was my birthday(yippie!) so I didn’t end up going up for opening and practice yesterday, but me and my dad took the train up to Ventura today so I could see the team's runs. Plus we got breakfast in Ventura which was really neat. As the world's biggest breakfast sandwich fan, I must say that the sandwich I got certainly was a 9/10 or higher.
Anyways robotics. We got absolutely wrecked round one. Someone slammed into our robot during the match and it disconnected the robot’s radio, so we literally couldn't do anything. Our alliance lost. Womp womp. The team who’s robot did it came up to the pit afterward and apologized so no harm no foul I guess. Second round we totally pwned the opposing alliance though. There was a lot of strategizing with the teams beforehand, and it paid off. Huge W for the robot community fr fr.
Anyway I’m on the train home writing this and I must have dropped my iPod at some point during the day because there’s dead pixels on the screen. I gotta replace the screen I guess. Truly tragic.
10/16/2024
tags: robotics
Two more days until Tidal Tumble! We're packing up tonight so we're ready to head out on Friday, but we barely finished coding D:. Luckily we got all the controller code working, so even if we completely flip the autonomous bit, human drivers can take over. But we barely got the autonomous code working today, so I'm pretty worried that not having enough testing to be reliable. -3-
10/06/2024
tags: robotics
Robot update! We got the new hub connected and running, so our new robot is really close to being finished. The wires on the motors ended up being too short though :( so me and this kid James had to solder extensions on the wire so they could reach the hub :P We had masks on, but I could still definitely smell the solder fumes and by the time I was done I felt a bit headachey so needless to say I might have severe brain damage.
10/03/2024
tags: job, other
Had an interesting day at work today. We had a special event going on because of the day off, so a bunch of kids came in for activities unrelated to the usual curriculum. I thought it was pretty cool that we got to show them programming principles in one big class so everybody could work together on one thing and we were all on the same page. Plus the kids weren't as rowdy and loud as the usual "special event" crowds are, which was nice. I always get nervous managing special events since screaming children are loud (obviously) and it becomes really overstimulating, which becomes a problem when my job requires me to not wear headphones. But all the kids were chill today, we just kinda hung out and I got to teach them how to make video games and program micro:bits. Swag.
Unrelated tangent, but I tried Prime for the first time today. Picked it up at the Dollar Tree during my break, along with some candy. The candy was kinda gross ngl, so I was like "well damn, at least I have this drink to wash it down with." Boy was I wrong. It was so sweet. Good lord. Neil's official Ice Pop flavored Prime review: 2/10. Not unbearably bad, but I would steer clear of it. If I was at a party and Ice Pop Prime was the only option for beverage, I think I would just wait till I got home for a nice glass of water.
Ok Prime rant over. I saw flyers for my HTML/CSS workshops at the YMCA today! I was walking so I could get a few miles in on the treadmill and I look at the front desk and there it is! :D Very cool. I'm very excited to do this cuz I think it's really important for people to know that social media isn't the only way that you can interract with the internet, and it's entirely possible to just trailblaze and make the net what you want it to be! That's actually why I made this website in the first place. The "HTML" and "CSS" pages are just basic lists of tags and commands that might be useful for anyone starting out.
I don't know what to say to nicely conclude this blog. Uhhhh. Peace out. 
10/02/2024
tags: robotics
Second day of officially being on the team(finally got my papers turned in), and I've already got some code up and running! Last Saturday, our robot couldn't even turn since all of it's wheels were out of alignment, and it couldn't tell forwards from back. Today, the programming team managed to actually fix BOTH issues! Woo!! Now we'll be able to properly implement the new Kraken motors we got for the upcoming competition! :D Will post a video of the robot having fun and running around when I get the motivation to properly format images and videos on this page :P