blog
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 COVID 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, 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 upcominc 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