First Quarter Round Up

Dear blog,
I'm sorry I've neglected you for so long. Look, I brought you flowers! Okay, I lied about the flowers. In truth it's been a really busy quarter. I restarted school, with some small success, fenced, did the climbing thing I usually do, and rediscovered my incredible need for caffeine. Sweet, sweet caffeine. Actually, it's often bitter, but whatever.

I managed to pass my first quarter reasonably well, so that bodes well for the coming year. I'm enrolled in a thesis program, so I'll be in this for two years. I'm doing a lot of coding, mostly MATLAB, and a lot of linear algebra, which is pretty standard I think.

So, let's review what worked and what didn't. Because nothing makes for a great blog like endless self-examination, right?

What worked: Studying with other people.
Okay, this is a no-brainer for most people, I understand. But I didn't really study with anyone in undergrad. Well, no engineers. It's hard to discuss structural engineering with political scientists and linguists, much as I probably wasn't a great sounding board for them. So studying with other engineers has been pretty helpful, especially near midterms and finals, as we could hole up in an office somewhere and review stuff for hours on end, clarifying small points for one another that we had missed somewhere. I felt like an actual grad-student!

What didn't work very well: Note-taking.
I had a couple professors this past quarter who did a lot of boardwork during lectures, illustrating everything and writing out all the equations, which made it pretty easy to take notes. I had another professor who basically projected the text on the screen and then pointed at the equations in question and discussed them at length. This didn't work very well for me, as I had a hard time figuring out what to write down and organizing what he was saying as he was saying it. So I identified this problem really early on, but failed to adapt and find another solution, and I think I took a hit as a result. I'm contemplating using a voice recorder next quarter in the eventuality that I can't take notes that work for me during the lecture alone.

My other note taking habit is to copy over my notes to a fresh notebook shortly after the original lecture so that I have a neater, more clear set of notes, and so I can correct any mistakes I made while transcribing them the first time. Overall, it really helped, so I'll be doing it again next quarter!

What also worked: The UCSD shuttle system!
I made extensive use of the UCSD shuttle program, hopping the bus from the graduate student housing most days of the week, and taking the Hillcrest shuttle the other days. At some point I'll probably figure out some manner of cost-benefit analysis of this whole thing, but that'll have to wait until I'm gathering actual data, and have time to do it. So expect it by, say, the time I graduate? Maybe?

Anyhoo, this is a pretty media free post, so here's a video of something my lab is working on!



More posts soon, I promise this time! Please do not go back and read the archives, where I have promised similar things and then not delivered on it.

Moving on, moving on

I'm about to embark on a new adventure! The grand adventure of grad school! I'll be working on a master's degree in aerospace engineering at my alma mater, UCSD, hopefully on the thesis track. I just stopped by the lab of my advisor, Professor Tom Bewley, and it looks like a really cool place, got to meet a bunch of people, see some cool robots. Check out the Switchblade!



I'm starting to get really excited about this transition. The prospect of not having income is still a bit distressing, but I'm sure I'll adapt in short order, perhaps get a part time job. The idea of working on something challenging and interesting is tantalizing, and to get into a different culture is also appealing. I'm not wholly certain that my current place of employment is a good fit for me. There's a focus on adherence to rules rather than performance, and I've increasingly felt that I have to censor myself in more ways than I think are really necessary for a workplace. It's likely that this is true of any work-environment, but I'll have to wait for my next one to see. My thoughts in this vein are pretty well summed up by one of my favorite XKCD strips ever. It's time to break my routine and set up a new one, and I can't wait.

Robot Madness!

I figured that I'd get my white whale and finish with this robot contraption I've been focusing on lately. So, I rewired the robot, put it all back together with a hot glue gun, attached the 'antennae' and look at how pretty it is!


And so, I fired it off and let it go for a couple of turns.



And, lo and behold, it broke.


Part of why it's only pseudo functional is because the parts (the switches on top) were kind of junked, so I decided to just scrap the project. Still, it's been a bundle of fun, and hopefully only the first of many robots. Hopefully the next one will be more successful.

Robot . . . The Revenge

I'd make a big long post here, but all I did was re-superglue some stuff and solder it together properly. It still needs some work, but this video is pretty funny, so here it is!


Cheers!

A robot with no name . . .

So, by popular demand (from all two of you. And, okay, one of them was me), this week I did a robot, and in doing so, discovered several special things. One, soldering is harder than I remember. Two, when following instructions, it helps to get all of the proper parts. So I set up my little laboratory, and got to work.


So, following the tutorial, I ran into a few problems. One, I had the wrong battery casing. Well, that was about the entirety of the problem, as I could solder to it, or affix the motors to it, so I wound up creating a horrible monstrosity by comparison. Oh, and it also didn't work.

And in short order, with a few changes, I completed the basic model.


Then I tried to plug in the batteries, and it broke.


At this point, I figured out that I couldn't actually glue the motors on (as there wasn't enough surface area for the glue to make a strong bond), so I slept on it and figured out that I could glue on some balsa wood to make a larger surface to glue to. And thus was born this monstrosity!


And it kind of worked! It spun in circles! So I think all I have to do to make it actually functional is reverse the wires on one of the motors. But, naturally, it broke. And, in attempting to fix it, it broke even more. So I'm calling this one a bust for the time being and moving onto other things. Again, I will return! And perhaps fail less.