Update for 8/6/2017

Posted on August 7, 2017 by Andy
  • Updates – Starting with this post I’m going to consider these updates as covering Sunday through Saturday (the day before the update) rather than Monday through Sunday (the day of the update), which should help me finish them a little earlier, since I’m not giving myself more to write about on the day the post is (technically) due.
  • Sleep – My sleep schedule deteriorated a bit last week, so this week I’ll watch myself more closely. Now’s not the time to let go of the rope of progress!
  • Project generator – Last week was mostly taken up by other things, but I inched a little further toward the first release. I thought I was ready to document, but I’ve gotten sidetracked trying to get the tests to pass on Node.js 4, because I guess we still care about that version. It’s good to learn all this though, because I’m planning to use Node.js and specifically Electron for most of my future desktop projects so I can focus on web technologies rather than learning a different set for each platform (desktop, web, and mobile). The generator project will probably stay slow for a while longer because I want to work on some apartment housekeeping, which I’ll explain below.
  • Beliefs report – I also inched along on the spirituality report, but I’ve been thinking about it a fair amount. I’ll write a little more on the overall framework this week and then post what I have so far.
  • Eclipse – In a couple of weeks my brother and I are traveling to visit our sister, who lives basically in the path of the solar eclipse that will be happening on the 21st, so if the weather cooperates, we’ll be watching that. My brother kindly ordered eclipse-watching glasses for us so we can continue using our eyes afterward. I’m planning to drive there, but I haven’t decided if I’m going to take my own old car or rent one for peace of mind.
  • Camera – Thinking about the eclipse led me to the idea of filming it, which for me these days suggests a 3D panorama, which reminded me that while the Google Cardboard Camera app is a nice first step, it has some glaring limitations that I’ve been looking forward to escaping, and so I decided now would be a good time to take my next step toward VR by buying a 360-degree camera. After a couple of days of research, since there are only a few of these cameras, I settled on the Ricoh Theta S, thanks to this tie-breaking review video. I might not end up filming the eclipse, if we don’t get to watch or it seems too distracting or my siblings don’t want to be filmed, but fortunately I’m not the first person to have this idea, and YouTube has several 360-degree solar eclipse videos, such as this Indonesian beach party and this surreal Norwegian landscape. But the eclipse was only an instigator, and the more I think about this camera, the more photo and video ideas I get–photographing places to take with me and hang out in at home, gathering hard-to-reach info by poking the camera behind appliances, filming an interesting drive so I can put off the distractions till later, plus some image processing experiments I might do once I know more math.
  • Housekeeping – In the past couple of weeks I’ve been reorganizing my apartment a little to make it easier to clean up, so I’ve been thinking of making housekeeping my next project after the project generator, and the 360-degree camera has given me some extra motivation to make the place more presentable, because I’d like to take some photos and videos around the apartment, such as to get decorating advice. Sometimes to get things done, you just need a big enough reason.
  • Podcasts – I’ve been expanding my futurism playlist to include podcasts on a few other large-scale topics that are relevant to my picture of the future, such as biotech, energy, and international development. Partly this is to get in touch with the problems I want AI to help us with, and partly it’s to keep track of where the world seems to be headed, whether it’s closer to a future I want or farther from it. Trying out all these podcasts is straining the usability of my podcast app (Downcast), so I’m experimenting with other ways to manage my listening, such as trying out Overcast and Pocket Casts. On a related note, I’ve decided to pick up Escape Pod and PodCastle again, plus Cast of Wonders, starting with the current episodes, rather than trying to catch up on the past few years first, since that plan wasn’t happening and I’ve noticed that stories from those podcasts sometimes stick in my mind and shape the way I see the world, so I don’t want to neglect them forever.
  • Work – I have a pretty hefty workload of ebooks to make this summer, most of them due on the same day in mid-September, and it was not made any lighter by the discovery that I have a very complicated one coming up that’s also due on that date, so I’ve rolled up my sleeves and scheduled my work so I get everything else done two weeks earlier, which gives me a month to make 17 ebooks–slightly faster than my usual pace. I’ve grouped the steps of my procedure so I can work on all 17 in parallel to conserve my mental task switching time, and I’ve given myself a rough deadline for each group of steps, and so far it’s working out well.
  • Nostalgia box – I’ve been severely distracted from this project for the past few months, but I had some thoughts the other day on how I want to proceed with it. First, I’m not going to worry about the folders I haven’t gotten around to opening, since they’ll still be there waiting for me next year, and I won’t even worry about the folders I didn’t get around to refilling, because I have some books from my childhood I can revisit for those months. And second, in addition to my earlier idea of simplify my creations so I can get them done quickly, I might take Jeremy’s advice and split up a single project across months, except that instead of immediately moving the project from one folder to the next as I add onto its parts, I’d try to make each component complete in itself so the next year I’ll have something to appreciate when I open that month’s folder, and then as I encounter the rest of the components in the following months, I’ll combine them.
This entry was posted in 360-degree camera, Beliefs report, Blog, Coding project generator, Housekeeping, Nostalgia box, Podcasts, Sleep, Solar eclipse, Travel, Weeknotes, Work. Bookmark the permalink.

6 Responses to Update for 8/6/2017

  1. Linda W. says:
    August 7, 2017 at 7:56 am

    Someone else I know is traveling to watch the eclipse.

    Reply
  2. Grace Culbertson says:
    August 7, 2017 at 1:47 pm

    Rent a car for your mother’s peace of mind!

    Reply
  3. Bas says:
    August 7, 2017 at 1:47 pm

    With the eclipse, you want to watch for “shadow bands”. I didn’t know they existed until I watched this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qc7MfcKF1-s . If you’re going there, you will also want to watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmg01KYfjc0 (although with a 360° camera some of the advice may not apply to you, but you may bring an extra camera). And if you have time, perhaps this too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twhZPxYVOe4 .

    I would have loved to go see it myself, but it’s a bit too far for me. 😉

    Reply

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