O glob.

Hello :D!

Its been a week again, I hope your all well. Im TIRED, but good, as per usual.

We did the project I was raving about (kinda) and it was a mess, and ill tell you all about it in a bit, but I have to mention something first.

Michelle. MICHELLE WAS FROM THIS ALBUM ?????? ? ?? ? ?

WHAT.

I never fucking knew.

Thing is, I realized after listening to it on the last track and checked it out in the album, and yeah, its easily the most listened to of the tracks on the album, but all im wondering is HOW DID I NOT SEE THAT THE FIRST TIME I OPENED IT X).

O well. It was a nice suprise, to say the least.

So yea, I just finished giving the album ‘Party Favors’ a listen, and it was awesome. I just played some Isaac while listening to it, and the somber mood of basically ALL of the songs fit right in.

Especially playing tainted lost, what the hell was I thinking :’).

Also got WLFGIRL like I alluded to last post, and it was great. There were already a couple of songs I’d listened to, like the krystle remix, but the later tracks that I handnt listened to yet were also fucking AWESOME.

After listening to them all, Its easily my favorite of the 3 albums. The other two go hard on just straight digital hardcore, while wlfgrl has a lot more jungle and breakbeat elements, which I DIE for.

The moment I put it on I already knew by krystle it would be a favorite of mine, even having listened to some of the tracks on occasion, but the WHOLE THING, yes the WHOLE ALBUM, was so sick, start to finish. I fucking adore it <3.

In general, and I know ive said this before but ill say it again, listening to albums from start to finish is a really good time. Honestly I wish i’d started sooner, cuz damn. I dunno what took me so long.

ANYWAYS, NOW, let’s talk about the project >:). Let me break it down for you, and how it kinda obliterated my week.

The first day, monday, was just a day to get things started. Learn about the project, meet groupmates, etc.

In theory it should have been chill as hell, but honestly it was a hell of a mess, since the group wanted to start IMMEDIATELY. I cant blame them, I would have loved to get it done soon too, by friday, but damn was that early and damn was I not prepared.

We threw around ideas, and decided on hide and seek.

Oh yeah, I should mention what the project is on before I get into what we chose :0.

We were given 7 small microbits, little pieces of junk with a bunch of sensors and a little display (as shown above).

We were also given two kritonik boards, little boards with a little OLED display and some more sensors, but rather than an accelerometer, microphone and antenna, the boards have sensors for detecting temperature, carbon dioxide and humidity, and air quality.

I even managed to take some room statistics with them.

Apparently my IAQ is only 70% ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

This is all really cool and all, I got to test it out the 2nd day and all (which we’ll get to) but what exactly IS the project again?

Anything, supposedly.

They wanted us to figure out a project that used radio between several microbits for communication, and that sent data to the computer via serial port using a connected microchip, the designated ‘server’.

But other than that, do whatever you like :0!

And so, first day of, we chose hide and seek, and tasked everyone with finishing all 5 of the documented practice tasks that day, and reporting back the next day with the knowlesge.

Of course, spoilers, nobody did that :p.

I got back home that day intending to do it, but got sidetracked. I’d been talking with my sister about fashion, and it got me curious to go to a thrift store, not just for secondhand clothes, but also because I’d never bothered to go.

I figured that day was low risk, and even if it wasnt that I could make up for it later, and after our meeting I went to two seperate thrift stores, pretty far apart (like 40 minutes).

I walked A LOT on monday, but it was worth it honestly.

The first store was full of a lot of goodies. A bit run down, but full of life and very home-like, it had the warm scent of wet wood, and a number of middle aged and elderly men and women.

The stuff ranged from plates and glass trinkets, to keyboards, a slightly busted up guitar, a WALKMAN, and some clothes.

I was tempted to buy the walkman but ultimately held off on it, since it was labeled as untested.

The second was more of the same, a charity organisation selling all sorts of goods, but with way less tech and way more household goods, especially cleaning. Couldnt find anything as interesting there though

All in all, although im not exactly putting any of my sister’s fashion tips on full display, it was a good visit to get a feel for what was available. I liked looking around, and there were honestly a lot of cool stuff, but maybe i’ll come around and buy them next time. So far, I think it’d be nice to buy a CD or a book from a thrift store and just explore whatever it is I get. but I havent found anything thats caught my eye. We’ll continue to see I guess.

So after visiting the second store, I headed back home at around 5 pm, tired as hell from having woken up so early. I showered and had my dinner, though I honestly dont remember EXACTLY what I did afterwards, though I know it was along the lines of just chilling, cuz I was tired from the journey.

By 7, I decided to call it a day and wake up early to work on the microbit.

And for whatever reason, this ON ITS OWN was the BIGGEST MISTAKE I MADE ALL WEEK :’D.

I woke up at 10 pm, not even 3 hours later, and I couldnt sleep for the life of me.

I DONT KNOW WHY.

Its not even a matter of not trying, let me be clear, whenever I say that I cant fall asleep I always take 30 – 60 minutes to try, so I promise you its NOT FOR A LACK OF TRYING MY BODY DIDNT LET ME.

I decided to suck it up and get to studying though, couldnt really let the time go to waste. Had a coffee and got going, especially given tomorrows meeting was early anyways (10:30 am).

Thats when I got the measurements done, as well as learning how to use the radio between microbits and ports to the PC.

It was pretty fun, and I even got to mess around with a hide and seek configuration between the PC and microbit. You shake the microbit to choose the displayed hand, and pick one on PC.

Still, this was task 2 OF 5, so, not even close.

I spent a lot of time in between listening to music and just chilling too, so by the time i’d gotten that far it was already around 9 am, about time to get ready and take a bus to the meeting. So I called it off for the day.

The meeting was pretty nice, we, as in the group, messed around with a beeping system for the microchips, while I was stuck getting the INTERNET SETUP, eduroam, to work on asahi.

(the uni didnt give detailed enough instructions but I found out how online the next day :v)

By the end of the meeting, we’d had a working hider and seeker, but made in one file. Basically, you’d click one of the two microbit buttons and choose between the two, which wasnt what we were going for but was made to test it.

(AKA, we’re throwing shit at the wall)

I felt that we were rushing things a bit, since it was day two of what is technically a two week project (its due this friday when we show it off), but given I wasnt helping cuz of the internet, I wasnt of much help in constructing a plan anyways.

Honestly, it felt pretty shitty, just cuz I didnt want to be the slacker of the group :’).

Given that, once the meeting was over, I took two microbits instead of one (borrowed one from a groupmate) and decided to lock in when I got home.

And YOU KNOW WHAT? I DID IT >:), IN FACT, I KILLED IT.

I genuinely dont know what came over me, since we had a while 3 days till our next meeting (friday, since a groupmate lived far away and wouldnt be around till the next day), but the day after the meeting on wednesday, I got the WHOLE system running between hider, seeker and server.

Obviously with cracks and all, but like, YOU COULD PLAY HIDE AND SEEK BETWEEN SEVERAL MICROBITS. THE SEEKER COULD EVEN CYCLE BETWEEN HIDERS PROPERLY

I DID IT, IN A DAY.

The 3 files, the radio signals, kill signals, ALL THAT SHIT.

It felt pretty good to pull that much weight after what felt like so much slacking off.

Basically, how it works is that each hider sends out a radio signal with it’s role (hider), its ID and live status (alive or not). Originally this wouldve been without the seeker ID, but I put it in later to help with seekers sending stuff to the server (so for hider the seeker ID would be 0, and for seekers itd be the other way around, but occasionally you’d need to send both).

The hiders keep sending that signal till their dead, and the seekers beep according to the system my groupmates made. If the seeker wants, they can also send a kill signal, which the server picks up and then sends to the hider itself, since the hider would only ever listen to the server and not the seeker for if it died.

This is for a number of reasons, main one being its cool and good for the project, BUT it does have a lot of real world implications too >:).

By modern standards, games are mediated by servers to stop cheaters from moving their postitions or doing other ridiculous stuff in game via a check. Basically, nobody can run 5000 steps a second, so the server could check the movement in a set time to determine cheaters, and all other sorts of stuff it might need to check.

(Very simple example of course, but you get the picture)

Since we have a server though, even if it was meant for data to be sent to the pc, it was practically a match made in heaven given the idea we landed on, right?

Also, even just mentioning this would look amazing in the presentation ;).

So I coded that in of course.

It was A LOT, and so on thurday I didnt even really bother working on the project, since it was meant for everyone to tweak anyways and it was more than enough before the friday meeting.

That day, we nearly finished everything, though the graphing of the data still isnt done yet. That’ll need to be done by friday of course, but I’ve been taking the weekend off since friday since, alongside working on that, we also implemented the distance limit for seekers (seeker can only kill when close) and a bunch of other small tweaks, alongside HOURS of trying to get the data from seekers to server on the hider-seeker distance, and getting that to the PC.

(for some reason, the print function worked but not the uart.write function given in the university documentation???? Dont even ask me why)

And yea, that’s about all of the project so far.

Like I mentioned earlier, it did fuck with me quite a bit, especially at the beginning, both sleep wise and given the work I hadn’t done (I was SO SLEEPY after the project on tuesday my goodness gracious) but I took thursday off so I got time to recover, so alls well that end well, mostly, better not celebrate till the graphing system is seamless to be honest (;n_n).

There is one thing worth noting that I havent mentioned about the project though, and this is something that I’d sat on in general after finishing up the hider/seeker/server system on wednesday, and that was the feedback.

Normally while coding, though you do get a terminal to output your results, the actual stimuli you take in from finishing lines of code is quite dull. It can sometimes get a bit tedious just bug fixing lines, for hours and hours.

But while working on the microbit on monday and wednesday, I got to test my code in a very REAL way. Everytime I implemented something, whether it be something as simple as showing stuff when I clicked the buttons, or using the given rock paper scissors code and modifying it for PC to microbit gameplay, something about holding a peice of tech in my hand that I could hear, press and even SHAKE to use my code was extremely invigorating.

Especially with wednesday, I was so tired, and only working with two microbits (which meant I had to wait to test the hider, seeker AND server at the meeting, but after modifying the kill switch for just the hider and seeker, and fixing some bugs, I got to kill the hider in real time.

Click of a button, and boom, it’s kaputz.

That, and just hearing the beeps everytime I booted up the seeker microbit, the result of the work on the project, MY code, gave me such an unimaginable sense of fullness, that it kept me going till I finished like half of the project THAT DAY, several hours later.

IM STILL SHOCKED BY THAT :0.

It’s got me thinking, about the feedback loops I give myself in code and in goals in general. I never realized how much it meant to a project to see even a fraction of it succeed, for any amount of validation from the work itself that YES, your on the right path, that there’s TANGIBLE benefit AND enjoyment to come from a project.

I’d guess that there ought to be more small wins in my future projects. I think so, and i’ll keep it in mind for my next project, whatever it ultimately ends up being.

Anyways, that’s all I have to say about the project itself, though it did remind me of another album I ended up listening to.

PLASTIC BEACH.

Again, empire ents, up on melancholy, rhinestone eyes, ALL already on my playlists and are lovely, I even know all the lore from an old friend :), but listening to it and staring at the starry LED lights was really fun.

I especially like to binge, and I kept playing it afterwards in my bathroom breaks on the friday meeting. Its somber but in a fun way, and I adore 2d and yukimi as a duo in any tack.

I ended played it 3 times that day, each entering the same bathroom and the same stall.

Felt like a goddamn checkpoint and it was hilarious X).

So yeah, good time. I’d say to go listen to it, but you already probably have, and of course if you havent you totally should.

That’s about all I have to say for the week, excluding one little detail. It’s been a fun week, albeit chaotic as hell, and I felt pretty cool listening to music inbetween coding for my microchips. Again, it feels like where im meant to be.

As for that last detail, it was my sister’s birthday recently :).

I wished her a happy birthday of course, but there’s only so much you CAN do across the world, though i’ll probably still get her something (whether I ship it or just send it back with my mom I dunno yet)

I just wanted to talk about that for a moment and what that means for me, cuz obviously it means a lot.

she’s getting older, and everyday, even if we dont agree on a lot of the big things in life, we’re learning a lot from each other. It’s always fun to talk, even if theyre serious topics and all, like religion. We’re quite amicable despite that.

She’s been with me for as long as I can remember, and more than anybody, has seen all of my different iterations too. How I was as a kid, middle school, high school, and now.

Im happy she was there for me, especially in high school, after I’d moved to riyadh. I wasnt doing well back then, and believed in the polar opposite of hundreds of different facets of my life than I do now, and I was more miserable because of it.

But regardless, she saw me through it till the end, and I appreciate that.

So honestly, even though we hated each other for so much of our childhood (both playfully and non playfully), regardless of the time, Im happy to have had her. Its meant a lot that I have someone to bounce off of on ideas and opinions, and just to share moments together when nobody else was around. Watching avatar the last airbender, playing minecraft together, cooking together, all of it.

Even when things were bad. Even when we had to deal with all that we did (and still do) from family, we were there for each other.

I can’t quite imagine who I’d be if she weren’t around, honestly. I like to think I’d believe the same things I believe in now, and I WOULD, but it would have been a nightmare getting here without her.

So thank you. Thank you for being a part of my life, a part of me. Thanks for leaving me better off,

I hope I’ve made things better for you too :).

That’s all for now. I hope you’ve enjoyed the post. See you all next week.