M431K3

Haven't been online in a while. Been busy with finishing my last few courses. I got a 5.7 (the grading system here is on a scale of 1-10) on the android app project, and a 6.5 on the combined industrial automation thing, both of which I was super upset about. I tried my best to get at least an 8 on all courses, but I failed. I've always had the feeling that I could do better, but I just don't know where it all goes wrong. I usually blame a lack of motivation, and even though the symptoms point towards it, I don't want to play the "executive dysfunction card" yet. My peers wouldn't take it seriously anyway.

Also started my internship and bachelor thesis project a couple weeks ago. I have absolutely no idea what to do or where to start. So far I've performed a few tests, figured out the tests weren't necessary or useful, asked colleagues about things I feel I should already know, and emailed a few of their suppliers about a certain type of electrical component they produce. On top of that, I got covid since last weekend, and I've had to spend an entire week in isolation. And I only have 20 weeks. At least it pays well.

Haven't had much time for personal projects. The Fujitsu computer is still giving me problems, I can't be assed to fix my 3D-printer again (prints won't stick to the bed), and I barely have any tools or equipment in my student dorm. computer parts are cheaper but still expensive, so I haven't built a replacement for Clutterbox yet.

I created an account on another social network, Pixelfed. I quickly ran into the same problem I faced with Dreamwidth and Friendproject: there are barely any active users, and no large communities relating to my interests. Even really generic search queries like "design" or "photography" came up with only a few thousand results. I'd prefer not having to create an instagram account, with how Meta treats user data, but I still want to discover new things and people around the world.

I'm going back to work next monday. I have to perform a few tests regarding leakage current at different temperatures, then maybe do another high-current test. Shouldn't spend too much time on the research phase anymore.

Winter break went by uneventfully. Was planning to spend some extra days at college, but the classrooms with the materials I need are locked, and the only classmate who has a keycard to open them was there only on tuesday. Didn't get much done.

Dyed my hair on thursday, fiery red. Couldn't really find the darker shade of red I was looking for at the drugstore. I'm done with Manic Panic and similar brands, the colors are nice but the dyes stain everywhere. The red hair dye turned out brighter than I expected, but I kind of like it. It doesn't cover the ends of my hair well, though, probably because of the blue and dark brown hair dye underneath. Not sure if I should do a black dip-dye to cover it up.

Finally fixed the problem I had with my android app! No idea what it was, though. Right before the autumn break, I asked a professor to help me, and he wrote a program to calculate the checksum. I thought I had tried implementing that code in my own program before, without success, but it works now. It did raise a brand new problem: since the program the professor wrote is based on strings, and mine is based on byte arrays, I have to convert everything to the correct datatypes, which isn't always as easy as it seems. I have until next monday to work on it.

Also started a hobby project: coding a website, mostly with HTML and CSS. I found a really cool retrowave grid animation thingy online, but for some reason, all other divs would not place themselves under the animation, but right on top of it. Tried to make it easier for myself by simply removing the animation and putting a picture in place. How hard could that be? Well, the divs do place themselves under the picture div now, but I can't scroll down to see them.

Ordered a new swimsuit from Disturbia right before new years. Shipping hadn't updated for a week, and I haven't received a confirmation email yet. I've emailed them three times now, but they won't respond. Bought a pair of pants on a second hand website, was kind of anxious to see if they would fit since my legs are usually a bit too thick for normal women's pants. They arrived yesterday, and luckily, it was a men's size, so they fit perfectly! And they were cheap, too. The more I buy second hand, the more I dislike buying things new, especially clothes. Maybe I'll splurge a bit when I get my first paycheck at my new internship.

Please. I'm almost there.

Finally, after at least three months of learning at least four and a half completely new programming languages, running into errors that plagued me for weeks, blood, sweat, tears, gallons of tea, strings of profanity so dire they'd make my grandma turn in her grave, I can say that two of the six projects I had this semester are (almost) finished. And the result isn't too bad either.

My teammate and I demonstrated our Embedded Systems project to the professor on wednesday. We'd been working all day to fix the last small things (that weren't actually that small) and I was confident that my part, a GUI app written in C# (custom buttons and title bars, using a USB protocol that no other project group used, the whole shebang) would earn us some bonus points, which it did. Though, I don't consider a desktop app an "embedded system", you could argue that it interacts with one. At the end, the professor asked us "if you had 100 points to divide between the two of you, how would you divide them?". 60/40, I said, 60 for my teammate and 40 for me, since he did most of the actual embedded systems-related work. Made sense to me. Instead, both my teammate and the professor said 50/50, because we both put a lot of effort in it, learned new things, and ended up with good results. The professor even said that I should be more confident in my skills. I just don't classify a desktop app as "embedded", is that hard to understand?

The Labview project is coming along nicely, the web client is as good as finished, the Labview VI itself has a timing issue where it kept invoking an event, even when it was technically not triggered. I hope I can fix the issue before winter break starts.

Most other projects are a nightmare at the moment, so I'm looking forward to having more time to spend on them. I haven't looked at my industrial automation project for two weeks now. Oops.

At least I found a nice Lip Service jacket on a second hand website. I kind of want to overhaul my entire wardrobe, throw out t-shirts I never wear anymore, and adopt a slightly different style. At the same time, I know myself good enough by now, I'll probably keep wearing simple black jeans and t-shirts all my life.

Update: the android app still doesn't work. Every time I implement something new, I have to learn a whole new set of classes. What the hell are classes, objects and instances anyway? Wish I could do this in C or something.

At least I'm making progress on my industrial automation project. Part of it concerns a machine vision application. Was given a license for Halcon with its somewhat user-unfriendly interface, tried to do it in OpenCV instead, got in a heated discussion with Visual Studio when I tried to install the libraries, went back to Halcon, remembered that the project had a bunch of requirements I never even looked at, heard that a classmate had figured out how to meet one of the requirements perfectly in Halcon.
The requirement? We have to use the OPC-UA protocol for transferring data. A PLCNext (like a PLC, but worse) acts as an OPC-UA server, so any external system should be a client. Luckily, Halcon has operators (functions or methods) to connect to an OPC-UA server. It worked in the end, but only if I turned off user authentication (removed all passwords and safety measures) on the PLC. So much for cybersecurity.

My webpage works! Kind of.

I've been working on a project where I have to make a webserver communicate with an external system and a web client. I've written a Labview program that controls a function generator and an oscilloscope, and sends their parameter values to my web server through HTTP-requests, where it is parsed and added to a SQL database. The web client does the same, through an AJAX-request. Both systems should also periodically pull data from the database to keep data up-to-date. This way, the measurement instruments can be controlled from both clients. Not sure how this could be useful in any way, but at least I met the requirements for the project.

I'm not sure if I should leave it at that, or add more functionalities, such as a login page with new account creation, or a graph where the scope image is displayed. My CSS could use some work too. However, I have six projects in total this semester, and at least this one and an embedded systems project with a PSoC5 are almost finished, but the others still have a lot of work to do.

The webpage project did spark an idea: get my own domain name (uni provided us with this dmonain name and server specially for this project), and use it as an online resume, with maybe a section for a travel blog. Domain names are relatively cheap, webhosting shouldn't be too expensive either. Flex on my future employers, show off personal projects, that sort of thing.