I haven’t seen my mom since Dyken Pond with my friends and it has been too long! My mom invited me and Lillian to say in Boston two night ago for the night of the 14th. We drove into the city and had dinner at Artu in the north end. The fettucini alfredo had an awesome spicy kick to it and my tagliatelle with proscuitto was nice and heavy. Just what I wanted. The burratta and country bread was delicious and I enjoyed eating there. The hotel was quite nice and since me and Lillian finished Scooby Doo Mystery incorporated this past Sunday (9/13/2020), we did a few crosswords and played Among Us.
Mystery Incorporated was an excellent show. The overarching plot alongside the classic scooby-doo mystery solving formula is very entertaining and gives something for everyone to enjoy. There were many twists and turns and lots of clever plot points and the character development and stories were interesting. I did enjoy this show and it was a solid 10/10 would watch again.
Today I have started to teach Ivy to lay down. She is doing well and has a very consistent sit and we are working on her come and heel. I am very proud of her, even though she still bites a lot!, she is understanding more and more everyday.
Tootles lmao
I have been thinking what I want to do with my online presence recently. The idea of create passive income sources has inspired me to create a bit of a business for myself online. I’m not really sure what I would do yet and have not found the time or headspace but I do think it is coming. I think this blog will be pushed to either a subdomain or under /blog/ or something like that.
I have a couple of ideas right now of things that I have always wanted to create or do. I love the intersection between technology, math, and computer science but I find the space is quite saturated with channels and information. There is not a ton of channels that combine easy surface level explanations of concepts with many following videos. I would love to create something that is very me and highly accessible to anyone looking to make or do something.
Probably will elaborate on this later or will be creating links to examples/products of mine to explain what I am talking about.
───▄▄▄
─▄▀░▄░▀▄
─█░█▄▀░█
─█░▀▄▄▀█▄█▄▀
▄▄█▄▄▄▄███▀
Did you know squirrels are a signifigant cause for power outages in the U.S? They jump on the powerlines and accelerate the wear and tear of these utilities.
Also! Another fun fact: Fall is the most dangerous and delay-prone season for riding trains! This is because leaves on train tracks lead to a braking hazard if the trains need to slow down. This is very similar to what its like on the roads when there is heavy rain, cautious drivers!
Sources: Lillian and unknown.
Some minor updates – The firefox extension did not make it easy to implement the features I wanted so I transferred my focus to another cause, my youtube-dowloader. Someone else also decided to look at the issues I had created for new features to be implemented and decided to make a PR on my repo, this was so cool! I love seeing this kind of collaboration. During the next week, I started spending lots of time towards working hard, finishing the novel that I was working on Pierce Brown’s Golden Son (part of the Red Rising series). It was excellent, I am deeply impressed by the character development and the mind-bending twists and turns the plot makes. More on this book to come in its own dedicated post. I did well on my school assignments for the week but found myself feeling a little behind in 551 Scientific comp. so I attented office hours. I started planning for the weekend of Cody Champagne’s wedding towards the end of the week and got myself packed late thursday night (9/3/2020). We left early next morning with my grandmother who had arriced the day before (5:15am) for the airport to fly down to Birmingham, AL. We had a connection in Charlotte NC and then after a 1 1/2 hour drive out of Birmingham, we arrived at our destination, Clanton AL, Mitchell Lake. This was the location of the house for us to stay at (Near Walnut Creek). It was very beautiful and I even saw a Bald Eagle. After festivities friday night, a wedding ceremony and party the following night (9/5/2020) we went home early Sunday morning beginning my quarantine. Being around many people, even though I sported a mask and kept my distance, I believe it is better to be safe than sorry. I will be waiting with just the immediate family members that went down with me (Dad and grandma) until I get a negative test result or until it has been 14 days. I will not be in close contact with anyone and will be wearing a mask at all times in public.
Yesterday when we got home, we got to see Ivy for the first time. Ivy is the name of our brand new puppy (Silver Lab). She is 8 weeks old and is the most precious thing in the whole wide world. She is extremely docile, well-mannered, and has a great temperment. She takes lots of naps and loves to play tug of war. I love her and am looking forward to spending these first few days back home, while I am missing my girlfriend, distracting myself with the dog. Ivy comes from the color of her eyes and Hailey was inspired when a Frank Ocean song came on when she had picked her up much earlier on Sunday morning.
Today (9/7/2020) we all got a test from ConvenientMD in Pembroke MA. I was very productive this past weekend and also today and want to continue this trend. The youtube downloader has helped tremendously by completely separating me from the time-engagement focused youtube algorithm. Things have been well! The dog is great and I am really proud of her and I think we got a really great, calm, easy to train puppy that will be a loving family member for years and years to come.
Update - Negative test recieved yesterday at 3pm (~26 hours after I had gotten tested). What a turn around time!
See ya!
It’s over. I have decided the youtube does not contribute anything tangible (in the way I use it) to my life. I am fed up and frustrated by how dangerous and how easily I fall into its trap and I am done with it. This morning, I woke up late for class because I should have went to bed earlier. It is nothing but a time waster.
Here is my plan. I need to start valuing my time more. I am going to put my current hourly value at minimum wage ($12.75/hr). Every hour wasted per day on youtube (and other time wasting excessive behaviours) I must transfer those funds to my Titan holdings and the money will not be able to be spent.
To help enforce this, I am going to start try and write a firefox extension that can track my youtube usage.
This may be the start of something new, something better, and possibly a lot less spending money. Hopefully I can hold myself to it.
What is new in my life? A lot of things actually. For starters, today is the first day of my sophomore year at University of Massachusetts, Amherst. It was a rather uncerimonious start as there was no move-in day, no meeting up with friends, no going to the dining hall, and no walking around the campus that I desperately miss. Instead, I woke up to my 7:45 alarm this morning, stayed in bed for 3 minutes and then got up and did my morning routine. Once ready, I popped on the 8am zoom call for my B.S. general education requirement, BIO 151. The professor seemed nice and for the first time, I saw a lot of students turn on their cameras on the zoom calls. I joined in this too hoping that it would increase my attention for the class and my retention of information. I am very comfortable with biology and do not find it hard to grasp and absorb which makes me hopeful fo this class. Right after, I hopped on to another zoom call for my Scientific Computing class. Both classes were moderately interesting and will definitely have something to offer. After a bout of laziness and youtube (my youtube python bot was written last week on Thursday! But it is broken) I headed into work at AirCycler to continue programming Bubbles Upcoming, I will be getting a puppy in all of six days from now and I am very anxious/excited for it. I look forward to it as a transformitive and learning expirience that will bring me a best friend, ‘a man’s best friend.’
Yesterday (8/23/2020), me and Lillian decided to leave early in the morning to head out to Captains Flats. We saw lots of wildlife: moon snails, hermit crabs (a huge one too), birds, horse-shoe crabs, crabs, dead sand dollars, and even living sand dollars (first time seeing those!). The morning fog had still not lifted and we found ourselves far away from shore and withough any visual references to where land could be. We left our phones on shore as to not get them ruined by the salt water and the sun was far overhead making it difficult to discern the cardinal directions. The only thing that guided us back to shore before the tide went too far out was Lillian’s Apple Watch, which she had downloaded a compass app onto days before. We started heading west and eventually we ran into a guy and his dog who was able to point us in the right direction. He was standing quite close to shore but it was completely impossible to see through the fog. This was a lot of fun because it was a small ‘survival-like’ scenario but was not dangerous at all. We made it all the way to shore (Thanks Dave and Bodie) and even kept most of our dead sand dollars intact.
Last week for me was a bit of a blur but a couple of cool things happened.
Today I have also been exploring Mini-PCs, NUCs, and SBCs looking for a solution to my small but powerful and cheap server wanting problem. I don’t have to have it look perfect do I? I might need to actually start allocating some discresionary income.
Yesterday evening, after preparing for school and such, I finally got around to finishing ‘Red Rising’ by Pierce Brown and boy, oh, boy, that was one good book. It truly kept me on the edge of my seat the entire time. So many twists and turns, artfully crafted sentences, rich and deep characters, intertwined destinies, all so great. I loved every moment of it and ordered the next book to read.
That’s all for now! Been feeling inspired by a couple of people around me (Russotiro, NODE, and others) to write my own theme for hugo, or just style my own webpage using html, css, and a little javascript. I love the look and simplicity of nodes webpage
Back from a great weekend at the lake with friends. A lot happened over the weekend and we got to do a lot of the things that I wanted to do. Firstly, the dates. Lillian and I left on Friday at around 1:30 - 2 and arrived at 5ish. Dinner had already been prepped by the both of us a week in advance so all we had to do was put on the spaghetti in advance, dress the chicken parm, and make a salad. The first day we swam and went out on the boat a bit to look at the stars. The sky was spectacular and we saw many shooting stars. I was able to identify (Saturn/Jupiter), Mars, Ursa Major, Polaris, Arcturus, and the Milky Way in the sky.
The next day was a lot of water sports and good eating. We were all sore by the end of the day and we played a lot of BANG! the card game. I am going to reread the rules because after about 5 mins of reading them while writing this, I can tell that there have been a few fatal differences between how we play and how this game is supposed to be played. My mom also showed me how I can fix the boat when it is being afflicted with the bad gas from Stewarts (water in the gas) and we got the boat running for the whole weekend.
Sunday (8/16/2020) was a bit of a crazy day. Around lunch my mother got a call from Shane that Alannah was not doing well. I could tell by the questions she was asking that it was quite serious. My mother remained calm for the majority of the day and came and went as she was tending to the situation. Lillian cut my hair for the second time that afternoon. During dinner my mom had to leave and we said goodbye, Alannah passed away that night.
Sunday and Monday morning were relatively normal. I kept in contact with my mother (who had flew out to Atlanta on Monday morning) as well as continued to host my friends until we started cleaning up around 4. Lillian and everyone was a huge help because earlier I had sliced my big toe on a glass that fell after I cleaned it. I then hobbled over to the bathroom and for the second year in a row (this time because I was hopping around on one foot) I smashed the light fixture in the Dyken pond bathroom. My hand had minor cuts but my foot had a small but moderately deep cut that I had to dress with cotton balls, gauze, and waterproof tape. Everyone left the camp, sad to go, at around 4:40. There are still some things that I want to do up there with them that we did not get around to. I would like to bring everyone over to the environmental center for a hike out to the petrified bog. I would also like to bring everyone to ramblewild or something like that. I would also have liked to show all of my friends my mom’s house down in center Berlin and her back yard. I would also have liked to have enough time to show everyone the pet Emu’s that the people on Airport Rd. had. This will have to wait till next year.
It is now Tuesday morning and I have just arrived at work at around 10:10, ready to use my brain, ready to work hard even with this slashed big toe. I am still working on Red Rising, Rust programming language, and am now prepping for the fall semester. I didn’t hear back from any of the scholarships I applied for and my financial aid is unfortunately going to have to change for the fall semester. I have a lot of stuff to do to prep for the fast approaching fall semester and I am anxious to get learning again. This weekend I also have become more comfortable with the idea of not being able to have a normal spring semester. After hearing some very preliminary data on campus life during the pandemic, I deem it unlikely that campus life will be back to normal in any meaningful way, even with a vaccine, during the spring. This is okay with me because I will get to have more continuous time with the new puppy which we will be getting on (8/29/2020) and also I will get to pay less money for not living in a dorm room.
All for now, updates will keep rolling in as I go. A lot of motivation to work on the youtube bot though!! Can’t wait to see where that project will go. - You all know who’s writing this.
What a journey the last almost three weeks have been.
Quick summary:
That’s basically the rundown! I have been very unmotivated to work on this website because the DNS (on Github pages end) keeps breaking and I don’t want to keep fixing it. This night, 12:18 am on Aug 14th I finally re-read Github pages documentation which gives a good rundown on the DNS setup. It also seems like there have been lots of improvments to github pages recently too!
I have been slowly beating back the bad habits monster but I am definitely feeling best this week out of the weeks I have been working (been trying to go into the office 9to5).
Anyways, I will hopefully be updating this while I am at Dyken Pond. Bye!
Yesterday I took a day off from work and just relaxed for most of the morning by myself. My dad was coming home early from work and my grandmother was arriving later that day. Unfortunately during this, I was not disciplined in following my youtube restrictions and have slipped into a cycle of regression instead of progression. But alas, this morning (after a night of staying up far too late watching videos), I am remaking the commitment that I have made months before. A commitment to improvement and one to limiting how I interact with youtube as a platform.
Today, my Aunt Kim and Uncle Peter are coming and I expect a lot of family discussion about Cody’s wedding in the fall. It is still very up in the air as travelling and doing a family gathering like a wedding at this time is quite impractical and discouraged. Yesterday I also started another little project of mine. The minecraft mapping project. During the week, I found a great piece of software that takes in a minecraft world and creates a scrollable map of the entire world https://overviewer.org. My friends and I have played many multiplayer worlds together over the years and I think a fun way of archiving them would be to have an overview of them online to explore. Unfortunately, this will not be version-controlled through github and implemented directly on github pages because of the enormous size of the file structure and render files themselves (Their system is a bit inefficient storage-wise imo but it is probably to have good LOD layers and high preformance when zoomed far out). So another solution is due, probably something like a dedicated piece of hardware?? Who knows?
Anyways… Seeya! Jack
So it has been a while, and there are lots of reasons for this that I would like to discuss. First, I’d like to discuss a timeline of everything that has happened in my life within the last couple of weeks.
On July 3rd, me and Lillian headed up to Dyken pond for a little bit of a vacation and to hang out with my mom. We arrived midday on the 3rd and we socially distanced ourselves from most people there (namely my sisters 6 friends that were up (Jul. 2 - 7th)). We spent a lot of time on the water, swimming, waterskiing, relaxing in center Berlin and doing porch coffee.
The 4th of July this year was spectacular, as it got darker, and the camp rowdiness was at peak, me and Lillian went for a paddle on a one person kayak out to the middle of the lake to enjoy the fireworks. It was quite trecherous because of 2 people being in one seat in a small kayak as well as for other unnamed reasons but once we got out to the middle of the lake, we got an awesome show. The brown house by the dam (or near there) did a fireworks show that lasted 13 minutes and probably costed upwards of one thousand dollars. After an awesome finale, and somehow without tipping and taking on water, we slowly made our way to shore.
When we got back, I helped Peggy Carter set up her tent that she had brought and the the cot for inside. An accident down by the dam happened that night. A 91 year old man had an accident by the dam after hitting the ditch on the side of the road and having a heart attack that prompted a ambulance, police department (maybe also fire dept.) response, so the sky went quiet. This added a little bit of chaos to the night but by the time we went to bed around 12ish, all was quiet. Early next morning, there was a lunar eclipse at around 5:30am, I was fast asleep.
The next couple of days consisted mainly of me and Lillian enjoying being away from the hustle bustle of Duxbury. She finally understood what I meant by the feel of Berlin and how I liked it better, away from all the white suburbia and ‘Karens’. It is refreshing being out there and it is something that I sincerely enjoy. I spend a good amount of time that week creating a better system for the rope swing. Cooking and helping prepare for our camping weekend. Helping out with various chores around the house. After Hailey and her friends left, me and Lillian headed up to sleep at the Dyke rather than the guest room in Center Berlin.
Towards the end of that next week, my mom, Lillian, and I went on a camping trip up to Lake Placid to explore the Adirondacks a bit. On the way, we stopped at Ft. Ticonderoga and got to see many beatiful vistas and looming mountains. When we arrived to the campground, I realized that I kind of forgot what camping at a campsite was like. They had all the amenities and we parked our car in our site. We settled in for the day after having a bite to eat from the Dack Shack and unpacked all of our things and set up our tent. I am more of a purist when it comes to camping. I like living off of granola and insta-cook meals on a portable camping stove. Wearing backpacks in and not having any power/cell service. The ‘glamping’ was nice but not what I picture in my head for sure when I thing about camping. The next day we woke up and started heading to Mount Jo for a nice hike with great views. Whiteface would be too difficult of a hike for us to jump into easily and would be strenuous. Mount Jo was the right size and at the top we got a great view of Mt. Algonquin and Mt. Marcy in the distance with the Adirondack Loj below (great history there, worlds largest log cabin before a fire in ~1903.) We headed back down the mountain so that we could find a good spot for my mom to get cell service as it was a friday and she had a conference call to attend.
We drove back towards Lake Placid and took a quick pit stop look at the Olympic ski jumping complex on our way. It was closed unfortunately, so we couldn’t get up and personal with it but it was still massive from the parking lot. We headed back to town for the day to let my mom catch up on work and just walked around the campsite and nearby public swimming area. By now it was dinnertime and we had a camping classic, grilled chicken and rice with tobasco sauce, my favorite. Me and Lillian did most of the cooking and it came out pretty good, nothing burnt and the rice cooked just right. As it came closer to night and after dinner, we all had some of the banana bread Lillian and I had made 2 days before and played some Yahtzee!. We cleaned up site for the night to leave tomorrow morning and were fast asleep by 10:30pm.
We left the next morning at about 8am and zipped on out of there. It had rained the night before but we had packed everything already which made the morning much easier. I drove us on the way back and we passed by some beautiful spots. One spot had a large waterfall that was viewable from the road and was very pretty. When we got back to Dyken Pond. It was a Saturday afternoon and we were leaving the following monday.
Sunday - After a great weekend we did a little bit of work on the front step to get it more stable and safe before we left the next day. Me and Lillian enjoyed a relaxing night next to another one of my fires (which I got roaring every night I made one, the coals would last until the morning).
On monday, we left after lunch ~4ish so that we could enjoy route 2 all the way home. I was a great drive with some funny moments closer to home, especially when we tried stopping in Lexington. It was back to the grind though when we got back, I wanted to get to work and get back to the office.
This is where the personal development part of this story comes in. I temporarily lift the youtube ban from the 13th till today. I watched many creators and videos and honestly do not want to know how much time I spent on the platform. This behaviour of bingeing after I had missed out on over a month’s worth of content was not what I should have been doing, hence why I am reinstating the ban. Youtube, and its ability to easily eat up my free time and boredom quickly impacted my work, sleep, and even this journal of mine in ways that I dislike deeply. I am making a commitment to myself that for me to continue using that platform as it contains many creators that I am interested by, love, and enjoy, I have decided that I must program an automatic video downloader and only choose my favorite creators. Using this method, I circumvent the most difficult part of youtube to me, the recommended videos sidebar (this, I have determined, is what sucks me in the most). When I run out of downloaded videos, I will have to move on to something else instead of clicking on the Youtube video in the top left corner and starting again with a whole new set of recommended videos. So far I have determined a few people that consistently deliver content I am interested in. Here is my short list of youtubers and reasons why I have decided them.
The List:
Hopefully this will limit how I interact with the platform in a beneficial way while also maintaining interaction with subject I am interested in. My idea is to have a program that checks at around 9 every day to see if there are any new videos from these creators, download these videos on to my PC, and send me a text notification if this is the case. Youtubes subscription and notification systems are terrible in my opinions and play to the ‘recommendation’ algorithm instead of being what they advertise.
These past 2 weeks has been a little disapointing to me as I have slipped back into old habits that I am trying to get rid of. Last week, I was extremely unproductive trying to work and failed on multiple occasions to hit my hour goal for the day while not being efficient with my programming. I procrastinated the free time I had and depressed my mood. I have accepted this now and have accepted the damage is done with me coming back to the youtube algorithm. I want to change this for the future so I avoid my bad habits, grow more as a person, elevate my mood, and grow my productivity.
This week has been exciting to me for other reasons though, and I am in much better spirits now then last week. I have come back to the office space finally at AirCycler (on Monday Jul. 20th). I forgot how much I enjoyed it here with the dogs, my co-workers, and my boss. It is a great environment to work in and I am grateful I have it. My productivity has been much higher here than at home and I am prouder of the work I have generated.
All in all, this has been a wild two weeks and in the next span of time, there will probably be more frequent and much less lengthy posts on what I have been doing.
Signing off, Jack