Coffee Space 
This past week or so has been a challenging time for the entire of New Zealand, after the awful attacks by a lone wolf terrorist on two local Mosques. It’s been hard on myself and those around me to get things done and to continue with day to day life. This has had a knock on effect, some bad news from my supervisors plus a general feeling of demotivation around me has lead to myself also slowing down considerably.
That all being said, time hasn’t paused in the last few weeks and I have greatly underachieved in what I set out to accomplish - and for this I have myself to blame. By the next update I need to have achieved a great range of tasks in order to be back on track with where I ought to be. In order to do this I must make several changes:
I’ll trial these two simple changes and see how it goes over the next two weeks. I also now have a better long term approach to thinking about the various tasks that will need to be completed, here is the overview (source created using Ditaa):
[~] PhD: A strong representation of my PhD project
in a formal paper format with annotations (for the purpose of explaining
it). This shouldn’t take more than two days and goes towards the
upcoming paper regardless.I ran into some issues with this and realized I was making an incorrect assumption about the domain space, something that will be fixed in the next upcoming days.
[~] RoboCup: Debug system implemented for changing
configuration states and motion states. Other people are now
waiting on this to be completed as it allows them to work on the robot
without needing to SSH into it or attach a screen/keyboard.
[X] RoboCup: WRC proposal finished (if its even
possible). We need to get funding before the end up the month in
order to get the competition.This has unfortunately become a dead end, it is highly unlikely we will receive funding from this avenue and even less likely it will end up beneficial for us in the long run.
[~] RoboCup: Funding secured. In order for our
team to compete, we need to begin paying bills in order to get early
rates.We now have the Computer Science department on board and interested, so it is likely that we now can make the full funding amount.
In the next coming update I plan to have done:
[ ] PhD: A strong representation of my PhD project
in a formal paper format with annotations (for the purpose of explaining
it). This shouldn’t take more than two days and goes towards the
upcoming paper regardless.[ ] RoboCup: Debug system implemented for changing
motion states. Other people are now waiting on this to be completed
as it allows them to work on the robot without needing to SSH into it or
attach a screen/keyboard.[ ] PhD: Final changes made to the experiment and
have the results run. This could take a week due to some bugs and
the complexity of the system.[ ] PhD: The second paper (a clean-up and
advancement on the second paper) ready as a complete first draft.
Again, this could take a week because of some large changes that need to
be made specifically in relation to the background section and writing
up the results.[ ] PhD: Consider additional avenues of funding
encase the project overruns. There is a possibility that there is
too much to do in too little time and I need to fund an additional
year.[ ] PhD: Submission of half-yearly project
update. This is something that should happen before the end of the
month, but we do have the option to push back on if we think we need
to.[ ] RoboCup: Torso redesign locked in to a final
revision. Currently the innards don’t fit within the outtards. This
requires a reasonably complex redesign in order to get everything in,
including the components we have mostly avoided so far.[ ] RoboCup: Legs locked into a final
revision. We need to do some major re-work to the screw mounts,
ankle positions and hip positions.[ ] RoboCup: Electronics ordered, tested and sent
off to a PCB manufacturer. This is the project of another team
member but will require some help as its a hand off between a previous
member they never really interacted with.[ ] Personal: Lose 1 stone in weight. This
should be achievable as I’ll both lose much through water retention and
also there is a lot to lose.[ ] RoboCup: Funding secured. In order for our
team to compete, we need to begin paying bills in order to get early
rates. A quick clean-up of the proposal is required to get the
go-ahead.Stretch and reach goals:
[ ] RoboCup: Game controller networking
completed. This is an open source library to be incorporated and
tested.[ ] RoboCup: Team networking completed. Again,
another open source library that it should be possible to
implement.[ ] Website: Get comments system running over
HTTPS. Currently the comments are broken for most web browsers due
to “security” issues.[ ] Website: Clean-up old controversial
articles. Some of the articles no longer represent my ideas and
could possibly end up causing me problems in the future.[ ] Website: Clean-up gaming website.
Currently it doesn’t work well and is seriously out of date.[ ] Website: Move coffee-archive to this site and
re-plan the work to be done. This project has been long
neglected.[ ] Website: Perform server maintenance.Next Update: The 9th of April looks like a good point for this.