Coffee Space 
This is an update to conclude the ridiculously ambitious wishlist of items to complete over Christmas. If you haven’t see already, I provided the initial plan here and a mid-way update here.
Below is the list with check marks for the tasks completed. An
X indicates the task is completed, a ~
indicates that it’s partially completed and a blank indicates it has not
yet been started.
I’ll finish this off with some thoughts about what happened and how I will plan better in the future.
[~] Finish journal [7 days] – A journal I am
currently working on really needs to be finished, there is no way I can
finish this Christmas period before completing it - in fact this must be
complete by Christmas day.[ ] PhD experiments [7 days] – A considerable
amount of computation becomes available over Christmas and I really want
to get some experiments running over this time. Specifically, I want to
get some multi-agent search experiments up and running.[ ] Underwater ROV [7 days] – I need to
implement a wireless communication protocol for an underwater robot.
This needs to be completed soon.[ ] IoT experiments [7 days] – I need to
setup, design, implement and demonstrate a new security protocol for IoT
for an up and coming paper. This needs to be completed ASAP.[x] Christmas [3 days] – Christmas day is most
definitely spoken for and I suspect heavily that Boxing day is also. I’m
not entirely sure about New Years Eve, but I do plan to celebrate 2021
coming in. I have made plans to meet several people over this time, so
there is quite some commitment.[x] Explore New Zealand [3 days] – I plan to
spend about $200-$300 and see some of New Zealand after - I got an
awesome invite by some friends to travel with them.[~] AI paper [3 days] – This is a project I’ve
started with a RoboCup friend based on the future of AI in RoboCup,
specifically learning. I suspect this will be about 3 more days of work
spread out over the Christmas period.[x] Website audio [1 day] – This project is to
create a podcast-esque auto-generated reading of the article pages.
NOTE: This is already completed.[~] Pinetime heartrate [3 days] – This is to
take infinitime OS and add a heart-rate sensing functionality,
so that it can be used as a proper smart watch. This involves setting up
the development environment so that I can compile code, writing an I2C
driver for the heart rate sensor and getting the user interface to spit
out sane data. NOTE: I have already worked on this for
a day.[ ] Oakwm improvements [3 days] – There are a
series of improvements that are required to make the OS more usable
daily, such as power state (multiple sources), configuration options and
just setting up some basic software to work correctly.[ ] Vision experiments [7 days] – I am working
on YOLOv2, have some ideas for experiments I want to run and need to
setup a system to run them. This will likely take many weeks to
complete, but the process should be started. I unfortunately missed a
publication deadline on this already simply because I ran out of time to
implement my ideas.[ ] Motion experiments [7 days] – I designed
an experiment a while back for self-motivated motion learning (towards a
motion engine) and really need to finish coding up the experiment
environment and actually code the behaviour. Maybe there is some
fundamental problem, but better to find out now rather than later.[ ] PCB design [3 days] – Our robot really
needs a power PCB to be designed and build. These designs can then be
sent off to manufacturing in China and we can begin the process of
iterating on the design.[~] Dead social [7 days] – This is a project I
started a few weeks ago to make a very basic social media system for
this website, allowing we to write short content remotely. The idea is
that I could have a brain fart and log into the site from my mobile to
write about it. NOTE: I have already spent 2 days on
this.[ ] Nvidia board [3 days] – This is our new
computing board and it really needs to have our source code compiled for
it in the development environment. This will be quite annoying to setup
automatically as Nvidia put their own restrictions on how their
libraries can be used.As you can already see, the number of days I want to get completed in the month already exceed the amount of time I have, so let’s see… I want to get 57 days worth of stuff done in 30 days!
Stretch and reach:
[ ] IRC notifications – I want to be able to
have a bot post RSS feed updates into an IRC room. This could be feeds
from source repositories, news websites, etc. This would really add
value to some of the rooms I’m currently part of.[ ] Motor design – I have for a while now
wanted to explore motor design for the robots. Something that stopped me
doing so was getting the motors to conform to a specific dimension, but
now I am tempted to say “hell to that” and just do it to which ever
size, just to see a working prototype. In any case we eventually move
towards larger robots.[ ] Programming book – A while back I started
a programming book about building ultra small OSes - I really want to
see this complete (and may even generate revenue), but I simply haven’t
had the time so far.[ ] Gameboy game – One plan is to build a
Nintendo game boy game in C, based on a plot I wrote a few months back
for an anime. I really think this idea will be quite nice, but I could
easily sink an entire year into it alone.Much less important:
[x] Watch TV series – I really want to watch
some TV series I have put off all year. I somehow have managed to fit in
watching the latest seasons of Star Trek Discovery and The Mandalorian
recently, but this is pretty much it.A quick breakdown:
| Task | Estimated | Completed | Importance | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Finish journal | 7 days | 2 days | High | |
| PhD experiments | 7 days | High | ||
| Underwater ROV | 7 days | High | ||
| IoT experiments | 7 days | High | ||
| Christmas | 3 days | 3 days | Medium | |
| Explore New Zealand | 3 days | 3 days | Medium | |
| AI paper | 3 days | 1 day | Medium | |
| Website audio | 1 day | 2 days | Medium | Not happy with result |
| Pinetime heartrate | 3 days | 7 days | Medium | Required lots of effort |
| Oakwm improvements | 3 days | Medium | ||
| Vision experiments | 7 days | Medium | ||
| Motion experiments | 7 days | Medium | ||
| PCB design | 3 days | Medium | ||
| Dead social | 7 days | 2 days | Medium | |
| Nvidia board | 3 days | Medium | ||
| IRC notifications | Low | |||
| Motor design | Low | |||
| Programming book | Low | |||
| Gameboy game | Low | No longer important | ||
| Watch TV series | Low | Completed too well | ||
| Total | 71 days | 20 days |
Well, this breakdown is depressing. Whilst I can account for most of my time (remember that this doesn’t account for everything), I really haven’t managed to complete everything that was required - especially the most important tasks.
Going forwards I need to dedicate more time on high priority tasks as opposed to spending too much time on low priority work. One method to achieve this would be to start working dedicated office hours to ensure the high priority items are better addressed.