Week 9

Frustrated with our progress for the video game in Software Engineering. We are in our second last sprint and we don’t have a playable game. Our game doesn’t meet the minimum requirements to be considered a serious game. We have made many mistakes in this project: choosing Unity, splitting the team in docs and code, following the Wednesday to Wednesday sprint cycle.

I got a chance to speak with Ali and Davide about the Foundations of Computation coursework. Davide explained his area of research to me, it’s quite fascinating. I’m very new to this area so I’m not able to distinguish between adjacent fields. Talking to him inspired me to watch the introductory lecture on Category Theory by Bartosz Milewski. I might continue watching for fun, I understand this passive consumption is not actual learning.

Computation coursework is due tomorrow. I spent quite a bit of time converting my handwritten homework to LaTeX. It was very enjoyable, although frustrating at times. It looks beautiful. I looked into Typst as well; I’m gonna use it to create the report for my coursework on Databases.

I watched About Time, Ratatouille and Aniara this week. I rewatched the first two, great movies! Aniara was very nice. Space is baffling.

One of the central ideas in About Time is to live a moment as if it were the last. I’m not sure if this is a good way to live. Believing each moment to be the last is bound to cause overwhelming emotion. Subconsciously, the brain knows that this is not the last moment so essentially the individual practicing this is faking their emotions. I understand the goal that this belief is meant to achieve, but I don’t think this is the right way to do it. Few understand this.

I visited the Christmas market on Saturday. It’s beautiful.

I cooked chickpeas and rice. I added vegetables this time! I earlier thought that vegetables are not strictly necessary, but I was wrong!; they add a ton of flavor!

Advent of Code has started! I solved the first one. We have a private leaderboard, thanks to the CS society. I’m only planning to do as long as they are fun for, which is usually around day 10, post which they start to get a bit too intensive. I also bought the Advent Calendar by Lindt!

I have modified my optional units for the next semester. I replaced a unit with T heory of human computer interaction. This unit is marked 100% via an exam, which I initially thought was bad, but I realized after speaking to Laura that it’s quite good!

This week I ate dinner earlier than usual around 5-6pm. This is powerful as it gives me 5-6 hours of uninterrupted time to focus. How efficiently I was able to utilize this window is a different question.