First thing to mention, which doesn’t really have a category: I walked from my home in New Westminster to UBC in one day; it was about 32km, which is the longest walk I’ve done in one day. I am mulling the possibility of walking across the US when I’m 60, and this is the kind of daily distance I’d want to maintain. I got some good blisters and was sore the next day, but not crippled; I think I could have done that again. It’s a good sign.

Webby

Hardware hacking

  • More work on the weather vane; got it mounted on a peanut butter jar lid. If that sounds silly, then in my defense it turns out to be very handy to have a standalone mount for a project.

  • Made an HTML page to display readings from the weather vane, using javascript to rotate an arrow graphic to reflect the direction it was measuring. Surprisingly handy.

  • Bought an Ikea Vindriktning, aiming to read its measurements directly with an ESP32. Took a while to figure out how to get it working – turns out that a common ground between the ESP32 and the sensor board was necessary to get the UART working – but I think it’s coming along.

  • Took apart a coffee maker that died on us to figure out what was wrong, and it turns out to be a thermal fuse that blew – apparently this is quite common. Will be picking up a replacement and seeing if I can get it going again.

ML/AI/Earth Observation

Space

  • After nearly 5 years of searching, I have finally got a job in the space industry: beginning January 9th 2023, I’ll be working for Wyvern Space. They are building satellites to do high-resolution hyperspectral imaging; my position is senior devops software developer, helping to build and operate their image processing pipeline. I couldn’t be more thrilled. 😁