Week 6: Productivity? Nah.

14 Nov 2020

Hiya! Another week, another check-in.

This week wasn’t particularly exciting, but what can I do? I don’t even know why people are interested in this! I’m the most boring person ever! (Well, second most boring. If you want content that really puts you to sleep, check out my friend Adam’s blog. Honestly, though, he’s brilliant, and you should really check him out.)

Monday

This week started off productively, and I hit the ground running after completing and submitting some CS118 problem sheets. I’m trying to get myself together by tackling a module a day, although I can admittedly carried away with commercial work.

I also viewed and engaged with the ASV meeting on Monday evening. The watch party on our Discord server was really enjoyable, and I want to thank everyone for making that an absolute success!

Tuesday

The first order of business on Tuesday was to vote on the five motions put before the student body by the Students’ Union. As much as I dislike the motions put forward this term, as well as the way the SU functions, I took a moment to vote and I hope you all did too!

As teased last week, I’ll discuss my views on student democracy and a possible platform for student leadership in Sunday’s post. Put simply, I believe it is extremely important for students to engage in the student democracy. However, I also believe that the students’ union should work for students, which is why I chose to abstain from all motions which didn’t directly affect student life at Warwick.

I also tried to hack away at some Professional Skills reading, without much success. My productivity and attention tend to taper off as I make my way further into the week, and I feel I really need to address that. However, I’ve always been an eleventh hour sort of guy (famously completing a two months data science course in the final week, and passing with honours), so I feel like if I work on it constantly, I’ll eventually find an approach that works for me that I can stick to. I’m still nervous about failure, though, as I always am.

Wednesday

I spent Wednesday reviewing my material for my computer organisation and architecture module and getting a start on the coursework, as well as attending maths lectures. I’m honestly terrifyingly behind on the discrete maths, and I don’t know what to do. I also spent today perfecting a script to join lectures from Echo360 into MP4s which can be downloaded onto a device to watch anywhere. Makes my life much, much easier, especially when I don’t have an Internet connection.

Thursday

On Thursday, I visited Krystal’s house to see her (and Porridge, who’s buried themselves in their enclosure!).

She pre-ordered an Xbox Series X delivered, and I thought I might join her to break it in! Plus, everyone needs a little company every now and then. It was nothing but a pleasure to visit her for two days, and I’m sorry I had to head back before the weekend even begun.

Krystal, your sofa is also the comfiest I’ve been on. Thank you for the blanket and the pillow, too!

Friday

Friday was pretty eventful. I got a call from my brief favourite tutor (praise be), got to play the next-gen Xbox, got a grade for my coursework and got a (tentative!) job offer.

I played two last generation games on the Xbox, and they are absolutely stunning on an 1080p 240Hz screen. The Talos Principle and Quantum Break are gorgeous and visually rich games, even though they’re last generation. They’ve both got amazing storylines and I recommend you check them both out if you’re into narrative games.

Although I really like the Xbox Series X, I don’t think I’m gonna go for a console this generation. I think a Ryzen build (which might be coming soon!) would be much, much better than anything either console has to offer.

I think Microsoft shot themselves in the foot by purchasing so many brilliant studios which produce so many amazing games, as none of them are truly exclusive to Xbox. They’re on Windows too, which means I think I’m better off dropping £900 or £1000 to build a PC to play next-gen games, and using it for other things (like video production, ahem) too. I also don’t see the point of Xbox Game Pass, but that’s a story for another time.

I also received a grade of my coursework, which was 78%, and I’m rather happy about that. I expected to get a bit lower, as I haven’t really been keeping up with lectures and I’ve mostly been working off the books and my programming knowledge. The grade was also accompanied by detailed feedback, so I know exactly what I need to improve for the second coursework submission.

I got a tentative job offer working full-time for a start-up in California, which I’m really excited about! Once investment goes through, I should have a position, but we’ll see. Nothing’s set in stone, but I’ve got my fingers crossed.

I remember I almost walked out on my first interview with them as I was so nervous that I was crashing, bombing and making a fool of myself. Now, I’m on a pitch deck being passed around to investors in the United States. I’m really happy that I can trust my gut, but I’m also scared that things will eventually fall apart because I feel I’m just faking it ‘til I make it.

Impostor syndrome, boys. It’s ugly.

Saturday

Today I mostly spent working, speaking to clients, writing code, issuing invoices, bookkeeping and putting together a plan to tackle my modules over the next week. Absolutely riveting stuff, honestly.

React’s being a fucking pain, but I’ll figure it out!

I also got the delightful news that Porridge has finally popped out of their hole, so the next time I go to see Krystal, I can also say hello to (and know the sex of) my furry, eight-legged friend!

I’m also considering building a poll bot for Discord which is ad-free and allows custom emoji, and just throwing it up on a GCP instance! If you have any ideas about additional features, please let me know. I’m also considering starting a series where I walk through building an open-source project and detail the how, what and why. I don’t know whether that’d interest anyone.

I’ve also been thinking about whether to take a year in industry, and what I should do. Although I have a few ideas, I’ll have to see what happens! Maybe starting a company was the right thing to do!

Next Week’s Goals

For next week, I plan to

1. Mark the maths sheets before Monday
2. Complete at least one question for the COA coursework
3. Speed run mathematics lectures, and complete at least 3 of them
4. Watch the COA lecture before Thursday
5. Write some code for one client’s MVP and hit the next milestone, and build a blog posting bot for another
6. Plan a Ryzen gaming build with PC Parts Picker
7. Write a Discord bot and open-source it
8. Start writing a plan for the MyMind charity
9. Organise this blog a bit, by adding date and tag fields in the headers