Fourty-Six: mistakes, learning

Mistakes:
Today I just watched a TED talk about talking about your ambitions or goals to other people. Apparently it reduces the likelihood of your success.

Keep your goals to yourself!

It actually explains partially why I become so much calmer since March. You can see in the blog activity how there is a large peak in the amount of posts right at the beginning and then it all declined.

It could be attributed to the fact that starting up a space program is not easy, and so when I faced difficulties like actually designing a system I had in my mind, the enthusiasm dropped and with that activity dropped.

It could be attributed to simply realising that blogging about something isn't going to make it happen. Which is why after trying some other things I went back to try and learn programming so I could try and design the system I would enjoy to play or be part of for the rest of my life that would also pump out tangible results in terms of getting a whole lot of people off the planet.

But it also could be that by simply talking about these ambitions my brain got tricked into believing that it achieved the actual goal, it got some level of reward of success, and now it's back to being a normal brain that doesn't rant at the Internet every day about going to the moon. :)

In reality it is probably a combination of all of these and other factors.

Anyway, so there is my mistake. I talked about freespaceships.

Learning:
There is so much to learn, not enough time for it. Or at least that is my excuse for not doing enough of it. :)

So my machine learning course started last week, the third week of Algorithms is starting tomorrow, and Gamification is starting on Monday. I am going to have serious issues with keeping up without good time management. Luckily though it's all free, so the only thing I am losing is actual knowledge I don't acquire by not keeping up with the course.

Still kicking though, so I haven't given up.

I did that thing when I write part of a blog then just save and post it later. I wrote the above bits Saturday night, now I am continuing. :)

So yesterday I watched the Octave videos for machine learning cause I already watched the linear regression ones weeks ago. Played around with Octave and matrices a bit, and I think I am getting quite excited about using stuff learned in the course for projects that I have in mind. I need to re-watch the first couple of lectures, but I think I understand the concepts to an okayish level. :)

Algorithms is going alright. I managed to watch the second weeks lectures this weekend. First programming assignment I managed to get to 84% or so. I could fix it up more but it's hard to find time for programming. I am a week behind with it all, this week I need to do the second one, hopefully on Tuesday and Wednesday I can tackle it to some satisfactory level.

Then Gamification started today and I jumped straight in and watched all the videos. Another subject I can't wait to make use of.

I don't know how it all will work out, but I am having a lot of fun learning new things, hopefully soon I can actually start doing something useful.

More mistakes:
So apart from "freespaceships", I am hoping to use my new knowledge for "environmental robotics".

I am thinking about how robotics/software/AI could be used to increase efficiencies in the environmental industry. Specifically in monitoring, management, and rehabilitation of our natural resources to healthier states. River systems, national parks, farming landscapes, coastlines, mountain ranges, forests, deserts, swamps etc...

We already use a ton of technology, especially in monitoring. Like satellite and aerial photos, machines, computer systems etc. but seeing how all the other industries have made great use of robotics for increasing productivity and improving efficiency, I am hoping/anticipating that the same thing will creep into the industry I work in.

I wouldn't mind being part of the process, but also I think if I want to work in this industry long term, it doesn't hurt to be prepared for what's to come.

I saw a TED talk about Open Source Ecology, a project of open source farm equipment design that can be built from scratch. I got really excited because I can clearly see in my mind how both "freespaceships" /or it's equivalent/ and also "environmental robotics" could be done exactly the same way. Simply building a database of designs that anybody can freely implement or modify.

Then in comes utilisation of AI, Gamification, Crowdsourcing etc...and we have ourselves a whole new world where tea parties on the moon are not only possible, but are also last century and not really cool anymore. :)

Anyway, I just wanted to post something again to make sure that any potential space programmer out there will see I am still here and still active. Still working towards the insane goal of setting my foot on the moon as part of an exodus that was made possible by large amounts of people cooperating for the sake of reaching a goal, and not some tangent completely irrelevant purpose. /like stuffing pockets with paper/

Open Source Space Programming FTW! :)