Welcome to another Burf update, my god, my last update was in August and we are nearly at the end of October. Time is flying by! I would love to say it is because I have been having too much fun but sadly that’s not the case.
Karma
Now I generally try to be a good and kind person who believes in the concept of Karma. I believe I am in control of my life and I appreciate what I have and have achieved. However, the last 6 weeks have for a few reasons been a bit shit! I have managed to have interesting times on all 4 fronts (love, work, money, and friendships) and so I am trying to step back a little and relook at life. Now I do fully appreciate you have to have bad times to appreciate good times, but hey, let’s play fair here.
Robotics Update
Right now that the emotional stuff is past, what have I actually done over the past 2 months? Seems like a good question to ask!
Nissan Narava
It has passed it’s MOT with the help of a large sum of money! I can now start planning to do stuff with this. The kids have named this Jeff
Mobility Scooter
Nothing 🙁
The Electric Motorbike Project
I have actually done something! I did some welding to join the 2 sprockets together (motor to motorbike) which was super good fun and I designed a 3D-printed plate to mount the motor to. I hope to do some motor tests for the next update.
Autonomous Car: Deep Learning & Computer Vision for Beginners
We could be on a roll here, again I have done some work on this, to the point I have nearly finished the last module of the course. I believe I have around 2 hours left to complete it.
I also built a robotic car for the other course on self-driving vehicles. This robot car uses a Raspberry Pi with a camera and should be able to follow the lanes of a road (printed out) and detect road signs. Learning this will help me to apply it to bigger things e.g. a mobility scooter.
CTO / Digital MBA course.
This is progressing well, I am over 60% complete.
Getting Fit
When I get stressed or sad, I generally turn to food, an emotional eater is what they call it and even though life has been a bit more challenging and the weather is getting colder I am still sticking roughly to my goal weight which is great.
Maths
Nothing, however seeing how I have done pretty well in other areas I am going to cut myself some slack here.
InMoov Humanoid Robot
I did turn this on and checked it still worked, however, more needs to be done
Xmas Present
So to cheer myself up, I got myself an early Christmas present which I will save until Christmas :). Yup, it’s a Gwiz again however the AC version! Pretty excited about this!
Reviewing the Plan AGAIN
As mentioned, Summer is over and I now need to get back to doing techie stuff. By listing the plan below, it helps me focus on what I need to do over the next 2 months.
Education
- Goal 1: Progress with my MBA (34% to 61%, original target to finish by May 24, likely Jan)
- Goal 2: Continue with self-driving courses (less than 1 module to go to Complete!)
- Stretched Goal 3: Spend some time at Khan Academy on Algebra and Geometry
Projects
- Goal 1: Work on the electric motorbike project (progressing, motor test by next month)
- Goal 2: Finish the Inmoov robot and fix the issues listed above so that the robot can be demonstrated to people. “Revisit this and get it reliable and demo it”
- Stretched Goal 3: Decide what to do with Burf.co Search Engine, it’s getting a chunk of traffic but what’s the point/plan? Still no plan
Life
- Goal 1: Get Fit and less fat! 85-90KG (at 91.2KG ongoing)
Goal 2: Load the Truck with tech and have it ready for camping (Not really a winter thing) - Goal 3: Carry on being a Governor (ongoing)
- Stretched Goal 4: Get a shed and put lighting in the loft (Shed on hold, lights will be ordered)
I feel the list above is getting even more achievable and I hope by the next blog post (I must do one in November) I hope to take at least 1 high priority off the list.
