Task Management
Why do I imagine that PWW comes out after PIC has decided to go to bed? I’ve tried lots of versions of writing during the day but it has only rarely worked.
There’s some aspect of PIC being tired. I sometimes do these after very long days, even when sleep would be easy. They let me invoke well-worn processes that change my perception, and sometimes that lets me art with the stress instead of against it.
But tired isn’t a prerequisite, just frequently coincident; there must be other factors. I’ll conspire to be in bed and done for the night at a time when I’m not terribly tired, and see how it affects the summoning of PWW. Maybe I can sniff out the other flavors.
I spent some time doing circuit design today. By which I mean “I read a bunch of data sheets to see what I can buy prefab” – 80% of engineering is being able to find existing solutions (the other 80% is integration). But I’ve picked out a couple of shift-register LED drivers that I can drive via SPI hardware, some logic gates to rebuild signaling on the clock and sync lines, and several different APA102s (which Adafruit calls DotStar).
I want to compare the all-in-one APA102s to the options I get rolling my own. I might get better cooling and better PWM if I drive everything myself. I could pick my own light spectrum and fine tune the gain in each segment and have all the parts speak the same protocol. But first I need some breakout boards and step next is finding the components, so good job me for picking parts.
I also spent time in Rimworld, though I think I’m ready to be done. That game really appeals to PIC in the way that it’s about survival and managing the moods and labor of a host of people to accomplish that goal. But whatever cool process I invent to optimize my story in that engine it eventually feels like the resource grind it is designed to be. I am never ultimately satisfied. It doesn’t help that my gaming host is down and my laptop slows down when the game gets complicated. But even under ideal conditions I eventually want to fast-forward until something cool happens. I like this game, but mostly in the edited-for-YouTube version I watch other people play. Occasionally as a way to foster obsessive distraction, knowing it will never be satisfied.
Writing scripts for cloud initialization is a task that scratches the same itch of interative process building. But in the cloud version I end up with tools to make hosting things fun instead of terrible. I used to imagine that was an avocation (and sometimes a vocation) that I liked and was good at. Maybe I can swing this Rimworld energy into that.
I got parts for my practice projector prototype project today. I want to build a rear-projection system that folds into the approximately 16:9, approximately 100″ frame that is conveniently built into the middle of my 1912 living room. Version 1 is just to put up unframed rear projection material and see how it projects, and I got a roll of such material today. Hopefully this weekend I can watch a big screen movie again, for the first time in months. It will be a bit homespun and hard to use, but it will be good see it working.
But the first priorities for this week are care packages and eating and laundry, because I’m trying to live an easy life where I mostly do things I like, or at least have the space to see if I can like the things I do.
ZiB
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Sent from a phone.
