The good news:

  1. Classes are going well so far.
    1. I’m learning about classical mechanics in the framework of Lagrangians and Hamiltonians in greater depth than I have every done before. In previous classes, we just stopped at deriving Hamilton’s equations. So far, we are exploring the theorems associated with phase space in greater detail
    2. Electricity and Magnetism gives me an excuse to read Jackson
    3. Computational physics covers a smattering of numerical techniques as they are applicable to physics. It’s been easy so far (just look at the rest of this site), but interesting nonetheless.
  2. Writing the Lox compiler in Rust has supplanted writing the GBA emulator since I found it more interesting (a little break should give me the motivation to grind through the opcodes). I managed to get the compiler into a state where it it Turing complete (ie. it can do conditional logic and store state in global and local variables). I’m currently working on getting functions working, which requires implementing a call stack trace.
  3. I got access to a STEP-MAX10 FPGA dev board to learn Verilog for my PhD work. I decided to write a little VGA video driver as a good project since it’s sufficiently complicated (involves generating clocks of different frequencies, sending pulses of fixed width, needs to gate certain inputs etc.), but not too complicated. I managed to adapted the industry standard 640x480 @ 60 Hz timing to the on-board 12 MHz clock on the dev board following this Ben Eater video (which uses discrete ICs to do the counter circuit; much more hardcore). I need to write a testbench, and then test on actual hardware.
  4. With regards to the theremin, I realized that while I have a good theoretical understanding of electricity, I don’t have enough practical knowledge to design analog circuits from scratch. This realization came about when I tried copying a Colpitts oscillator circuit from online, only to have the whole thing fail due to using the incorrect transistor model. To rectify this, I started reading the first half of the Art of Electronics in order to get a better intuition for analog circuit design. I finished the first chapter, and am slowly making my way through the BJT chapter. I like the book so far, since it’s only delves into the minimum amount of theory needed and focuses on practical stuff.
  5. The POV fan is chugging along. My friend gave me a cute, small form-factor ESP32 dev board with enough GPIO pins to drive all the LEDs that I need in the display. The downside is that ESP32 devices are 3.3V TTL logic the Arduino Pro Mini is 5V TTL, which required swapping out the hall effect sensor I was using. I also redesigned the enclosure to orient the magnet the correct way (Very silly mistake to make). I soldered up the LED’s and the sensor, and they all seem to be functioning. I now just need to print out the housing unit, balance the fan blade, and make sure that the whole thing doesn’t fall apart when the motor turns on.

In bad news:

Nothing to report, which is a lovely thing to type out.

In other news:

  1. The place I am living in is my first stand-alone apartment that I’ve had to furnish. I’ve never realized how many little odds and ends I just took for granted until I didn’t have them and had a need for them. Silly things like cleaning supplies, groceries, toiletries etc.
  2. I got to meet up with my New York friends again IRL, which was very nice!

… That’s all that comes to mind ATM. See you next month.