may

almost there

justin scawful • 10 may 2020

my semester is almost finished. i have an exam left to do in biology, an exam in calculus, and one last speech before i'm finally free. i'll end up getting straight b's which i guess isn't awful but unfortunately even going online couldnt fix some of the average exam scores i got in bio and calculus as well as the lack of motivation i had to complete certain assignments in speech. it's almost like i don't even care to do well because things feel so pointless right now. obviously i want to do well in school so i can transfer to uic but how much do these grades matter outside of just maintaining a 3.0 gpa which i've managed to do. these institutions just want your money anyway my only concern is just some competition in the computer science department. i just find a lot more fulfillment in programming than i do with these gen ed classes and wish i could be at that place in my life already and not here. it's not like there's anything wrong with the now (outside of the obvious) but i also just want a lot more for myself. it's still important to be where i am cause i'm having to self motivate with a lot less pressure on myself. once i get to higher level cs courses i'm gonna have to be really disciplined. i guess that's another thing i'm worried about with the way i perform in my classes. is the effort i'm putting in going to be conducive to success later on? am i doing myself a disservice by not trying in classes that should be easy A's comparatively speaking to university classes. or will the motivation materialize from my genuine interest in the subject.

i manage to motivate myself to tackle difficult coding problems. if anything i've been procrastinating school work by finding things to do in code. between zen3mp, hyrule magic, and my test games in sdl i've had a lot of fun. it's definitely what i want to be doing with my life. it may not make perfect sense all the time but i know how to find the problems i like troubleshooting and debugging. analyzing systems and structures in pre-existing code like hyrule magic or reading sample code for sdl is very mentally stimulating. i'm excited to do more. definitely once this semester is over i'll crack open sicp again and do more exercises. since i was so busy with school work when i did read it i glossed over some exercises and the entire picture language section out of a lack of interest and time to fully engage with the material rather than the rigid structure i had in chapter 1 where i did every exercise to completion before moving on. it's nice to get familiarity with some of these concepts by reading ahead though. i think if i invest more time into lisp it'll help translate over to the thought processes that abstract processes when i'm using my primary languages for my main projects.

may day

justin scawful • 1 may 2020

we're here already. it feels like april just flew past for everyone. i think it has a lot to do with the familiarity of our surroundings during quarantine. since we are all staying home our memories are parsed in our brain very similarly and the relative perception of time speeds up. i have a feeling that may could be pretty fast in the first two weeks but it all depends on if there's any major world developments or not. march felt very long for me personally because there was so much changing and many unique experiences that i had that made time slow down within my own perspective of it. it's strange looking back on it because i was just starting to make friends and be social and then this all happened ruining any chance of progress i had.

as of today we are required to wear masks in public if you're in a situation where social distancing cannot be consistently upheld. i've got two surgical looking masks as well as a couple cloth face coverings that my job gave to me. because of my anxiety i get really insecure having to put the mask on for some reason so i'm trying to get over that feeling. there's this idea in my head that others will judge me for wearing the mask and taking the situation seriously if they aren't wearing a mask and i don't quite understand where that comes from. i shouldn't really care. from my perspective i don't judge others for wearing masks when i don't have one on. i wonder where i get these baseless assumptions from. it's something i should try to focus on and explore during meditation today.

i spent a lot of time working on zen3mp over the last few days. it's been nice going through my php code and cleaning up messy aspects of it that i know longer agree with. a lot of my styling has changed for the sake of readability and the methodology in which i design my classes has improved. it's funny cause i was told these little things in my programming classes but ignored them for some reason and just continued to make bad unreadable code that doesnt abstract to one purpose. i think it's necessary to go through that learning experience though, to see how bad the bloat can get if you are not responsible. i've also been working on a small game of tic tac toe in c++ made with sdl. it now can detect winnings and display which player won but still lacks a lot of the bells and whistles of a complete game. a lot of the improvements i've made in coding has come from working on that project and trying my best to do a lot with very little.