Training the beast!
Hopefully I will submit my paper soon, and then I can share a video of the beast in action :)

So the new robot (Dingo) arrived yesterday. Today I did the unboxing, and damn was it disappointing. I realized the university purchased it not from the company I recommended, and they messed up the delivery.
The robot controller was missing, and the charging cable did not match the charging station input. Like dude, you had one job!
Since the lady in administration decided to disregard my recommendation and order from a random shop, she might as well assemble the robot herself....

So my localization algorithm actually runs onboard my YouBot :)
My paper was basically torn apart by my professor, so I had to write some new classes and redo the whole experimental section. And all the other sections too. I resubmitted it to him after revisions, and the second iteration was way better - I'm really close to final paper level :)
I told my professor and postdoc that I will appreciate more support and positive feedback, because so far our communication was only very dry criticism. For me it's really devastating, because feeling like I constantly disappoint people just kills me on the inside.
It seems like they took it to heart, they have been nicer to me in the last few days :)

Now realizing the whole "Fuck this shit, I'm gonna become a barista" was literally a midlife crisis.

Now, how do I find my way back to a brand new PhD application? Or a research job... Or a dev job... Honestly, I'd take whatever.

Side note, after weeks of being on my feet and working 6-8 hours a day, I have lost exactly zero kilos. This was a very bad idea. 🤦

So, I'm not the smartest, but at least now I have had two careers. How many of you can say that you've had two different careers in your life, eh?

The newest addition to our lab - Pikachu!
We managed to overcome the weirdest pinout configuration ever on the MCU and power up the Nvidia Jetson.
Next week I'm going to make a clean install of the Jetson because there is some funky garbage there, and then I'll try to drive the little beast :)

My professor asked for some images of cool stuff I worked on for a presentation he is giving. So here is me moving fast enough to cause motion blur :) The code is using the camera to detect people, and then project the bounding box down in the lidar frame, and mask all the lidar points within that cone.
Anyway, if someone is familiar with super fast agglomerative clustering code in C++ (or even python, if it's efficient), please share it with me!

Sometimes I wish I was driven by positive reasons, and not by self-loathing and sense of worthlessness. I didn't have an actual vacation for over 3 years.
I am now in Thailand with my parents, and I am working my ass off to meet IROS/RAL deadline instead of chilling. The urge to continue working is really compulsive. I am very tired.
On a brighter note, the early experiments I ran look promising

So, I'm trying to process the feelings from not getting accepted for the PhD project I applied for a while back. And it's just unfair. They've recruited people with no publication and less GPA than me. I also doubt any of them would be field-wise more relevant than me tbh. (Wouldn't be surprised if they hired MBA grads) I have all the relevant qualifications that even people working on that project do not have. I could easily get this project going beyond what they are doing with it rn. It's unfair. But it's life. And life goes on.

Am I angry? Yes. Am I disappointed, also yes. They didn't give me any alternative offers either. So I am going to steal the project and finish it so they have to throw all the money they've invested in the toilet.

... If only I wasn't depressed and could bring myself to apply elsewhere again. 🙄

I got the booster shot yesterday but I'm pretty sure they injected me some psychoactive drug. I had the weirdest dreams - I was have in-depth arguments with my post-doc about complexity and deep learning, and I came up with 3 different directions for my research. Also my mom was singing Despacito in the background.
My arm is dead and I can't even connect cables on my beloved robot :(

!dev

There are two weeks left until the PhD application results are published. But I'm having such awful nervous breakdowns. I don't even know, if it's anxiety or if I'm literally dying inside from something else. From an almost-heart-attack today when I got a trivial and unrelated bad-news email, to keep having weird dreams about things like end of the world and post-apocalyptic life, or being jumpy all the time.

... And it's not like it's life or death, I know that. I know that I can do other things if this doesn't stick. I know things will workout the way they should; I know all of those. But there's just something destroying my physical and mental health right now, and I don't even know if it's just the anxiety for the next big step in my career, or something else, or how I should deal with it.

... Anyways, amannoyed.