Thinking About Going to College, Getting Things in Order.
Lemme explain what this is: this "random" space on my blog is going to be simple, periodic life updates which I don't really expect anyone to read.
Anyway, I've been thinking a lot about moving to college, which will be happening soon. I've begun to realize that things really just aren't "in order", and I'd like to get them that way. I've come up with a list of things I'd like to do before I move into my dorm room in late September:
Get Another 3D Printer
I already have an Ender 3, but that model is nearly 8 years old, and 3D printing has advanced significantly in the time since. I'm thinking a Creality K1C would probably be best: used, they're going for anywhere from $200-275, which is, IIRC close to what I paid for my Ender 3 when new. The newer printer can, if the specs are to be believed, print nearly 5 times faster, (350mm/sec vs 50mm/sec). Arguably more importantly is the auto bed leveling, which was a huge pain for me. This probably isn't the most important thing, but it is, nevertheless, something I quite strongly want.
Make Better Pots for My Plants.
I love having plants around my workspace, and I intend to bring them with me when I go to college. Trouble is, watering them has proven pretty painful with my current setup.
My Current Routine Is:
- Go though each plant, touching the soil and observing the leaves to determinewhich need to be watered.
- Instead of pouring water into every plant that needs it, I try to always water fromthe bottom up, by placing the plants' pots in a water-filled basin, and waiting until the soilis saturated.
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The watering bit is the main concern; it's a bit time consuming, though ultimately not too bad (I'd still like an in-place way to do it though!). The real problem is that I don't have anywhere to put the plants after they're done being watered! I usually just put them on the kitchen counter or a separate basin until a sufficient amount of water is drained from the soil, before re-placing them on the window sill. Very annoying. I want to 3D print a pot, feeding into my insatiable desire for the aforementioned K1C, but I can't, as my older Ender 3 isn't with me ATM.
Storage and Organization.
I ... I have an organization problem. Actually, I have a pretty significant organization problem. Nothing has a dedicated "place" and while I'd like to say my room is organized chaos, it really is just a disaster. I think I want to focus on a couple of significant "storage" solutions that would probably be the 80/20 solution for my situation.
- Clean & Dirty Laundry
- Medication
- Workspace
- Misc
- Display stuff
- Plants
Laundry is pretty simple: I'm thinking a "dirty" hamper, and then an under-the-bed drawer loosely organized by clothing type for clean clothes.
For medication, I'm a bit more conflicted. I could get a "medication organizer" but I don't think those are very nice, mainly because they aren't well sealed or well labeled which can be problematic, plus I use Kratom, and may well integrate more powders into my routine for cost, which wouldn't really fit in the off-the-shelf organization solutions. What I want is something like a mostly airtight medicine cabinet, with some cotton or silica at the bottom to remove moisture. I'd then just have the medications randomly, but neatly, placed upon shelves or other surfaces within the fixture. It would be super-duper cool to 3D print such an enclosure, or even make it out of wood or something, but for the time being, I think I'll just get something akin to a small chest.
By "workspace" I mean tools for whatever projects I'm actively working on. This would be my desk, if it ends up being big enough, but I may want to add some way to rapidly exchange trinkets in order to save space if needed.
For miscellaneous, probably just closed drawers for "everything else". I'd like a place for random, uninteresting stuff, that is still occasionally useful, like obscure charging cables, label printers, etc.
I also want to have a place to display some of the merchandise I've purchased from creators I like, as well as gifts I've received, souvenirs, etc. Some kind of layered shelf would be nice.
Plants are explained above.
Savings
I'd really like to save up some money for miscellaneous expenses incurred while moving in and during the period of time before I (hopefully) get a job there. I've not come up with a whole lot of great ways to earn money before I move; I can't really get a regular job, given I'm leaving so soon. The best I've found so far is DoorDash. In spite of the, in my opinion, great harms such services have brought to society, DoorDash pays alright and is very flexible, so I intend to do some more orders for them during what times I'm able to do so.
Another possibility is freelancing, but honestly, I'm really not confident enough in my programming skills to really do anything. It's not 2003 anymore — you can't just do one of those boot camps or whatever and Get to Work™, AI's really taken all of those positions, unfortunately.
Clean up Digital Infrastructure
By "digital infrastructure" I mean the systems behind my website, my desktop/laptop computer configurations, and mobile phone. My primary concerns are as follows.
My number 1 concern is synchronizing my dotfiles (and other system configs) between my desktop and laptop. I, as a Linux user, very frequently change my configurations and reinstall my operating system. It would be very nice if there was some way to more or less "copy and paste" my configurations across devices. The closest thing I've found to what I want is NixOS Home Manger, which is nice, but pretty much exclusive to NixOS, which I don't really wanna use. Right now, I just have a Nushell script that can copy files to and from a directory I have synchronized across devices with Syncthing. It's a kinda janky solution that does not deal with conflicts well: even if no file changes overlap, if two devices were updated separately, AT ALL, it'll delete one of them.
I think what I want to do is make some kind of configuration management program in Rust, which I could then use with Syncthing. I'm already working on it, but the first real prototype is at least a week away, I think.
Ickle Game
I really wanna get a usable prototype of the Ickle game up and running on the website before I go there, so that I can have an active, public game project. I think what I need to add to the Ickle game right now is...
- An intro scene.
- A functional Ickle generator/editor.
- A couple of buildable things.
- And a page on the website talking about the game and it's development.
That's pretty much it. It's not a lot of steps, but each one of those steps has proven to be rather time-consuming.
Anyway, yeah, that's the most important things I've been thinking about in the past little bit. I'll probably post another update in another couple of days.