Diary - January 2025

january 1, 2025 - New year's resolutions

Everybody has been making New Year's Resolutions, so I thought, maybe I should also make some! But, I totally forgot how to make one, but then I realized that it was making a goal to improve yourself. I first thought about improving my listening skills, but I was already trying to improve there. Then I thought about my attention span, and I settled on that. My old teacher said that our age was how long you were supposed to be able to listen to, but my goal is 15 minutes at least. My teachers talk for long ends at a time, so I will have to learn how to stay focused on the teacher instead of wandering off in your thoughts.

I also found some ways to stay focused...

• If you feel like you need to move around, stretch your legs out and fidget with your jacket zipper quietly.

• Try to focus on the whiteboard or the teacher when she is teaching: if you just can't, look away for 3 seconds and go back.

• If you just have an idea in your head, just say in your head, "Come back when I'm in bed.". It works!

January 3, 2025 - Mom's new office building

Today I went to mom's office building to have some quiet and work on my interview questions in private. Also, I wanted to use ChatGPT to its full potential. So, every time I did a draft, I copy-pasted into ChatGPT to improve my writing. I also 

NO TIME!

January 4, 2025 - sports

Today I went to Odle Middle school to play basketball and badminton. I was surprised that dad even let us go outside to play with grandma, so I wasn't really in the mood to play sports. But, you don't miss out basketball with a professional (A.K.A my grandma), so I went.

I first practiced layups, and those were not that hard. But when I tried to dribble, the basketball didn't bounce. So, all we did was layups and free-throws. Apparently grandma is really talented at scoring 3 pointers from the right side, and I almost scored one, but my free throw consistency was a lot higher that grandma's.

When I was playing with my brother, Kyle, in badminton, I wasn't trying my hardest, but I was still beating him. He didn't want me to go easier, so I kept beating him. Then, when grandma started playing against me, things started to get hard. First of all, she is stronger than me, so she hit balls over my head. The only way I kept on was trick plays. Second, she always managed to get my tricks somehow, but I couldn't. Third, she is taller than me, so it is easier for her to hit balls.

January 1, 2025 - league night

Today me and my robotics teammates wanted to try out our new robot at the league night to see what it could do. The results surprised us, even Eric.

In our first qualification with 838C, we scored 6 balls and received 6 passes ,earning us 82 points. In our second qualification, my team did good, yet I disqualified our team with an accidental rapid load that got us 0 points for that match. Even though our second qualification did not go as planed, our third match improved. My team scored 57 points while playing with a robot that could barely score. This wasn't the surprise though!

The real surprise was: 208 in skills driving! That is 17 balls and 4 cleared switches, our personal high score for the season. Even though we scored high, 838C did a whopping 244 for driving! That is crazy! Our team is catching up, though. Bobby is developing a new prototype for our robot. It is a really long intake like 838C's design. Even though, I may be able to do better: I will explain.

I already made a conveyer belt design. It is okay, but I still want to put H-Drive on it. If I just combine the conveyer and the intake, I'm all set! So, for driving, I will use a long intake like 838C, and also have H-Drive so I can move around easily to get the balls. For autonomous, I'm just going to have the robot turn to one side, then go to the other side after one side. For teamwork, if we are passing, no problem. Just use simple configuration. If we are shooting, if you have a ball, score a ball. Otherwise, no problem!

january 30, 2024 - driving STRATEGIES

On the weekends, my team is going to Vancouver for a robotics tournament. I feel like last time, we didn't do the best at roboplanet, so I hope we can improve. Our skills score in our first roboplanet tournament was around 310, and I feel like we can do a lot better than that. So, we will try to get 200 more that that score. Yeah, 200 points is a lot, but I think 500 points is very achievable. Hopefully we can get 750, but that will be us on steroids.

I have 2 driving strategies: If the other team is slow but has a reliable catapult, we will assign them to score. If the other team is fast but has a non-reliable catapult, we will have them either touch the balls or intake the balls and shoot to us. This way, we can score as many balls as possible. If the alliance's robot breaks down, we will ask the team not to fix or touch it (unless the opposing team is first handedly told by us), so we can outtake balls to them, and then intake the balls and score.

I hope we do good! 

🤫🧏