Less of a technical post and more of a personal blog spot to get me writing again

Hello, again, world!

It’s been almost three years since my last blog post. That is a lot more time than I expected. A lot of you are probably asking, why is she talking about hypothetical people reading a blog post when realistically this will be viewed sequentially with all other posts, removing any effect a large time gap would have? And to that I say, theatrics.

So what has happened in the last three years? I’m genuinely not sure, so this post will primarily be used for logging events as I dig back through my memory and my emails.

The latter half of 2023

Sales at Darktrace was getting a little more sales-y than I wanted, and I wanted to get back into the development world. Sadly, the development team for Darktrace was in the UK, and as much as I loved [my time in the UK earlier that year](see https://loparcog.github.io/posts/2305uk/), I was not ready to leave my post in Toronto. Instead, I started joining local development operations, primarily on internal tools. I had a friend get married, I went to the AGO with another friend, got a Miyoo Mini+ which is a lovely game emulation tool, signed up to some generally spiritual email lists, and started seeing my therapist again. In general, I existed.

I got into Geese, yeule, Mary Lattimore, and a handful of small ambient projects this year.

2024

After a few more months, I left Darktrace to try to drive myself towards something that more closely aligned with the work I wanted to do. Granted, coming from sales, getting a developer job was not the easiest thing. I poked around at some possible independent contractor positions, but ultimately ended up looking to go back to school. I started working at a bar, where I continue to work at the time of writing. It is a lovely little environment for social interaction, exercise, and a free beer after every shift.

From this I dived into masters applications. Going back to school made the most sense at this point, as I had a better idea now of what area of software engineering I would like to focus on, and I felt like my time researching would be working towards a concrete goal. I knew I wanted to do something with signal processing, so I threw myself at any professor with interesting work ranging from audio/visual to biomedical software (turns out the body makes a bunch of signals, who knew!). After a lot of emails and cover letters, I accepted a role at Toronto Metropolitan University in the Medical Devices and Systems Lab, to begin at the start of the new year.

I started talking my dog on walks with a bunch of other reactive dogs. It is a wild concept, but it turns out they can all co-exist and learn to be comfortable together. Lola had a little blast, made some friends with other dogs, and maintained discomfort towards massive, looming Belgian Shepherds.

Tapir! released an album incredibly early in the year, which I knew was going to be my top album. I also finally gave time to Black Country New Road and Japanese Breakfast, as well as poking the new releases from NxWorries, Magdalena Bay, Kelly Lee Owens, Haley Heynderickx and SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE, and finally found some new faces in Ben Varian and More Eaze.

Musically, this year slapped. And Tapir! still stood as my favourite.

2025

This was last year! I vaguely remember this!

I began the year in the aforementioned lab, focussing on a generalist telesurgery project. This has involved dives into robot control with ROS2, depth camera object recreation, and most notably, VR headset visualization and controls. I found a gap in research of defined VR spatial resolution, so I put an experiment together about how to test this, giving results for an individual as well as a specific VR headset. I also set to record user visual acuity and glasses usage to measure those effects on the given system. Other than coursework, TA positions, and the occasional adventure, this year was honestly very tame.

I did come out though, so that was neat. 🏳️‍⚧️

Rose Gray, Underscores, and Oklou dominated the start of this year. The end was picked up by Nourished By Time, Ninajirachi, Evelyn Gray (of Tapir! fame), and The Beach Boys. The Smile Sessions is some of the best music ever made and I will stand by that.

I did not like the new Geese release and I have felt old for that.

2026 to Now

The paper has been written for VR spatial resolution and is being reviewed as I type this. I am continuing this summer into robotics to fill that gap in my brain. My hair is long and my hormones are all over the place. I look forward to dapping someone up with a robot arm. That’s what this is all for at the end of the day, right?

Right?