Weekly Wins time! You know what to do, anything good that happened, or cool, or really just that you want to celebrate - let’s hear it.
I’m looking forward to a relaxing long weekend, got some code to write and it looks like the temps might get into ranges that aren’t extremely uncomfortable so that’ll be nice too.
Get to sleep with the windows open tonight… sweet cool air. And I have been getting to bed earlier over the last week! (see hurting back thing below)
Made some good progress with some code stuff, more to go, but massive data reduction incoming. Feeling good about that.
Also had a 1 hr conversation with my advisor that wasn’t absolute s**t, which was a welcomed change.
In the not win category. My back is hurting, time to stop lounging on the big sectional couch I guess… look after the posture for a bit . I did manage to snag a better office chair for work though.
I’m jealous, we’re still getting 98 degree temperatures.
MIT Applications opened up this week and I got my common app essay rough draft done.
I can now solve a Rubik’s Cube!
After almost a year of hospitals, isolation, medical treatments, and contemplating my mortality, I will officially return to full time school next week.
I’ll be in a one room school house with many other children, which should be very interesting. I hope I make some new friends.
Started an frc team, built a chassis, programmed chassis, and almost finished electrical for it
This is so dean kamen coded
lemme get back to you tomorrow 
Edit: didnt mean to reply to anyone in particular
first day of senior year last week! only 30-ish more weeks to go then I’M DONE!
on a more personal category, after the following:
573 days since the accident that gave me my injury
521 days since I was told it was likely career ending
512 days since surgery
509 days since starting rehab
473 days since I started walking on one crutch
468 days since I was cleared to do stairs
459 days since I started walking on two feet
10 months since I was told my junior season was likely not happening
4 months since I was cleared to run again
17 days since I graduated from physical therapy for the LAST time
5 days since I walked onto the field for soccer practice for a senior season that NO ONE thought was going to happen when I got my injury
and tonight, I’m happy to share I finally got onto my rollerskates for the first time in exactly two years and managed to go for 25 rounds! I am thrilled that this is a clear sign of how far I’ve come, even if I’m going to regret this for practice in the morning 
In the boooooo category, my classes are all screwed up for Running Start, which is proving to be stressful to say the least.
Our team is currently doing an onboarding process for the 2025 FRC season. I was able to get some of my friends interested in joining. After such a fun maiden season in FRC last year, I decided to make it my mission to try and spread interest in FIRST. It is good to know that I am making some progress so far.
My daughter started her 2nd year of university this week. Her schedule was a giant mess because she was not particularly quick off the mark to register last spring.
This turned into a week long lesson in how to persistently yet politely traverse a giant bureaucracy to get what you need… She started Monday dejected and absolutely convinced that “nothing will work, i’m just stuck”, repeated every time someone couldn’t help her. “OK, now go here and ask…” (repeat)
But, just at 5pm on Friday she got the call from the guy who could telling her that everything had been put right (and she was pumped to say the least).
This gives me hope that this time, she will actually follow my advice and register for next semester’s courses on the first day she can
I’m a little late to the game in posting this… (blame it on the sleep deprivation) but this is really a win for life. Meet Harlow Louise Swanson! Our family is happy and doing well after a chaotic first few weeks!
I guess it isn’t spelling tea now, but our lead teacher resigned right at the end of July. The initial push to fill her shoes got stymied by storms and the start of school, but this week I finally felt like we made some progress on filling her shoes.
Coached one of our other teachers through the basics of NASCAR, as her daughters are on a field trip to today’s Xfinity race at Darlington. Fortunately, she hadn’t left the school so she could borrow some earmuffs from the shop.
Watching the Paralympics is fun. Try Goalball.
lol I got really into rubik’s cubes like two years ago. They’re really fun to solve.
I went to the coolest concert/show I’ve been too in a long time
The very first ever Infinity Saga Concert experience
The show had some notable highlights including a appearance from Kevin Feige
And they played preview music for the next Fantastic 4 movie
Made it through first week of school.
Didn’t lose my voice on day 1 like I usually do!
Had a long week of a lot of packing, but I finally moved into college today! I’m really excited, and my dorm has a really nice view.
However this does, unfortunately, mean I am now catless (so you should send some cat photos)
I’m officially a mentor. Huge thanks to Joe and Mike from 6032 for welcoming me in.
Over the past few months I’ve been working on a fitness tracker, OpenFitnessPal (mirror) with the intent of fully replacing my usage of the proprietary, ad-ridden MyFitnessPal while keeping access to its massive nutritional database. So far that’s been successful, albeit it lacks mobile support yet and still has plenty of features I’m looking to add.
I also completed a partial rewrite of my scouting app (mirror) to support a customizable configuration for each team and year. Still has work to be done, but as of yet it’s effectively feature-complete: fully customizable auto, teleop, and opinionated data. Available as a webpage or as a native Android, Windows, or Linux app. The webpage can easily be “self-hosted” on your own GitHub account with a custom configuration through GitHub pages, or you can even download the HTML files onto a device and run it completely locally (assuming you’re on macOS/iOS with no native option). UI improvements and more config options, along with documentation on the config, to come.
Enjoyed my first week at college, having tons of fun playing football (learning OLB/DE and WR/RB, normally I’m a K/P) and soccer (GK). Not really learning anything because my CS class is on stuff I learned 9 years ago, but hey, what can ya do.
Is this database openly available somewhere?
It’s not publicly accessible in a “download the whole thing” manner to my knowledge, but by virtue of a MyFitnessPal account and a little HTML parsing magic (thanks, coddington), I created a search engine (mirror) that lets you search the food database indirectly, plus added some filtering options e.g. by nutrient content.
My server is logged into MyFitnessPal on Chromium (thanks to X11 forwarding) and the python-myfitnesspal library uses those cookies as a means of “logging in” to MyFitnessPal.
I contacted MyFitnessPal support and do have the green-light on doing this, so long as I don’t circumvent their CloudFlare protection or account requirement (I’m not).
