Take ownership to enhance the experience of your own life.

I was mid-conversation with a friend today, repeating the same sentence I tell myself every day - "I really have to go for a run." I've always had an on-off relationship with running due to some or the other bodily dysfunction, but this time I know I have just been giving myself excuses. There's no motivation. There's too much other work I can do in those 30 minutes - 1 hour of being out of the house. Or the classic I don't feel like it right now even though I know I will feel amazing the minute I step out.

But mid-conversation, I also told my friend that I think I just need someone to knock on my door and be like "Kanksha, get out, we're going for a run." and that's probably the easiest way for me to start again. I also recalled how I used to be that person who would wake others up and push them to go for a run with me.

So this post is a short reminder to myself, and everyone else, to do those things that you're waiting for others to lowkey drag you to do. Do what you know you will enjoy. Be the motivator for yourself. We're not always going to have people who will accompany us, or push us to do what we should/what's good for us.

Take ownership to enhance the experience of your own life. It's a little stupid to be waiting for someone to make you do something you want to, don't you think?

Lots of love and motivation,
Kanksha

P.S. I've promised myself that I will run for 15 minutes today (and put it on my blog so that it gives me some amount of accountability haha).

Even if it rains and is cold and looks like this

Go for it and make a promise to yourself. 

Head Worn Displays and Passion

I have taken a course on Ubiquitous Computing this semester, and my motivation for taking that course was how I like almost every project done in every Ubicomp lab I have taken a look at. They're all products with the latest and coolest technology created with the aim of solving a problem (or just fun) and you can see first hand the impact of what you have made. I had been slightly confused about what exactly I was learning in the course because the lectures are super interesting, full of real-life experiences, and I thoroughly enjoy the class... But how intertwined the learning gets with experiences and stories makes it hard to concretely identify it.

Today, we had a class where the TAs had got out A LOT of our professor's head-worn displays for us to play around with. They ranged from 1998 to current ones. And suddenly everything that he was telling us in class made sense.

FASHION MATTERS! Barely anyone is going to wear something that doesn't look good.
Weight of the device will kill it vs make it thrive.
The display should be on the upper corner on the outer side or basically outside the line of vision to allow users to focus.
Why gestures to switch on/off and swiping are so much more preferable than clickable devices.
The brightness of the display matters.
And a display closer to the field of vision may actually make sense for applications that require switching from the virtual space to the real world and back. 

"Like a Mattress Protector for the Head Worn Displays"

It's really cool how with every head-worn display I picked up, I began analysing it and noticing things I really would not have earlier. Things I have learned so easily coming to me has never happened before. The things our professor taught us seemed so obvious after wearing the device. They feel commonsense when someone tells you, but it's hard to come to that conclusion before you know it I guess.

So while I may not be able to tell you what exactly I am learning in the course, I know that I am learning a lot. And I think a large part of the reason for that is how passionate the professor is while teaching. He knows a lot, as every professor does, but he also knows how to keep things interesting. Sometimes it is through providing math proofs of iron man comics about how they got it right that shooting electricity out of your fingers is possible, but would leave you with your fingers being burned and require you to consume more calories to recuperate. He talks about how paraffin is used to maintain the temperature of electronics making use of its latent heat of fusion in satellites. You can see the excitement running through him as he talks about how he can carry so much memory just in his pocket, and his frustration behind particular companies for doing particular things. "What do you call a Pentium in your pocket? A soldering iron." is one of the kinds of jokes that he cracks. (Because a Pentium has 200 watts of power which is what you need for a soldering iron.) And, "10% back to me" seems to be one of his favourite things to say, as he gives us multiple million-dollar ideas every class.

I think I really enjoy watching and listening to passionate people. Part of the reason behind that would probably be that I hope to feel that way about something someday. It's fascinating (and hilarious) when someone writes the instruction "water plants" as "H2O C55H72O5N4Mg"(chemical formula of chlorophyll). It feels great when you hear people talking about how much they love what they are doing, and how it makes them feel that it's adding so much value to their (and others') lives. And I wish to get more clarity and figure out what really consumes me in a good way.

What are you passionate about?

Love,

Kanksha