Goals —

@goredchanel sure! Planning, practice, and time management are probably the most important things.

We didn't really come in with a plan and had to spend a lot of time figuring out what we were going to do, how each of the pieces fit together, and how to get the code working across files. I was also not familiar with HTML, CSS, or JavaScript, and since we decided on building a website... it took a long time to learn how anything even worked.

Also practicing I think is just overall helpful. Even if it's just smaller projects, it helps build up to making that bigger hack. Making small apps/games/websites, even if they aren’t that useful can help keep your skills up to date. And then when the hackathon comes along, you can do a more practical project. For learning python and java from the very beginning I like codingbat, but if you’re already familiar, it might be too slow.

Time management is also important to keep track of. We didn't have this issue, but I think it was pretty common in the groups.

Devpost has a "Beginner-Friendly" tag for more hackathons, so those are hopefully less intimidating. Anyways, I hope that helps 😊

my first 24 hour hackathon!

NEVER AGAIN in my life am I building a website from scratch 😭 it’s torture. if only my dumb self knew that frameworks existed…

regaining momentum ♡

ps: i received roses!

GUESS WHO'S BACK!!

Not me.

I've finished writing my dissertation (no beta we die. we just die) but I still have my whole ass presentation to prepare.

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I'll defend this shit in two days.

funny story… the timer on my quiz was at ~40 mins and i only had an hour for the quiz so I was super stressed— only 20 mins left with a third of the problems left.

turns out the timer was counting down 😭 so i rushed for literally no reason. i got 100% anyways! so no harm.

today is a study day (fortunately or regrettably depending on your perspective). this problem set is really cool and i actually like learning about circuits, which i didn’t expect.

- circuits problem set (88 mins)

- circuits quiz (39 mins)

- advanced circuits lecture

i’m REALLY behind in my course and i need to catch up by the time school starts again so i probably have another 4 hrs of work minimum. it’s finally feeling like crunch time lol

studying from home tip— move your desk next to a window so that you don’t get depressed while you study ❤️

"Anything that is easy for me must be worthless." — Impostor syndrome in a nutshell

m42 (great nebula in orion) | 28 sec | 1/12/25

Friday, 21st March 2025

Moving onto my stellar remnants module today, with an appropriate soundtrack :)

🎵The Sky Moves Sideways Album - Porcupine Tree

Saturday, 25th January 2025

I’ve had a pretty productive day – finishing it by reviewing this week’s plasma lectures :)

🎵Watershed Album – Opeth (finally moved on from my binge of the song Bleak like 10 times in a row, lol)

Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) taken by Auvo Korpi on January 27 2023.

During the formation of the sun, there was a protoplanetary disk (cloud of debris and gas) that orbited around it. The farthest parts of this disk were far from the heat emitted, and cooled down. The cold material clumped with frozen gasses and water, creating icy rocks.

These rocks orbit far away from the sun in huge elliptical orbits, in the Kuiper belt and Oort cloud. At one point, the icy rocks get closer to the sun. The ice is heated and releases dust, known as the comet’s trail.

Comet ZTF was first discovered in March 2022, but came closest to Earth in a long time in January of 2023. At first, the comet was believed to be an asteroid, but when it got closer to the sun, it was observed to have its signature green glow.

The green comes from the diatomic carbon, which is part of the comet’s atmosphere. As it got closer to the sun, the molecules became excited and radiate green light. This is also why the green color doesn’t extend to the tail, instead it is happening in the comet’s nucleus.

I remember going out with my telescope around this time to view the comet. At that point I think it was just above the Taurus constellation, and I had a lot of trouble angling the lens to point that high up.

I don’t remember being able to see the tail, but just with the naked eye, I could see the comet’s light. I can’t believe it’s already been two years since then. Time really flies.