Chugging Along

Getting back into the swing of things.These last few weeks have been pretty horrendous for fencing and running.

Many things conspired to limit fencing, plans and cancellations, but finally got to fence last night. I fenced a bit and practiced some too. After being up the mountain yesterday, and getting up to do 1.5 miles in the morning I certainly wasn't at top performance, however it was definitely good to fence. I certainly need to improve, as we have a person that can soundly beat me. It is quite amazing how much of a motivator that is, in fact it will be an excellent learning opportunity.

I really need to work on my point control, and in that direction I have made a ball with a string through it. Really simple, but attaching a clamp to the beam and then dangling the ball from it should help my point control become better. Or rather I will improve my point control. Another thing is reactions, I need to definitely put in place stock actions as well as leave the door open for flexibility. I see things just fine, but as I get more tired I make bigger actions, which are most decidedly not restful. They also cause pieces of blades to break off and go flying across the gym. So some shopping needs to be done to find a few dry blades, and a glove as mine is finally wearing out, Leon Paul certainly makes great gloves.

I ran 1.5 miles yesterday and 2 miles this morning. I haven't run in 2 weeks mostly because of the rain. I dislike running in the rain, but I made a deal with myself Monday night, I would run at least once a week whether or not it was raining in the morning, Monday being the day. That would allow for my shoes to dry out. But it was actually nice Tuesday morning, so I didn't need to get wet. When I reach 300 miles in my shoes I think they will be relegated as I get a new pair, but I am still about 110 miles from that goal. An old pair of shoes, or just even a second pair that can get wet without worrying about tomorrow.

I also didn't do too well on the most recent self-driving car homework. It wasn't so much programming as putting together matrices for a Kalman Filter. The fact that I didn't have to take linear algebra in college probably doesn't help. Also waiting until the last moment doesn't help either. This week I started in on the lectures so I can hopefully get that done well before this weekend and start in on the homework. It is focused on Particle Filters, supposedly a much easier idea. I sure hope so, but I suspect that we will have to know all three including a histogram discrete filter. It should continue to be interesting, and I am learning python at least.