Animations, Leather Working, and a return to programming for fun.
animations
At the start of the fall semester, I found myself returning to a childhood routine: Saturday morning cartoons. While it it definitely extended beyond Saturdays, I found myself switching on old episodes of Tom and Jerry and Looney Tunes as a way to relax and unwind. I found it impressive how entertaining these cartoons were with such a simple animation style, little dialogue, and meaningful soundtracks. My interests in animation grew enough for me to try my hand at it, but there was just one small problem: i can’t draw. This in mind, I attempted to keep a sketchbook with one sketch every day, but in the midst of a busy semester this quickly dissolved into one sketch every other week. As we inched closer to our mid-year showcase, I‘d decided to go even simpler with my animations: abstract. I fixated on dots — finding fun, random, and new ways to test my imagination, trying to make a mere dot interesting. Here’s some of what I made:
I’m still animating, and using the skills I’ve learned about perspective, frame rate, spacing, and speed to add animations to more personal projects like my website, notion page, and even as gifts for friends. And as for drawing and sketching, I’m slowly getting back into the habit of a sketch per day. At this rate, who knows if I’ll ever graduate from stick figures :0
leather working
This past summer I spent a month in Montreal. I really picked it at a whim, but it turned out to be one of the best places I could’ve solo-tripped in the summer. What struck me about the city was the culture — everyone I befriended from my roommates to fellow climbers were obsessed with customization. Custom clothes and trinkets surrounded me everywhere. I brought this idea home with me, and slowly I found myself wanting to customize as many things as I could. From my shoes to my hoodies, I wanted my things to be mine: I was inspired to make my own leather wallet. Unfortunately, amidst a busy second semester, hectic schedule, and sheer blunders my goal had washed away. Compounded by an array of leather thickness issues, pattern matching difficulties, and a few wrongly measured cuts, I had a work-in-progress wallet that was just small enough to hold nothing. Here’s a pic midway through stitching it (rip basement Union tables):
The dream to customize is still alive! And you better believe I’m making a v2 as soon as I get back on campus. I found the entire process to be pretty relaxing and therapeutic, and even mistakes lent themselves to a nice outcome. Stitching, while tricky for the first few minutes, became a nice repetitive task I could mellow out to (and a great new transferable skill).
programming
Of course, as a CS major, my year wouldn’t be complete without a few programming projects. Importantly, programming side projects were something that I had fallen off of since attending college. To me, it felt as if the spark of coding in my free time was replaced by a rigorous curriculum centered around programming. But second semester, just as I had in high school, my curiosity got the best of me and I found myself coding.
To start, I began to experiment with some path finding software — specific to airplane routes and airports. Using datasets of flight routes and available airports, I hacked together an optimal flight route planner, similar to what Airlines have on their backends. My optimization centered around time and distance, but it would be easy to modify to optimize for things like fuel use and climate goals. Utilizing the A* algorithm, some fancy visualizations, and a quick Flask/React frontend, I had a working path finder:
Another quick project I worked on was to build a quick Snake game on a micro:bit v2. The micro:bit is a microcontroller similar to an Arduino/Raspberry pi — the only difference is that it comes with a 5x5 LED array, wifi, bluetooth, speakers, accelerometer, and buttons. With this, and an ‘Intro to Rust’ book, my mind immediately jumped to create Snake. Key challenges included learning Rust, which is a very interesting language with its own quirks. Similarly, it was fun to break down the game of snakes into its core principals and simple rules that I could then code up. An entire FISI was devoted to exploring how to represent Snake in code in my notebook :). Here’s the finished project:
Lastly, I thought it was time to finally redesign my personal website. I originally made mine as a junior in high school, mostly ripping off of my brother’s, so I thought it’d be an apt time to refresh it with some of my personality. Here are some of the original Figma designs for v1, but I think i’m going to go with v2. Something speaks to me about v2 a little more than v1 (albeit v1 looks a little cleaner):
phew, that was a good bit.
I can’t believe the year is over. This year will definitely hold a special place in my heart — getting to know everyone in Shift and exploring my passions outside of tech has been a privilege. And while I’m sad that I only have two more years left, I can’t wait to see what the future holds for Shift.
Thank you to the seniors who have inspired me to be a better leader, creator, and friend. i’ll never forget the laughter infused crusty floors, late-night conversations in the attic, and of course, hei hei — goodbye 923 state street. Until next time…
if you made it down here, thank you so much for reading :)
— rohan
