aerkiaga's blog

Progress report on my projects

What does one do when a software bug is annoying them? Report it to the developers, of course. But there's one cool thing with Open Source software: you can also do it yourself!

I did this with LibreOffice back in the day (just kidding, that's only last year). I reported the bug in November 2020, self-assigned it in March 2021, and after learning the ropes, sent a fix in May. Et voilà! Now I can make clinical statistics charts without the data series going haywire! Could I have done this with MS Office, huh?

So, fast-forward to November 2021, when I reported this bug in Avogadro, one of the programs in the Open Chemistry suite. These months I've come to believe this project should be getting more love from contributors (just look at the name, it's important stuff!). Seeing how little manpower such an important project gets has inspired me to, hopefully, work for them in GSOC 2022.

But that's a whole different matter. Here I'm talking about a bug that was, well, bugging me; and it seems like I've grown less patient and more efficient since last year. Because this time I only waited until January, and sent in a fix two days later, this week. It also helps that the Open Chemistry codebase has such well organized code, heck I want to spend the summer diving into it so badly!

Now, honestly that's not taken up much time this week. Most of it was spent improving the code I want to use for fully 3D-printing hydraulic and electronic circuits. It's not yet in a state wherein I could comfortably publish it (FOSS ftw ;), but at least I've implemented the ability to export the prints. The hackers and makers among you will love this...

I've also become more familiar with the theory behind dielectric spectrocopy, and I'm pretty positive that I could use it for my intended purposes if I design the circuits carefully.

Also a friend has quite a few spare stepper motors to sell cheap, so that's some monies I could shave off the BoM for the Big Project. A project still expensive for my standards, but it's something.

Btw, if you would like to contact me for any reason, drop me a text at @aerkiaga:matrix.org.

There's a chance you know about the electric-hydraulic anlogy. An analogy between two fields I happen to need, in combination, in two of my projects... Now, I've got an exam on neurology and cardiology next week. Apparently unrelated, huh?

What if I show you this article related to neurology? Or this one to cardiology (no, that graph is not from a half-wave rectifier with a smoothing capacitor). Or this whole bunch of literal circuit diagrams taken straight out from medical-related publications? See the pattern now?

Well, this is the simple fact that both engineers and nature look for solutions to fight the very same physical laws (also scientists don't like reinventing the wheel). And this week I'm studying all these four “similar” subjects; isn't that terribly beautiful? :D

By the way, I'm much less interested in those four than I am in the psychiatry-computer science duo; and I might be forcing the analogy at this point, but I want to believe it's no coincidence that I want to become a psychiatrist... Deep Learning, anybody? Anyway, don't mind my ramblings ;)

This week, after having previously contacted them, I sent an e-mail to the FSFE translators mailing list with a list of changes to help correct the faulty spanish translation of their PM/PC Open Letter. I hope their campaign ends up being successful!

My Big Project is related to the field of biotechnology. I need to make it reliable for critical applications, while still being open to flexible use. One particular problem I've faced is storage: how can I implement an atomic, consistent filesystem that's still dead simple and standard? Well, I've been working a bit on that front. I want to create a protocol that's verified by automated proof and then show it to people that might also find it useful.

And, last but not least, I've made the decision that I want to participate in GSOC 2022, as, for the first time, it allows non-CS students to get onboard! I've read the rules and everything, but I'm worried that my being a med student will get my proposal turned down... Oh, yes, I only intend to send one, to this organization (provided they even participate...). I've been reading their source code this week so at least I get a head start; I'll need to set up a computational chemistry workflow though.

This week has been marked by productivity; that, and bad sleep. I ...

  • ... published Nodeverse 0.1.6 with many bug fixes. One of them had been reported back in August!
  • ... sent three pull requests to the engine developers. Two of them are related to API documentation, and one has already been merged. I tend to follow engine development very closely.
  • ... started this blog, obviously :)
  • ... learned more about AC circuits. I'll need that knowledge for the printer, but especially for the Big Project (it needs several RF dielectric spectroscopy circuits).
  • ... bought many presents for my relatives and friends! Yay!
  • ... made a visit to someone in a different city. Sorry, no details on this.

Did I mention I have a final exam tomorrow? Yeah... It's about this. Not my cup of tea, not terribly complicated either; I could probably have studied more if I hadn't done any of the above things :/ Or if I had studied at all before this week. But, y'know, procrastination... Of the productive kind.

Well, there's some good news too. The new 3d printer has arrived, so hopefully I will start using it in the coming days.

Also, Nodeverse is becoming much more popular. Now over 1600 downloads, it got its first positive review, stating that it “needs some work, but we could be looking at the next No Man's Sky”! Not sure about the last part, but I sure will put that work in. The game currently appears on the first page of the ContentDB “Top Games” list... which is only 3 pages long anyway, but hey, that's something!

The New Year is already here, and nothing can make a year as memorable as, well... writing everything down!

I'm Aritz Erkiaga, currently a Medicine student at the University of the Basque Country. But, for someone as curious as me, learning and making are unavoidable side quests, so as projects come and go, I'll keep track of my progress around them here.

As of right now, in the middle of the exam period, there are three main creative projects behind my procrastination: * Nodeverse, a space exploration game inspired by No Man's Sky, but with voxel mechanics. * An open-source printer; it started as a proposal by a social network user, then evolved into a project involving multiple people... Although only I seem to be working on it at the moment. * Something else :) A big, big project that I expect to talk more about in the future.