Projects Lost to Time

I've lost (or lost access to) many projects.

I’ve gotten up to a lot since I finished high school, and I’ve unfortunately lost a lot of it. This page serves as a collection of the projects that now exist only in my memory.

  1. Tracking Camera : For a project lab course at UBC (PHYS 319) I used a motor, microcontroller, and thermal camera to make a camera that tracked people as they walked across the room. The main challenges here were the mess that was the microcontroller’s timers (which wasn’t well-documented of course) and me forgetting I was on Windows and using UNIX commands instead.
  2. Microbial Fuel Cell : In a previous life where I thought I might want to do engineering, I was part of the UBC Rocket design team. One of the lesser-known parts of rocketry competitions is the payload competition, where teams compete to launch the coolest gadget or experiment in their rocket. Our team made a microbial fuel cell, essentially a generator powered by hijacking the respiration of microbes, and I was in charge of the data collection apparatus. It ended up working well enough, and got to go for a trip on a vomit comet, as did I!
  3. Pong : I made a working version of pong using an Arduino, a low-refresh rate 40x12 pixel LCD screen, and two potentiometers of questionable quality as controllers. Was it advisable or good? Probably not. But it was fun to make!
  4. x86 : In an attempt to finally understand the error messages of C++, I spent the summer before university teaching myself x86 Assembly. The program I remember most from this adventure was an in-place quicksort (i.e. that allocated no new memory), which got way more complicated than I expected. I’m not sure I ever understood those error messages, but knowing assembly definitely helped a bit, and made me a better programmer overall.
  5. I’m Not an Experimentalist : Back when I was in the Science One program, I worked on a term project with a friend that consisted of a fairly simple experiment; measure heat dissipation in a metal rod, and compare it to theoretical results. Fifteen barbecue lighters and two trips to Home Depot, I discovered that I’m really not an experimentalist.