Yet another packed week, though this time we're also coming back to my love for nature. I've trailblazed a new ping pong variant, thought about human psychology, prepared for many more catchups before the summer ends, and started planning for my capstone project.
Take your time and enjoy the view
Starting with the weekend, I went to the park with my friends and played frisbee and spikeball. I'm including this in my reflection because of the moment when I lay down on our picnic blanket, looked up, and enjoyed the view. First, the sky and the shifting of clouds. Then, the way the light hit the leaves and had this glowing effect on some while others had no glow, producing a rich contrast. It's moments where I appreciate life and nature like this that I feel I'm truly doing my "summer off" justice and making the most of my time.
Trailblazing ping pong variations
On a fun note, I explored the world of ping pong with my friends, straight out of an action movie. Why? Because we hit the ball... with our fists.
Why....?
Let's go back a bit. First, we played 2v2, but then wanted a challenge. Naturally, we tried playing where each team needs to swap who hits the ball of every hit. So if I return it to the opponents, my teammate must be the one to hit it back next. We got a bit too good at that, so I came up with the ambitious idea of not just swapping who hits the ball back but also using the same paddle. Now, after hitting the ball, we needed to master a seamless handoff to our teammate so they could hit the ball when it returned.
A realization
As we played, we noticed that we needed time to do the handoff, so our hits became intentionally slower and we tended to lob the ball. As we started, part of this strategy also made us hit it easier to the other side because we wanted to have a proper rally so it almost became collaborative to not let the ball die. But our competitive spirits were soon reignited as we decided that we had to hit it upwards to give the other team a chance, BUT could hit as hard as possible. Really, the trajectory just wasn't allowed to go down, and this still posed a challenge for us to master.
A fist fight ensues
As we played, I thought about abandoning the paddles altogether and using our hands. However, hitting the ball with our palms seemed like it would be too easy. After all, we only started these variations as a challenge. So, I made the crazy proposal of hitting it with our fists. Here, we learned the importance of upwards momentum and that uppercuts worked the best since our hits lacked the power that a paddle had. If the ball was high enough, a jab worked too.
Honestly, I think it's incredibly valuable to have people who will try "stupid" stuff like this just for fun. It's harmless yet was actually a very intricate sport to master, and this hand eye coordination could be helpful in a myriad of ways through our lives. Plus, it'd be a pretty impressive trick to start hitting a ping pong ball like that in the future like a seasoned pro while others trying it for the first time realize how difficult it is.
Knowledge does not equal confidence
Back to more work-related topics, I had a realization simply knowing something isn't always enough. For context, I had made these tutorial documents as part of my freelance work so that the company I made the website for could make small edits on their own without needing to pay me for my time. However, I had failed to recognize that for someone new to web-specific coding languages, even though they had lots of coding experience, the thought of working in an unfamiliar domain meant they wanted more support.
Specifically, they wanted me to walk through making an update with them on call to ensure they wouldn't break anything. We then recorded that call as a reference for anyone else going through it in the future. As someone who enjoys video/visual walk-throughs myself, I certainly saw the benefit in a video that shows you that exactly what you are doing is correct and will not cause issues.
It's also made me think about my own work, where I often blaze ahead when working with new technologies that have similarities to ones I know, yet slow down a lot with the unfamiliar. For example, in setting up Supabase for my personal projects, I've never worked with an online database manager before (I've used stuff like MS SQL and Oracle SQL Developer but never any web-based SQL platforms), so I ended up asking a lot of questions to AI because Supabase involves so much more than just the database -- it has authentication management and object storage too.
The time sink of AI
I had a notion that I could send my website off to Claude to do an "SEO audit" and improve my SEO in advance of publicly releasing my website (aka posting it on LinkedIn). I planned on starting the projects page soon but thought I could use my spare time on the weekend to do the SEO work. What I did not realize was the time sink in reviewing it's code and fixing errors, such as it trying to open an image in the code for Open Graph but failing twice, finally realizing that it needed to pre-encode the image in base64 because it couldn't dynamically open the image on the website due to constraints in my hosting platform.
Needless to say, it was a good reminder that even if I can start anything with AI, finishing it remains something I need to properly slot into my schedule.
Preparing for the end of summer
Finally, I've done lots of preparations for final catch-ups before the summer ends. Friends, old coworkers, some of whom I even met this week as I went downtown to visit. I've spent a lot more time that I ever thought I would in maintaining and growing my relationships this summer, and realized just how much effort it takes to stay in touch. Luckily, I've got some free time now, and I hope that by building my relationships this summer and upcoming year, we'll get to the stage where less frequent catch-ups become easy, because we're close enough that we don't need to see each other every month to enjoy a good chat.
I'll be heading off on a little trip my with family this weekend, so I'm excited to write about how I spent my time disconnected from the internet.