Journal

You are beautiful if you can say that about yourself.

A perfect video that never gets made has zero impact.

If god has created this beautiful world, then it is your responsibility to learn about all of its wonderful mechanisms.

Existence precedes essence. There can not be a meaning without the existence, so you exist first and then you can give it any meaning. It is you.

The best way to learn about the world is to not trust with your ears. Use them only for navigation.

I learned that “Do what you love” doesn’t exactly mean to do what you love. It’s just a humble way of saying choose what you love — and the emphasis is not on love, it is on choose. And you don’t fully acknowledge your choice, you stay humble about it.

The shark.

It cannot stop moving or it dies — not metaphorically, literally. It does not assess the water before entering it. It does not wait for the current to feel right. It was not built for stillness and it does not pretend otherwise.

It is not the most intelligent creature in the ocean. The octopus thinks circles around it. But the octopus sits in its den, camouflaged, waiting, calculating — and the shark has already crossed the ocean.

There is no perfect stroke. There is only forward motion and the water that follows.

Being a fully grown adult, I can vouch for myself that my heart is orange and maroon.

Ideas have to be big, achievable and problem solving.

Life is only one. Make friends who you can trust, and don’t make them easy.

I’m a young grandpa of my future generation, it’s funny.

Never make excuses no matter how rational it feels. It’s your responsibility to not make one; and to be there so that you don’t have to make excuses.

Those who continue to look for perfection, never start.

I’m a big pile of nerves, but I also love to be uncomfortable.

Your good friends come to watch you play music.

I didn’t know I’m so chirpy unless I stopped listening to dark music.

It’s hard to be aware of your imperfections, but hey, you know what! Nobody is perfect. My teenage enlightenment is showing now.

Have faith in yourself, and trust in your knowledge.

I’m tempted to write “however incomplete it may be” but I’ll not write that. Because I trust in my knowledge.

Never. NEVER. Take spinning props lightly. Ever. No matter who designed them, no matter if you designed them. Never take multirotors, ESCs with props on, and especially with high voltage LiPo batteries, lightly.

Loafc usage: I’m using Loafc_stable and modifying the “stable” version and copying it as loafc_experiment. Always use loafc_stable when building the current firmware.

Some more high school wisdom: The best way to predict the future is to invent it.

You’re not that special; suck it up and do it.

I’m 50% heavy metal, 50% Beatles.

This life is made out of basic elements. If you do them right, it’s gonna turn out quite pretty.

Slow things in the long run are the fastest.

You all know my obsession for finding exuberance in little things that I find every day, if I may. I also thought it is a choice, and I still do, but I’ve come to realize I only make that choice when it is justified. Aristotle says something similar — he even gave it a word. Eudaimonia. It means a flourishing life. Of yourself and of those around you. Sometimes it means being strict. I say this because I’ve realized that the things that you do that make you forget your own existence are what lead you to a flourishing life. If I don’t make sense to you or if it all sounds obvious, then all I’m saying is: slow things down. When you do that, you focus. You give your undivided attention to the thing you’re doing. You flow in that moment. And in the long run, you end up faster than you could imagine.

Slowing things down is a superhuman power. And we all have it.

High school wisdom 101: If you’re special, then it is not because somebody thinks that you are, but because you think that you are.

Don’t copy others, trust your life experiences and be honest about them to yourself.

When you feel awkward attending an event, don’t. Because they are not feeling awkward the way you do. They are comforting, and want you to be there. They are happy to see you.

Life is short, don’t waste time on things that have no return in value. Such as making problems for yourself, only to solve them. Solving them depletes mental bandwidth, and wastes time that could be used doing something with useful returns.

It’s been a long time since I wrote something about my day. Normally I write it in my diary with a pen when things are more intimate. But I’m riding a bus right now and this is the only way I have to run down the stream of thoughts that I have. It’s snowing outside, all the things are covered in white but the red fire hydrants have found a way to get away with it. It looks like a fairy winter land as one of my old friends Varnika calls it. This month has been like the first time on the swings. It’s exciting, it’s a little nervous. The discipline I’ve built in the previous year is paying off. There seems to be enough time in a day, sometimes a little less, but it’s there. Making footprints on the freshly fallen snow in the morning is a pleasure that this young man loves to savor. While a big day awaits. I’ll squeeze in a little bit of life in it in my own ways. Yeah, that’s it.

All my life’s lessons come from this sport — snooker. I don’t think it is an overstatement.

After exploring so many ideas, I’ve realized that there is no best way to do a thing. Each person comes with a certain set of learning and skills and they use that to progress what was already there. For example, the aircraft controls community is obsessed with PX4 and thinks that it is the best, mainly because there is a group at NASA that does all these experiments on PX4, largely due to the available documentation. The world thinks that PX4 is better than others. However, there is another controls group at UIUC and MIT that does the same things — and even better — with Ardupilot, and lists their reason for choosing it as their preexisting familiarity with Ardupilot. So the entire department follows that.

The big tasks are run by one person in each department, and that person’s ability to perform the tasks determines what the lower chain will follow. This is not the only way though. You can have your own way and find paths that are more familiar to you. You need to leverage your skills and align them with your strengths instead of abandoning them and following someone else just because there is somebody who is doing that. Unless there is a significant bottleneck in the skills you already know, there is no real reason not to pursue those.

So going forward, I’m going to use Ardupilot to implement my controllers because I have a good base, understanding, and most importantly, support from friends to resolve problems with it. This network and base is what is required to do a good project. Instead of learning something new and finding new people — this is the way.

Difficult guitar solos, difficult code and difficult math are all the same. There is a lot that is squeezed into a very small part. So slow down as much as you can. Even though you’ve just moved four lines in the code, or math, or four bars — it is the part of gluing all those simple, seemingly wasteful, or in my words “little things” that most people don’t want to do or ignore.

Beauty of Adaptive Control History: NASA pilot Neil Armstrong is seen here in the cockpit of the X-15–1 (56–6670) after a research flight. Neil Armstrong was the first test pilot to fly the North American X-15–3, the first-ever manned hypersonic vehicle that featured an adaptive flight control system, the MH-96. Image source: NASA Collection.

Your belief in your identity is just an excuse to do things.

Your body is the only true place you live. Treat it with respect, nourish it with wholesome food, move it with intention.

Haven’t been so obsessed with myself in a good way. This human loves like hell, and knows when to push to the limits.

Flew the DRAGON transition today. The gain-scheduled LQR held through the corridor — first clean fixed-wing to multirotor without any manual intervention. The altitude loss was under 4 meters which is well within what we planned for. Hard to describe what it feels like to watch something you spent months on just work.

Been thinking about the gap between simulation and hardware lately. The 6-DOF model matches flight data well on attitude but there is still something off in the translational response at high roll angles. My instinct is the propeller inflow model — BEM assumes uniform inflow and that breaks down when the disk is tilted. Worth revisiting the skewed wake correction.