Hey Everyone! 👋
Welcome back to my newsletter, today we’re going to be looking over the month of January! Hope all of you had a fun and productive start to the new year.
If it’s your first time here, my name is Jayant Arora and I’m a 16-year-old Innovator at The Knowledge Society (TKS) in Toronto, Canada.
Well, you might be wondering what I did this month. Let’s get right to it!
Mindset 🤔
This month, I focused on practicing a stoic mindset. Stoicism helps us direct our thoughts and actions more positively. In the real world, we can’t control everything, but we can control how we react to situations. Stoic practices remind us that our reaction to events in our daily lives really make a difference.
Here’s an example:
In the midst of this pandemic, sometimes I feel myself getting frustrated from staying indoors all the time. I try to remind myself that this also serves as an opportunity to spend time with our families, work on our crafts, develop a good, consistent lifestyle, and most importantly - stay safe! By reminding myself of these opportunities, I am able to feel better about the situation. So, perspective is everything.
Here are 2 of my favourite stoic principles:
Focus on what you can control, accept what you can’t
Turn obstacles into opportunities
To read more about stoicism, click here!
Brain-Computer Interfaces 🧠
In January, I started to work on a project using Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs). For this, I am using several resources to develop a BCI system which performs an action when the user blinks their eyes. Specifically, I am working with the chrome-dino game.
When you’re on Google Chrome and you don’t have WiFi, a little dinosaur comes on your screen and you can hit the spacebar to make it jump over obstacles. Type in “chrome://dino/” to see what I mean (available only on Chrome)!
The goal of this project is to make the dinosaur on the screen jump over the obstacles when the user blinks. I plan on completing this project in February. I am using the MUSE-2 headband to work on this - more on this next month.
Creating Content ✏️
As mentioned in my previous newsletter, I planned on writing an article related to Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs). This month, I wrote an article on how EEG and BCIs are used together. Although this article was more focused on research rather than my personal opinion, learning about the connection between EEG data and brain machines was beneficial for my project (mentioned above).
Smaller Things 🤏
This month, I also spent some time exploring some emerging technologies including Blockchain and Gene-Editing. Spending time looking at these different technologies has really put into perspective how the world will be changing over the next couple of decades - so many problems can be solved as these technologies continue to develop!
I’ve started to do some work on my personal website! This will include my portfolio and any updates on my learning about BCIs. I’m hoping to launch it in February or early March.
Goals for February 📆
In January, I was busy with my school courses and couldn’t work on my side projects as much, but next month will be an action packed month. Here are the things I plan on doing:
Finish my current BCI project and start working on the next one!
Participate in a Tech Hackathon
Possibly launch my personal website 👀
Write a newsletter for the month of February
Anyways, that’s it for me! Hope everyone stays safe and does well in February!
Regards,
Jayant Arora
If you’d like to connect with me on LinkedIn, click here.
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Good going Jayant. Can't wait to see your BCI Dino project.. Looks exciting
Great newsletter this month!