March has been a good mix of heads-down programming and daydreaming about hardware projects. Here’s what I’ve been up to and what’s coming next.
Grinding CSES problems
I’ve been putting a lot of time into the CSES Problem Set lately, and I’m really enjoying it. If you haven’t run into it, CSES is a big collection of competitive programming problems that genuinely make you think about how you’re solving something, not just whether it works.
Back on C++
I’ve used C++ before for console apps, but working through these problems has reminded me why I like it. There’s something satisfying about the speed and control you get, and the language doesn’t let you get lazy. You actually have to think about memory and efficiency, and that mindset carries over to everything else I write.
The problems cover a good spread: dynamic programming, graph algorithms, data structures, and a fair bit of math like number theory and combinatorics. Each category has forced me to slow down and really understand what I’m doing.
Putting the Raspberry Pi to work
I’ve got a Raspberry Pi 4 Model B (2GB) that’s been collecting dust for way too long, and I finally want to do something with it. A few ideas I’m kicking around:
- A media server with Plex or Jellyfin to stream my library around the house, since the Pi 4 should handle transcoding for a couple of devices at once
- A small home monitoring setup for network status, temperature and humidity, camera feeds, and general system stats
- A lightweight dev server for testing web projects before they go to production
Next up
Whatever I land on, I’ll document the whole thing here: the setup, what breaks, and how I fix it. Sharpening the algorithm side with CSES while getting my hands dirty with the Pi feels like a nice balance of theory and actually building something.