Since I last wrote my goals on this blog, a lot has changed with my life. In February, I was still finishing up my semester. Since then, I’ve started my co-op position in May and I’ve learned quite a bit in the four months since last writing.
In this blog post, I will reflect on the goals I wrote in February earlier this year, and then list my goals for this month.
For my science fiction course I took last semester, I wrote short story in the style of an author or filmmaker in the course materials. I chose to write a time travel story in similar vein to The Time Machine by H. G. Wells.
I've always had this concept in my head, but I never fully explored it in a story before. I chose to write a short story to force myself to conceptualize these ideas. While it's not a complete execution, I'm pleased that I've completed something about the idea that's been mulling in my head for a while
Over the past year and a half studying software engineering, I have created and refined a note-taking system that I’ve found a lot of success with.
First, I use Obsidian to store all of my notes for every course in one vault. I take advantage of features such as Markdown formatting, vault-wide search, and internal vault links that act as a “wiki” of my notes, where I store all of my consolidated notes on a particular topic.
The Markdown files created in Obsidian map well as sources for NotebookLM, an AI research tool developed by Google. I use NotebookLM generate quizzes and study guides on my notes, saving me time so I can focus on testing myself for more effective studying.
In this blog post, I go more into detail of how exactly I set up Obsidian and use NotebookLM to help with my studying, as well as some considerations should you want to adapt my system.
Just some small site and life updates I want to share:
I've changed my website host to KnownHost. So far, the transition has been very smooth. I have been with x10Hosting for over a decade (!), although I've been meaning to migrate for a while now. For whatever reason, my website would take a good few seconds to load, regardless of caching. As soon as I switched hosts, my site has been loading as smooth as butter. I feel as if I've caught up with the modern era! ... Almost.
This is all to say my main domain is now vanesarobledo.com. However, I plan to make sure vanesa.robledo.ca redirects to the new domain.
As much as I wanted to update this blog more than once every few months, I have been very swamped with schoolwork. Software engineering has already had quite a bit of a workload, but it has picked up substantially! Between five intense courses, an elective (I opted to take Science Fiction), and looking for co-op jobs, I've had very little time to actually write. I've had a few drafts saved for months, along with a backlog of reading material. Thankfully, I've freed up time by securing a co-op position, so I hope to pick away at my side projects in between my assignments.
Hopefully I'll post more soon, although I suspect I won't until this semester ends.
My current goals and projects, as of February 2026:
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This goes without saying, but finish this semester. Ideally I also maintain my GPA, although this has proven to be the toughest semester yet. Currently, I'm taking Advanced SQL, NoSQL, Microprocessors and Embedded Systems, Application Security, Windows Network Programming, and Science Fiction as an elective. It has been quite the workload!
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Revamp my portfolio. Right now, my portfolio has been slowly transitioning away from my old goals of seeking an advanced degree in bioinformatics and focusing on bioinformatics toward my current web application and web design career.