2025: Teaching Robots how to Drum

or I'm Getting Rhubarb For Christmas

31 Dec 2025 - atrodo - Song: I'm Getting Nuttin' for Christmas by Relient K

As we wrap another year, and we consider that I started Teaching Robots how to drum just over 7 years ago, we enter the part of the year that is useful for reflection. Unfortunately, this year has been full of reflections already and a curious decision has yet to be made.

Per tradition, it is nice to track the measurable before talking about the unmeasurable.

Made 32 commits
Changed 18 files to the tune of around 1100 inserts and 170 deletions
- The number is surprisingly close to last year’s
Wrote 1 blog post

It is hard to summarize the last post succinctly, but it is also the best source of information on current progress.

I don’t yet have an answer to the questions raised at the beginning of the month. I still have some desire to teach robots, but the reality of the moment we find ourselves in takes a real toll on the motivation to do things. I don’t want this to be another project left unfinished, but the reasons to walk away are not like previous projects. Not many of my projects are made useless because of a cultural moment. While the reasons are different, its also bitter no matter the reasons.

I do have things to work on; earlier this year was in fact quite productive and there is a good amount of confidence in the changes made that I think will pay of with improvements. Not state of the art AI improvements mind you, they can only be improvements to this project in this moment.

And that’s the only way forward: making progress for this project in this moment.