Since The Law, Being mental and Data Science, the last two weeks have been fairly muted in some respects and quite substantial in others. I've been wanting to complete an assignment for my Continuous Professional Development (CPD) module and it's been weighing heavily on me, though I've been avoiding it. The subject matter is concerning Reflective thinking, The nature of understanding (knowing) and Concept maps among other things. I think I was a bit ambitious with this one.
Last weekend I didn't do anything related to it whatsoever, I hardly even made eye contact with my computer. Instead, I magically found inspiration to go to the gym. So much so that I went on Saturday morning, Saturday evening and Sunday morning. Funny that. The best way to procrastinate, in my opinion, is to go for a run and do some exercise. At least it's healthy.
In prior weeks, I'd been heavily focused on another assignment for my Digital forensics module which is currently going through English law right now, which might appear boring is quite interesting and I'm enjoying it.
In Tuesday's C programming class, we covered pointers and while I knew what was going on, other peoples heads blew up(Except for this one guy who seemed to get it).
I also submitted my end project which I cobbled together to create very simple noughts and crosses application that two people can play. It uses multidimensional arrays to represent the board and I've tested the puzzle solving algorithm in a 3x3 board and a 4x4 board although we only needed to code up a 3x3 board. It's not pretty but it works (a bit like me really...) Also, I didn't need to use multidimensional arrays but this has always been one my weaker subjects so I wanted some practice and its related to pointers so that's OK. The brief for the project is here
The class is drawing to a close now and I've only got 1, perhaps 2 classes left and I'm going to miss it. One of the student that I'm in contact sent me and email saying that she is eyeing out the Python course but I'm not really interested in re-learning python or maybe it is that it cost me another £500.
An interesting tidbit that I came across in my digital forensics material was a mention on how the C programming was not designed with the current mindset in the security engineering, which is of usability i.e making it easier to be safer. As master Yoda would say, "that it does not".
But then again, if you're programming in C, it likely that you're alone in a dark place and the effects of your C program will only kill you and your immediate fellow underlings down there. I miss the dark days...
Anyway, during the week, on the train every other day(basically my non-run days) I've been slowly piecing together my CPD assignment and today I completed the majority of it. That said it's not complete, it still needs proofreading, referencing and condensing - word limits are really restricting these days. I'm trying to manage my commitment and sanity.
Today, I switched back to the next sections in Law discussing the Computer Misuse Act of 1990 (CMA) and that that was how the day transpired really. Although I didn't go out except to buy some snacks or go to the gym, as I mentioned, I'm rather enjoying the law subject we're on. We've got another few weeks left so perhaps by the end of that, I'll be less enthusiastic?
One of the most revealing aspects of digital forensics has been focusing on the law and while doing my Software Engineering module, which I finished a few months back, I also found the sections around intellectual property and copyright and reproduction law quite fascinating. One of the great things about understanding more about the law is understanding how not to break it, and how it generally works. Seemingly small things like modifying an application's binary contents, circumventing a security mechanism or obtaining access to machines just because you can now hold some really intense penalties and in some cases like breaching section 3, you can be imprisoned for up to 10 years. Btw, section 3 under the CMA is about manufacturing viruses and impairing computer operation in general. An interesting read is cases where people have been convicted of related computer crimes such as this interesting website: http://www.computerevidence.co.uk/Cases/CMA.htm.
All this has rather muted my recent efforts to get an animated sprite up and running through my game development project and even my reading on the matter has somewhat taken a backseat. But that's Ok, everything has its priority and place and I'll get straight back into it when the other priorities start dying down somewhat (CPD and DF assignments for one).
I've managed to stay disease free, meaning I've not caught a cold whilst sticking to my running regime of about 25km a week. This is good.
And if you're wondering what Bran Flakes has to do with the title of this post - well let it be said that one should never go for a run in the morning fuelled up with All Bran Flakes. I did and I nearly did a Mikael Ekvall on route - I didn't but never, never tempt fate. That being said, had a good run, setting a new threshold heart rate of 154 which I gather from this is the longest ability to carry a average heart rate for the route/distance I run. So I seem to be able to average out at 154bpm over 8.5km.