Me, myself and I

So for my first blog, I decided that I would talk a bit about me and my course. My name is Scott Dewson, I'm 23 years old and I'm studying Computer Security and Forensics (CSF) for the second year. I am a big gamer (both board and computer) and I am usually terrible at both. The time that's not spent studying or gaming is usually taken up by my role as a Squadron Commander within the Air Cadets.

The course that I'm taking is very relevant to what's happening in the world at the moment. For those of you who aren't up to date with what's going on in cyber security, I'll give you a quick overview. The UK are attacking China, China are attacking North Korea, North Korea are shaking their fists at everyone, Russians are attacking Russia, Russia is also attacking anything that moves, and everyone is attacking the US. Looks like a messed-up war zone don't you think? Well, it is. It may not seem it on the surface, or even publicly, but war is moving from the battle-ground to cyber-space. This is where the CSF students come in. We will eventually move into one of two areas, either the protection (Security) or the investigation (Forensics) sectors. With the protection we will be testing defences, and fixing holes before malicious attackers can exploit them. With investigating, we will be doing a post-mortem on attacks to figure out what happened and how it was conducted. 

So why did I choose this course? Because of how awesome the technology is, how interesting the subject is, and that the future of computing rests completely on the future of this area of study and the people studying it. Without people defending computers from attacks and malicious uses, computers would not be safe to use for anything (not that they're hugely safe now). 

Why the University of Bedfordshire? Because at the time it was the only University to offer a Security and Forensics package. The lecturers and technicians know what they are talking about. Some lecturers have years of experience in teaching the subject, others have industrial experience in the subject, and a couple have both. If you want people who really know what they are doing, then Bedfordshire is the place to go.

And what's the best thing about my University life so far? The people. I know it sounds cliche, but it's definitely the people that make the Uni experience. Not just the friends, but just the people in general. Bedfordshire is a very diverse University both culturally and ethnically, and it's this that makes the best experiences. I have learnt more about different cultures and the food (my god, the food) in my two years at Bedfordshire than in 11 years of Religious studies in school. 

With A-level exams going on now and Year 12's looking towards University choices soon, next week I'm going to talk about choosing the right University. More importantly, the choices that come with picking a University beyond the name.

Make your own opportunities

Joining university is a hard and a life changing decision. The course you want to study, the university and if further study is right for you. The likelihood is that going to university is the first major opportunity you’ll encounter. It’s a major stepping stone towards a career, but getting accepted to the university is the first hurdle.

The definition of luck is that it’s brought on by chance rather than one’s own action, but opportunities on the other hand can be brought on by things like skill, determination and contacts. Doing things like researching into a programming language for a programming course before going into the university interview or maybe playing around in some 3D software when joining a 3D Animation interview means a lot. The interviewee may have someone who’s done exactly that, meaning if you haven’t dabbled and researched you might find yourself looking elsewhere. Every small thing counts, printing Hello World maybe slight, but at least you've taken the time to look into it in your own time. The more effort you put in, the results will clearly show and will give you a much wider range of options in life’s next step. This is my last blog post, I've successfully finished university with a first and achieved everything I wanted to. I thought I’d round up with something that I wish I was told when I was younger. Make your own opportunities can be something as simple as joining a user group, every single contact you create is vital for when you finish university. It’s very long term, but every little bit extra you do will help in the long run. My final year of university I did an internship, Microsoft Student Partnership, freelanced, co-authored a paper and planned it all around my study time. These have all led to other opportunities and such as guest blog post sites on some major websites all because of the blog you’re reading now!  

How difficult is university?

In my opinion it’s rather easy, I found it easier that Sixth Form and so did many of my peers. Yet why are there still people that drop out and find it too difficult? There are some environmental and external factors that can lead to university getting to difficult. But its often because the student doesn't have a passion for the subject. I honestly don’t think intellect isn't an issue for most courses. Even think back to your own experience, the rather obvious correlation between the subjects you enjoy and the higher grades you got for them. The average Joe can get a degree if there passionate, though the smarter you are the wider subject areas you can take to the extent that a genius can get a degree in any subject area.

It will be difficult in pulses if you don’t plan. It’s not impossible, though you’re generally going to find it harder if you leave everything until the last minute. A good friend of mine who got a 1:1 would often leave things until the last minute. Literally uploading it seconds before it’s due in. It’s how he worked. It’s actually how I worked for a large time at university. I enjoy having that adrenaline rush before a deadline and I could easily stay up all night on an assignment. Although I also had a friend that’d do his coursework months before it was due. He’d panic if deadline got shortened and things like group assignments would be a little more stressful as everyone isn't normally like that. You usually find a good middle ground by the time you finish. Like I planned and scheduled my work. So I'll get that same adrenaline rush based on my own deadline which is due before the actual deadline giving time for any issues.  

To conclude if you enjoy a subject and think a degree would benefit you, do it. You’ll have some hard times, but that’s a part of the experience. I love doing what I do, I’ll happily read and watch related videos for hours on end. Please keep into consideration that your passion can change. I know people that no longer want to work in the field. University gave them experience on what they’d be doing in industry and they’d rather keep it as a stress free hobby, don't let that detour you as some are studying a different field for their master degree.

Graduation and what’s next?

Next week is graduation day and generally the last time I'll see and speak to most of my peers and lecturers. Though I can imagine I’ll keep in contact with a 10 or so, it’s realistically the last time you’ll see everyone together. People move back home in most cases around the country and in some cases back to their home country.  It’s a great opportunity to reminisce and socialise although I personally won’t be attending mine because of costs.

I think this time tells a lot about a student. Speaking to quite a lot of my peers almost all of them haven’t even opened 3Ds Max (Main program we used for uni) and I think it clearly shows those who were actually passionate about the course and their career. At the moment my timetable is 10 hours’ 3Ds Max a day, 6 days a week. I'm planning to give my portfolio a huge boost with my skills in the next few weeks.

I enjoy doing it and sometimes in my assigned breaks I’ll be still working on projects. Though in the meantime I've been accepted to 3 different scholarships at 2 different universities. This means if I decided that industry isn't right for me at the moment then I’ll carry on with education.

I think the perfect job for me would to be working in a small 3D animation studio and I think I'm ready for that. I’ll polish up my portfolio in the next few weeks and be sending it to a certain few companies that’d love to work at.

I think this applies to any computer science course, work on your portfolio. It’s 100% your portfolio that counts. Your degree will only matter when being compared to someone who doesn't have one. 

Bedfordshire win second place!

A team from the University of Bedfordshire won runners up for Mobile at Brains Eden in Cambridge last weekend. 5 Students from different courses and different years in the Computer science department took part in the 48 hour hackathon.

Image from @andra_ivanescu on twitter.

The event was one of the biggest hackathons I’ve been to, there was teams from all over the world there. Spain, Belgium, Germany, Netherlands, Sweden and even Canada. The team consisted of Sean McGee (me), Bogdan Predescu, Liam Griffiths, Robert McGreal and Mathew Kaye.

The theme this year was “Unequal” and the game we designed was a medieval themed tilt game where you had to attack a castle while keeping the island even as all enemies would slide off.

We all won tablets for coming runners up and the first prize was a team from the Netherlands who again won tablets. The game will hopefully be published on android, iOS and windows market place soon. We are happy where we placed and considering the time taken we made a very polished and complete game. The competition was extremely good, almost every game we tried was unique and generally visually stunning.

Link to the game

http://it-ca.net/CastleTilt/Webplayer.html

I think the game turned out very well, considering the hackathon was 48 hours & only that time for those who brought there own laptops! We was stuck in a very hot room, 1 monitor and on macintoshes prone to over heating and made life difficult for us. We had an amazing outcome and are really happy with second place! A team from the Netherlands came first, we played there game during the gallery showcase and was great fun!

UPDATE: I also create a similar blog post which got featured on Microsoft.com! For those who wanted more information on it.

Is university worth it?

I’d hate to be you right now. No offence, but going to university is a much harder decision now for sixth form/college students who are thinking of applying. The fees are up, competition is hard and scary statistics of graduates not finding jobs.

It’s hard for anyone to find a job at the moment and I’ve recently been researching on companies and how they accept people. They will automatically not hire someone who’s got a perfect CV/portfolio but turns up with a suit on and not wearing a watch… At least having a degree on that CV will at least hopefully tick the box to get the interview in the firs place.  

This is for most aspects of computer science, I’ve seen programming jobs for graduates. With requirements like “Good with C#, Java, C++, AS3, HTML 5, Python, Maxscript, Unity, 3Ds Max, Maya, good word/excel skills and can sketch well”. Now, I’m not a programmer, but it must be frustrating applying for such vague job descriptions. I think it’s probably rare to find anyone who is fluid with all of these languages at graduate stage. Almost every job I’ve seen requires a degree and a good one at that. Though there are routes you can take with internships and personal portfolio building in your own time, I think it’s personally a great idea to get a degree. 

I have yet to graduate, but I’ve already got myself a few interviews. I’m almost certain that I wouldn’t even be considered if I applied for my degree because to be honest it’s the skills you learn and the knowledge you gain which is much more important that the paper work. So now I’ve got a much more impressive portfolio that I had a few years. Of course I could have worked on 3Ds max projects in my own time, but why not both? I’ve done a lot of freelance work while at University including stuff for Microsoft, YouTube and internships.  

If you have a passion for something, you will try in all means to succeed. I personally think getting a career you love is almost winning at life.

Extra classes, events and user groups at university

Now there is plenty of societies and groups that the university hold. Event workshops for CV’s, languages lessons and I think I’ve even seen gaming societies. I’ve attend very interesting guest lectures which aren’t apart of the curriculum but generally everyone attends. It gives you a better insight on how companies work and what to expect when going into industry. We’ve had quite a few of these guest lectures and I’m certain they have them for all aspects in computer science.

I’m attending another gamesJam/hackathon at Cambridge University next week (first weekend of July). Although this isn’t held by the University of Bedfordshire, a team of Bedfordshire students are going up and participating it. In computer science there are more technical user groups dotted all around. For example, there’s specific software user groups, operating system user groups and just general monthly/weekly tech events. Now it’s very difficult to compete with events which are held by in most cases experts or even creators of that software. It’s a place where people go to share ideas, contacts and get expert/peer advice.  

What’s amazing about being a Computer Science student at the moment is there is so much free knowledge and really plenty of events which relate to what you prefer. You may argue that you don’t need to be at university to attend these yes, but it’s amazing to have experts in the field very local/ most probably London.  From the ones I’ve attended everyone is very friendly and probably can answer any burning questions you have. Though I wouldn’t personally ask trivial questions which you can just research yourself and maybe not ask university assignment question answers. Rather techniques/tips to learn more on a specific area. Generally at these user groups there’s presentations that take places for some free extra knowledge!

Below are some links that you may find useful, studying at the University of Bedfordshire it’s a very quick journey to London. So there’s really no excuse to be attending these what mostly are free events. In some cases there’s a digital live steam you can watch if you can’t attend in person. 

Useful related links

List of societies running at Luton Campus

http://www.bedssu.co.uk/main-menu/societies/bedsocs-luton

Search for Microsoft related user groups

www.technicalcommunity.com

Search for Apple related user groups

http://appleusergroupresources.com/find-a-group/

UK Linux User groups 

https://lug.org.uk/

 

Autodesk events, workshops and seminars

http://uk.gep.autodesk-services.com/