Back in the Game

Posts here have been pretty infrequent in 2017 and up-to-now in 2018. I have been working towards completing a Masters Degree in Software Engineering for the past two years which has been a significant commitment whilst also working full-time. In the middle of that, I also moved to a new job (staying at McAfee, but moving to a new team and area), which required a significant ramp-up in new technologies.

I’ve just completed my Masters by submitting my final dissertation entitled Detection of Cyberbullying Using Cloud Based Services. This was a very interesting project where I got exposure to supervised machine learning techniques and tools, and also architecting and building a cloud native application within Amazon Web Services. Once I receive the results of this in October, I will certainly post here on the architecture of the system developed and the conclusions.

While taking a Masters program while working full-time is a challenge and a lot of work, I would recommend it (working evenings and weekends become the norm for a while, especially when completing the final dissertation). The main reason I would is that, as we know, in the field of technology, especially software engineering, skills can get out-of-date very quickly. I had always wanted to look at machine learning and used the same old story of ‘not having the time’. The MSc program I undertook, and the dissertation I completed, forced me to prioritize and make the time, and it has opened up a fascinating world. I’m sure I’ll be posting here about some of my planned further experiments in this area in the coming months.

For right now, I’ve just returned from a week in the sun (Portugal), and am enjoying a few days off work (to do things like update my blog 😉 ).

Hacker Monthly

A new magazine has just been released. Unlike what the name suggests, ‘Hacker Monthly’ is nothing like Phrack was, in that it’s content is mostly centered around software development, and software topics like Agile development etc.

The first edtion contains an excellent article on why programmers, in the age of dual cores, still struggle coping with parallelism and concurrency when developing software.

Check it out here.

Aside, I see a new issue of Phrack, Phrack 67, is actually being release on July 11th 2010, may be worth a look.