I haven’t written anything in a good long while as I’ve been focusing on the various coursework and exams that came along. It’s good to be coming out of the other side. Essentially it’s just been a bit of a grindy month, and nothing interesting has happened, not that any of my COVID lockdown life has been particularly interesting. The last few weeks of the taught portion of my course have passed, thankfully uneventfully. I completed all of my work on time, slowly and steadily, now there’s just one exam next week before I’m on to the summer dissertation grind. It’s smooth sailing from May 24th to the 3rd of September due date.

While getting this coursework done I definitely learnt a lot about how I like to work too. Having a steady daily word count helped me get what I needed to done without any real stress. It’s the extra planning that makes a difference, knowing when you need to push and when you can say that’s good enough for today really helps reduce any stress around being examined. It’s a good lesson I’ll be taking forward with my dissertation work over the next few months, small incremental goals.

It’s all passed surprisingly quickly, the two thirds of a year I’ve spent studying so far. Things are beginning to reopen in the UK as the vaccine roll out (our one COVID success) carries on. Most have my family have been vaccinated, I’m just waiting to see when the shots drop through the ages and I can finally get mine.

The week after my final exam I have my rescheduled driving test, originally meant to happen in November. With the lockdown exit ongoing, and a bit more mobility I’ll hopefully be seeing more friends over the summer. I can recommend a monastic year to do an MSc to anyone though, it’s nice to get through without any distractions. In the summer I’ll be applying for jobs too, and potentially looking to pick up a little part time IT/coding work if I can find any near Bath!

Bit of a backlog on the reading list, hoping to take a break next week once the final exam is done and get away from screens a bit more.

Reading List

Just be rich
Teaching a Robot Dog to Pee Beer
- Michael Reeves is just fantastic and this is a brilliant abomination.
Big Tech’s guide to talking about AI ethics
Meaningless states should not be representable
- I’m appreciating the importance of types a hell of a lot more after a semester both working with Haskell, and trying to read machine learning code in Python. Anything to do with having to work through type strict languages makes me think about the truism that weeks of programming can save you hours of planning.
Why do pictures of busy outdoor pubs still trigger panic about Covid-19?
New Clubhouse Security Vulnerabilities Could Happen to Any Growing Unicorn
Why I distrust Google Cloud more than AWS or Azure.
The knackerman: the toughest job in British farming
How to learn Unix tools
The Yayagram
How the middle class became downwardly mobile
An Open Letter to Jason and David
Why programmers don’t write documentation
The compiler will optimize that away
Opposition to Net Neutrality Was Faked, New York Says
Neither interoperability nor data sharing will solve transnational monopoly