2011 has been a great year for me;
- Graduated with a 1st MEng in Electronics & Software Engineering @QUB,
- Got Job offer to a major financial house, which I turned down,
- Got Job offer to a C|EH company in England, which I turned down,
- Got DELNI Funded PhD offer (x4) from CSIT/ECIT, which I turned down,
- Got selected to be one of the two UK projects within a Joint UK/FR Defence PhD Programme, which I accepted,
- Saw fantastic growth in QUESTS and the Hacker^H^H^H^H^H^HMakerspace, including the beginning of a Major project, which we got EEECS Funding for and are also hoping to get QAF funding for QUESTS in general,
- We are on track to get a actual space for the Makerspace circa Summer 2012,
- Had the fantastic experience of living and working in Zurich for the summer with IAESTE / Pc Engines Gmbh, which gave me the opportunity to visit all over Europe, which was great for my confidence and self-belief, and also gave me a great many new friends all over the world,
- Started (re-)learning French,
- Came second in the UK Nationals of the IET’s Present Around the World Competition in Liverpool for my talk on Privacy in the Modern world (I keep meaning to screen-cast this but keep forgetting…)
- Had a great time making an interesting site with Matt Campbell, Alastair McKinley, and the Sisk Brothers (was live for a few days over the summer, and we didn’t want to pay for it so let it die; may go back to it this year!)
- Was asked to speak at the QUB EEECS RS Colloquium, representing Digital Communications within QUB/ECIT.
- Travelled over 6,000 Miles, visiting at least 12 cities in 7 countries.
- Lost a phone and a bike,
- Went on 12 ‘dates’, 5 of which were worth while, 3 of which I’m still in touch with,
- Taught at least 5 first years that C++ isn’t magic, it’s just poorly taught,
- Sat on 5 committees, only one of which made me feel productive,
- Had a pretty awesome time.
Going forward, I’m not going to make a load of promises I won’t keep. Thanks to all my friends, family, colleagues, competitors, enemies, bureaucrats, pencil-pushers, and random-folk who made my year what it was.
I plan on only two things; KISS, and…
7
Apr 11
Why Belfast Needs a Hackerspace
I was sitting in Sinnamon on the Stranmillis Road, enjoying a coffee, a sausage roll, and my Kindle, reading the latest 2600. One article immediatly stood out to me, ‘A World Spinning’. The main focus of the article was the world-changing domino effect, toppling regimes across the middle east, all caused by one, little textfile. The textfile in question was a US Embassy cable highlighting the indemic corruption in the (ex) Tunisian Government. As most know, this leak was from WikiLeaks; a rag-tag loosely knit chaotic alliance of hackers across the globe, all with the the same general aim to allow open and plain discourse and stopping governments across the globe from hiding secrets from their citizenry; big secrets and small…
Of course, as with most things to do with hackers, the aim isn’t that simple; having spoken to some of those involved, it was abundantly clear that some elements within Wikileaks purely want to screw with governments that (they feel have) wronged them, but others are simply motivated by the cat-and-mouse challenge of acquiring, validating, securing and releasing information in a hostile environment.
Its this kind of spectrum that makes me wish that I could just fastforward a year or so (or much longer), to a point where Belfast Hackerspace is established, stable, self-funding, and growing. Innovation only comes from discourse, and the best innovations (in my opinion) come from differences.
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