UCL Second Term

Woo! I've managed to get more then one blog post posted in a single month, and in the space of just under three days too! Amazing!

Anyway, onto the topic. As you may have guessed by the new ticker on the right-hand side of the blog, my second term at UCL University is well under way. So I thought I might give you an update on what is going on...

As you may know, I'm currently studying an MSc in Networked Computer Systems since September last year. The first term was definitely a lot of fun and was very interesting, but was extremely hard work to complete. The courses involved learning about the underlying structure of networks and, in particular, the Internet; learning about distributed systems used in the world and the procedures involved in keeping them secure; a look into operating systems and how they influence networking; and a final course in Network Performance.

Network Performance was probably the hardest course I have ever taken anywhere, even over Physics, due to it's high use of extremely difficult mathematics. I am so not a mathematician, so I really struggled with this course.

Another thing that really brought me down last term was 9am lectures, every single day. For those of you for which this is the norm, do understand that this was coming from an extra-long four month summer vacation with late mornings and equally late evenings, so I was completely unprepared for what was involved.

This term, it's a little different. While 9am lectures happen 2/3 times a week, I do get slightly longer lay-ins. I also get a completely free day on Monday, which I am using for work. But my afternoons that I used to have are now turning into evenings, so it's a trade-off from the previous term.

Of greatest interest this term, for me personally, is Network and Applications Programming, which is a purely programming course in C in which we program on TMote Sky's, shown on the right hand side. These small devices contain various sensors, buttons and LEDs, and a small radio chipset; and use an OS called Contiki that is specifically designed to work on memory-constrained devices such as these. We will be working to program a multi-hop routing algorithm between the devices which will eventually allow for a button to be pressed on one side of the room and an LED to flash on the other side, with each of the devices routing between each other to get things to the other side. This is what I came to Uni to do!

So yeah, all in all my course is definitely coming along nicely, I'm enjoying my time and learning a lot at the same time.