This is the final post in my MSc journey. Last month, in an academic congregation at Northumbria University, I was formally awarded a Master of Science Digital and Technology Specialist (Data & Analytics) with Distinction. Look! Actual proof! Thanks to Mike, my Father-in-Law, for ripping that stream. As my research was about "Exploring the visualisation of hierarchical cybersecurity data within the Metaverse", I thought it only fitting that I had a formal photo taken wearing the damned …
Continue reading →
It was only after I started editing my MSc down to its prescribed word-count, that I finally understood the phrase Kill Your Darlings. I spent ages writing florid prose, only to realise it was needless verbiage. The delete key was hammered mercilessly. But... As all fans of Jasper Fforde know - there is a "Well of Lost Plots"; where rejected sentences live on in the eternal library... As I was writing about the Metaverse, and as I love reading sci-fi, I decided to merge my interests! So,…
Continue reading →
Welcome to acronym city! I recently published my Master's Dissertation. I say "published" - I just shoved it up on a website. But real academic publications should have a DOI - it's an identifier which is supposed to make it easier for people to find and cite paper. You know how books have a unique ISBN? It's like that. I couldn't find a way to publish this via my university, which was a little disappointing. And I didn't have the time or energy to rewrite it for submission to a journal. Then …
Continue reading →
Metawork is so much more fun than real work. Sharpening your pencils. Colour coordinating your filing system. Creating Gantt charts of what you intend to do. Marvellous! In that spirit, here's how I used the venerable pandoc to convert my MSc dissertation from .md into a variety of more readable formats. Prep I've no idea what you already have installed on your system but, at a minimum, you need to install the latest version of pandoc and you'll need a modern version of the weasyprint…
Continue reading →
Well gang, I did it! After two years I've finally finished my MSc! My final project was a 10,901 word epic about... The ✨Metaverse✨. Have I gone a little bit peculiar? No. I don't think so. I was advised to pick a project which would sustain my interest for 6 months. So I chose something which would have lots of modern papers to read. And, more importantly, justify me buying a new toy to play with! I was delighted and overwhelmed that it received a score of 80% - taking my overall grade to …
Continue reading →
Back in November 2020 I started studying for an MSc. And, yesterday, I got this... All done! I've got to say, it has been... an experience. I've relentlessly blogged about the process. The academic content was pretty good, but the administration by QA.com was nothing short of atrocious. Missed deadlines, unhelpful staff, incompetent tutors, and admin staff who clearly didn't care about the student experience. Here's an excellent example of the failure of student experience. After arguing …
Continue reading →
I've recently completed my Level 7 Apprenticeship. One of the more onerous tasks was completing the portfolio. This document was the source of much stress and confusion with our cohort. This blog post attempts to demystify it and provides a template to make it easy to complete. My main piece of advice is that you should read the official guidance from the Institute For Apprenticeships. If your training provider or Skills Coach tells you something which contradicts the Institute's advice -…
Continue reading →
The last part of my MSc Apprenticeship was my EPA Professional Discussion. It's designed to be a 90 minute chat to make sure you've actually learned something on the course. The official guidance is available. But I thought you might find it helpful to see the questions that I was asked. Disclaimer I jotted these down while doing the assessment. They are relevant to the Digital Technology Solution Specialist L7 MSc with a Data Analytics pathway. They will almost certainly be different for…
Continue reading →
There's a new pre-print paper called Pinpointing the problem: Providing page numbers for citations as a crucial part of open science by Leon Y. Xiao and Nick Ballou. It's a short, easily understandable paper, and well worth a read. I think I disagree with nearly all of its conclusions! The main point, I agree with. Citing a whole paper is a lossy process. Saying "Smith, J (1963) Practical Time Travel, Gallifrey Press" is basically fine but it doesn't tell you where in the publication the bit…
Continue reading →
When I was a kid, our school had one computer per classroom. Luxury! Teachers had long-since given up on the state of my handwriting. So I got special dispensation to write up some of my work on whatever primitive word processor was installed on the PC. With one caveat: no spell check! Which, even as a ten year old, I thought was reasonable. Learning to spell is an adult life skill. So using a spell-checker was cheating. Once I got to secondary school, it was assumed that I knew how to…
Continue reading →
Mostly notes to myself - I hope you find them useful. So, you want to write your dissertation or thesis in Markdown. But how do you manage all your citations? Install Zotero Install the Better BibTex plugin Restart Zotero. The BBT plugin will launch a configuration screen - use it to set your preferences Install VS Code (or VS Codium) Install the VS Code Zotero plugin Now, when you want to enter a citation in Markdown, the combined plugins will generate something like this: ## Abstract …
Continue reading →
The end-game of my MSc is almost in sight! I've written up 6 assignments. Now all I need to do is write a 10,000 word dissertation in the form of a Major Project Report. Oh, and go through an End-Point-Assessment with my portfolio to make sure I actually know what I'm talking about. But, back to the report. I need to write a 1,000 word literature review. The only problem is… I've never done one of those before! Sadly, my MSc provider aren't particularly proactive in providing resources to s…
Continue reading →
