So I'm well into the second term of the Master's now. Last term was mostly things I'd done before: modules on Advanced Software Engineering, HCI and Business and Project Management (the last covering large-scale portfolio management: connecting projects back to overall strategy and issues relating to large organisations). A fourth module, Topics in Computer Science, exposed us to the pet topics of various lecturers: TCP congestion management, Scala, interaction nets, super-optimisation, networks, and more. I was pleasantly surprised by how current the syllabus is: we were using git, Android, EC2 and TDD during software engineering and the HCI course was very hands-on and practical. (On which topic: I have a write-up of my Alarm Clock project to go here soon).

This term is the exact opposite: pretty well everything is brand new. I'm taking modules in Adaptive Systems, Pervasive Computing, Limits of Computation, and Web Applications and Services - the latter being a rebranded Distributed Computing course, so we're knee-deep in RPC and RMI, with a promise of big-scale J2EE down the line. I'm also sitting in on, and trying to keep up with the labs for, Language Engineering.

Thus far it's Pervasive Computing and Language Engineering which are sitting at that sweet spot between "I think I can cope with this" and "this stuff is fun". They're both quite hands-on: for the former we're playing with Phidgets and learning about the practicalities of using sensors in the real world, something I've talked about recently but haven't done much with. Adaptive Systems is enjoyable, but quite deliberately vague - like Cybernetics, it's applicable in all sorts of situations but I'm finding it jelly-like, in the pinning-to-the-wall sense. Limits of Computation I have mentally prepared for a struggle with: it's mathematical, and maths is not my strong point (when taken beyond numeracy); and the Web Applications module is so far quite familiar, though I'm looking forward to getting my teeth into a project.

I can't emphasis how much fun this is. It's been years since I've been exposed to so much new stuff, and joining some of the dots between these areas is going to be interesting. That said I've still no idea what I'll be doing for my project in the third term; the idea of doing something Pervasive appeals strongly, but I'm waiting for inspiration to strike. If that doesn't happen I might return to superoptimisation and see if I can carve off a dissertation-sized chunk to look into, perhaps something around applying it to Java byte code…