Coffee Space 
It’s been a long time since I last updated this blog (sorry) and it’s well overdue some decent content (or, at least, the best I can manage on limited time). For now this is just an update on my current situation, mostly regarding the PhD and partially on some interesting side projects. We’ll take a quick look at what I have been able to do, what I have not been able to do and what I plan to do in the future - also touching on the future on this site.
Since the last update, I have been working more heavily on my PhD. Some of the outcomes of that work include a workshop, a conference, writing my Confirmation report, presenting my PhD Confirmation (which was accepted), running experiments and submitting a paper (which was also accepted). To say it’s been busy is an understatement, but the PhD is looking good.
Regarding side projects, I have been working on several other websites, drivers, a game engine and some new algorithms for humanoid robotics. These are all unfinished projects (as they always seem to be), but progress is being made and I’m confident they will reach an interesting point soon.
As for this website, things have been very slow. One positive is that it now supports HTTPS - something that Google are enforcing on everybody. From a security perspective, I can understand it, but it’s hardly a great solution within itself. I don’t want to have systems with single points of failure (root certificates, DNS servers, etc).
Back to the PhD - I was hoping to be further than I am right now. This isn’t to say I’m on track and making good progress, but there are clearly some interesting problems I also want to work on that I might not be able to look at within the scope of this project.
And as for the side projects, the major side project that got neglected was the 512 OS book. Unfortunately almost zero progress has been made on this, despite it having quite a lot of potential. This has been partially beneficial though as I have had time to think about exactly the direction I want to take the book. I’ve seen a few similar books around, but I believe the real benefit of this book will be its brevity and completeness.
And finally this wesbite: nothing has really happened regarding this site other than the HTTPS mentioned previously. I wanted to work on the style of the site some more and improve the comments system (which continues to regularly come under attack).
With regards to the PhD, the plan is to submit another paper before Christmas which should be a large improvement over the current paper, potentially submitting to a journal. After then we can look to re-evaluate the course of the project, but I suspect it will be another 3-6 months before the paper after that is complete due to Christmas and the difficulty of the next task.
With regards to side projects, my focus will be:
And finally, with this website I mostly plan to sift through and remove content, clean up the style and make it easier to contribute to. My time is only becoming more limited and as I push forward into academia, personal opinions outside of my field are very unwelcome. I think Stephen Fry sums up the issues of modern thinking rather well:
Please feel free to comment below.