Girl and the Sea

"I've seen where you would rather be" - The Presets, 'Girl and the Sea'.

I'll leave the story to the end. I want to put the coding stuff first this time.

But first of all, here's the real "Girl and the Sea" - qualified marine spatial planner, living by the sea in Brighton, and no.1 fan of all time of the extremely marine movie, "Whale Rider" - here's a photo of me that I sent to my colleagues back in Brighton when I went up to my head office in London last week!!! 

Okay so moving on let's revise my absolutely chaotic and huge and yet somehow very realistically achievable TECH to-do list...

Revising My To-Do List

So I'm not going to lie. I've had a tough day. 

Just for personal reasons. 

Even though I have been surprisingly productive I have also been very busy. So today, rather than writing loads of stuff up, my goal is to make a list of all of the things that I need to keep doing - and then to keep on going at it. So, sorry if you end up reading a lot of lists but this is for me. Please feel free to skip these if you wish. ✨✨💖

But as for myself, I will always keep on going - and I will always find the strength and power within me to carry on. Always. ❇❈

First of all - Extra tech security to-do list

This is basically my new passion.

STRIKE WHILE THE IRON IS HOT!

• I need to read over all the tech resources that Steve has sent me and to make up a list of all of them
• More on Steve and his amazing resources below/and tomorrow.
• I need to make a plan for how I approach ALL THESE AMAZING RESOURCES ON TECH SECURITY I AM GETTING - I wonder if I might be able to approach this as a mornings/weekend project.
• In relation to the above - I need to register for the OWAS TOP 10 SECURITY COURSE  
• Turns out that the thing that I was doing yesterday was just one of many many example practice exercises 
• But not an actual course.

General Tech To-Do List 

This is all the stuff I have left over from the last few days/weeks etc. ... and NO, I WILL NOT give up on WRITING THIS OUT!:

• I need to read up on the MDN, and write about, the Math.random method.
• Adam has sent me two examples of code that I really really want to revisit, focus on, look at, and understand 
• They are both to do with functions and callbacks in JS.
• I need to revisit Jules' code AKA THE GREAT CODE OF DOOM like, TWO MORE TIMES.
• I was thinking about it deeply as I trekked across Brighton & Hove last night to order my new phone.
• Revising what I have learned today about components - I went to a Front-End meeting at work and I have
• Lots of notes on some Random sheets of paper
• Lots of notes in my GIANT VAMPIRE-THEMED RED-PAGED JOURNAL.
• Some links that my lovely Software Engineer colleague Orla has sent me to read!
• She has also reached out to me directly about doing a demo with me and so hopefully I will have some notes to write up tomorrow on this as well. 💖
• Reach out to 2 members of my team to set up meetings (after Will's advice last week to "Be like a sponge" - this is just the beginning...) 💖
  
• One technical lead who I was talking to.
  
• One security applications person who at least 2 people have recommended to me to talk to now.
• (Also related to above section then I guess!).
• Finish building my Rock Paper Scissors game in JavaScript 
• This has been going on for over a week now :( 
• I need to finish working through the list of steps in the project - I think I'm about halfway through or something (you check them off yourself). 
• I also want and need to finish watching the video associated with the project.
• Because these videos are so, so, so, so, so, so, good.
• Because they always mention things that I have never heard of before and they put things into a new perspective and they make it so so good.
• Then I STILL need to build this SLEEP DEBT CALCULATOR and then I will be DONE with JS functions. 
• But I will NEVER, NEVER, EVER give up on writing about these things.
  
• Until I actually get them done. 

A Quick Update on Tech Security

So after my wonderful and amazing chat with Will last week, I had a chat with a colleague called Steve this morning. 

Steve is a Security Engineer and a Digital Forensic Incident Responder (DFIR) - he basically described himself as a Forensic Investigator and he talked to me about Incident Response. 

I told him that the security courses I was doing were basically teaching me how to do hacking - and he replied that of course! In order to protect yourself against the hacking, you have to understand how it is done. Wow!!! That is amazing. Thank you.

And he sent me SO MANY SECURITY RESOURCES. I have bookmarked all of these, and plan to turn it into some sort of a project.

Your Brain Is Just Trying To Finish the Song

I will never forget the first time that I heard Girl and the Sea by the Presets. I was planning a dance workshop. 

I was doing my first MSc in Marine Spatial Planning at the University of Liverpool and as part of the course, we were running a Summer School for students from abroad. Although all of my colleagues and I were delivering workshops I wanted to create the most interactive workshop of all time ever. So I decided to do an EXTRA, SIDE-PROJECT workshop. 

I was a pretty active dancer at the time. I was going to freestyle dance classes for at least about two hours every week, and I was going to extra workshops on the weekend. I would love to get into that level of intensity of dance again. Anyway, I decided to deliver a dance workshop called Discovering the Ocean Through Dance. It would be a one hour dance workshop about CREATING A MARINE SPATIAL PLAN THROUGH OUR BODIES, THROUGH DANCE, AND THROUGH MOVEMENTS. 

And it WORKED!!! I can honestly say that it really truly worked. I took a bunch of non-dancers through an hour-long dance workshop and we CREATED A MARINE SPATIAL SCENARIO WITH OUR BODIES. 

The only thing that cracked me up the most was that I was the only one in the room who had the stamina to keep dancing like crazy for the full hour - and the second fittest person in the room was my lecturer who had very kindly agreed to support my workshop and had actually danced all the way through with us (he did do a very good jellyfish impression as well I must say).

Hearing the Song for the First Time 

I think I Googled best songs about the Sea. It was on a Top 10 list and the title spoke to me. I had recently got Spotify, so I stuck it on. I COULDN'T STOP PLAYING THAT SONG. I danced to it for an hour on end, repeating it again and again. 

I felt more alive and triumphant than I had ever felt before. Nearly four years later, I have covered it on piano, on guitar, in vocal only harmonies, and it remains one of my favourite songs of all time. I also really like and really really strongly recommend

• the remix (I like it almost as much the original - in fact some days I prefer it).
• the AMAZING live version (omg)
• the AMAZING INCREDIBLY BEAUTIFUL animated music video

The message of the song is a clear one - freedom, overcoming. That was what I needed in my mid-twenties. 

That is still what I need every day.

P.S. Why the title of this section? Well one day at Uni, my flatmate told me that, when a song gets stuck in your head, then "Your brain is just trying to finish the song". 

P.P.S. I still love Interstellar and I still love BLACK HOLES!!!