Year 2, Term 2 – That Means Group Project

As usually, I shall begin with some academical information. The courses in this term have been a well balanced mixture of highly theoretical courses (Computation Theory, Semantics), engineering-like practical courses (Computer Networking and Distributed Systems) and also courses that combine both (Security I, Databases and Compiler Construction). Most of them were very stimulating, as they showed me that a lot of things I have considered to be rocket science are not rocket science at all and the basic concepts that are used are not very complicated.

However, we had also one other special course this term – the Group Project. Everything has began last term when we were given a list of possible projects that we could choose from. We were supposed to pick three and order them by our preferences. At the beginning of this term we were told which project we got to be working on and who our colleagues are going to be. Surprisingly, I got the first project in my preference list – The Project Darknet. 

We were supposed to develop an application for an experimental theater in London. The application was supposed to gather as much data from the Internet on all members of the audience before the actual show as possible, using only the details filled in when buying tickets. Then, during the show, the actors would use these data to freak out the audience (imagine your photos you consider to be private being displayed on the screen in the theater) and hence raise the awareness about the security and privacy on the Internet.
 

Our group had five members including me and we were given six weeks to develop the whole system. That involved writing a specification, meeting with our client (the theater owner) three times, writing documentation for the system, presenting it and naturally delivering the whole thing. But more importantly, we were supposed to learn how to work in a team and how to split the work optimally. I think, that we have managed that very well and I think the relationships in our team were very good (especially compared to some other teams, as my friends told me). However, at the end, I was a bit disappointed with the result, as the application wasn't able to gather as much data from the Internet as I originally thought it will. This was due to additional technical difficulties that were not apparent at the beginning of the project. But the system we have developed is extensible easily, so adding new features in the future will not be a problem, in fact it will be very easy thanks to our good design.

Now on the non-academical things. My friend from Russia had birthday this term and me and my other friend wanted to give him something special. Coincidentally, my friend was doing an experiment which involved helium in the Cavendish Laboratory. Hence one present became obvious – balloons filled with helium. It was rather exciting, filling balloons with helium out of 25 liter bottle of liquid helium in a physics lab with oscilloscopes blinking in the backgound. Another thing that had to be done was to transport the balloons over half of the town into my room. Moreover, I had a group project client meeting in the Computer Laboratory, so I had to take the balloons with me. It was very nice, people were smiling at me and the balloons were trembling in the wind as I went.

Another nice thing was my visit to the Coventry Transport Museum. Coventry was the British equivalent of Plzeň, a city that is a synonym for car production. The museum is large! Couple of nice things that are worth mentioning: They have the two world's fastest cars that went faster than the speed of sound. They also have on display the famous DeLorean DMC-12 car that has been used in the movie Back to the Future. Also, on part of the museum was about the history of Coventry during the Second World War, as Coventry was one of the most destroyed British cities because of Nazi bombing. I look forward to visiting it again, since one day spent in it was not enough!

I would like to devote this blog to the people of Ukraine. I admire their desire for freedom and I wish (and believe), that they will manage to gain it.