8 must-have applications for life in the 21st century

1. KeePass
2. Pocket
3. Evernote
4. Duolingo
5. Memrize
6. Drive
7. Workflowy
8. AskMeEvery

KeePass

What it does: Portable password manager

Cost:Free
[My] Usage: Daily
URL: http://keepass.info/

Remembering passwords is the bane of life in the 21st century, thanks to KeePass you won’t have to worry about that anymore.

Portable, no back doors, lightweight, open-source and immensely secure – as far as free password managers go, this is the best. In many cases it’s better than many of the paid software one may get.

Why is this great?

1. It auto-generates every password for you – choose from a 16-bit to 128-bit alphanumeric string. Then it stores all these passwords in an encrypted database, accessible only by a master-password (and possibly a key file).  Brute forcing these passwords is not feasible as KeePass does quite a large number of hash checks, that takes a few seconds to complete.
2. It can be used with cloud storage. Keep it on dropbox/drive and you can access your password from anywhere
3. 2-factor authentication – You have one master password and can also have KeePass authenticate with a unique file or image. Just to satisfy your paranoia that someone is trying to steal your passwords.
4. Automatic login! Yes you heard correctly! If you’re going to the trouble of using a password manager then it works best if you have your browsers remove any login information after each session. Hence, you would have to login each time you open a new browsing session. Fear not! pressing ctrl+a will auto-fill in the login boxes with the username and password you have for the specific website (since KeePass can be made to link login information with a URL)
5. Lead a stress-free life

Pocket

What it does: Browser plugin that saves webpages to an online profile

Cost: Free
[My] Usage: Daily
URL: http://getpocket.com/

The idea behind pocket is to have an online store for your favourite articles and webpages. Accessible online and offline via mobile devices and your regular desktop. All this is done by clicking the chrome/firefox add-in button while you are on the webpage you wish to store.

You can access all your saved pages by logging into your account on getpocket.com Sounds simple enough and that is actually its major selling point. Found an article but you’re too busy to read? Pocket. Sick and tired of storing links of pages on notepad/word? Pocket them.

I’m warning you, pocket is so great, it’s actually addictive. I used to pocket an article here and there. Now, I pocket everything, every interesting thing I find online, I pocket it for future reference.

Go get it and join me. Together, we will pocket the entire internet.

Evernote

What it does: Store + organise notes/images

Cost: Free + premium model available
[My] Usage: Weekly
URL:

Ah yes, Evernote, where to begin…

When it comes to organising notes and collecting data for projects, this is THE tool. The concept of Evernote is that the user creates and organises notes on an Evernote application that you install on your machine. These notes are then stored on the Evernote cloud. Compare this to making notes in Word and storing them on your machine or dropbox/drive, it’s already a step forward since they can be indexed and organised in “notebook stacks” (e.g you can group every note relating to university in one stack) and so on.

On-top of this, it has tons of functionality built in.

Features:

1. Synced with the cloud
2. Cross-platform support, works on ipad, android, pc and mac
3. Email notes to your notebooks! Yes! Forward important/informative emails to your evernote mailbox and it will be saved to your notes
4. Attach files/images and voice recordings to notes and take webcam photos from your laptop in real
5. See something interesting while reading an article online? Clipit and send it to Evernote! Mark/highlight text in the article before saving it
6. Set up email reminders for notes
7. Record the geographical location where each note was written. Perfect for travelling journalists

… and countless others

It’s honestly the best tool I have found for writing, storing and organising notes for projects that I work on. Very useful for 3rd year.

Duolingo

What it does: “Duolingo is a free language-learning website and crowdsourced text translation platform”

Cost: Free
[My] Usage: Weekly
URL: http://www.duolingo.com/

No blog post  can do this application justice. Go and experience it for yourself. It currently has language courses in French, Spanish, Portugese, English, German and Italian. You start at the top of the language tree and work your way through simple present tense until you cover everything to do with that language. The way it teaches the languages is great because it incorporates vocal games (you need to speak the language and it will analyse your dialect) and competition between friends.

Memrize

What it does: Learning application that associates images with trivia to help you remember

Cost: Free
[My] Usage: weekly
URL: http://www.memrise.com/

Similar to Duolingo in that it is awesome for learning, however it is not just for languages and its methods are different. As the name suggests, it works through memorising, usually images. You are given phrases and trivia and associated images that relate to that piece of trivia.

One major selling point Memrize has over Duolingo is that the content is generated by the community. Anyone can create a course and add images to phrases. This allows for a much more diverse set of courses and possibly a better experience.

It is also very game like. There exists a concept of planting a seed (starting a course) and watering that seed (practising) until you can harvest the flower (completing the course), which, if nothing else is just something to keep you from getting bored.

Drive

What it does: Google Cloud Storage

Cost: Free for first 10gb
[My] Usage: Monthly (backups)
URL: https://drive.google.com/

I personally prefer this to Dropbox since I find it integrates better with android on my HTC. Also the ability to create collaborative Google docs is a huge plus!

Workflowy

What it does: List organiser

Cost: Free for the first 500 items
[My] Usage: Daily
URL:  https://workflowy.com/

If only I could use this at work!

I love workflowy because of its minimalistic UI whilst having enough functionality to actually get things organised.

Imagine writing a list of to-dos on a notepad, but then being able to hide parts of the to-dos you’re not interested in, searching particular types of to-dos (coding, reseach ect. in my case) and it is all stored online so you can access it anywhere.

Cool isn’t it?

AskMeEvery

What it does: Emails you with questions and produces stats on your answers

Cost: free
[My] Usage: No longer use it (I got tired of replying!)
URL: http://askmeevery.com/

This service attempts to solve the problem of tracking and monitoring self progress or statistics. If you’re trying to monitor how long you run each day or what time you sleep every night, don’t bother with a spreadsheet anymore, AskMeEvery is here for you.

You can set  it up to ask you specific questions every week via email (you specify the days and times) and you then reply to that email with your answer, for example:

Email: “How far did I run today?”
Reply: “5km”

AskMeEvery will the collate your results over time and produce graphs and metrics for you, so you dont have to.

It’s a useful idea, however I got tired of the emails!

As fun as it is to write about awesome opportunities and all the cool stuff you get to do at university & beyond, there is a slightly more realistic side to all this. Unfortunately, this hardly ever gets mentioned (maybe it’s because we are always trying to look like we’re having a good time?).

If you’ve heard the phrase “The Grind” before, then you know what I am talking about. The (daily) grind is the boring, tired routine you fall into after the excitement and motivation you had at the beginning of something fades away. It’s normal and inevitable. In my case this has started to set in now that I am 5 months into my internship. I feel as though I have reached a point where nothing is that new anymore, I know what to expect from the day ahead and how to go about tackling the challenges I face. Although things do come out of nowhere and break the routine, they’re not as frequent as they were.

During the first two months of my internship, I would come home after a day of work and have this ton of energy left over. I would go to gym or for a run, cook a healthy meal, read or work on a side project (I used to take online German language courses) before finally getting a full night’s sleep and doing it all over again the next day. Now? On my worst days I would come home, pop a frozen meal in the oven, log onto facebook and skype and doddle about while watching a series on the television before crawling into bed and passing out.

Wake up, work, facebook+TV and greasy food and then bed. It’s madness but that is my grind, it happens every year for a few weeks. If this or something similar happens to you, then worry not, it’s normal and if you want it to pass then you will find your way out.

So in essence, you reach the grind when you get deeply stuck into the routine of doing the things you set out to do at the start. You get to the point where you forget why you wanted to do it in the first place. It’s a place everyone must pass through if they want to achieve something significant, the winners are those who can ride it out, the ones who never quit. Do you think top athletes enjoy every training session at 5am? Do you think scientists enjoy every single experiment/project they’ve worked on? Of course not! Nothing worth achieving ever comes easily, sacrifices must be made and patience is a must.

What I am saying here is that the grind is not a bad thing, actually it is the most important part of the journey to your objective/goal.

I recently attended several startup events and whilst working with so many young entrepreneurs, something dawned on me. Anyone can get excited about starting a company and everybody will start pitching in ideas and scheming and coming up with plans. However, only those who are serious about their goals will make it through the grind. It is meant to weed out the weak and will make you stronger by teaching you patience, perseverance and resilience. This is especially true of a university course and later on, employment.

The golden question is how to get out…

I don’t yet know how I’ll get myself out but for now, I’ll start with an extremely cold shower and take it from there. I used to beat myself up about not being efficient everyday and when I used to see that I was loosing motivation but now I understand that it’s inevitable.  If you ever find yourself in a grind (whether it’s during a university course or at work), remember that it’s fine and normal. Remind yourself why you are where you are, keep at it, keep pushing and remember quitting was never an option.
At the end of the day, however bad a situation you find yourself in, it’s unlikely it would be as bad as this:

Yesterday marked exactly one month since I started my year long placement as an application developer at JP Morgan Chase (in Bournemouth). Never have I had to learn so much in such a short amount of time. Coffee, headaches and ready meals were prevalent during the past four weeks. All that aside, it has been a tremendous experience until now, my heart goes out to the summer interns who only have 5 weeks left. Sucks to be you. So this is an opportunity for me to share with you what it’s really like working in technology and how it differs from what we are taught in university (the answer is A LOT!) When I was looking for placements last year, I made it a point to ask my friends in third year about their experiences on a placement, however it is often very hard to imagine what it is like until you actually experience it for yourself. There is no template experience, everyone’s is different, from what I’ve already gathered, many of the interns at JPMC are doing very different things in different teams, so it really just depends on your situation. That said, there are common themes that arise wherever you are, having to learn a lot in a short time span or being pushed to make as many friends and professional relationships as you possibly can. Again, this is just my experience and may very well not apply to some or most people, don’t take it as standard, I’m sure the culture/environment would be extremely different working in a technology company like Google or Microsoft.

Learning at Work

The way we learn at university and JPMC differ immensely. The most significant difference is that at work we are encouraged to ask questions as much as possible.

“There are no stupid questions” – Common phrase at work

I spent most of my first 2 weeks walking up to all of my colleagues asking “why?”. By the end of every day I would have compiled a list of around 20 questions on things  I did not understand (including, but not limited to, ACRONYMS. More on that later). They were all friendly and helpful every time, stopping what they were doing to give me a run through on something they’ve probably done a thousand times. Asking questions is also one of the best ways to network and get yourself out there, even better if you go up to someone and ask them about their LOB (Line of business). This shows that you are taking an interest in what they do which means they will appreciate the gesture all the more, even if they cannot help you at that time. People will usually find some time during the week to show you what they do at work.

It goes without saying that there is no need to ask questions that you can find the answers to else where or with a quick Google search. “Who’s the CEO?” and such questions are a waste of people’s time. The 20 questions I used to compile at the end of a day arose after hours of reading through documentation of applications I will be using. So it is important to take the initiative and try and learn/solve problems yourself before taking it to someone else.

“There are 2 ways to learn. Reading and speaking to people.” – Jamie Dimon

“What you know, is never as important as who you know” – Quote from a blog post I read

That last quote annoyed me the first time I read it. How can it be true?  How can knowing people replace knowledge? I am now realising how true this is. Speaking in terms of opportunity, instead of trying to open all the doors yourself, get people to open them for you. If you try to be an expert at everything you will fail. US AirForce General Welsh once said in a speech that everyone he commands is better than him at something, some are even better leaders than him, but through them he learns and earns their respect, which in turn means that he can utilise their combined skill-set to achieve things one person cannot.

Finally being back feels a little strange, especially since I’m here for 3 weeks before I depart for Bournemouth  for the next 12 months. So my time back home feels a lot like a vacation abroad in some ways. Strangely enough, there are some things I miss back in MCR (the weather not being one of them), however there are also aspects about my home that I feel cannot be iterated elsewhere. A comparison must be made.

Firstly, just to set the scene, the Maltese archipelago consists of a number of islands situated between Sicily (60km away) and Libya, the largest of the islands being Malta(27km long by 15km wide). It can be crossed by car in little over an hour, the population is around 450,000 and we drive cars like there is no tomorrow. Here’s a map for those of you without any imagination:

So some major differences I can’t help but notice are as follows:

1) The people – Loud but friendly

Everyone here is so much more approachable, everyone just wants to have fun, relax and enjoy life. Night clubs are free, drinks are cheap, beaches are everywhere and there’s enough sun to turn northerners into walking tomatoes in minutes. So this is probably why. You can walk home late at night without really worrying about being mugged (if someone asks you for a lighter, they genuinely want a lighter!). This is especially true come summer, when students from Europe stay here for the summer to learn English at one of the language schools, the endless stream of boat parties, beach days, BBQs and the like make sure that everyone is out to have a good time.

2) The driving and the roads (this could be it’s own blog post)

There’s a reason why so many people drive Land Rovers here. If the roads were any worse we’d be getting around in tanks. The myriad of potholes forces one to remain at a cautiously slow speed. However, this is probably for the best, because just like our Sicilian neighbours, we love speed and don’t have time for the rules of the road. This is something I don’t miss, I must say that I admire that people in the UK have a level of etiquette on the road and the infratructure is well kept (imo). Things seem to be done on time and in a high quality fashion. Of course, some of you may disagree or have higher standards for local services. Keep in mind however, that I am comparing this to what I am used to back home, where filling a pothole only serves to create a large, upward facing, ball of tarmac in the place of the pothole in question.

3) There’s always something going on in Manchester

I find it hard to get bored in a city where there exists such a multitude of different people. There’s always something going on somewhere, and if you add university societies to the mix, then you’re really spoilt for choice. To mention a few, there’s a few awesome jazz clubs in the northern quarter (free entry and free pizza on Monday to Thursday nights) You can go skiing in THE Trafford centre, there are local markets popping up during the week, a BMX track in Platt Fields park (if you’ve never been, you MUST GO!) Old Trafford (of course) and enough clubs and bars to quickly drain you of your student loan.

4) Living with friends

Okay, this one is not exculsive to Manchester, but it’s something I do not get to enjoy while I’m back home. If you have any reservations about sharing a house with friends you should really go ahead and try it out. Granted you have to choose you housemates wisely (go for responsible people rather than just fun people) and you will have some arguments and frustrations, but it’s an outstanding experience. Plus chances are you’ll have some memories to take back from your university experience.

5) Food!

The Maltese cook like the Italians, the pasta is “al dente” and the ingredients are fresh. Can’t say I enjoy eating much in Manchester, although living on the curry mile has led to my discovery of some interesting Asian cuisine.

6) The countryside

Firstly, I love British countryside, I’ve been to both the Lake and Peak Districts and they are truly stunning, however Manchester is devoid of real countryside (where one can escape the city), except for the parks (which you wouldn’t even dream of entering at night). Although I love the city life, the stress of it all can be frustrating. When you live close to the centre and hearing sirens becomes a common thing throughout the day it gets quite annoying. This is why I really miss the Sea and the Countryside, less stress and less hassle. It’s also a lot easier to  participate in outdoor sports like rock climbing, abseiling, hiking and biking, since everything is so close by.

7) Lastly, the weather…

If you like having your feet soaked day in day out and thrive in the darkness of greyish black skies, then Manchester is the place for you. The former may just be my own problem, as even after 2 years there, I have yet to buy a proper umbrella (hoodies FTW).

Overall, I am still learning how to effectively reach all my goals for the day. At the end of the day, it’s all about motivation and perseverance, but it’s always useful to have a few little tricks up your sleeve.

So, the dreaded first post. What can I possibly write here that would make you want to continue reading this blog (or any other blog on this site?). Tough decisions. First impressions count right?

Ok, here we go. What would you like this blog to be about ? Technical hard facts about computer science and what we do here? Some real, student experiences of life at university? Maybe what it feels like to suddenly be independent and responsible for your future? Or some cool photos of stuff that goes down here in Manchester?

One thought comes to mind…

… Yes, EVERYTHING.

There’s more to university than assignments, lectures, clubs and the occasional random “harlem shake” or a guy in a banana costume invading a lecture theatre. I’ve learnt a whole lot more than I expected to and I would like to translate those experiences into words. In fact, the most useful things you will learn during your time at university are more subtle than you think, and have little to do with coursework (much of which you will never actually benefit from in the real world because things are done differently).

Making decisions, identifying and exploiting opportunities, networking (social not computer networking haha!), putting yourself out there and not being afraid to fail as many times as is necessary before you finally get things right. These are a few of the important skills one can gain from university. If you master them, you won’t just graduate with a degree but also some experience of tackling these challenges and with that, you’ll be able to thrive in the “real world”.

But I digress.

University is also good fun. Really good fun at times.

So to sum up what I wrote here, I aim to blog about my university experiences facing any personal challenges, fun times I had and any tips I have about going about doing things.

I bought a camera recently so I’ll make sure to take some photos to backup my blog posts.

I hope you’ll have some good laughs reading this blog and, maybe, find it somewhat interesting too, that’s my cunning plan.