Posts

It has been interesting learning about FHE - Fully Homomorphic Encryption and MPC - Secure Multi-Party Computation in my recent studies with Royal Holloway, University of London . Honestly, I think these advances are very exciting. Some people think that cryptography is too academic or inscrutable, but the reality is that it has had the biggest affect on our digital lives. Without cryptography, Bitcoin, HTTPS, secure messaging, VPNs, online banking, online payments in general, WIFI, mobile phones.. simply would not be able to exist because they would be too insecure to implement. ...

Have just finished the most recent module exams for my MSc Cyber Security degree at University of London, Royal Holloway. This means that I have now attempted (and I hope - passed) around 50% of the degree content, not including the final project, since I started the degree in April 2025. Previously I was averaging a distinction result, I am not convinced those two last exams will result in me maintaining the distinction average, but we will see! ...

It is very annoying how low peoples expectations and initial perceptions of me are. I apparently come across as some kind of ‘invalid’, possibly because of my neurodiverse social difficulties. When people get to know just how different I am from their initial expectations, they seem to get genuinely shocked and annoyed! As if I have no right to be as intelligent/capable/successful/kind/generous as I actually am. I really HATE this reaction. People don’t understand that it’s THEIR perceptions and prejudices are at fault, and the gap they have discovered between them and reality is actually A REALLY GOOD THING!

We are experiencing our second heatwave of the summer here in the UK and to be honest, I’m sick of it. Our new home, despite being a recent new build house, seems to get much hotter than the external-wall-insulated house we used to have in Manchester. We have had to install fans in most rooms, and 2 (!) portable aircon units in the south facing upper rooms to attempt to deal with the heat. ...

The problem with arguing on the internet is that you usually automatically assume that the other person is as cognitively capable as you of understanding the argument you’re trying to put across, and also, are interested in the argument at all. Often people cannot understand something - perhaps they are lacking critical thinking skills or literacy, or perhaps they are genuinely mentally ill - or maybe they simply don’t WANT to, and are using the argument as just a way of letting out the frustration of their day. ...

The Christies have decided that they only need to see me once per year now. The current chance of the cancer returning is less than 5% over my entire lifetime now - also, out of the participants on the clinical trial I was on who made it past stem cell transplant.. 3 years on.. NONE of them have relapsed currently. So that’s good news. I still need to worry about the second cancer risk but as long as I stay healthy and fit, I should be fine for a good few decades yet. ...

We have been incredibly busy with the house move, and I did not get as much time as I wanted to, to put into studying for my latest Royal Holloway Cyber Security module, “Applied Crytopgrahy”. So, when the results came out, I was expecting to have to resit it. Imagine my surprise when I found out that I had passed, not only just barely, but with 71%, which is a distinction!! ...

I found this diagram very interesting and useful for explaining multiple levels of privilege in society, and also explaining how some people can be very privileged in some areas and very unprivileged in others. There are a lot of minority and oppressed groups that actively fight against each other and condemn each others ‘weaknesses’ - and this should show that this is really NOT a good idea, and that we should all understand that even though we might be actively disabled or unprivileged in some areas, we all are more privileged in some areas compared to others. ...

The University of London Cyber Security Society team I was a part of made it to the regional qualifiers of the Cybersecurity Leaders Challenge! This was a competitive achievement, and we received good feedback including a lot of positive feedback, for our presentation, that we will look to take on board when we enter the competition next year!