Blog Blog

 
And now , the moment you’ve all been waiting for!   Yes, it is here… The blog about my blog.  What did I write about?  Where did I get my information from?  And, to whom would this whole thing be useful?  This is an interesting exercise, a fairly rare look back at something to see what was gained. 

My intention at the beginning was to find a theme and stick with it throughout the semester, to gain a deeper knowledge about one or two topics.  This isn’t what ended up happening.  In reality, what I seemed to do was browse around, and the first time I found a topic that interested me, I wrote about it.  Topics were truly all over the board – simply whatever grabbed my interest.  Some had very little personal input, while some had a little more of my philosophy.  I think the best was when I found a story by someone else, and then looked to see if outside facts supported the claims – if I had to do it over again, I would do that more often.

My approach to finding material was simple.  If I didn’t get curious about something during the week – I simply started clicking on the recommended links from the first week until something grabbed my eye.  If I read it, and was interested, that became my topic for the week.  I guess the approach was close to leafing through a newspaper and commenting to others in the area about it.  My biggest sources ended up being Infosec Island and Security Week.

I really don’t know if a security professional would get much out of my blog – perhaps some weeks, but I think a lot of it would be simply “Well, duh” stuff to a professional.  I would really recommend starting with a theme (or 2-3 related themes), sticking to them, and doing more investigating of topics.  I have to admit that, at 20 points per week, I tended to give this lower priority than I should have.  Usually, I would complete my post late on Sunday, think “This was fun, I’ll get a head start on it next week!” and then all my good intentions would go for naught.  I’d really recommend students do this for themselves – really think of a way they can create something they can be proud of, and might even want to continue after the class is done.