Sharpening Ones Tools..
I’ll be the first (maybe) to admit it… I am rusty.
In the time I have been working quite a lot of my ‘skills’ have diminished over the years, this is due to complacency/stagnation at work, ‘Attic Theory‘ learning and a general loss of being able to exercise my skills.
I was quite an ok-ish programmer way back when and it is something I do miss doing a lot of. When I was a young lad and starting out at University I opted into doing a computer programming degree ‘Information Technology Computing’ which, to the keen eyed, is badly worded and now doesn’t exist in the curriculum anymore.
Initially I wasn’t even thinking of going to higher education however I was convinced to go by one of my closest friends and jump into this course while it was ‘shit hot’.
When starting out we were learning Microsoft Visual Basic and something else (I forget what, likely Excel or some shit). We raised this with the tutors at the time saying “this is a dead language everyone is using Java and SQL/Oracle” to which we were told we were ‘incorrect’. The first day of year 2 they said ‘forget everything you have learned were now learning Javascript and SQL’ – – no shit seriously this happened.
Now all being said and done I took my lumps passed my Foundation Degree and left, I can’t top up to a BSC Hons (AFAIK, as the path isn’t there anymore). This is all well and good as I am in work and earning but bored, unmotivated and once more, stagnant.
I was inspired to look into things by another, Eddie ‘Cranklin’ Kim and his blog post here – https://cranklin.wordpress.com/2013/04/04/engineers-stay-agile/ – I have actually been reading his blog for years and it is always amazing to see and learn.
So I figured its high time to change and skill up once more.
Enter the Learning.
While at University I discovered, among awesome things like ‘The Mythical Man Month‘, that I am a Visual Learner (for the most part). If I sees it I learns it, so this is how I have been learning for years now (though I still have problems reading books, could be mild Dyslexia) and for some things I work like a knowledge sponge, absorbing all the smarts in the room and going from there.
I have been following a few notable people in one field or another on Twitter, from Coding to Security (and general shitposting) and as a result of this I have been slowly regaining my confidence, firing up my interest and expanding my learning theory.
So I’ve decided (after a Jerry Seinfeld streaks revelation) that I am going to start polishing up my skills and learning new things though how to do it? is it free? is it actually any good?
Well the following sources I have been using and I cant recommend them enough;
Stack Skills – Free/Paid – Stack Skills isn’t something I would have necessarily jumped at in the beginning as I was unfamiliar with it and how the system worked handily this has changed over time and now I find myself using it quite a lot.
It has an important set of learning tools… Labs and videos these are invaluable for learning as its easy to pause a video to figure something out if you need to.
Stack Skills also has some amazing sales on courses and regularly have up to 99% off on some courses, pretty much all of mine have been in this bracket (as I’m skint) but there are also Pay What You Want sales and these also have different tiers, pay a little more and unlock all the training docs things like that.
Code Academy – Free – This is a fun little resource for starting at 0 (In my opinion) the classes are built in a way that you can code live and see the output while going through the slides so you know immediately if you have screwed something up.
Cybrary – Free – This is a little more involved but my god the resources are immense.
The training material is focused towards Security and Networks such as CompTIA A+, Security+, Network+, Pentesting and Ethical Hacking, CISSP and more (though there is that debate if CISSP is real training or if its all fake and something you pay for, I dont have time for all that drama). All good quality and handed down from the experts.
An interesting thing about Cybrary is you can learn on the move as they offer an Android (and maybe iPhone app) which also has the same content as the main site for convenience.
Humble Bundle – Honourable Mention – Free/Paid
Humble Bundle has a Books section and in it they had/have a Bundle of Cyber Security books and a tier system for unlocking more content, this was worth the £11 I paid at the time as there are some amazing books in it (digital downloads in a variety of formats) and again good for on the move reading and reference.
This will likely come up again in the future so be sure to keep an eye out.
The Jerry Seinfeld thing.
A long while ago I read this : https://lifehacker.com/281626/jerry-seinfelds-productivity-secret
The long story short, “Don’t break the chain!” which is the approach I am going to use for learning, I’m trying to carve out half an hour to an hour a day for learning/reading or a little project every day to keep sharp and learn something, hopefully committing it to memory as well.
Perhaps I should start smaller like ‘learn 1 new Linux command a day’ but why not throw ones self in at the deep end.
You can monitor my progress (If anyone even cares) via:
https://github.com/Ha3ks
Anything I code or make Ill be storing here, the learning side of things is harder to track or show that ‘I have completed my 1 hour sit and learn today’.
I may find a way to do this or implement a counter on the site…
This is just my two cents catch up for the moment and I will be writing up projects on here as they build up.