Iíve ended up with some good new challenges in my working life. I am studying part-time, and working part time at QUT, focusing in at the ISRC. I am studying here at the moment, looking towards doing a PhD in Information Security. Information Security is an interesting and important field, and Brisbane seems to have enough people doing it for this not to be a dead-end for a career in Brisbane. I have also got another good reason for hanging out at the ISRC.
I am doing two subjects, one is Advanced Cryptology, and the second is Computer Forensics. The Advanced Crypto is pretty heavy maths wise (way more than in building web-based apps). I am implementing simple versions of a number of the algorithms in Java, writing a bunch of code that interacts with BigInteger and friends. I was wanting to do these tools in a obscure fun language with the thought that Java isnít cool enough, but found that BigInteger does lots of good stuff, and didnít get too far away.
Groovy shows promise for doing maths, but the way things are at the moment, its behaviour wasnít as nice as I had hoped, so Java was the choice for me.
I am also doing 24 hours a week of programming, writing the implementation of a security risk model in java. I am doing it in an XPish way, fully Unit and Acceptance Test Driven. As I am the only coder, there isnít much opportunity for pair programming, but I canít have everything 
.
I am finding my professional niche in Brisbane, which makes a great compliment to the great weather.
Life is good 
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