Lecture 5

Guest speaker: Kofi Appiah

Kofi worked for the Robotics research group. He covered a brief history of computer processors, which included:

1970s - Semi-conductors

1980s - DRAM

1990s - Micro processors

2000s - DPS, the technology of FOCUS

The lecture mentioned the increase in chip speed, the speed of which hit a limit at 2Gz, as 4Gz was eventually deemed unfeasible. This was announced on October 4th 2004 by Intel when project Tejas, the 7Gz chip, failed due to overheating and melting of the chip.

This led to multi-core processor, which have a 30% -70% improvement on single core chips of the same speed. FPGA is a parallels approach to processing.

One project Kofi was working with using these processors was a smart camera, which tracks movement by locating new pixels in the current frame from the stored background image.

Lecture 4 - CV and Cover Letters

The workshop was a introductory explanation to how to write a good CV and cover letter. The main points that were covered are summarised below.

CV

Header: Name, Address, Contact details,

Objective: Clear, concise, detailing career path intended to follow, setting tone

Include: Degree, skills, examples.

Work history: 'Relevant' and 'Additional' categories, any work is valid.

Cover Letter

Include why you are applying, your interest in the role, work, employer or organisation, strengths and suitability for the job, refer to the CV and have a positive ending.

Links that were provided to help with CVs and cover letters were websites that were:

ulopportunities.co.uk

prospects.ac.uk/links/appsinterviews

hercomestheboss.com

Lecture 3

Guest speaker - Ken Blair

Ken works for a music production company as a location sound engineer. He mixes sounds, in the classical genre, which takes roughly half an hour to an hour. He uses digital work stations, which include Sadie and ProTools and there can be anywhere from 100 to 2000 edits in one song. He works in venues such as concert halls and arenas and works for record labels, music publishers and bands without a record label. He has had one year working in industry along with post-graduate work.

Lecture 2

Guest speaker - Wendy

Wendy teaches and works from home. The teaching job is self employed, of which she has her own, self designed, website for. 

Lecture 1

The lecture explained what will be covered in the Frontier Technologies module. This included guest speakers, assignments and mock interviews. Curriculum Vitae and cover letter training is also going to be covered later on in the year. Workshops will be the main source for this along with notes from the lecturers and guest speakers.

A mock job application and interview will also take place later in the year.