When it comes to network security, everyone is great until they at it when there are no issues. However, what truly sets people apart in this major, and the field, is handling stressful situations and making the right decisions. Part of the nature of security is the value shines through during a crisis. If you want to read the Red team's perspective (the team that causes the chaos in a competition) you can read more here.

This year I am very fortunate to lead a team that not only excels in preventing something going wrong but is also agile and quick to recover after something goes wrong. In my opinion, that's the driving force behind our recent success in the Western Regionals.

Last week the UAT CCDC team competed in the last invitational—or practice round—of the season for the Western Regional Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition (WRCCDC). At WRCCDC colleges compete against each other in maintaining and securing servers. This experience was only our second invitational. (You can learn more about our first go around here.)

In recent years, the popularity of competitive gaming and esports has skyrocketed. People want to take playing video games and push it to that next level with competitions and tournaments popping up all of the place for a wide variety of games. One that I’ve recently delved into is the bizarre underworld of competitive classic Tetris!

Starting out my final semester, it feels great to be able to partake in a course that allows me to explore my personal interests. Starting Creative Writing II, I can’t explain how excited I am to come up with new ideas, but I am also looking forward to seeing what students who are new to the course will produce.

Good puzzle games are difficult to come by. Having the right balance of challenging puzzles, while not being too frustrating, is a difficult thing to achieve. Zachtronics, however, have really nailed this formula. They’ve created some of the most intriguing, creative, and most importantly FUN puzzle games of the past few years. Games like Opus Magnum and SpaceChem have been received with overwhelmingly positive reviews and are thought of as some of the best puzzle games out there today.

Participating in game jams is a big challenge. You spend a full weekend working as hard as you can to make a complete game. When I was 16 years old, I was just beginning to learn programming games, but I really wanted to participate in a game jam to test out my skills. I had seen people participate in the Ludum Dare jam before, but had yet to do it myself, so I set out to participate in the Ludum Dare 30. For this jam, I decided I’d team up with my good friend, a very talented artist named Devon. He and I had never worked on a project together and were both nervous to see how it would go. August 22nd, 2014, the Ludum Dare 30 announced the theme “Connected Worlds” and we set off to create our game!

The biggest misunderstanding with Collegiate Cyber Defence Competition (CCDC) teams is that only the most technical people can be effective team members. But in reality, passion and willingness to work with other is more important. Seniors can always teach younger students the basic technical skills beforehand, and the competition itself is supposed to be a learning experience.

Have you ever made an entire video game from scratch in two days with your friends? We do all the time at UAT. It sounds like something that should be left to the professionals and experts, but that’s just not true. I believe that every single game developer, new or experienced, should participate in game jams when the opportunity arises.

It's been a while since I’ve written about the courses I’ve been taking, electives in particular. This fall semester, I’ve found a class that is creatively challenging and seems to cover certain skills that would be useful amongst artists and filmmakers alike. For this blog, I’m going to be covering the DVA234 course, otherwise known as Special Effects and Character Makeup.

I had a blast at Arizona's premier cyber security conference CactusCon, where I learned a lot about cyber security trends and tools and met a lot of cool people.