I don’t want to have several sidebars overrun with advertisements and reciprocal links, I don’t want every other word in my content underlined to trick the unwary into looking at something unrelated to my thoughts and even though some extra cash would be nice; I like having this space as a place free from marketing.

I get emails on a weekly basis from people wanting to pay me to advertise for them (part of the territory when you hit the Google top spot for your real name AND your pseudonym) But I won’t do it. This is where I play and I’ll keep it as a playground for as long as I can.

I think sometimes folk forget that there’s more to life than wringing every penny they can from it. If all you ever think about is monetisation then I feel for you m’love, I really do.

This is why I have just thrown up another theme that was literally created in 5 minutes over at cool template and I think I may keep it for a while until I’ve learned how to scribble the code needed to throw one together myself from scratch (I have more than enough books and tutorials now so if it isn’t done by this time next year I’ll quit talking about it) creating is fun and I should really take the time to get back to loving my own site as much as I do other peoples.

Professional issues in computing

Long questions:

1. You have been asked by your manager to develop a website, but the specification you receive makes no provision for accessibility. Write a memorandum to your manager explaining what needs to be added to the specification, and why this should be done.

Re: website specification.
The lack of accessibility provision has been noted and this employee feels it would benefit you to add this important aspect for the following reasons:

The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2006) recognizes Web accessibility as a basic human right.

The UK Disability Discrimination Act makes it unlawful for a service provider to discriminate against a disabled person by refusing to provide any service which it provides to members of the public and specifically with regards to websites:

• 5.23 (p71): “For people with visual impairments, the range of auxiliary aids or services which it might be reasonable to provide to ensure that services are accessible might include … accessible websites.”
• 5.26 (p68): “For people with hearing disabilities, the range of auxiliary aids or services which it might be reasonable to provide to ensure that services are accessible might include … accessible websites.”

(http://www.webcredible.co.uk/user-friendly-resources/web-accessibility/uk-website-legal-requirements.shtml)

While accessibility focuses on people with disabilities, it also benefits older users, mobile phone users, and other individuals. Older users with age-related accessibility needs are an increasingly important customer base for most organizations, as the percentage of older users is increasing significantly.

Those aged 55+, are set to overtake 35-44 year olds as the demographic age group representing the largest share of UK Internet visits. Those aged 55+ represented 22.0% of UK visits to all categories of websites in the four weeks to 12th May 2007, up 54% since 2005 and 40% since 2006. This compares to 23.5% of Internet visits from 35-44 year olds.

(http://weblogs.hitwise.com/heather-hopkins/2007/05/54_increase_put_silver_surfers.html)

Legalities aside, common sense dictates that making the website accessible (and therefore easier to navigate/ access material) to the largest online demographic alongside mobile phone users and people with disabilities will make it more accessible for people without those problems.

Organizations with accessible websites also benefit from search engine optimization (SEO), reduced legal risk, demonstration of corporate social responsibility (CSR), and increased customer loyalty.

(Developing a Web Accessibility Business Case for Your Organization, S.L. Henry and A.M.J. Arch, eds. World Wide Web Consortium (MIT, ERCIM, Keio), June 2009. http://www.w3.org/WAI/bcase/)

Adherence to the w3c web content accessibility guidelines (WCAG 2.0 http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/) is strongly recommended as an addition to the current specification.

2. You have been asked to manage the sending out a questionnaire relating to the requirements of a web site your employer is developing. You will also be responsible for producing a series of reports from the response. What professional and ethical issues should you take into account when doing this?

Adherence to the 8 core principles of the data protection act (1998) is paramount:

1. Personal data shall be processed fairly and lawfully
2. Personal data shall be obtained only for one or more specified and lawful purposes, and shall not be further processed in any manner incompatible with that purpose or other purposes
3. Personal data shall be adequate, relevant and not excessive in relation to the
   purpose or purposes for which they are processed
4. Personal data shall be accurate and, where necessary kept up to date (with every
   reasonable step being taken to ensure that data that are inaccurate or incomplete,
   having regard to the purpose(s) for which they were collected or for which they are being further processed, are erased or rectified)
5. Personal data processed for any purpose or purposes shall not be kept for longer than is necessary for that purpose or those purposes
6. Personal data shall be processed in accordance with the rights of data subjects under this Act
7. Appropriate technical and organisational measures shall be taken against
   unauthorised or unlawful processing of personal data and against accidental loss or destruction of, or damage to, personal data
8. Personal data shall not be transferred to a country or territory outside the
   European Economic Area unless that country or territory ensures an adequate level of protection for the rights and freedoms of data subjects in relation to the processing of personal data.

• Transparency – ensuring individuals have a very clear and unambiguous understanding of the purpose(s) for collecting the data and how it will be used;
• Consent – at the time that the data is collected, individuals must give their consent to their data being collected, and also at this time, have the opportunity to opt out of any subsequent uses of the data.

(http://www.mrs.org.uk/standards/dp.htm)

Take on board the conduct codes and recommendations of marketing research bodies such as MRS and ESOMAR and consider where your sample base will be taken from (online panel, customer database etc) and the implications of using such contact information under the relevant acts of law.

For surveys completed online, respondents must be told about the length of time the questionnaire is likely to take to complete under normal circumstances (e.g. assuming connection is maintained).
The use of some form of metering device so that respondents can track their progress through the questionnaire is recommended.
Respondents should be informed if they have the option of completing the questionnaire at a time convenient to them within the schedule dictated by the time frame of the study. Beyond this, suitable technical measures should be implemented, where appropriate, allowing respondents not to answer particular questions (but to proceed with the rest of the interview) and to interrupt and subsequently return to the interview at any time.

It must be remembered that a respondent’s e-mail address is personal data where it refers to a data subject and therefore needs to be protected in the same way as other identifiers.

ESOMAR does not prescribe a mandatory minimum set of background variables that should be recorded about each active panel member. However, the following variables all have valuable roles in strategies to avoid duplication or clarify individual identity, stratification of samples for research projects, and weighting strategies to counter heavy user bias:

• Sex
• Level of education
• Household size
• Region
• Location (postal code + house number)
• Age (date of birth)
• Presence of children in household
• Working status
• Weight of internet usage (hours per week)
• Type of internet access

http://www.esomar.org/uploads/pdf/ESOMAR_Codes&Guideline-Conducting_research_using_Internet.pdf

Short questions

Codes of conduct: http://www.sqa.org.uk/e-learning/ProfIssues03CD/page_01.htm

ACM http://www.acm.org/about/code-of-ethics

BCS http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=nav.6030

ARrrrgh! you see why my head hurts? roll on Friday and it will all be over – until next year.

Web services:

The main difference between a web site and a web service is:

• A web service is designed to work with any type of client or device using XML messaging
• A web site is designed to work using a web browser client using html, xhtml and css

A web service consumer is a program which uses information provided by other applications in a network environment.

A web service provider is a software agent that will undertake work on behalf of a client application.

A service request is a message sent from one application to another for data to meet the applications needs.

A function oriented service is where an application performs a function and returns a result based on the inputs supplied.

The main reason security is such a difficult issue for web services is that unknown people and applications should be able to access the service – this means they need to be very open which leaves them vulnerable.

The role of WSDL in web service architecture is to describe the interface to the server; it describes what the web service can do, where it can be found and how it can be invoked.

XML

The two main benefits that come from using xml to create documents are that it:

• Separates the content from it’s structure
• Allows the use of more meaningful tag names

The main advantages of using an xml schema instead of a DTD are that an xml schema allows you to define both data types and namespaces which a DTD doesn’t.

An xml document can be well formed without an associated DTD (Document Type Definition) or Schema – so long as it adheres to the syntax rules laid out in the xml 1.0 recommendation:

• There can be only one root element.
• Every start tag must have a matching closing tag.
• Empty elements can omit the closing tag, but, if they do so, must have a forward slash before the closing angle bracket (/>).
• Elements must be properly nested.
• Attribute values must be in quotes.
• In the content of an element or attribute value, < and &; must be replaced by &lt; and &amp; respectively.

In order to be validated an xml document must have an associated schema or DTD to be validated against.

So to reiterate; The difference between an xml document being valid or well formed is:

• Well-formed: The XML code must be syntactically correct.
• Valid: If the XML file has an associated XML Schema/ DTD, the elements must appear in the defined structure and the content of the individual elements must conform to the declared data types specified in the schema.

The root node of an xml document tree is the first element at the top of the document.

Namespaces

The namespace is defined by the xmlns attribute in the start tag of an element.

The namespace declaration has the following syntax: xmlns:prefix=”URI”.

Schema

Two benefits that come from using XML Schema Definitions (XSDs) in specifying document formats, that do not apply to DTDs are:

• An XSD enables you to specify the format of character data within an element
• An XSD enables you to give an allowed maximum for an attribute value

To show that an element is optional at a particular point in an XML schema you should include minOccurs=”0″ in the elements definition.

DTD

There are three types of DTD:

• Strict; free of all deprecated tags and framesets
• Transitional; includes deprecated tags
• Frameset; framesets (with or without deprecated tags)

To show that an element is optional in a DTD you should follow the elements name with a question mark.

Parsing

A parser is a program that performs parsing; parsing is a method of stripping away xml markup tags leaving only the data which can then be processed further.

Before parsing a DTD or Schema must be referenced to identify the validated markup tags and their structure definition.

You do not need a parser to read an xml document.

XSLT

Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations (XSLT) is most accurately described as a means to transform XML markup into another markup format for use by other applications.

..and there I must leave you – t’other half is kicking me off the pc to get some kip so I’m fresh in the morning to carry on revising this stuff – you envy me don’t you – go on.. admit it, you so wish you were me right now..

“She greets us as we enter the world; she is with us when we leave it. She is never more than a second away from us, as close as our own heartbeat; but when she does not stand directly before us, we cannot recall her face.
When she calls, loud and clear, we drop whatever we are doing and attend to her needs alone. At the touch of her hand we forget work, friends and lovers. She is the mistress of the universe. She is pain”

I first read Trader’s World by Charles Sheffield when I was about 14 or 15 and for some reason I memorised this passage so well that nearly 20 years later I still recall it.
..I guess a psychiatrist would have a field day with that revelation.

But isn’t it strange the way our memories work? How a smell, sound or an image can trigger them. The thing I find most strange is why are the unpleasant memories so much easier to trigger than the happy/ fun ones?

This is something that’s been playing on my mind a lot recently because whenever I have an ME/CFS flare up/ relapse or whatever you want to call it, those unpleasant memories boil to the surface at the slightest provocation. If this were me writing as I would 4 or 5 years ago I’d probably describe some of those memories to you in quite some detail; but I’ve learned a lot in those 4 or 5 years about the internet and over sharing so those memories can stay in my head for now.

But it’s not only personal memories that we seem to have little control over, I have tried for years to learn musical theory – I own (and have read) at least 5 books on the subject, had several friends try and explain it to me and through the patience of one of those friends (who drilled me endlessly) learned it well enough to pass the entrance test to a music degree course. ..But within days of doing that test I was back to not understanding a note on the page.

Some things you don’t learn or remember without constant drilling on the subject; other things you soak up like a thirsty sponge, but either way it seems to be some kind of luck as to whether it sticks or not.

I memorised hundreds of things when I was at school, and later on at college – but of all those things; soliloquies, poems, songs, technical information, it never seems to be the useful stuff that I recall. Which is a real shame because if I could recall everything I’d ever read or made a concious effort to learn then would. I. ever. be a force to be reckoned with!

Song lyrics I have no trouble with (well, songs I learned pre-CFS that is) At one point I knew so many songs that my peers nicknamed me ‘jukebox’ and would test me by throwing song titles at me and have me sing a verse/ chorus for them – if someone was trying to think of a song they’d tell me a line and I’d sing it back to them so they could remember; that was my ‘special talent’ I guess.

My interest is the web but my passion is creating things; jewellery, lyrics, website designs and content – I generate ideas for things on a daily basis that I have to put aside through lack of time/ energy or materials until some unforeseen future date..

..my worst fear is that I’ll never have the time, energy or materials for that future date to arrive.

It’s no secret that I’ve struggled with this year, I had to defer all of semester A which has in turn forced me to defer Semester B until next year – my year tutor made the observation that I would have been better suited to part time study but it just seemed like the wrong path to take at the time.

I’m struggling with exams especially; having next to no short term memory is bad enough but then having to deal with the demands of motherhood and family life, seemingly never ending episodes of fatigue and illness on top while attempting to cram technical information into a mind that seems hell bent on it going in one ear to travel straight back out through the other..

I keep reading, making notes, re-reading and it’s like every time is the first time I take in the information. It’s not so bad doing coursework because I know where I need to look to find my answers, but a test of memory – especially a 3 hour long test of memory (or 4 hours  in my case as I get extra time due to the illness thing) trying to find the little hooks, the triggers that will allow me to pull those answers from thin air – that’s the trick really.

I have to remember the quality of light coming through the window during a lecture to hear Guys voice in my head explaining the property in question, I need to hear the clatter of the canteen to picture the page I was reading about the description of such and such an effect. I have to be able to picture step by step the process used in a program to explain my reasoning – sometimes you can’t do that without the program in front of you; which is why I hate closed book exams with a passion.

In the real world I have all of these props to hand to help me trigger the flash of inspiration/ the required memory, in a closed book exam I have only my mind; the seemingly inaccessible hard drive with the faulty connectors that get even more faulty as the stress levels rise.

..and trust me, they are constantly rising.

SIMPLES! All you need to do is become a student and sign up to social networking site Studyvox.co.uk.

As the lovely lady is the site patron you too could wind up having a cheque or a music award passed into your sweaty grasp – it happened to me; it could happen to you.

This time around there were 3 things each of the winners of the inaugural bursary awards had in common:

1. we were all students
2. we were all female
3. we all thought this was some kind of a hoax or scam.

I kid you not, I mean; C’mon! Kylie Minogue handing out cash for nothing more than signing up to a social networking site?

It sounded insane! So much so that Stef and I even organised a house sitter ‘just in case’ while we travelled down to the event..  *blushes* paranoid much?

It’s taken me a while to recover from the exertion of travelling and being sociable which is why the date of the cheque is 25th of February but this blog post is happening in March – the joys of living with ME/CFS I’m afraid ( but this was an event that was definitely worth the health fall-out!)

Both Stef and I have been converted to the view of the studyvoxfoundation crew, we really want them to make of the studyvox.co.uk site everything they dream of. The people behind the charity are wonderful, caring passionate people not lacking in intelligence and their ideas are ambitious; they want to take on every big social networking site out there and as Kev the CEO put it “we want to take everything they’ve got horribly wrong and do it RIGHT!”

They want to create an online home for students, a place where;

• their profiles will not be held up out of context during a job interview as evidence of lying and debauchery
• they have representation and help with social needs (things supposedly catered for by the NUS)
• where they can talk freely about their courses and the towns in which they live
• a marketplace for them to sell anything from textbooks to clothes and furniture
• a one-stop shop for all their financial needs and concerns
• somewhere safe to upload their music, imagery and video footage

In short they are taking on Facebook, myspace, MP3unsigned, Youtube, directgov and any other site you can think of that can hold some kind of benefit to students.

It’s audacious, it’s ambitious, it’s totally nuts – but they are so passionate about their vision that you cannot help but be swept along by it.

The bursary awards are to be a regular thing, any student who signs up to StudyVox is in with a chance of winning – it’s definitely on the up and up, it’s legit and I have the pictures to prove it. If you don’t believe me then just look at some of the news coverage of the event on the BBC and in the Telegraph and obviously the foundations own news site the StudyVox echo (I have several times just to remind myself that I didn’t dream the whole thing)

They want to ‘put their money where their mouths are’ and show in a real way that they are there to help support the student community.

At present I will admit to a lot of teething problems with the social networking website – but that is less down to the vision of the group and more to do with the company paid to do the coding and design; I think, given time and a lot of tweaking this site could well be a force to contend with, the NUS would be well advised to take note and learn a few things.