Science Tony

By McDonald, T . | Date 13th of December 2017 When a human wakes up in the morning, the next thing to happen depends on the needs of that human.  For instance, if hungry, putting on a dressing gown and heading to the fridge is the most likely thing to happen. If the bladder is full, a trip to the toilet will occur before raiding the fridge. Furthermore, most people can perform these tasks independently, but what if the subject is a robot? Writers have written about autonomous robots and androids with super intelligence for decades. With that in mind, how would an autonomous robot achieve true autonomy? Before understanding an autonomous robot's needs, developers must first consider humans needs and second understand the meaning of an autonomous robot then apply human needs to the autonomous robot. Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs First, before understanding the needs of autonomous robots, developers must first consider human needs. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is a g...

By McDonald, T . | Date: 6th of December 2017 Almost everybody likes to use the internet for a varied number of reasons. With the increase in disability awareness and the mobile market, every developer needs to think carefully about accessibility from the beginning of the design process. It is a top priority it to consider the needs of accessibility for legal reasons, and because of the mobile market. Accessibility and the law Accessibility needs is a top priority for a developer for legal reasons. Some users will be using assistive technologies to access the internet, for example, screen readers used by people with sight impairments. Subsequently, HTML has attributes in image anchors such as alt and longdesc, which will allow the reeding aloud of a text description of an image or graphic by a screen reader. This is, however, only one example, so it is good practice to involve people with disabilities throughout the design process to get a better understanding of individu...

By McDonald, T. | Date 1st of December 2017 You may have wondered what goes into building a webpage or thought about becoming a web developer yourself. If so, you may have noticed that web developers and technology businesses encourage workers to volunteering in the community because it can be a valuable experience. Can volunteering in a charity shop improve web development understanding if a shop is thought of like a webpage even though volunteering in one will not make anyone a web developer? Is thinking of a webpage like a shop useful? Shops have services going on in the background such as sorting products much as a website will sort data. The back room is unseen by the shopper, yet remains a crucial part of the service much as a server is critical to a webpage. In addition, shops have a window, which displays the services much as a landing page does for a website. Service users must be able to see what the shop has for sale just as a landing page needs to clearly di...

By McDonald, T.   |  Date 21 of November 2017 Sometimes life can leave us with time on our hands and nothing to fill the void. In other cases, a person may just need a chance to get started or restarted in working life, or maybe, like me, you spend all your time in front of a screen coding and studying and simply need a break. In any case, some suitable activity can provide the experiences all people need in order to achieve a feeling of fulfilment. Volunteering is one such activity that can provide much more than people realise. With this in mind, what can someone expect from volunteering? A volunteer can expect a variety of duties and benefits. Duties in the shop A volunteer can expect a variety of activities. The standard model of a charity shop is to have clothing, housewares and book sections with the intension of providing quality second hand goods in order to support a charity financially. Standard duties in a charity shop can vary but mainly involve sor...

By McDonald, T. | Date: 19th of November 2017 In the previous blog, usability was briefly covered. Usability is about ensuring a site is easy and pleasant to use. This blog, briefly covers accessibility. Considering accessibility will increase audience and avoid prosecution, so it is worth adhering too.  Make a site accessible to maximise the audience . You may be excused for thinking that accessibility is the same as usability since the two ideas do overlap. However, while usability is more about using the site, accessibility is more about accessing the site using assistive technologies. Assistive technologies are things such as screen readers, which read everything on the screen and even read allowed a description of an image or graphic. In order to do this the image or graphic must have a description in the html code within the tag for the image. Before I go any further, it would be good to examine disability. If you go to a shop and it has a door ten meters...

By McDonald. T | Date: 12th November 2017 As the web continues to grow more and more people begin to depend on it. Everyone is using the net for all sorts of things including using it as the new high street. We can shop online, socialise online, book holidays online, study for our degree online; in fact, you name it and there is more than likely a website for it. For this reason, it is good to know if a website is reaching the maximum target audience. This blog is in two parts. In this blog, part one, I will cover usability and in part two I will cover accessibility . Make a site user friendly to maximise the audience and audience retention. Have you ever been to a site and left it quickly or stayed for hours at a site? Why did you do that? People go to a site for many reasons including: looking for information; to purchase something; or to use a service. With this in mind if any of us went to a shop and it did not have what we wanted we would leave, correct...

By McDonald, T. | Last updated: 7/9/2017 We face problems every day; subsequently, we spend a lot of time attempting to find a reasonable solution even if we do not realise it.  Solving problems is a big part of computer science.  In fact, problems are so important that computer science separates them into different classes including P, NP, NP-complete and NP-hard, but what does it all mean and can NP =P? Computer scientists have developed a way of measuring how long it takes to compute a problem. This is not as easy as it sounds since we cannot just time how long it takes.  Think about it for a minute, if timing an algorithm by looking at the clock, the timing run on different computers would be different each time because different computers could have different hardware such as processors and memory.  Even if running the same algorithm several times on the same computer, the time spent running the algorithm would depend on the other operations the co...

By McDonald, T. | Last updated 30th of November   Do you think your computer is amazing? It can do so much and reasonably quick most of the time, yes?  Perhaps you are beginning to think it will not be long before a computer can accomplish any task especially with knowledge of Moore’s law whereby the number of transistors per square inch on an integrated circuit doubles every eighteen months.  Nevertheless, some problems are not just difficult they are impossible to solve. For some problem to be computable, it would need to be possible to solve it in a finite number of steps for every instance of that problem; we call this effective procedure.  Alan Turing came up with the idea of a machine that could solve a problem if given a set of precise instructions called a program, which he called a Turing machine.  In addition, he theorised of a universal Turing machine that could take the state of any other Turing machine.  It is important to remember th...

By McDonald, T | Last updated 30th of November 2017 What a computer scientist actually does remains a source of mystery for most people. Computing is a general term for many fields involving a computer. However, computer science is more specific. In the past, computers were people who made calculations using a set procedure known as a program. Nowadays, the word computer conjures up the image of an electronic device. Subsequently, I feel it important to say what computer science is not before I say what it does involve. What is not computer science? Although a computer scientist will have an understanding of how a computer works, they are not a computer repair person. If you think a computer scientist deals with networking you would be wrong again, that is a network engineer: who keeps the Internet working. Even so, a computer scientist will have some knowledge of networking. Network engineers are more about solving different problems such as connection on diffe...

By McDonald, T. | Last updated 30th of November 2017 What do you want to do with your life must be the most famous open-ended question ever asked.   It usually strikes fear into the hearts of people while they desperately try to think of something cool to say.   Sadly, some people never find an answer.   Deciding on a future is perhaps one of the most important decisions a person will ever make.   Before deciding on a great future, be honest about what you want out of life, realise the value of education and decide on a suitable educational root while making sure you have the right grounding.     In order to decide successfully on a great future, you will need to be honest about what you want out of life first.   This is a more straightforward task than you might think.   Look at it this way, do you want to do something exciting like volcanology where people collect lava samples among other things or spend your time watching soaps? ...

By McDonald, T | Last updated 02/12/17 In this world of technology something is needed to make it all run.  This something is programming languages such as Java, C# and Python just to name a few.  Subsequently, the programming industry is a great place to be a part of with new opportunities opening up all the time.  If you are new to programming, Python is a great place to get started since it is relatively easy to learn and has extensive libraries. Getting started  The following will be required in order to get started. Python 3 (Free) Software to right the code (Free) Python 3 is different to Python 2.  The difference is in the syntax, so for now i will just keep to Python 3 since it is the newest.  Installing Python 3 is easy just follow the instructions in the video and then install Pycharm.  Pycharm is software for writing code.  You will need to install the latest version of Python for your operating system and the Communi...

Updated 28/05/17 Linux has several distributions with different flavours such as Kali, Red hat, Ubuntu and Mint; nevertheless, most are based on Debian.  Debian itself has different flavours, which means you can choose from one of the many exciting desktop environments.  Before any of this can take place Debian 8, stable edition, or higher will need to be installed.   You will learn how to: Choose the correct image Check minimum hardware   Download Debian Install Debian Install Parallels tools Try out different interfaces Step one Choose the correct image  Minimum hardware  Download Debian Choose the correct image for your architecture. You have a choice of 64 bit or 32 bit.  If you are using a Mac, amd64 bit build will be fine.  The live image is best burnt to a CD or USB stick since it is used to check an operating system out first, but you will not need it for this tutorial. ...

by McDonald, T. | Last updated 30th of November 2017 You may have noticed the huge numbers of charities in the UK or supported a charity by donating to it, but have you ever wondered what it would be like to volunteer for a local charity? Although collecting money is important in its self, there are many more exciting and potentially life changing roles within most charities. I have volunteered on and off for most of my life because I get so much out of this underestimated experience. I like volunteering for the following reasons: supporting others with their technology needs makes me feel a part of the community; I get to meet interesting people at promotional events; it shows a perspective employer I have a willingness to work and use skills I am learning at university in a positive and constructive way. Firstly, I like volunteering because supporting others with their technology needs makes me feel that I am a part of the community. For instance, in my role as Digital...