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Showing posts with the label Computer Science

A Storm Is Coming

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By   McDonald, T.    | Date 29th of November 2020 The future as we know it is uncertain. As we become more and more dependent on computers and machine do we put our very existence at risk? Even in entertainment, sci-fi is constantly airing our subconsciousness concerns about our own demise. Now we have the problem of algorithms determining what type of propaganda gets the best results from us. As we move into an uncertain future due to the high levels of propaganda from politics and religion on the net not to mention the violence, the tension on the street and in everyday life grows. What are the problems that we face?   Influence from outside our nations: bots on the net.   By this i mean foreign countries with malicious intent.  You know how businesses collect information for advertising purposes so they can make adverts that are more appealing to someone?  Well, political parties can do the same.  Algorithms collect information on you and then determine what type of person

Nuclear Test Map For 1969 to 2017

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By T. McDonald | 29/07/19 | Updated 07/10/19 Did you know that nuclear tests can be felt on the Richter scale? This investigation maps the nuclear tests registering 5.5 or greater on the Richter scale from 1969 to 2017. (Click on the markers to find out more about that test). At first it may look as if there are not many tests, but if you zoom in on one of the clusters, you will see many more markers. During the investigation it was discovered that the cause 'explosion' was actually four more nuclear explosions. Twelve test sites were discovered with six consisting of many tests, and six with less than ten occurrences. North Korea with just one test was the last nuclear explosion detected in the dataset. The average magnitude showed no real difference with nuclear a explosion was 5.86 and earthquakes at 5.87.  Furthermore, the biggest nuclear explosion was in 1973 and took place at Novaya Zemlya, Russia.  Further investigation revealed little difference between

Random Images from API with python

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By T. McDonald | 2/07/19 You may have heard of API’s and wondered what you can do with them. This is a simple but satisfying use of this powerful technology. What is API? Application programming interface. What does it do? An API will allow communication between two applications. The API I am using is a publicly available web-based API , which returns data as in JSON or XML.  In other words, I send a message to a stated website and request some data, in this case images are then returned to me.  Using python 2 is a little different in the coding.  It is worth noting that the ['file'] at the end of json.loads() may be different in the website you are connecting to.  I connected to randomcat.com .    Hope you enjoyed this quick blog.  Please leave a comment below. 

An Outline Of The Data Pipeline

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By T. McDonald | 2/07/19 The data pipeline is one way of handling data. This involves acquiring data from a source, or sources, preparing it for use, analysing it, and presenting what was discovered during the analysing to an appropriate audience. Subsequently, there are four stages to the pipeline, which I will outline in this blog: Acquisition Preparation Analyse Presentation Acquisition Before you can do anything, you will need to find some data and determine if it is suitable for the task. This involves legal issues surrounding the data such as its licensing: are you allowed to use it and if so, what are you allowed to do? There may be limitations on the use of the dataset for example. Furthermore, files come in different formats such as CSV or JSON for example. exampleFile.csv Or exampleFile.json   Meaning of the extensions: CSV = Coma Separated Values JSON = JavaScript Object Notation The above are just two examples and there will be other types.

What is data?

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By McDonald, T . | Date 14th of June 2019 We live in a world that is obsessed with data. Companies collect data on all types of people and things. You may have even heard the term big data or heard people talking about data, but actually is data?  Data is neither information not knowledge, so what is it? Data is not information. Information is according to Lexico.com, ‘ What is conveyed or represented by a particular arrangement or sequence of things .’ In other words, information is the arrangement of data into something meaningful. Information is usually generated in order to answer a question from raw data. Information is not data, but information does have data in it. Data is not knowledge either. Knowledge is some information that a person can use in conjunction with other information in a stack of knowledge. Lexico.com defines knowledge as, ‘ Facts, information, and skills acquired through experience or education; the theoretical or practical understanding o

Which Programming Language Should I Learn First?

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By McDonald. T |  July 29th 2018 If you are thinking of learning how to code, the number of different types of programming languages can be a little daunting.  Putting it another way, there are languages such as PHP, HTML, CSS, Java, Python, C++ and many more, so where do you start?  Almost every day I hear someone asks the question, 'Which is the best coding language to learn first?'  This is not a straightforward question to answer because it depends on what you wish to achieve.  In other words, different purposes call for different languages.  Subsequently, it is not enough just to learn how to code; a programmer needs to know what language to use and for what purpose.  To learn about programming languages start with a visual language to understand the basics of algorithms then look at HTML and CSS to get started with web technologies. Start with a visual language to learn the basics of algorithms.  By a visual language, I mean a language where the programmer uses visu

Why Dreaming Electric Sheep Need Maslow to succeed

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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

How Considering The Needs of People and Mobile Devices Works

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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

A Usable Web For All: Accessibility

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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 in