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What Is Mental Health And Who Is In Control Of It?

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By McDonald, T . | Date 3rd of October 2018 Mental health is a phrase banded about by more and more people.  Mental health encompasses a wide range of disorders listed in the international classification of disorders (ICD 10) and in the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (DSM 5) Recently I was asked on social media by Wendy Dignan , ‘How do I maintain a balanced mental health ?’  This is a perplexing question since it is firstly difficult to explain what mental health is and secondly why should we assume that mental health is something that has a balance and is solely in our control ?   What is Mental Health? Firstly, how can mental health be described ; what is mental health?  Is it something to do with the way a person feels or is it more to do with how a person copes under stress?  If it is to do with how a person feels, surely it is easy to heal people and if it is to do with stress then why do some of the most successful people with no stress su

How to sleep well every night

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By McDonald. T |  September 24th 2018 We spend about a third of our life asleep.  For anyone working with computers, sleeping can become a problem due to the light from the screen and from the stimulation of cracking technical problems.  If we have a bad night sleep, it can ruin our day and make us feel unhappy.  Sleep is a place of rejuvenation and for dreaming: it is a time to relax and regenerate.  We place a lot of importance on sleeping and rightly so since if it is interrupted night after night it will turn our life upside down.  If you have trouble sleeping at night consider these factors: temperature of the room, activity in the room and breathing. Temperature of the room If you have trouble sleeping at night, consider the temperature of the room as a factor.  Our core body temperature needs to drop a couple of degrees before we can nod off into the land of blissful sleep. So open a window in the bedroom a few hours before you go to bed to cool the temperature i

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 Computer Science Is Good For Mental Health

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By McDonald. T |  July 23th 2018   A.I. is not a discipline in its own right; however, it does fall under a subset of psychology called cognitive sciences and computer science.  Although cognitive science does not include therapy, it is still a good idea to have some understanding of mental health and if any parts of the mental health system can be automated.  For your interest, cognitive science includes anthropology, neuroscience, philosophy and linguistics.  Ultimately, computer science can provide advanced technology to improve mental health services: automating tests; supporting people in the home and understanding the way a person solves a problem. Advanced technology provided by computer science can improve automated testing of mental health. Surveys are a good way of extracting information from people and computers do surveys really well. Furthermore, in computer science there is a subset called data science, which uses scientific methods to extract knowledge from data

How to play spectrum games on a Mac, Windows or even GNU/Linux.

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By McDonald. T |  July 14th 2018   The 80s was a great time for gaming. For a while, gamers had been able to alleviate the boredom with dedicated gaming devices such as Asteroid and Donkey Kong. However, things really got going when gaming consoles like Atari 2600 hit the market. Even so, nothing compared to the new home computers like Commodore 64 and the Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48k. These computers not only had tons of games, but also you could program your own software including games.  Sign up to my blog for more fun stuff! The gaming consoles had the advantage of instant loading from a cartridge while the home computers needed to load games from a tape in a tape recorder, which was not always successful. This could take 5 minutes or more and the sound level had to be just right or the game would fail to load. Despite the loading issues, the home computer won out and steadily advanced into the powerful machines we have today. Now that we have our wonder rigs, some of u

Build A Test Website In 3 Easy Steps

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 By McDonald. T | Updated November 28th 2018 Building a website may seem daunting if you are new to web design. The truth is, however, that building your own test website is so easy it will embarrass you! You just need the correct tools to do the job. Brackets and xampp can be used on Mac, Windows or Linux, but in this blog I will focus on Mac. What is a test website? A test site is a site that you can create without the need for a server or a web host. You can create the test site all on your own computer and play around with it until you are happy with it. This is a really good way to learn HTML5 and PHP in a safe environment. 1)  Install Brackets  Brackets is an editor that will allow you to code and test files. Brackets is simple to use and has a nifty little feature, called live view, that allows you to view the code in a web browser as it would look as a webpage. In other words, it translates the code into a webpage. Brackets is free and open source softwa

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

Can Volunteering In A Shop be Good For Web Developers?

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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