HeyDaz.co.uk Weblog

Reading can be difficult. Many people have never received an education and yet of those of us who have, there are still a multitude of possible obstacles that might prevent us from enjoying books.

As a blind person, the most obvious barrier for me is that of finding accessible books. Technology is constantly improving the situation with the development of scanning and character recognition. Yet even then, legal considerations often prohibit distribution of such materials, making finding them, challenging.

I’ve recently devoted more of my time toward reading the Bible. As you might expect, the same difficulties exist in reading the Bible as with anything else. There are a number of websites which freely offer online access to a variety of translations. However, there still remains the problem of accessing materials offline. Fortunately, help is available. Optasia Ministry is an organisation offering their entire library without charge to visually impaired people throughout the world. As well as Bibles, their library contains a surprisingly comprehensive collection of related literature. Take a look at their website to find out more by visiting www.optasiaministry.org.

If you’re on Facebook, you know the drill.

1. I’ve been enrolled as an undergraduate student somewhere or other since Saturday 22nd September, 2004.
2. I’ve just noticed that the three keys on my keyboard directly to the right of my left shift key: (\ z x) aren’t directly in line with the gaps in between a s and d as they are on most keyboards.
3. I have far too many bits and pieces of old website experiments scattered over the internet.
4. I have published several small computer programs which improve how Window-Eyes, my screen reading software, interacts with other software.
5. I share my initial with my dad and as such, all mail addressed to Mr D Paskell is opened by him.
6. I once played a small prank on our family computer which meant that it would only agree to turn itself on properly after my dad agreed to a significant pocket money rise (not recommended).
7. I remember the last time London had snow similar to the conditions around here last Monday.
8. I’m obsessed with dates and can mentally calculate the day of the week on which any given date fell.
9. I’ve loved radios since I received one as a Christmas present in 1993.
10. I could have been heard hundreds of times, usually on BBC local radio. My particular favourite competition was the treasure hunt on Radio Berkshire’s Saturday breakfast programme, then hosted by Andrew Peach.
11. I’am particularly pleased with my tiny battery operated walkman-like radio with a solar rechargeable panel.
12. I hold valid dual citizenship for both the UK and Ireland.
13. I met Michael Schumacher eleven days before he won his second grand prix race.
14. My nicknames have included derivitives of a well known white washing powder, Arbuthnot, Wheel nut, Dazareth and DJ.
15. I used to have my own Internet Radio show on ACB Radio Interactive.
16. I’m an accomplished blind shooter with nowhere to train and not enough time to establish my own facilities.
17. At Great Marlow School, I received the lower school History and French prises from the late Sir John Mortimer in 1998. I was permitted the afternoon off to practise manoeuvring on and off stage in advance and did so that evening, without guidance or use of any mobility aids.
18. I’m the only person I know to have successfully broken an arm by landing on a stack of crash mats.
19. My sense of humour has always gotten me into trouble. I was rebuked at primary school for randomly bursting out laughing whilst walking off the playground on my own.
20. According to Who’s Who, my interests include flogging servants, shooting poor people; and the extension of slavery to anyone who hasn’t got a Knighthood. (profile of Sir Talbot Buxomley) - See, told you!
21. I’m one of few people who can boast of A-level results of A A E.
22. I’m utterly terrified of balloons.
23. I have an extremely short attention span and have been known to nod off just 111 seconds into a lecture.
24. I am of a naturally shy disposition.
25. At the time of writing, I’m killing time, waiting for my dad to come and pick me up from university.

I’ll try and keep this short, since the internet is boring. Did I say
that? Some bits of it are, but there is also some fabulous stuff
around! I’m targeting some of the technology behind it today, in
particular the stuff that exists to hopefully make the life of the
programmer, easier.

In a fairly simplistic level, I’m fond of html and its derivitives.
This is the simplist method out there for creating web pages. Ever
wondered why that bookmark ends in bla.html? Now you know! As with
almost everything vaguely geeky, it’s an acronym of Hyper text markup
language but since that’s almost entirely irrelevant, don’t worry
about it for now.

Then we have XML. Why? Someone somewhere realised a few years ago that
it was really inconvenient for those of us with more than one
computer, to transfer our documents and the like from one to the
other. Shouldn’t be a problem if we all have the same version of Word,
Excel and the like installed, but what if we don’t even have Excel?
All I want to do is look at some spreadsheet (goodness knows why), but
I don’t have Excel! That’s hardly fair now is it? I’ve been given
permission to read the spreadsheet. Why should I have to pay Microsoft
for the right to read my work?? And so, some boffins came up with the
idea of extendable markup language, XML. It’s just a way of defining
all sorts of other ways of saving files, with the main advantage being
that it is relatively straightforward for anyone to understand other
people’s methods of storing data. Ever tried opening a .doc file in
Notepad? Try it some day when you’re bored, and you’ll see it’s just a
scrambled load of gibberish, even if it happens to be your prise
dissertation when you open it in Word. If it were based on XML, it
wouldn’t be quite so daunting, although it would be necessary for
someone like me to write some sort of filter to strip the words in
your document from all the rest of the junk that should show a
computer how to format it.

Again, don’t worry too much if you haven’t got a clue what I’m on
about, you’re not necessarily supposed to understand this stuff -
that’s my job!

Why am I going on about “markup”? Wonderful as it is, a third of all
of our lectures this semester seem to be devoted exclusively to
markup. That is the same amount of time we had last semester in class,
for the express purpose of learning how to program for the first time.

“But,” you ask. “Isn’t this markup blurb programming as well?”

Absolutely! But, it’s far easier by definition than learning how to
write the software which renders web content. I guess they want anyone
to be able to put stuff on the web, even without the benefit of wikis
and expensive tools like Dreamweaver. For want of a more apt example,
think of it in terms of learning to write a web page versus learning
to make our own web browser to display it.

Sure, the internet appears to be constantly increasing its penetration
of influence into our daily lives. It’s important, possibly vital for
the future career path of a computer scientist. I happen to have
enjoyed a time of employment thanks to my knowledge of these web
technologies. That is my point. Why bother to lecture us about this
stuff now? It’s important, I’ve already said that! If it’s necessary
to spoon-feed computer science students with this sort of stuff, why
not do it before we come onto more advanced programming? As far as I
can tell, this module is wasting at least four hours of my life a week
- time I could be spending robot building or researching the
under-documented methods implemented by Microsoft for including sounds
in their XBoxes. Or better still, it could be devoted to extra time
understanding theories of computation and logic programming, or the
“maths stuff” as I like to call it, stuff which I’m quite crap at by
nature.

We’re expected to use our resourcefulness to find out about the finer
points of robots and our Java programming in general. If there’s one
thing well documented on the web, it’s web programming, so why does
the same principle not apply here?

P.S: I’m proud to have spent all of these lectures so far, working on
prolog and generally procrastinating. I am however, reassured by the
promise of low-level network protocol troubleshooting and hacking
later on in the term. Bring on March!

Here in the UK today, the main headline in our news is the aeroplane
which crash-landed at London Heathrow Airport. I think it’s fair to
say that us Brits have somewhat of an obsession with aviation,
probably thanks to those engineers and service men responsible for the
defence of Britain during the second world war. Whenever an amateur
pilot encounters a problem with their aircraft, it will usually make
national news, although naturally such false factors as the perceived
importance of those involved will often dictate the degree of air time
devoted to their plight.

However, my view of aviation is undoubtedly distorted, given that my
dad worked as an air traffic controller for forty years. Whenever
anything aviation-related made news, I have been privileged to have
the knowledge of a professional view of a situation to call upon, for
as an analytical thinker I do value any opportunity to establish
what’s really going on.

Let’s return to this particular crash. What do we know?

1. A British Airways airliner crash-landed.
2. Everyone on board survived and escaped without serious injury.
3. The cause of the accident is currently unknown.
4. The cause can be and will be found out, once materials such as the
   flight instrument data have been fully analysed.

Here are a few other things we can also fairly safely assume.

1. While many of us know how to drive a car, few of us know how to
   fly a commercial airliner.
2. As in any industry, there are a multitude of technical terms and
   procedures associated with flying. I don’t intend to insult the
   intelligence of anyone with experience of working in aviation, nor do
   I wish to embarrass myself with my complete ignorance of most of it. I
   have enough trouble getting my head around three-dimensional
   movements!

Given all I’ve said so far, why is it that in the whole of this
afternoon’s media coverage, I’ve not noticed the BBC make any attempt
to probe this incident by consulting anyone from the aviation
industry? On one hand, we should be reassured by this absence of
experts from our media coverage, since their wisdom is needed
elsewhere in making sure that normal operations around our airports
and airspace may be restored. Yet there are folks, such as my dad, who
have retired from a life’s service to aviation. Why were their views
not sort? Instead, all I heard questioned on the radio were views from
those who saw the accident. But unless they were on board the plane
and could see both of its engines and examine the flight instruments
first hand, what can they tell us? We already know that the plane
crashed, but only an aviation expert such as a pilot is qualified to
analyse this information and make valid conclusions from it. In the
space of a few minutes, I heard BBC journalists describe the crash as
an emergency landing, a crash landing, a catastrophic failure from a
few hundred feet above the built up area that surrounds the airport,
and an incredibly lucky escape for a plane which was just a few feet
above the ground while still a couple of miles away from the runway.
This contempt of the truth only serves to confuse the audience. If we
don’t know what’s going on, why is it considered disgraceful to admit
as much?

There are issues of competition between news agencies which must not
be forgotten. If Joe Blogs the reporter doesn’t know what to make of
what’s happened, you can bet your bottom dollar that John Block might,
leading to a loss of respect and audience for Mr. Blogs.

I only feel compelled to write in here though as one factor, that of
the British weather, was not explored at all. Power failures, engine
trouble and all sorts of other rather dramatic possibilities have been
analysed by these journalists. But not the weather.

On this occasion, dad was very lucky, not least because he wasn’t on
duty! But as it happens, he flew back into the country and into
Heathrow, minutes before the crash. He noticed that wind seemed to be
affecting the horizontal balance of his aircraft when it came in to
land. He told me as much when I rang him, after I heard about it. So I
proceeded to try and contact the BBC. I left voice messages, sent
texts and emails, inviting them to seek the professional opinion of an
air traffic controller. Dad also composed several detailed
correspondences for the BBC’s benefit when he returned home. Nothing
happened.

“So what?” you ask. “Surely they can’t be expected to get in touch
with everyone,” and you’d be right. But in all that time, they managed
to track down several passengers, a cabby and a few other people who
observed the event from the odd car park or back garden.

We can’t dismiss any source of data until we begin analysing it, so
I’m not going to criticise the BBC for concentrating on tracking down
those who might have observed the crash. What infuriates me is their
complete failure to consult anyone who might have helped piece
together the information as it became available. Analysis of such a
unique situation performed by those of us unfamiliar with this sort of
data is bound to lead to inaccurate and irresponsible conclusions. Yet
perhaps more worryingly, we’re ready to embrace these analyses as the
truth!

Given that we suspect our media of failing to consult experts when
analysing an aviation matter, it’s almost tempting to question their
authority in piecing together other circumstances, although I’m
obviously only speculating here. What I can’t help but wonder is if
the media are not at least partly responsible for the synical attitude
adopted by many of us, according to various examples of market
research, toward issues such as politics, crime and the social
responsibility of our youth (for want of better examples).

End of Rant

Forgive me dear reader, for I have yet again opted for a stupidly
abstract title.

First off, “enemies”. In fact in this instance, the culprit is a
single entity by the name of Nokia. A couple of weeks ago, my phone
exploded while it was on charge. I kid you not! It literally, did,
explode. The battery short circuited, overheated, expanded, cracked,
caught fire and disintegrated, shooting debris off everywhere and
causing extensive localised damage to my carpet and walls. If you
don’t believe me, Check out the damage
for yourself.

That nicely leads us onto “the air”. This is where the element of
abstraction shows itself. Over the air has loosely defined any form of
wireless communication for many years. Since mobile phones are of
course wireless devices in themselves, we thus offer some context when
considering any grievances toward Nokia.

Finally and most importantly, we come to the ominously implied threat
of caution directed at Nokia. For at last, their inadequacies shall be
revealed to the good old British public, on the nation’s best loved
item of living room furniture, the television. Yes, look out for a Watchdog report into the
case of the blundering batteries, on this week’s programme. See you on
the box tomorrow night at some time between 8 and 8.30 PM!
[footnote: 30 seconds TV time is roughly equivalent to 3 hours
recording time and several more editing.]

The text of the title of this post is copyright (C) J.K. Rowling, and
is a minor extract from the book entitled “Harry Potter and the
Chamber of Secrets”.

P.S.: Anyone with a Nokia phone really should go take a look here:

http://www.nokia.com/batteryreplacement/