ICT To Include Programming! At Last!

 Computing, Politics  No Responses »
Jan 112012
 

According to the BBC it has been announced that the current curriculum for computer training (ICT) in schools is to be torn up and replaced. And curiously enough the new curriculum is to include programming to a certain extent – as people have been urging for decades.

The first programming language intended for use by children was the Logo programming language first developed in 1967. So it is not as if this is a new idea.

To many of us, the most interesting aspect of computers is not that they allow us to use applications such as word processors, web browsers, and the like – all very useful tools that I would not want to give up – but that they can be controlled by programming. This could be as low-level as writing a device driver in C, or could be using some application macro language to automate a tedious task.

It is perhaps an over simplification to say so, but to a certain extent programming is that last bit – automating tedious tasks. Computers are good at tedious tasks; humans are not. We should be “teaching” computers to perform tedious tasks for us, and that is called programming.

Programming can of course get rather tricky particularly the lower the level you are getting to, but it can also be quite easy with an interactive language with more or less immediate results. For instance the old BASIC :-

10 for i = 1 to 80
20 print "Hello"
30 next i

Can be quickly typed in and then run gives an immediate result – the computer “says” hello to you. A simple example that can be typed in quickly, modified to give a more personal result … or enhanced to give different and slightly more interesting results. The immediacy is important to hook people in and interest them in programming.

And programming is not just useful for those who want to become programmers. Someone who has been introduced to programming may well be better able to :-

  1. Better specify to an IT department what they need, or the error they’re encountering. This will save time and money.
  2. Better appreciate what is and what is not possible.
  3. Be capable of automating computing tasks themselves – not quite programming, but very similar.

Thoughts On Cameras

 Photography  No Responses »
Jan 032012
 

As someone who spends quite a bit of time with a viewfinder stuck to his eyeball, and has used cameras ranging from an ancient Canon 1DS, through various compact cameras (including Micro 4/3 cameras) to my latest camera – a Leica M8, it is hardly surprising that I have some strong opinions on cameras. Here are just a few …

Camera user interfaces are too complex

In some ways there are too many buttons doing too much – it is all too likely to result in accidental changes whilst shooting. Which is the last thing that you want! The important thing when shooting is just that – not fiddling with the settings. Anything that gets in the way of the most difficult part of making images – composing that image – is a compromise on what a camera should be.

Whilst there are many settings that can be changed, it is rare that someone wants to make a change to say the ISO setting during shooting. Or the colour balance – as someone who always shoots raw, I have no use whatsoever for the ability to change the colour balance on the camera. Or the shutter speed when you are not shooting in “Manual” (which rather few people do).

Of course getting a bunch of photographers to agree on what controls live on the camera to allow immediate settings changes is more or less impossible without increasing the number of controls to the current level of confusion. Different kinds of photography call for different settings to be adjusted; if I’m shooting landscapes, I don’t want any kind of autofocus interfering (although automatically adjusting to the hyperfocal distance would be handy) and when I’m shooting people I may want to fiddle with the ISO setting (even accepting a bit of noise to avoid motion blur).

Some controls can not only live on the lens, but live there perfectly naturally (as someone who uses old-fashioned manual lenses, I may be prejudiced here) – the manual focus control, and the aperture control. No need for controls for these under the thumb!

The Leica wins here with only a small number of controls without going into the menus – it is perfectly possible for any photographer to pick up a Leica and immediately start using it. Of course the downside of the Leica is that it isn’t as flexible as many modern cameras. And that is something else that is important – cameras need to be as flexible as possible.

That would seem to be a conflicting requirement, but can quite easily be catered for by allowing settings to be changed through the menus on the big LCD panel that appears on practically all cameras. And assigning those settings to a set of user-settings which can be quickly selected using a dial on the camera – perhaps that dial that already selects from different scene settings on existing cameras.

The key here is to allow the photographer to change predefined settings on that dial so those who want full control can have that. Indeed it would be handy if the camera were supplied with something to stick over the existing dial to give numbers instead of pre-defined scenes.

Time to rethink the viewfinder

By which I mean not that large LCD screen on the back of the camera. Whilst that’s pretty nifty for inside shots where keeping the camera as steady as possible (whilst hand-holding) is not that vital, it fails miserably when outside. Too many times the screen is so washed out by sunlight that making sure the composition is right never mind the focus is impossible.

When pretty much the only choice was some kind of optical viewfinder – either through the lens as in an SLR or a separate viewfinder as in TLR or rangefinder cameras – it was quite impossible to do much with the location of the viewfinder. Whilst electronic viewfinders have their limitations, it is possible at last to do interesting things with the location.

So why are all electronic viewfinders nailed to the top of the camera as an optical viewfinder needs to be ? If you are lucky you will get something that rotates from horizontal to vertical – which is very useful, but does not go quite far enough.

The camera (or rather the lens) needs to be positioned to get the shot – perhaps down on the floor for an “interesting” angle. And the viewfinder belongs where the photographer’s eye is. Which is not usually on the floor – and remember that some of us are old enough that we find “interesting” angles difficult to get into.

This could be done quite easily with an EVF attached to glasses with an HDMI cable (or wireless connection) to the camera. And whilst we’re talking about EVF’s, they should be connected to the camera using an open-standard interface, so that EVF’s can be moved from camera to camera.

Open-source The Firmware

Whatever you do with the firmware of a camera, there are those who will not be totally happy with the result. The advantage of an open-source firmware is that anyone who is unsatisfied can hire someone to make modifications to the firmware.

And that may result in the incorporation of features that a camera manufacturer may later realise is a really good idea. So why not ?

John Terry’s Potentially Risible Penalty for Racism

 Politics  No Responses »
Dec 232011
 

In the news this week was the announcement that the Crown Prosecution Service will prosecute John Terry (apparently a famous footballer) for an allegedly racist verbal assault during a football game. Now I have no idea whether the alleged offence took place, whether John Terry is or is not the kind of person to make such remarks, or much idea on what football is.

What prodded me into thought was the potential fine he faces for his offence – as much as £2500. That’s quite a bit of money for me – certainly I’d think twice about doing something that might cost me that much. And there are those for whom such a such is much more significant. Yet for John Terry, such a sum is risible – according to one report, it is about the amount of money that he earns in an hour!

This is not the place to go into the ridiculously high salaries that some footballers earn for an activity whilst it brings enjoyment to some, is really just kicking a ball around. But to point out that the variation that a particular fine means to different people on different incomes, effectively means our criminal justice system punishes the poor rather more heavily than it punishes the rich.

Fines should be a proportion of our daily income – a racist remark should cost us 30-days worth of income whether that means 30-days worth of income support, of 30-days worth of John Terry’s salary. Similarly for other fines.

Is The Aidan Burley Sacking Going Too Far ?

 Politics  No Responses »
Dec 182011
 

Now as you may have guessed by now, I’m hardly the Tories biggest fan; on hearing the news this morning of a Tory getting caught doing something embarrassing, I couldn’t help but give a nasty smirk. It is always a bright start to the day when the Tory party is caught out demonstrating beyond any shadow of a doubt that they are the party of the über-rich which only gives lip-service to the middle-classes and has nothing but contempt for the working-class.

And running around dressed up as a member of the Nazi party is no joke – which is why certain foolish young people do it of course. Running around offending the sensibilities of their parent’s and grandparent’s generations is one of the all but irresistible pleasures of youth. These things go too far sometimes – it’s all very well running through the centre of a town naked, but dressing up as a member of the Nazi party is a step too far.

But Aidan was merely at a party where the offensive actions took place – he didn’t himself dress up as a Nazi, and it is not claimed that he did anything offensive himself. If you lined up all of the people who have ever been at a party where someone has done something incredibly foolish and offensive, then not many of us would not be lined up – and one suspects that most MPs would be in the queue trying to look inconspicuous.

 

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