The Dodgy Domain of Digital Darragh

Website available for testing.

darragh@14u.ie (Darragh Ó Héiligh) — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 10:38:00 +0100

Over the past few weeks I have been working on a new website for the Visually Impaired Computer Society of Ireland (VICS) for short.

This website takes over from the existing static site and offers much more functionality while building on the excelent work done by the previous developer. Without her we'd still have a few pages with no real effectiveness. By her work she's made my job a lot easier.

The new website needed to build on the existing policy. Provide an accessible experience for our members regardless of vision impairment while also appealing to our fully sighted visitors by being visually attractive. This was to illustrate that a site could be functional and attractive while being accessible also.

As well as this I was also given the task of providing a members only area, increasing the training content, providing InfoVics in a more accessible format i.e, in a podcast and providing the rest of the vics committee with a content management system to enable them to provide updates to the website more regularly.

Almost all of the aims have been completed now. The only issue I have left to tackle is the podcast feed for iTunes. Unfortunately, the feed that has been created contains HTML code therefore is not compatible with iTunes.

If you would like to assist in testing, please go on over to www.vicsireland.org/drupal and send me your feedback.

The electronic baby sitter.

darragh@14u.ie (Darragh Ó Héiligh) — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 09:42:00 +0100

I’ve been talking to Emma and a friend of mine about children and TV’s, game consoles and yes, even computers. I’ve been posing the question: How much access should kids get to this form of entertainment?

Before I continue, let me say that this is not in relation to any specific family. Nor do I have the experience to make any firm determinations on this question. All I have is a question based on a few things I’ve observed over the past few years and an opinion.

So, my questions are, how much access should children get to this type of entertainment? Should it be used as a reward? Should it be used as a method of allowing children to “wind down” before bed? Is there any harm in using it as a distraction while the parents do something or to keep the child quiet?

Some programs can be educational. Some parents make their children watch what ever their watching. Some games build hand eye coordination. Maybe there’s some usefulness to be found somewhere?

If there is, I really don’t see it. I am of the very firm opinion that children should be very limited to their exposure to television and games consoles. Unless their learning, I also don’t think they should be allowed on a computer either.

Not to use the usual crap of it was different when I was young, but for many of my readers, I grew up in a very different environment than you did. At age 5, I was sent off to a boarding school in Dublin. There, I stayed from Monday to Friday until I was 18. For the first few years, there were 16 of us. During the last few years there was about ten in each unit. The television was never on until I was about 16 and even then it was only on during certain designated times. Looking back and seeing other kids between 5 and 7, I realise that they have much more creature comforts than we were allowed in the school. Simple things were just not allowed because it was a unit with 16 other children and it would just become too hard to manage if every child had too many personal belongings with them. I’m not saying this as a poor me story, I’m saying that it is really not necessary to use the electronic baby sitter to keep kids entertained. Emma asked me this morning exactly how we spent our time in the evenings. We had plenty to keep our selves occupied. Activities were arranged such as swimming lessons, mobility classes, chess classes, horse riding, Music, judo and in fact, for the first few years, we even had to learn Irish dancing! God I hated those lessons. My point is that because there wasn’t much of what is now considered conventional entertainment, we were forced to fill our time with other things.

Even now, I’d much rather be outside or doing something than parked in front of a television. In saying that, I will admit that when I’m absorbed in something on the computer wild animals can’t tare me away.

The very lame excuse was also given to me that it builds up hand-eye coordination. That has to be one of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard! Fine, stick your kid in front of a television but don’t try to excuse it with that rubbish. Give the child something practical to do with a physical end result and that will be the best way of building up coordination. Take Emma as an example. She did arts, sowing, knitting and all that kind of thing from the first time she could hold a needle. Now, she’s studying fashion design in the very elite Grafton academy, a private college in Dublin, she’s creating the most fantastic brides made dresses, she’s creating tailor made suits for women and men and all by using designs that are in her head. There are no pree-made patterns involved and everything is done by hand right from the first sketch to the hand stitching to put buttons and other finishing on. She’s a bit like me. Television is nice but not the be all and end all of entertainment.

Again, I’ve no experience. I’m possibly talking crap but am I wrong in thinking that if you start from an early age by encouraging any child to spend time outside or doing something practical you’ll have less need to provide as much entertainment later on as they’ll develop their own talents and interests other than sitting staring at a screen?

Oh, finally, I think radio is also something that should be closely monitored for kids. Listen to the morning crew on Dublin’s 98 for example. I like that show a lot. I think their all very funny but some of the things that slip out from time to time are just a bit too explicit for a child to hear. Same with some of the music. Listen to Katie Perry's stuff. Do you really believe a child should hear that stuff? Even if they don’t understand it right away, it will raise questions that they shouldn’t really think about until later on.

Maybe I’m too set in my ways.

What do you think?

I'll be off to sight village.

darragh@14u.ie (Darragh Ó Héiligh) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 14:23:00 +0100

On the 16th of July, I'll be heading over for the day to Birmingham to the sight village exibition. It will take place from Tuesday the 14th to Thursday the 16th and will host dozens of companies, organizations and interest groups of interest to the visually impaired.

Some of the Exhibitors I'm really looking forward to meeting with again are: GWMicro, Humanware, DDAware, T and T consultancy and Freedom Scientific.

If your going, I'll see you there. If not then... I won't.

R.I.P Michael Jackson.

darragh@14u.ie (Darragh Ó Héiligh) — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 00:47:00 +0100

Wow. I thought I'd be a lot older when I heard that news.

Similar comments are flooding in through Twitter at the moment. Is full of similar comments.

He was possibly the most contravercial entertainer of the last few decades but regardless, some of his music was absolutely fantastic.

I have to admit, I ordinarily wasn't his biggest fan. I didn't really believe the aligations made against him. I thought they were all a bit too sercomstantial. His music was and still is what I'll judge him for. Some of it as I say wasn't my taste but the stuff that appealed to me really caught my attention.

I really hope his family are given some space to greeve.

An exclusive recording. You'll not want to miss it.

darragh@14u.ie (Darragh Ó Héiligh) — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 10:03:00 +0100

I don't know how I managed it. Maybe he was just in a really good mood yesterday, but I convinced a good friend of mine to allow me to record him playing the guitar. This recording is of the two of us. I turned out quite well actually.

Isn't it ironic that the week that I say I'm going to put this thing on the back burner, I get loads of time to play with Linux and I also get the oppertunity to get this fantastic player recorded and up on the blog? Weird stuff.

So, like other recordings, there's a flash box below. If your a screen reader user, press enter on the pause button. Sorry, the play button isn't labeled correctly. If you don't have access to flash content, I've put a link to the recording directly under it so you can download it and listen when you want.

[mediaplayer:http://www.digitaldarragh.com/audio/guitar-pipes.mp3]

Listen to Malachi and Darragh.

My first look at OpenSolaris 2009.06 with Orca.

darragh@14u.ie (Darragh Ó Héiligh) — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 12:40:00 +0100

As a result of spending a few hours messing around with OpenSolaris, I've observed a few things that a really like and a few I don't like so much. Over all though I have to really congratulate the people atSun for making one of the most accessible and user friendly distributions ever. You should be very proud of your achievements this year as you have taken things to an entirely new level. I remember just four years ago when it was still a struggle to use the graphical environment in Linux. Now, it's a breeze thanks to your work.

Here are just a few of the observations I made this morning.

Installation went perfectly. Absolutely no problems and it couldn't have been easier.

Not fully impressed with Orca out of the box. Control key does not always silence speech when reading in Firefox. It continues trying to finish what it's saying even when repeatedly pressing the control key

Open Office was not installed with the base system. I suppose it's an expectation set by other distributions such as Mandriva, Ubuntu, OpenSuSE and Fedora to name a few but most distributions of *nix come with some kind of flexible word processer. OpenSolaris seems to be aimed at office use so it was strange that it doesn't include at least something.

When using the package manager tool, I wasn't really impressed with its intuitiveness or it's usability with Orca. Yes, everything is accessible as I've come to expect with this well put together distribution however Orca announces sun or OS before every option. Probably something to do with the repository that I have selected? OpenSolaris 2009.06 comes with just the OpenSolaris software repository available for obvious reasons and I haven't seen the need to change this just yet. The next down fall in the package manager was that the options for update update and install and remove were actually hidden away in the menu bar. Going from package managers such as the that in OpenSuSE, YaST and the tool in Ubuntu, this seems slightly less intuitive.
Finally, after running through the package manager and installing the packages I required, the message to say that it had completed did not get focus so I had to use flat review to find the ok button.

The top and bottom edge panels are now very accessible compared to just a year ago.

When installing Orca from source to update it from SVN, the instructions at http://live.gnome.org/Orca do not mention that you need to install a C compiler for the OpenSolaris build instructions.

THE notifications that appear on the screen from time to time alerting you to updates, new mail, network connectivity or availability etc are now read automatically by Orca. I noticed this in the later version of Ubuntu also. Great to see it though as they are another key part of the puzzle.

I've noticed that even on a freshly installed system, OpenSolaris takes longer to boot than a system running Windows XP that has been used and abused for over a year. Both systems would be reasonably similar in terms of spec and performance abilities.
These observations of course are just made informally. Try the system out for your self. I've found a few things that I like and a few that I dislike but over all, I'm really impressed. At the moment, it's connecting to my exchange server for downloading mail, it's streeming music from a windows share and I used it for writing this blog entry. After a minimum of set up time this is really good!

On the back burner.

darragh@14u.ie (Darragh Ó Héiligh) — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 15:06:00 +0100

After a long long time of blogging, I've asked my self over and over again why do this.

I've not found an answer to that question for quite a while so until I do, the blog here at DigitalDarragh.com is going to be put on the back burner for a while.

I've had to ask my self some serious questions about this website but I've not determined answers to them yet. Any ideas?

What do I want to get / give from blogging?
Blogging was the origional method that started the name "DigitalDarragh". Twitter has built on that slightly, LALRecordings has really got the name out there but is this of benefit to me? If I need / want it to be of benefit to me, what exactly am I looking for?
Are there better ways of promoting the name DigitalDarragh. And, exactly what do I want to get from this promotion. Yes, I'm asked a lot of questions via Email every week about Linux etc but short of keeping me involved in that user community why should I continue with this when LALRecordings could take the brunt of these questions?
If I were to stop blogging, should I keep DigitalDarragh.com?
If I keep DigitalDarragh.com what would you suggest I use it for?

In my line of work, I suppose it's beneficial to be recognised by certain people as being very technical. The online persona of DigitalDarragh kind of does that to an extent however it has never really filtered down into anything worth while. I'd either like to scrap this thing completely or do something drastic with it.

Any ideas or suggestions?

First time for everything.

darragh@14u.ie (Darragh Ó Héiligh) — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 14:59:00 +0100

For the first time last night in about twenty years, I forgot my popping strap!

A popping strap is a piece of hard material preferably leather that sits across your right nea. It's used by Úilléann pipe players to help close off the chanter. Not using a popping strap can cause air to escape out through the bottom of the chanter causing notes to be out of tune and not allowing for tight piping.

Since I've started playing the pipes, I've never once forgot my popping strap. Not that I think about it much, it's kind of like forgetting to put your shoes on in the morning. It just doesn't happen. If you go out with nothing on your feet your going to get all sorts of things sticking into them.

For some reason though, about three years ago while teaching someone how to play the pipes, I made a popping strap for her so made another for my self just in case it was ever needed. It's been sitting in my pipe case, untouched since that day. Last night, it came in really handy!

I just thought it was funny how things work out.

I know it's only a bit of leather but I really hope I find my old popping strap when I go home later. I'll be very unhappy if I've lost it somehwere. That strap is as much a part of the pipes as the chanter is! they just feel weird without it.

Ok. I've just written an entire blog entry about a god damn piece of leather.

Something is really wrong here now.

RSA goodness.

darragh@14u.ie (Darragh Ó Héiligh) — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 11:02:00 +0100

Today, I got my self up and running with a RSA secure token" that connects via USB.

Normaly, RSA tokens work by displaying a six digit code on a tiny screen on the front of the fob. YOu type this cod along with a pin number and your user name into a system to get access to a particular application or network.

This form of authentication poses obvious problems for me. The digits on the screen are not accessible therefore I rely on someone else to read them.

For another network that I need to access, I use a software key token that is contained on the computer that I use to access the network from however this is not such a great idea on a computer that is not in a secure location.

This is a particularly good solution for me as for the past year I've had to rely on others to read the digits for me while working remotely. This gives me a lot more freedom.

The difference an alternative Bodhran stick can make.

darragh@14u.ie (Darragh Ó Héiligh) — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 12:49:00 +0100

About a month ago, I lost three of my best Bodhran beaters. Last Wednesday, I baught four new ones. Two the same as the ones I lost but two completely different ones.

I wanted to illustrate in this recording the difference that a beater can make to your playing, the style that you use and the difference that is produced in the drum.

Even if your not a Bodhran player, you may find this interesting as I play around with a few different styles and sounds.

By the way, what do you think of these music posts? Are they worth writing? They usually take at least an hour to prepare so if their not of any interest to people, I'll save my self some time. In saying that, their usually a bit of fun for me as it's interesting listening to some of the qwerks in my playing.

[mediaplayer:http://www.digitaldarragh.com/audio/bodhran-sticks.mp3]

Thanks to Dominique for telling me that some people couldn't access this in the flash box. So, for those who want to download it, Use this link to hear the Bodhran recording.