TASK 13

Part 1

What are the advantages of separating the styling (i.e. CSS) from the actual document with the content?

By separating the styling from the document itself the full power of digital text can be realized, if the style and the document are tied together than the advantages that digital text has over the plain old written word are severely compromised. But when the styling is separated from the document than the exciting and dynamic nature of hyper text is fully realized, and the advantages of doing so are legion here are a few advantages dynamic hypertext has to offer.

When the web was young and before the advent of Cascading Style sheets the content and the styling of web pages were all combined in the HTML document, this provided some basic styling in the form of Tags such as the <> tag used to denote bold text. However HTML did not provide the kind of presentation that the new and expanding Internet web masters craved

HTML was initially created by Tim Berners-Lee
as a method of sharing and updating research among colleagues and it was more than capable of doing this. It was not however, quite as suitable for the plethora of uses to which it would be employed as the world wide web began to take of in the 1990's.

This led to a lot of inspired and some what at times genius attempts at employing tables as a method of laying out the contents of web pages and greatly improving the way that web pages could be laid out. Given the simple tools that early web developers had to work with it was quite remarkable how much they manged to accomplish with the industrious use of tables.

However tables were not originally created as a means of expressing style and as such they tend to become clustered and clumsy and difficult to both work with and maintain, they also make it very hard for search engines to find the content that is hidden amidst a sea of table data and table row tags.

Finally a solution to what was fast turning into a styling nightmare was provided in the form of Cascading Style Sheets. These are specifically designed to meet the styling needs of the web and are purpose built to be used with HTML. A site that is built with CSS styling as opposed to one that relies on a table based layout will load significantly quicker and be far more accessable to Internet search engines .

The advantages of using cascading style sheets have long been recognised now and since the HTML.40 specification it has been a tenet of the standard that HTML is not t be used to apply styling, but rather as a means of structuring a document, and it is left up to CSS to provide the style to a document. Old attribute tags that were formally used to style HTML documents are now depreciated in favour of the styling attributes provided by CSS.

The latest XHTML standards further recognise the advantages of separating the style from the content, as this allows for the dynamic digital advantages of hypertext to be fully realised so that the one document can have differing styling applied and allow it to be tailored to the media that is being used to view the document, the need for this dynamic capability is growing rapidly as the number of Internet enabled hand held devices like the Iphone for example continue to grow rapidly.

Another huge advantage of separating the styling from the content is that it makes it a lot easier to implement a site wide style change without going into each and every document and changing it by hand, the amount of time that can be saved by using an external style sheet and then simply altering this to effect site wide changes can be mind boggling.

With this in mind it is often worth going to the effort of insuring that you do not defeat one of the primary advantages of CSS by over using the internal style commands, it is better to use an external style sheet and link this to the document rather than host the style sheet within the document itself, this ensures the content and the style are truly seperated and allows the dynamic nature of XHTML to be realised.

Part 2

Identify at least two style manuals which you think would be useful for future reference.

I have found the w3schools site
To be really useful while trying to learn the basics of HTML Javascript and CSS. This site has a wealth of resources and I particularly like the Try it yourself textbox that they have set up so that the user can practice their styling technique and have the results of their code displayed in screen simply by clicking the refresh button.

ADDACTIO is a well written site that I have found to be very useful. While I have learned a lot from reading thru some of the material on this site I do not feel that it is comprehensive enough to recommend as a style guide that I will be referring back to, but it is nonetheless worth checking out and having a Read thru, so I have included it here as well.

As for a second style guide that I will find useful for future reference, I suppose that it is hard to go past a complete and detailed guide such as that found at the Westcive site
I have chosen this site as I know that if I run into a problem or need to know how to do something than it will most likely be covered here, and thanks to the comprehensive hyperlinked table of contents finding that information shall be made all the easier.

Crocodylus Park

Crocodylus park offers a great opportunity to get up close and personal with that great NT icon the Saltwater Crocodile. And so long as you are not an animal rights advocate than you will probably enjoy your trip, here a few of the photos I took when I visited as well as a few of my thoughts on the experience.

The park has a very down to earth feel and fits in well with the Territory way of life, there is no unnecessary pomp, and if you happen to be visiting Darwin in the hope of absorbing some of our unique culture than you will be in for a treat here. It is kind of hard to describe what exactly it is that I mean by this, but I suppose that is the way that it always is with culture, ask an anthropologist to describe culture to you, and they will either spew forth a 30 minute discourse on the ambiguity of the term or perhaps they may simply gnash there teeth at you before launching into a diatribe. Suffice to say the park is very down to earth but at the same time it is very obviously a professional and well funded operation.



Entry was $25 Australian dollars, which is neither particularly expensive nor cheap, and I suppose it is all relative to your circumstances, but You certainly do get to see a lot of animals for your penny's, and there are also guided tours in the mornings midday and afternoons, where the guide will feed the crocodiles, make them jump in the air and try and get them to play up for the camera, Being in the middle of the tourist season when I went the tour was rather full, but it was Nice to see the guide conscious of this and make an effort to ensure that everybody had an opportunity to get some close up shots of the big Lizards being fed.


Not that there were that many Big Crocodiles to see, as a a child I went to the Crocodile farm on quite a few occasions and as I recall they did seem to have a few more of the really, big Crocs it also would have been Nice to have seen the large Crocodiles from a better angle, while It was still possible to get some decent photos from the angle at which they were viewed it would have been better to get a straight on look down the lizards throat.




There were many more medium and small sized Crocodiles then there were large ones, and some of these did provide some nice photo opportunity's where the crocodiles were literally lying on top of each other and occasionally having a bit of a Biff, many of the crocodiles showed visible scars testament to the vicious nature of these ancient creatures.


There was actually a lot more to the park than just Crocodiles with a host of native animal on display, such as wallabies emus a wombat Dingoes and also a number of exotic imports. If you want to get some nice close up photos of tigers or Lions than this would be a great place to do so. I remember going to the Auckland zoo and having to push my 10x optical zoom to the limit just to get near the tiger that, was hidden way at the back of an enclosure seemingly designed to help hide the Tiger from the Zoo's visitors.


As I said there is no such problem here and all of the big cats as well as the monkeys are in plain sight. I was not all that happy seeing the dingoes they seemed to be rather unhappy in there little enclosure, I guess that was the only real concern that I had with the park, while it is not something that is particularly unique to this nature park, it does still trouble my conscience a little to see all of these animals enslaved for our viewing pleasure.

At least the animals do get a steady supply of food, there are many dogs that suffer a lot worse at the hands of there masters, particularly in many remote parts of the territory, where people have enough trouble looking after themselves let alone there dogs.

There were many Crocodile products to be found in the gift shop in particular there were some really nice looking Crocodile purses it is odd that I noticed them because I assure you I am not really inclined to ponder the fashion sense of purses but for some reason or other they caught my eye and they looked very fashionable. There is quite a collaboration between the Charles Darwin University and the park and it would not surprise me if some talented design students had gone to work on a range of crocodile skin products.

If you feel that a crocodile skull or crocodile paw or practically any other bodily member of a Crocodile would make your home feel complete than, you will be delighted by the array of Crocodile body parts on offer at the gift shop.

Google Adds & Your Health

Not too long ago, a couple of months real time, which is several eons in web time, Google came under fire for an an article posted in the Google Health Advertising Blog that was accused of suggesting ways that Google could help Pharmaceutical company's to manipulate public opinion in light of Michael Mores New film SICKO. To be honest there is nothing really wrong with the post, and it received more attention than it probably deserved an advertiser can be expected to recommend services to its clients as a method of influencing public perception, that is after all the whole point of advertising.

Now Google is developing Google Health
Which don't get me wrong looks like a great and long overdue idea. I just hope that drug adds linked to your condition don't start popping up on screen as soon as you start entering in your medical details, for too long Big Pharmaceutical company's have had far too much influence. New Scientist as usual were news breaking when they ran a series of articles that called into question the amount of influence that corporate influenced lobby groups hold and how they are possibly influencing the way that many illnesses are treated.

Call me simple but I think that the patients health, and the best method of treatment should not be compromised by corporate lobby groups that seem to have an undue influence on the drugs that are used for treatment. Having taken Viox myself and falling rather ill I can testify to the tragic consequences of clinical trials that are not independent of the parties that hold an interest in the results.

I would like to make it clear that I am not saying that Google Health is too blame here or that it is a bad idea, I think it is a great idea and is clearly the way of the future, but lets just be sure that drugs get prescribed for the benefit of the patient and not for the benefit of corporate profit.

Anthropology and Web 2.0

Videos belong on YouTube and not in blogs, but this one simply demands to be posted it captures the excitement of IT and the web, it shouts out that Web 2.0 is here inside of us it takes moving pictures frees them from there shackles, injects them with life and bids them sing a new song.

About a year or so ago having just gotten my first computer and starting out into the cyber age, I recall this great sense of awe, this feeling of having all that I desire laid out before me, this feeling of pioneering excitement of inexhaustible adventure and it is this sense of wonderment which has been so very brilliantly captured in this video.


I still think it is amazing, to be able to communicate and exchange our lives with one another the way we do today and it has motivated me to undertake a diploma in IT so that I can gain the knowledge to work these tools and tend the fire of our times.

When I was living by myself sometimes I would feel lonely one thing that would always cheer me up would be reading some great anthropology blogs like antropologi.info
They gave me a sense of belonging and of company in this vast sea of life.

It was with great pleasure that I stumbled upon this video it reminded me of some of those first Ethnographic waves I caught as I first learned to surf. The video is not really about anthropology, well it is, but only in so far as it explorers this great Communal Tool that has captivated our culture.
Enjoy



I encourage you to send comments and compliments to Mike Wesh
Who is responsible for this great work.

Fall Before me Machine OR Building my first PC

What an awesome experience this has been, for years, I have lurked around PC Building magazines such as Atomic
(which is by the way a pretty awesome Australian hardcore computing magazine)
But always thought that it would be too hard, but recently I took the plunge and very nearly proved myself right. Being a student and on a tight budget, that actually should never have stretched as far as it did I opted for a Gigabyte
GA-VM900M mother board, which while cheap is still pretty nasty.I also got a SATA hard drive and a SATA DVD combo drive a one 1 GIG stick of DDR2 667 ram and an Intel E6420 core 2 Duo processor.

It was the price of the core 2 duo that motivated me to build the thing in the first place, all that power for a mere $280, this is what Halo looks like on my starting to get old and never intended for gaming laptop, not too bad at all, but I think it will look so much nicer on the new system, of course having lost the product key I will probably never know, but eh there is more to life than gaming, at least that is how I sleep at night.

The installation seemed to go along quite well I bought a really cheap and really nasty case, because I could not afford anything else, and assembled my components, it was a lot of fun if you have not tried it and you are interested in computers, than give it a go, you won't be disappointed, there are heaps of tutorials online and I find that while Mikes Hardware
is getting old now, there is a dearth of information here and it can be really helpful if you encounter a problem.

On an old test PC that I was getting some practice on, I got an error about an 80 pin socket, I was like WTF googled it and stumbled upon this site that helped me, and straight away I was able to go and connect the hard drive properly.You definitely want to practice on an old machine before you touch the new stuff as just a little bit of tinkering around inside the box can really help to build up that confidence.Use your brain or fry yourself when you play with electricity the chioce is yours and I will not judge you one way or the other.


So I thought all was good I had everything assembled I powered on the system and there was just a beep, followed by a click click and another beep and still yet more click click's the CPU fan and the system Fan fired up but there was no signal going thru to the monitor, it was about then that I realised maybe I had bitten off more than I could chew.

After reading the troubleshooting forums at Atomic I thought that I had fried my mother board I also suspected that the shitty case that I had bought may not have had enough juice to power the machine, and a half dozen other theory's, that seemed to multiply with each post that I read.This was really frustrating but I knew (OK I desperately crossed my fingers and hoped) that if I waited to pay day, and stretched my budget a little further, bought a couple more components than maybe just maybe I would get this PC up and running.

So I had to wait a week, it was a long depressing week full of anxious moments where I would lie in bed wondering why oh why was I so concerned about a PC that would not boot, oh just take these thoughts of upgrades and trouble shooting forum images out of mind and let me sleep, no not dream about giant sized click click clicking computer components, sleep please just let me sleep, get out of my mind, oh hurry up pay day I can't stand that Useless PC lying in the corner looking at me laughing at me saying that it has defeated me, work you bastard, don't beep just work, why oh why won't you work.

But once payday finally arrived I went to the store and got a slightly better case, nearly bought another motherboard, but fortunately the techie said that it may be RAM so I bought a half GIG stick, threw it all in and you little rippa it booted up I was so happy to see that screen come up, I really was not expecting it to come up , as I still thought that the motherboard was fried, but she was alright, the machine booted Victory was mine machine nothing man oh mighty man ONE.Somewhere in between turning it on and off again, to test the old ram and make certain that it was the RAM before I returned it to the store, I noticed Smoke pouring out of the machine, Shock Horror petrified silence.


It was not actually too bad it was just some plastic melting, I had attached the front sound cable to the wrong connection, I kind of knew it was the wrong one, but I just wasn't thinking, it was the last cable Before I could test the machine, the week leading up to this moment had felt like a glacial age and so I just threw it in on the wrong slot, fortunately all it did was inconvenience me a little, because my headphones don't quite reach to the back Mic port too comfortably, still it could have been worse, my machine now worked, I was victorious, the clerk in the shop could not stand before me, the refund was mine and with a nice value for money graphics card, ah the sweet sweet pine of victory.

Being an IT student I got Vista for $5 dollars, so that I can test it out on this machine, but still mostly use my laptop for all of my important work (honestly I do important work).So far Vista has been a little frustrating I tried installing some antivirus software and Vista had a fit, but I do like the way that you can see files inside of folders, but I guess I may as well leave Vista for another post, thanks for sharing in my victory dance, one day I will figure out how to use my camera without flash, and then I will take some better photos, but these ones still look all right tech looks so Sexy.

Task8 part 2 Writeboard

Collaborative tools such as writeboard are surprisingly enough great for collaborating on a team project. The advantages writeboard offers are numerous. Any team member can contribute to the project at whatever time suits them, and they can easily leave a message if there is something that needs to be discussed before work continues on the project.There is therefore no need to set aside a time that everybody can be available to work on the project, before it can move ahead, and this can potentially save a lot of time.

One of the things that I liked most about working with writeboard was being able to just start putting words down and knowing that even if what I write is not suitable for the final copy it is still useful as a foundation to build upon, either by myself or by one of my colleagues when they in turn are working on the project.Obviously this goes the same for other members of the team, at one point in creating the policy I found that I was out of inspiration so I left the project for a day came back and reading up on what my colleagues had written felt inspired with fresh ideas and insight, this allowed me to continue on past tat sticking point.It is said that two heads are better than one, and the saying certainly runs true with Writeboard.

This was the first time that I had encountered a Textile and I found this textile reference
to be an excellent introduction to what looks like a fascinating method of marking up text, with a little bit of practice writing web based marked up documents should be a breeze, the difference that a little bit of formatting can make is really quite remarkable.

Having a "humane web based text generator" greatly contributes to the utility of Writeboard
because semantic markup helps to give meaning to a document and there is no steep learning curve.To gain a working knowledge of a textile language only takes a few minutes initially and as you go along you can easily build upon your skills. This is important so that even people with little computer knowledge can easily contribute to a web base document and provide input that speaks semantically.



Would I use Writeboard again? I most certainly would and already have an upcoming project in mind that may well see me gaining further textile experience, actually it probably does not really need to be used for this project and may be a little bit of overkill but I will try and incorporate it in nonetheless because as you may have guessed I am now quite the Writeboard Fan Boy.

Robotic Packmule

Check out this video of a Robotic packmule. When I first saw this I was blown away by how far robotics has come, see how it corrects itself even after being kicked, and nearly losing it's balance.It would be nice if a use for this can found other than allowing People to kill each other more easily.

Economics 101

Rant, warning but I promise to keep it short, like Mr Howard.Check out the graph, and see just how competitive our privatised telecommunications network has become.


I guess what annoys me the most is the false advertising that is used to promote broadband prices, rather than say Broadband plans from just $19.95 per month, why don't they be truthful and say
"Broadband caps for just &19.95 that will let you surf the net for, one or, possibly even as many as two days a month, before we drop you back to speeds that make you wish you were still using dial up, or perhaps you would prefer excess usage charges that make phone sex look like VOIP".


In New Zealand, when there telecom started trying to ripp off all of the citizens with outrageous Bandwidth costs, poor infrastructure maintenance and development, the Government stepped in and made them clean up there act, But I have not seen the poor old dog legged ACC let out so much as a whimper let alone a bark, at our Telescum.

Privatisation is Theft!