The weakest link

Not necessarily what you'd expect: Security rule 1 -- The security of any system is measured by its weakest link <grin> (Snaffled from the web, pointed out by Bruce Schneier)
Or, seeing as this is a blog dominated by dumbasses I liked the original site's caption: Probably an elaborate IQ test. If you sit at the barrier, you fail...

No such thing as bad publicity?

To appear in the Telegraph's "Non-Job of the week" ... is that good or bad publicity <grin> (And WTF is a "Sustainability Facilitator" anyway?!)

Problems with accessibility

An interesting post on 456 Berea Street entitled Accessibility charlatans highlights how difficult it is to tell if a web page is accessible or not ... It's not that hard to design an accessible page if you are already paying attention to web standards and people like Joe Clark. Sadly many sites slap "accessible" badges on their pages as soon as Cynthia or Bobby give no explicit "no" answers, but that's not enough.

The example that the trainees stumbled upon during a recent day's accessibility training was hyfinity whose site (in February 2005 at least) was an inaccessible mess of unsemantic div and span tags with oodles of CSS classes (a clear case of divitis and classitis!) They're a company that proclaims Our Web Accessibility programme is designed to ensure your web applications conform to WAI guidelines but passing Bobby or Cynthia does not necessarily mean your page is accessible.

I suppose it's a case of caveat emptor but how does the buyer know to be aware? Perhaps each country with specific disability legislation needs a certification programme run by genuine experts in accessibility? Sadly it could easily add to the real expense of implementing an accessible site.

MSc by Research success

Not long (in MSc/PhD terms) after our first MSc by research success, today we got our second ... so my congratulations to Millie and Dimitris :-)

First lecture ... a success?

1^st "Databases and the Web" lecture last night and it seemed to go OK. For the first time I recorded the audio from the lecture using a mini disc recorder and tie-clip microphone. It's weird listening to myself witter-on (is that really what I sound like? Blimey!) but the delivery seems clear and not too rambling ... I hope to use SMIL to attach the audio to the lecture slides. Techno-joy ;-) with an e-learning slant. Listening to the recording is also a great way to reflect (teaching & learning tree-hugging language ... shudder!) on the lecture so I intend to continue the practice.