Welcome

acky.com is the personal domain of Mark Ackroyd. Having had the domain since the mid-90's. I have had numerous offers for the domain over the years, but I'm sorry it's not for sale.

2 really cool projects to help kids learn IT

Having got my Raspberry Pi last week, I am in totally on board with what they are trying to achieve. I think the software needs more work, but once you get the Pi into lots and lots of hands, the community will take on the challenge and I have no doubt that within 6 months we'll have awesome learning tools.

Another project that looks totally awesome is LittleBits, you can see the Ted talk by it's founder here.

Littlebits, is simple hardware design. What the Raspberry Pi is to software, this is for hardware.

The New EU cookie directive

With nearly every major site using some sort of analytics tracking, where do we stand with the new EU directives. Analytics tracking using cookies (Google Analytics, for example) The most important advice, is this

An analytic cookie might not appear to be as intrusive as others that might track a user across multiple sites but you still need consent
You should consider how you currently explain your policies to users and make that information more prominent
If the information collected about website use is passed to a third party you should make this absolutely clear

Asking for consent before you start tracking people is an absolutely nightmare at the moment and, as far as I’m aware, not possible with Google Analytics without a user controlling their opting in/out with browser settings. However, the general rumour mill, is that they won’t be expecting compliance from companies for at least a year after the regulations are adopted. In this time hopefully we’ll see more clarification and, most likely, an official Google tool to help users to opt in and out of tracking although what that will mean for the interpretation of your website data is a whole other, bigger issue. One to keep an eye on for now then but the current advice seems to be to make sure your privacy policy is up to date and visible.

Teach our kids to Code

“An article by Andy Young in The Kernel makes the case that lessons in programming should be compulsory learning for modern school kids. He says, ‘Computers help us automate and repeat the many complicated steps that make up the search for the answer to some of our hardest problems: whether that’s a biologist attempting to model a genome or an office administrator tasked with searching an endless archive of data. The use of tools is a big part of what make us human, and the computer is humanity’s most powerful tool. … The computer makes us more efficient, and enables and empowers us to achieve far more than we ever could otherwise. Yet the majority of us are entirely dependent on a select few, to enable us to achieve what we want. Programming is the act of giving computers instructions to perform. This is true whether the output is your word processor, central heating or aircraft control system. If you can’t code, you are forced to rely on those that can to ensure that you can benefit from the greatest tool at your disposal.’”

–from Slashdot.

Better than Coda?

Finally a Text Editor that enables me to get rid of the ageing Coda. Really hope panic get the beta of Coda 2 out pretty soon. I am fan, but Sublime Text 2 is awesome, give it a few more days of use and will I want to go back? I like everything I see at the moment .. check it out..

http://www.sublimetext.com/blog/articles/sublime-text-2-beta