Many of the world’s major sporting events take place every four years such as international football tournaments, the cricket and rugby world cups and, of course, the Olympic games. Generally the summer Olympic games take place in leap years although since an end of century year is only a leap year if it is also divisible by 400 then the year 2100 won’t be a leap year even though it is an Olympic year. The last edition of the summer Olympic games was delayed by a year due to the Coronavirus pandemic which has clearly had a major impact on the business and technology worlds over the last four years.
The pace of technological change means that over the last four years there have been huge leaps in the development of artificial intelligence. The ChatGPT service was only launched in November 2022 but has rapidly gained awareness with the general public rather than just within the technical sector as had been the case with AI previously. We’ve already written a few articles on this topic such as AI Tools we are using but if you’re using February 29th as a way of thinking about how your business approaches the next four years then take the time to think about how you could integrate some AI into your processes.
If you’re not quite ready for AI yet then perhaps you might take a step back to consider other systems within your business. Something that might have worked well for you four years ago may now be starting to get unwieldy as your business grows. Security and availability of data is crucial to the success of a business and if you started out storing data in a spreadsheet such as Microsoft Excel now might be the time to consider whether that is still the best home for your business critical data.
In general many companies look to redesign or refresh their websites every 2-3 years so if your website hasn’t changed since the last leap year then it might be worth thinking about a refresh, we’re always happy to have a conversation about how we can help with that refresh process.
This leap day we hope you get the chance to take that step back from the day to day to look at the bigger picture for your business.
With Valentine’s Day approaching, we want to wax lyrical — not just for our loved ones, but for our beloved county of Suffolk and our clients within it. We are proud to have worked across the globe over the last 25 years, but nothing quite beats the feeling of working for our local clients and we love our ongoing relationships.
Here’s our love letter to a few of the local social enterprises and businesses we love working with, and continue to support.
Using their self referral system means you can show yourself a little love, as well as getting access to important resources for your physiotherapy needs. We love working with AHP on this platform. Its focus on user experience makes NHS healthcare that much easier to access for people both within and outside Suffolk.
A romantic walk in the countryside has nothing on Suffolk as it’s known for its diverse landscapes and history as well as Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty.
Working with Green Suffolk, who have the aim of Creating the Greenest County, we are proud to have created their WordPress website. We also migrated their content across to the new site so they can continue to champion the local work they are doing, and provide resources for people keen to make a positive ecological impact in Suffolk.
Starting out casual and getting more serious, our relationship with Denbury Homes started by creating a quick website as they rebranded from Hopkins & Moore. We worked fast on our feet, helping establish the Denbury Homes presence online, and they were so impressed with the work created they changed their plans — retaining our work and using it as their future foundation of growth. Just like Denbury’s exceptional home builds, we are proud to show our exceptional development skills to match!
It’s not all about looks, and while keeping website designs simple we can also develop integrations behind the scenes to help showcase the best of a business. ACC Art Books are one of the world’s leading publishers and distributors of books relating to the arts and visual culture. Established in 1966, ACC also represents nearly 100 premium publishers worldwide and are based here in Suffolk.
In redeveloping their website, we built a bespoke API to help bring the work across 4 sites into a unified portal. We are not just a pretty face but have some strong development power. Also the perfect site to check out for an unexpected Valentines gift….
What’s Valentine’s Day without a little sauce? And what’s better than Scarlett & Mustard’s range of condiments, dressings, jams and conserves?
They produce a range of delicious sweet and savoury condiments and dressings from their base in Suffolk. With their bold branding we continue to support them with their website and we are some of their biggest champions!
Situated on the banks of the River Deben, Woodbridge Tide Mill Museum’s wheels have been turning for over 800 years. One of only two tide mills you can see at work, Woodbridge Tide Mill Museum is a charity who needed an up to date website that’s clear and accessible for its many visitors.
We love working in partnership and so far have enjoyed the work we are doing with SCA. Sharing knowledge and resources, even more so locally is valuable to us here at Infotex and with the SCA. Healthcare is an area we have over 25 years of experience in and are keen to help companies with anything relating from websites to systems and anything else digital.
So you’re thinking of a career in web development, but not sure where to start? We sat down with our Technical Director Christopher Waite to see what advice he’d give to aspiring developers.
Web development offers great flexibility in how you work, either freelance or salaried and almost every industry requires development in some capacity, meaning you have endless options to build a career to suit you.
With the ever changing landscape, there’s always new things to learn so you’ll have the opportunity to push yourself and grow your expertise. That said, here are a few tips to get you thinking and hopefully give you the confidence to start…
Data is the language of technology, and it’s something that we all use, add to, create and learn from every day. But what exactly is data, why is it important, how do we keep it safe and where is it stored? This new blog series from Infotex will explain it all and keep you up to date with the latest in the world of online data. But first, let’s start at the beginning with the big question.
When it comes to computing and websites, data is information. Put simply, data is every photo, video, sound and text in a computer, broken down into a string of numerical values called binary code. This code is made up of just two digits: 1 and 0. The smallest unit of data is called a bit, a portmanteau of ‘binary’ and ‘digit’. Then the next biggest is a byte, which is eight binary digits long. Data gets progressively bigger into megabytes and gigabytes, and then terabytes. Most computer users won’t need to think about anything bigger, but with an estimated 120 zettabytes of data generated in 2023, and predictions of 150% growth in 2025, it doesn’t hurt to be more familiar with larger types of data. A zettabyte, by the way, is equivalent to a trillion gigabytes. And just for fun, if one byte of data is a grain of rice, then a zettabyte is enough rice to fill the Pacific Ocean.
Enough of the measurements. Why is data so important? It’s the backbone of the internet, and with more of our lives and important files online than ever before, we must understand the importance of data and the impact it has on all our lives. The way we use, store and interact with data is always changing, and this blog series will explore data, cybersecurity, the cloud, and the future of data.
Cybersecurity is all about defence. Defending data, defending privacy, and defending all computers and technology against hacks and attacks. While greater connectivity via the internet is a huge advantage, it can also leave organisations vulnerable to cyber attacks. According to IBM Security, the average cost of a data breach in the UK is £3.2 million, proving that data is a valuable commodity. Not only that, but when organisations risk the safety of customer data, the reality is they will lose trust from a loyal customer base.
Cyber attacks come in many forms, and fraudsters are always looking for new ways to infiltrate even the safest systems. Three of the most common types of cyber attacks:
These attacks can leave an organisation out of business and the loss of customer trust is a potentially enormous blow to deal with. Keeping up with cybersecurity measures is crucial for all organisations to maintain their reputation and the future of their business.
While there are many different cybersecurity features to watch, these three are proving increasingly popular online.
We’ll be exploring cybersecurity in more detail in a future blog post, so make sure you’re following the series for more information.
The cloud isn’t a place, but a name for the collective online, on-demand availability of services — usually data storage and processing. A global network of remote servers supports and hosts the cloud and allows access wherever you are in the world. Tools like Dropbox, OneDrive, Microsoft Azure and Google Drive are great examples of cloud storage that you’re probably using already. Your data — which can include files, emails, or photos — are all stored in a physical location called a data centre, which can be anywhere in the world depending on your location. Google has 35 data centres globally, and Microsoft has more than 200 centres as of 2023. The quantity and availability of data centres helps the cloud work as a reliable tool for data storage around the world.
Knowing where your data is and how companies use it is key to keeping vital information and personal details private and safe. Where the cloud can get complicated is when the data privacy laws cross international borders, so it’s important to know which laws are keeping your data safe. In the UK, remaining GDPR-compliant while using cloud storage and cloud-based services can be a challenge. It’s a topic we’ll explore in more detail in a later blog.
No topic is complete without some frequently asked questions. And with a topic as complex as data itself, there are plenty of questions to explore.
Cloud storage is split over servers all around the world. In the UK, your data will be held in one of an estimated 517 centres currently. But it’s not only data centres that store information. Websites can store the smallest amounts of data, including cookies and user preferences. Your internet browser will store history, downloads, bookmarks and passwords. And your personal hard drive will store anything that you save to it, keeping your precious photos, work files and favourite music safe.
“Big data” is what it sounds like — it’s data that is simply too large to measure using traditional means. Big data can be described using three Vs: volume, velocity and variety. Huge quantities of data, known as data sets, are used on a large scale for data analysis to spot patterns, inform decisions, train algorithms, and even tailor targeted advertising.
We’d love to say a firm ‘yes’, but the answer truly depends on where your data is held, which organisations are responsible for looking after it, and where and how it can be accessed. Third-party access is a big issue in data security, and advances in AI are likely to have an impact on the way we store data securely in future.
For more FAQs and answers, follow the blog series for more information.
So what’s next for the future of data? With more interconnected devices thanks to the Internet of Things (IoT) and growing networks, the amount of data we’re producing is increasing at a rapid pace. The data market has been estimated to be worth $400 billion by 2030, which means we’re going to need a lot more security. Gartner has predicted that AI-enabled fraud will be a bigger threat by 2025, and said: “the consumerization of AI-enabled fraud will fundamentally change enterprise attack surface driving more outsourcing of enterprise trust and focus on security education and awareness.” This is a topic we’ll be coming back to in a future blog post, so follow us to find out more.
When we are working on a website or systems project we may use the terms “front end” and “back end” to describe what we’re working on.
The front end of a website or system is what the users interact with. That could be the images or text that they see on screen to describe a product or the buttons that they click to add something to their basket. The front end is what our designers have produced during their process of creating wireframes and visuals.
Once the designers have created the visuals for the site and the customer has signed them off the development team will move on to converting those designs into HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) or JavaScript code which are languages used by web browsers to display content on screen and make that content interactive for users. The front end of the website is responsible for sending messages to the back end of the website based on actions that a user has taken e.g. adding a product to a basket or saving their delivery information.
The back end of a website or system is where the information used on the website is stored and processed. Usually there will be a database that holds the information and some code that responds to the messages sent from the front end. For a website project this is often a CMS (Content Management System) such as WordPress which comes with lots of pre-defined functionality and a database structure which we then add to in order to meet the specific needs of a particular project. For a systems project the team will generally create a bespoke back end for the project including writing code and creating a database to hold the information required.
For any website the front end and back end must work in harmony to produce the best outcome. A beautifully designed front end can still result in an unusable website for the client if the back end is too slow or fails to take the right action when a user tries to do something. Equally a smooth, quick back end will not be enough on its own to make a successful website if the front end doesn’t help users to do what they want to do, for example because the layout doesn’t work well on a mobile device.
At Infotex we aim to produce websites and systems that have well designed, mobile responsive front ends and efficient back ends to maximise the experience of users and the better the experience of the users the more likely they are to engage with the website and make a purchase or read the information you want them to.
This article is part of our blog series: Websites 101, lightly introducing and explaining important topics on everything to do with websites, including design, digital marketing, software, infrastructure and beyond.
Got a question you want answered as part of the Websites 101 blog series? Get in touch to let us know.
Every year I’ve hosted a quiz on the day of our Christmas party. Apparently, this year was “too hard”, but as it is the season of giving I’m posting it online so you can try it yourself, or test your office.
Quiz Questions 2023 [PDF]
Quiz Questions & Answers 2023 [PDF]
Rounds cover the last 12 months, items relating to royalty, band anagrams and more.
Featured questions:
Let me know how you get on.
How does Google see your website? What are your site’s top performing pages? Which keywords are people using to find your site? What’s needed to improve your website’s performance?
Google Search Console is the free tool that helps you get to the root of these questions. Here are the need-to-knows for understanding and making the most of the product.
Google Search Console is a free product designed to help website owners monitor the performance of their website in Google Search results.
Formerly known as Google Webmaster Tools, it helps measure organic search engine listings such as keyword rankings, as well as any issues reported by the search engine that can be used to improve the website’s performance.
The information provided can help a site owner understand how they’re doing in Google Search. It also informs anyone who directly works on the site – be that an agency like Infotex or site owners and administrators – how to troubleshoot issues and improve performance.
If you have a website with Infotex, then it is very likely that your site is already registered with Google Search Console. You can contact your Account Manager or the Support Team if you wish to be added as a user to the Google Search Console service.
Otherwise, sign up to Google Search Console to verify your ownership of your website and get going.
Once logged in to Google Search Console, you are presented with a left hand menu of sections including:
Overview: Provides a summary of your site performance and indexing in Google.
Performance Reports: Displays how many people saw and clicked on your site in Google Search, as well as your website’s average position in Google search rankings. This information can be seen for both keywords and for individual site pages, so it is an important tool for understanding the search terms people are using to find your site and the content that is being seen most in search results.
Page indexing: A report which shows all pages on your site that are known to Google, along with whether each page is or is not indexed in Google, and the reasons for this.
Page experience: This report isn’t about what some would typically associate with Google Search. Page experience reports on how “good” a page is in terms of other factors like loading speed and mobile experience. As Google’s ranking algorithms have become more and more sophisticated, these experience metrics have become more important for Search Engine Optimisation.
Google Search Console is a vital tool for any Digital Marketer for both troubleshooting and understanding a site’s performance. It’s well worth a look, even if you’re just wanting an overview of what keywords your site is being found for.
This article is part of our new blog series, Websites 101, lightly introducing and explaining important topics on everything to do with websites, including design, digital marketing, software, infrastructure and beyond.
Got a question you want answered as part of the Websites 101 blog series? Get in touch to let us know.
Black Friday is seen by many retailers as one of the biggest selling opportunities of the year. But is a Black Friday sale the right option for your business?
Since it was introduced to the UK by Amazon in 2010, Black Friday has become a much anticipated four-day long retail event, which sees retailers release big offers and discounts to mark the beginning of the Christmas shopping season. This year’s Black Friday falls on November 24th and is likely to be one of the largest ever, particularly for online sales.
But Black Friday is also associated with fuelling hyper-consumerism, irresponsible production and damaging smaller businesses who cannot compete with the discounts on offer from bigger retailers. The notoriety of the sales mean it is not uncommon to see false discounting, and even entire fake stores designed to catch the unsuspecting consumer.
Because of this, some big brands are choosing to opt out of Black Friday altogether, and 85% of independent retailers also boycott the event.
The brands doing Black Friday differently
For a number of years some socially and environmentally conscious brands have been boycotting Black Friday.
IKEA boycotted Black Friday sales last year, saying that they don’t do large sales because they strive to have the most affordable prices possible all year round. In the place of Black Friday, they are favouring their Green Friday initiative, which enables customers to get 50% off new items when returning an old item to the store through the Buyback & Resell scheme.
Patagonia, for example, does not participate in Black Friday in the usual way, instead committing to repairing clothes, buying used, and buying quality to improve sustainability and help tackle the climate crisis. For Black Friday 2011, the brand ran an ad in The New York Times highlighting overconsumption, and in 2016 donated 100% of Black Friday sales to grassroots organizations.
Skincare brand Deciem have opted to close down their website and store for 24 hours each Black Friday. Instead, they have a month-long sale as part of their ‘Slowvember’ campaign, to encourage consumers to take time to consider whether the product is necessary and the right product for them, instead of impulse buying, which can lead to waste.
Despite their hugely popular Boxing Day sale, Next has opted out of Black Friday since 2020. While they’ve never divulged the reason, the general thinking is that it is a push towards sustainability.
Boycotting Black Friday can actually help your business, communicating that you have confidence in the value of your product at full price and, in doing so, building trust with your customers.
However, Black Friday also has many positives: most importantly, sales are a valuable opportunity for consumers to purchase necessary items that are too expensive at full price.
Our advice is do what suits your business best. If you are going to participate in the nation-wide discount extravaganza, consider your offer and why you’re doing it, keeping your customer experience and business values in mind. Make sure you keep in touch with the wider team, including delivery companies, website hosting etc to make sure they’re geared up as well to support your promotion.
Sunday 8th October saw a 10-strong team tackle the Whole Hog obstacle course mud run. In what is now one of our more unusual annual Infotex events, this year we’re raising money for East Anglian Children’s Hospice.
The Whole Hog course snakes 5 miles around the Suffolk countryside and is peppered with over 30 obstacles to navigate. Three of the team also took the extra step of signing up to The Boss Hog which branches near the end of the main route to add 2 more miles and 10 more obstacles. This year the sun was shining and the temperature above 20°c added a new element to what is usually a chilly day for the competitors.
The course starts simply enough with a short run, before a dip into chilly, murky waters while being sprayed with a fire hose. The obstacles continue with tunnels, nets, over things, under things, through things, and generally getting very wet, and very muddy.
Our Boss Hog team absolutely smashed it, with account manager Matt Adlem storming the 7-mile course in 1 hour and 6 minutes, and James Fulford crossing the line only 2 minutes later. This put them 6th and 14th for Boss Hoggers. Client services director Katie Robinson cleared the 7 miles in 1 hr 35, to be 19th placed female. This is an amazing achievement for the trio, with there being over 740 Boss Hog entrants!
Meanwhile, on the Whole Hog course, Theo, Alfie and Rob all finished the course together with an impressive 1:07, taking 40th to 42nd. Studio Apprentice Will would have been around that time but his timings sadly didn’t register, though he definitely beat last years time. Ant crossed the line with daughters Chloe and Lara in 1:45.
There’s still time to support EACH via our JustGiving page and help us hit our target. All support is gratefully received. To find out why we’re raising money for them view our previous article.
Thanks to the The Whole Hog team for some of the photos on this page. Feeling inspired, why not sign-up for 2024?
In what’s become an annual tradition, we have a team taking part in The Whole Hog obstacle course – and this time we’re fundraising to support East Anglian Children’s Hospices (EACH), an incredible charity providing care for children and young people with life-threatening conditions and their families across East Anglia.
The Whole Hog again? Really…? Anyone would think we like crawling through dark tunnels, swimming through swamps, and lugging tyres across a field.
But certainly, we can’t turn down an opportunity for another fundraiser. The last two years you supported us and helped us give life-changing donations to Home-Start and BIGKID Foundation – a huge THANK YOU to everyone who has previously donated. This year, we are determined to raise even more.
James – 2k in to his 8k training run this week
The truth is that this year the challenge feels much bigger, for a number of reasons. Firstly, because three of our brave team members are moving up a level to take on The Boss Hog – 7 miles instead of 5 miles of obstacles. This is the race the professionals do, and we’re a little concerned Katie, James, and Matt don’t know what’s going to hit them.
Katie’s Strava training data for August
“There’s some seriously fit people that run the Boss Hog and my competitive side is really feeling the pressure! It seems less like a ‘fun run’ and more like an endurance test – it’s certainly pushing me out of my comfort zone this year.”
Katie
We also have recruited three new team members to tackle the challenge – Alfie, Lara and Rob, who are also unsure of what exactly they’re crawling into…
Kevin during The Whole Hog last year
But the main reason we’re feeling the challenge is that this year we are supporting a charity that is very close to our hearts. EACH offers incredible support for families and care for children and young people with life threatening conditions, as was the case for our colleague Debbie’s partner Steve.
Steve’s children had a rare genetic disorder called Batten’s Disease, so the children, their siblings and Steve attended EACH hospice in Ipswich for approximately 7-8 years. Jay was 12 when he died and Tianna was just 9, both passing away at the hospice in 2008 & 2009, with EACH providing so much valuable care not only to the children but the whole family.
It’s the hope of raising money for this incredible charity that has got us through some pretty tough training runs already (running is enough, do we have to do obstacles?) and we are asking for your support to get us through the last hurdles.
By supporting EACH we can help them provide specialist nursing care, symptom management nursing, short breaks, wellbeing activities, therapies, counseling and volunteer services in the family home; meeting the needs of all family members. They also provide support for families during the last few weeks and months of a child’s life, allowing them to choose where their child passes away, either at home, hospital or in one of their hospices.
To understand more about the life-changing importance of EACH, you can hear from families who have had their support and have shared their stories.
If you can spare a donation, big or small, please Donate Now
Thank you!
Last year’s team as they each crossed the finish line of The Whole Hog
High-quality images instil trust and credibility in your company, so taking time and effort to source, create or take good photos is a vital part of any website content plan. We list some key things to look out for.
Images that are too small will become pixelated when enlarged. Make sure your source images are of a reasonable resolution – around 1000 pixels wide as a minimum. Make sure you keep the original as well, so you can always go back to it if needed.
Subject matter not too closely cropped or “zoomed in”. Images on websites have to work “responsively” for each device size. This means as the site is viewed on a laptop a user can see more of an image than on a phone. If you’re cropped in too closely on a face, for example, you may find you can only see half a face on certain screen sizes. This does depend on how the site has been set up originally, but especially pertains to banner / hero photos. Because of this landscape photos are generally more useful for websites -a lot of imagery used is wider for desktop such as banner images.
We love to get high-resolution photos. It means we have the option to crop and zoom as needed. But, having large files can mean a large file size, meaning they can be slow to download for the end user. We use a variety of tools make sure they’re quick loading, from saving them in the correct format initially, resizing them prior to upload to the site, to on-site image optimisation which further compresses images without any loss of quality. If you’re loading images yourself there’s a site that can help you compress them called tinypng.com
If the images are going in the background of text make sure they’re not too busy and that they’re made up of a colour that’s contrasting to the colour of the text in front otherwise the text will be difficult to read. This can be difficult to achieve, as photos are often taken with a close zoom to get the most impact, but these don’t always work well for websites.
If you’re taking product imagery consider taking the photos on a white background this stops any distraction for the eye and leaves your product as the star of the show. It also allows for easy “cutting out” of the product so we can use the images overlaying other colours or images elsewhere on the site.
Make sure the photography conveys what you want it to. For instance if you want your website to show that your company is friendly and people oriented – get photographs of people interacting not only photos of your trendy office space.
Make sure you have permission to use the photography. Sadly you can’t just find any image on Google and use it on your website -you could be breaking copyright laws and receive costly fines from the right’s owner. If you don’t have your own photos to use then free resources such as Unsplash, Pexels and Pixabay have a wide choice. Alternatively, consider purchasing stock images online from sites such as Adobe Stock, Alamy or iStock.
In the last 12 months there has been a rapid rise of AI generated images, and the quality keeps improving. Sites like MidJourney, Canva and Dall-E allow you to type a prompt for what you want your image to be, and it’ll create one like magic.
If you’re not comfortable taking your own photos, then hire someone. It’s not as expensive as you may think (if you pick the right agency/ person) and a carefully planned photoshoot can be used as assets for years to come. Make sure you know what you want out of any photo shoot though, and speak to your web developer about what ratio photos should be so your hero banners, product photos and / or team shots are the very best they can be.
“When code is able to drive tech to achieve something, to make people’s lives a little bit better, that’s when the magic happens”- Moz
National Coding Week runs from 18 – 25 September, with the aim to inspire children and adults into careers in technology. In support of this, we sat down with our developers to find out what made them start coding and why they still love it…
“There is always a new puzzle to solve.”
My journey into programming was sparked by an early fascination with computers. Some of my earliest memories involve my dad teaching me how to set up and play games on our ageing Commodore 64.
We decided to start a family business creating websites. I initially took on the hardware and support aspects, but as time went on, I started delving into the intricacies of software and how websites functioned, and started learning PHP, MySQL, and Linux. I have continued to work with these skills throughout my career in programming.
The day to day work is generally interesting, there is always a new puzzle to solve and with that comes a great sense of satisfaction when elegantly solving a challenging problem.
My favourite project I’ve worked on was IFLScience, mostly because of its scale and the challenges/solutions that come along with that. (I had nothing to do with the current site, all the parts I worked on have been relegated to history).
My favourite Infotex project would probably have to be the Children’s Commissioner site; it had some interesting challenges and was overall a fun project.
We used a tool called the WordPress Page Builder to help us make the website. It’s like building with colourful blocks, and it’s fun!
“Pragmatic use of tech driven by code can help to progress a career.”
I’ve had an interest since the 1990’s (before we had graphical interfaces), that started out as batch files and quickly turned into QBasic. At secondary school I unknowingly took the next step when I created a Visual Basic for DOS (disk operating system) maths educational program to fill a need for one of our teachers, who went on to use it more widely, to the annoyance of the IT department.
For me programming is a means to an end: when code is able to drive tech to achieve something, to make people’s lives a little bit better, that’s when the magic happens. At work that might be the ability for code to analyse a body of data that humans couldn’t practically do, or for a business to succeed in ways it otherwise couldn’t.
Outside of work I’ve long been fascinated by the interconnection between code and the real-world. Things like Raspberry Pi’s or Arduino’s that allow relatively small amounts of code to either control or monitor physical real-world items are a particular favourite of mine.
I used code to take thousands of news stories and changed them to work on a different system to help keep a little bit of car history alive.
I’d look at it the other way: that pragmatic use of tech driven by code can help to progress a career.
The fact that things like Amazon’s solutions allow us to write just a few lines of code to create, and modify, entire virtual worlds is very powerful. It’s starting to become possible within the SME arena to couple things like this to some of the relatively large, even real-time, data processing systems. One can imagine some very cool solutions just over the horizon, allowing a few lines of code to determine how a structure should dynamically handle some event, that could, for example, allow a system to scale resources down to avoid wasting energy at quiet times, or could respond to a high load attack by filtering traffic and/or increasing capacity.
“I can’t choose a favourite project, it would be like picking a favourite child!”
I was working in a company that made paint colour cards and various promotional materials and the production manager and I spent a lot of our time programming in Excel to handle customer stocks. I realised I preferred that to the rest of my job, so I left to do a MSc in Advanced IT, specialising in software development.
I love the problem solving aspect of programming, I still get a buzz when I figure out a way of doing something that’s been puzzling me for a while.
I can’t choose a favourite project, it would be like picking a favourite child!
I’m working on an App that will help to make it easier for people to learn about forests and have fun outdoors.
“That moment at the start of a programming project when there are so many possibilities is still very exciting”
When I was a kid, we had an Intel 8088 machine which I used to write simple text adventures in GW Basic. It was a relatively simple programming language that taught me the basics of variable assignments and looping. I think we are missing something simple like GW Basic in today’s early learning.
Creating an empty folder and then structuring and writing files and code to produce something that people can interact with. That moment at the start of a programming project when there are so many possibilities is still very exciting.
I’m currently experimenting with ways to talk to a computer in English so that it can do complicated things for me in a program I’ve written.
There are always new and interesting things to play with in development so it’s easy to find lots to be excited by.
I have a 4 year old and I’m looking forward to seeing how he interacts with computers. I hope that the modern curriculum places a greater emphasis on interacting with, and particularly programming, computers.
Outside of that I’m very interested in AI and how I can use it in my programming.
“I enjoy seeing the end product and how it helps people out, making their lives easier”
By accident. I had a degree in Economics, but didn’t want to go into finance. I took a business NVQ while looking for a job, and ended up helping the other students with the computer parts of the course. This led to a job in IT training, which was short lived, then to a job in software support, which slowly introduced software development.
When it goes well, I enjoy seeing the end product and how it helps people out – making their lives easier.
An application that is for the running of woodland courses, that allows users to register their interest in a course and then say how they feel each day of the course.
“I’m excited about seeing how AI will provide an opportunity to transform the way coding is carried out”
My first experience with coding was as a child running simple commands using BASIC on my dad’s ZX Spectrum. As there were no formal coding lessons at school, it was not until university that I had the opportunity to explore programming in greater detail. It was there I started using FORTRAN to simulate Physics experiments and this was the point at which I developed a passion for coding. I much preferred this to the time consuming setup and repeat of experiments with physical equipment.
I enjoy the sense of achievement once something is working as it should, and the ability to connect different systems to allow them to communicate with one another.
I have been working on a website which shows different items which can be bought from the website’s business.
I wrote a list of instructions which is called code. When a person visits the website the code that I have written will show the words in different sizes and using different colours. This code allows the people to view the website on a phone, tablet or computer and to have a clear layout on any device.
This coding also allowed information to be taken from the old website to the new one.
I’m excited about seeing how AI will provide an opportunity to transform the way coding is carried out with the potential to aid debugging of issues and testing.
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