Technology Tales

Advance your Data Science, AI and Computer Science skills using these online learning opportunities

25^th July 2025

The landscape of online education has transformed dramatically over the past decade, creating unprecedented access to high-quality learning resources across multiple disciplines. This comprehensive examination explores the diverse array of courses available for aspiring data scientists, analysts, and computer science professionals, spanning from foundational programming concepts to cutting-edge artificial intelligence applications.

Data Analysis with R Programming

R programming has established itself as a cornerstone language for statistical analysis and data visualisation, making it an essential skill for modern data professionals. DataCamp's Data Analyst with R programme represents a comprehensive 77-hour journey through the fundamentals of data analysis, encompassing 21 distinct courses that progressively build expertise. Students begin with core programming concepts including data structures, conditional statements, and loops before advancing to sophisticated data manipulation techniques using tools such as dplyr and ggplot2. The curriculum extends beyond basic programming to include R Markdown for reproducible research, data manipulation with data.table, and essential database skills through SQL integration.

For those seeking more advanced statistical expertise, DataCamp's Statistician with R career track provides an extensive 108-hour programme spanning 27 courses. This comprehensive pathway develops essential skills for professional statistician roles, progressing from fundamental concepts of data collection and analysis to advanced statistical methodology. Students explore random variables, distributions, and conditioning through practical examples before advancing to linear and logistic regression techniques. The curriculum encompasses sophisticated topics including binomial and Poisson regression models, sampling methodologies, hypothesis testing, experimental design, and A/B testing frameworks. Advanced modules cover missing data handling, survey design principles, survival analysis, Bayesian data analysis, and factor analysis, making this track particularly suitable for those with existing R programming knowledge who seek to specialise in statistical practice.

The Google Data Analytics Professional Certificate programme, developed by Google and hosted on Coursera with US and UK versions, offers a structured six-month pathway for those seeking industry-recognised credentials. Students progress through eight carefully designed courses, beginning with foundational concepts in "Foundations: Data, Data, Everywhere" and culminating in a practical capstone project. The curriculum emphasises real-world applications, teaching students to formulate data-driven questions, prepare datasets for analysis, and communicate findings effectively to stakeholders.

Udacity's Data Analysis with R course presents a unique proposition as a completely free resource spanning two months of study. This programme focuses intensively on exploratory data analysis techniques, providing students with hands-on experience using RStudio and essential R packages. The course structure emphasises practical application through projects, including an in-depth exploration of diamond pricing data that demonstrates predictive modelling techniques.

Advanced Statistical Learning and Specialised Applications

Duke University's Statistics with R Specialisation elevates statistical understanding through a comprehensive seven-month programme that has earned a 4.6-star rating from participants. This five-course sequence delves deep into statistical theory and application, beginning with probability and data fundamentals before progressing through inferential statistics, linear regression, and Bayesian analysis. The programme distinguishes itself by emphasising both theoretical understanding and practical implementation, making it particularly valuable for those seeking to master statistical concepts rather than merely apply them.

The R Programming: Advanced Analytics course on Udemy, led by instructor Kirill, provides focused training in advanced R techniques within a compact six-hour format. This course addresses specific challenges that working analysts face, including data preparation workflows, handling missing data through median imputation, and working with complex date-time formats. The curriculum emphasises efficiency techniques such as using apply functions instead of traditional loops, making it particularly valuable for professionals seeking to optimise their analytical workflows.

Complementing this practical approach, the Applied Statistical Modelling for Data Analysis in R course on Udemy offers a more comprehensive 9.5-hour exploration of statistical methodology. The curriculum covers linear modelling implementation, advanced regression analysis techniques, and multivariate analysis methods. With its emphasis on statistical theory and application, this course serves those who already possess foundational R and RStudio knowledge but seek to deepen their understanding of statistical modelling approaches.

Imperial College London's Statistical Analysis with R for Public Health Specialisation brings academic rigour to practical health applications through a four-month programme. This specialisation addresses real-world public health challenges, using datasets that examine fruit and vegetable consumption patterns, diabetes risk factors, and cardiac outcomes. Students develop expertise in linear and logistic regression while gaining exposure to survival analysis techniques, making this programme particularly relevant for those interested in healthcare analytics.

Visualisation and Data Communication

Johns Hopkins University's Data Visualisation & Dashboarding with R Specialisation represents the pinnacle of visual analytics education, achieving an exceptional 4.9-star rating across its four-month curriculum. This five-course programme begins with fundamental visualisation principles before progressing through advanced ggplot2 techniques and interactive dashboard development. Students learn to create compelling visual narratives using Shiny applications and flexdashboard frameworks, skills that are increasingly essential in today's data-driven business environment.

The programme's emphasis on publication-ready visualisations and interactive dashboards addresses the growing demand for data professionals who can not only analyse data but also communicate insights effectively to diverse audiences. The curriculum balances technical skill development with design principles, ensuring graduates can create both statistically accurate and visually compelling presentations.

Professional Certification Pathways

DataCamp's certification programmes offer accelerated pathways to professional recognition, with each certification designed to be completed within 30 days. The Data Analyst Certification combines timed examinations with practical assessments to evaluate real-world competency. Candidates must demonstrate proficiency in data extraction, quality assessment, cleaning procedures, and metric calculation, reflecting the core responsibilities of working data analysts.

The Data Scientist Certification expands these requirements to include machine learning and artificial intelligence applications, requiring candidates to collect and interpret large datasets whilst effectively communicating results to business stakeholders. Similarly, the Data Engineer Certification focuses on data infrastructure and preprocessing capabilities, essential skills as organisations increasingly rely on automated data pipelines and real-time analytics.

The SQL Associate Certification addresses the universal need for database querying skills across all data roles. This certification validates both theoretical knowledge through timed examinations and practical application through hands-on database challenges, ensuring graduates can confidently extract and manipulate data from various database systems.

Emerging Technologies and Artificial Intelligence

The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence has created new educational opportunities that bridge traditional data science with cutting-edge generative technologies. DataCamp's Understanding Artificial Intelligence course provides a foundation for those new to AI concepts, requiring no programming background whilst covering machine learning, deep learning, and generative model fundamentals. This accessibility makes it valuable for business professionals seeking to understand AI's implications without becoming technical practitioners.

The Generative AI Concepts course builds upon this foundation to explore the specific technologies driving current AI innovation. Students examine how large language models function, consider ethical implications of AI deployment, and learn to maximise the effectiveness of AI tools in professional contexts. This programme addresses the growing need for AI literacy across various industries and roles.

DataCamp's Large Language Model Concepts course provides intermediate-level exploration of the technologies underlying systems like ChatGPT. The curriculum covers natural language processing fundamentals, fine-tuning techniques, and various learning approaches including zero-shot and few-shot learning. This technical depth makes it particularly valuable for professionals seeking to implement or customise language models within their organisations.

The ChatGPT Prompt Engineering for Developers course addresses the developing field of prompt engineering, a skill that has gained significant commercial value. Students learn to craft effective prompts that consistently produce desired outputs from language models, a capability that combines technical understanding with creative problem-solving. This expertise has become increasingly valuable as organisations integrate AI tools into their workflows.

Working with OpenAI API provides practical implementation skills for those seeking to build AI-powered applications. The course covers text generation, sentiment analysis, and chatbot development, giving students hands-on experience with the tools that are reshaping how businesses interact with customers and process information.

Computer Science Foundations

Stanford University's Computer Science 101 offers an accessible introduction to computing concepts without requiring prior programming experience. This course addresses fundamental questions about computational capabilities and limitations whilst exploring hardware architecture, software development, and internet infrastructure. The curriculum includes essential topics such as computer security, making it valuable for anyone seeking to understand the digital systems that underpin modern society.

The University of Leeds' Introduction to Logic for Computer Science provides focused training in logical reasoning, a skill that underlies algorithm design and problem-solving approaches. This compact course covers propositional logic and logical modelling techniques that form the foundation for more advanced computer science concepts.

Harvard's CS50 course, taught by Professor David Malan, has gained worldwide recognition for its engaging approach to computer science education. The programme combines theoretical concepts with practical projects, teaching algorithmic thinking alongside multiple programming languages including Python, SQL, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. This breadth of coverage makes it particularly valuable for those seeking a comprehensive introduction to software development.

MIT's Introduction to Computer Science and Programming Using Python focuses specifically on computational thinking and Python programming. The curriculum emphasises problem-solving methodologies, testing and debugging strategies, and algorithmic complexity analysis. This foundation proves essential for those planning to specialise in data science or software development.

MIT's The Missing Semester course addresses practical tools that traditional computer science curricula often overlook. Students learn command-line environments, version control with Git, debugging techniques, and security practices. These skills prove essential for professional software development but are rarely taught systematically in traditional academic settings.

Accessible Learning Resources and Community Support

The democratisation of education extends beyond formal courses to include diverse learning resources that support different learning styles and schedules. YouTube channels such as Programming with Mosh, freeCodeCamp, Alex the Analyst, Tina Huang, and Ken Lee provide free, high-quality content that complements formal education programmes. These resources offer everything from comprehensive programming tutorials to career guidance and project-based learning opportunities.

The 365 Data Science platform contributes to this ecosystem through flashcard decks that reinforce learning of essential terminology and concepts across Excel, SQL, Python, and emerging technologies like ChatGPT. Their statistics calculators provide interactive tools that help students understand the mechanics behind statistical calculations, bridging the gap between theoretical knowledge and practical application.

Udemy's marketplace model supports this diversity by hosting over 100,000 courses, including many free options that allow instructors to share expertise with global audiences. The platform's filtering capabilities enable learners to identify resources that match their specific needs and learning preferences.

Industry Integration and Career Development

Major technology companies have recognised the value of contributing to global education initiatives, with Google, Microsoft and Amazon offering professional-grade courses at no cost. Google's Data Analytics Professional Certificate exemplifies this trend, providing industry-recognised credentials that directly align with employment requirements at leading technology firms.

These industry partnerships ensure that course content remains current with rapidly evolving technological landscapes, whilst providing students with credentials that carry weight in hiring decisions. The integration of real-world projects and case studies helps bridge the gap between academic learning and professional application.

The comprehensive nature of these educational opportunities reflects the complex requirements of modern data and technology roles. Successful professionals must combine technical proficiency with communication skills, statistical understanding with programming capability, and theoretical knowledge with practical application. The diversity of available courses enables learners to develop these multifaceted skill sets according to their career goals and learning preferences.

As technology continues to reshape industries and create new professional opportunities, access to high-quality education becomes increasingly critical. These courses represent more than mere skill development; they provide pathways for career transformation and professional advancement that transcend traditional educational barriers. Whether pursuing data analysis, software development, or artificial intelligence applications, learners can now access world-class education that was previously available only through expensive university programmes or exclusive corporate training initiatives.

The future of professional development lies in this combination of accessibility, quality, and relevance that characterises the modern online education landscape. These resources enable individuals to build expertise that matches industry demands, also maintaining the flexibility to learn at their own pace and according to their specific circumstances and goals.

What SAS Innovate 2025 revealed about the future of enterprise analytics

21^st June 2025

SAS Innovate 2025 comprised a global event in Orlando (6^th-9^th May) followed by regional editions on tour. This document provides observations from both the global event and the London stop (3^rd-4^th June), covering technical content, platform developments and thematic emphasis across the two occasions. The global event featured extensive recorded content covering platform capabilities, migration approaches and practical applications, whilst the London event incorporated these themes with additional local perspectives and a particular focus on governance and life sciences applications.

Global Event

Platform Expansion and New Capabilities

The global SAS Innovate 2025 event included content on SAS Clinical Acceleration, positioned as a SAS Viya equivalent to SAS LSAF. Whilst much appeared familiar from the predecessor platform, performance improvements and additional capabilities represented meaningful enhancements.

Two presentations, likely restricted to in-person attendees based on their absence from certain schedules, covered AI-powered SAS code generation. Shionogi presented on using AI for clinical studies and real-world evidence generation, with the significant detail that the AI capability existed within SAS Viya rather than depending on external large language models. Another session addressed interrogating and generating study protocols using SAS Viya, including functionality intended to support study planning in ways that could improve success probability.

These sessions collectively indicated a directional shift. The scope extends beyond conventional expectations of "SAS in clinical" contexts, moving into upstream and adjacent activities, including protocol development and more integrated automation.

Architectural Approaches and Data Movement

A significant theme across multiple sessions addressed fundamental shifts in data architecture. The traditional approach of moving massive datasets from various sources into a single centralised analytics engine is being challenged by a new paradigm: bringing analytics to the data. The integration of SAS Viya with SingleStore exemplifies this approach, where analytics processing occurs directly within the source database rather than requiring data extraction and loading. This architectural change can reduce infrastructure requirements for specific workloads by as much as 50 per cent, whilst eliminating the complexity and cost associated with constant data movement and duplication.

Trustworthy AI and Organisational Reflection

Keynote presentations addressed the relationship between AI systems and organisational practices. SAS Vice President of Data Ethics Practice Reggie Townsend articulated a perspective that reframes common concerns about AI bias. When AI produces biased results, the issue is not primarily technical failure, but rather a reflection of biases already embedded within cultural and organisational practices. This view positions AI as a diagnostic tool that surfaces systemic issues requiring organisational attention rather than merely technical remediation.

The focus on trustworthy AI extended beyond bias to encompass governance frameworks, transparency requirements and the persistent challenge that poor data quality leads to ineffective AI regardless of model sophistication. These considerations hold particular significance in probabilistic AI contexts, especially where SAS aims to incorporate deterministic elements into aspects of its AI offering.

Natural Language Interfaces and Accessibility

Content addressing SAS Viya Copilot demonstrated the platform's natural language capabilities, enabling users to interact with analytics through conversational queries rather than requiring technical syntax. This approach aims to democratise data access by allowing users with limited technical knowledge to directly engage with complex datasets. The Copilot functionality, built on Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service, supports code generation, model development assistance and natural language explanations of analytical outputs.

Cloud Migration and Infrastructure Considerations

A presentation on transforming clinical programming using SAS Clinical Acceleration was scheduled but not accessible at the global event. The closing session featured the CIO of Parexel discussing their transition to SAS managed cloud services. Characterised as a modernisation initiative, reported outcomes included reduced outage frequency. This aligns with observations from other multi-tenant systems, where maintaining stability and availability represents a fundamental requirement that often proves more complex than external perspectives might suggest.

Content addressing cloud-native strategies emphasised a fundamental psychological shift in resource management. Rather than the traditional capital expenditure mindset where physical servers run continuously, cloud environments enable strategic use of the capability to create and destroy computing resources on demand. Approaches include spinning up analytics environments at the start of the working day and shutting them down at the end, with more sophisticated implementations that automatically save and shut down environments after periods of inactivity. This dynamic approach ensures organisations pay only for actively used resources.

Presentations on organisational change management accompanying technical migrations emphasised that successful technology projects require attention to human factors alongside technical implementation. Strategies discussed included formal launch events to mark transitions, structured support mechanisms such as office hours for technical questions and community-building activities designed to foster relationships and maintain engagement during periods of change.

Platform Integration and Practical Applications

Content on SAS Viya Workbench covered availability through Azure and AWS, Python integration, R compatibility and interfacing with SAS Enterprise Guide, with demonstrations of several features. As SAS expands support for open-source languages, the presentation illustrated how these capabilities can provide a unified platform for different technical communities.

A presentation on retrieval augmented generation with unstructured data (such as system manuals), combined with agentic AI for diagnosing manufacturing system problems, offered a concrete use case. Given the tendency for these subjects to become abstract, the connected example provided practical insight into how components can function together in operational settings.

Digital Twins and Immersive Simulation

A notable announcement at the global event involved the partnership between SAS and Epic Games to create enhanced digital twins using Unreal Engine. This collaboration applies the same photorealistic 3D rendering technology used in Fortnite to industrial applications. Georgia-Pacific piloted this technology at its Savannah River Mill, which manufactures napkins, paper towels and toilet tissue. The facility was captured using RealityScan, Epic's mobile application, to create photorealistic renderings imported into Unreal Engine.

The application focused on optimising automated guided vehicle deployment and routing strategies. Rather than testing scenarios in the physical environment with associated costs and safety risks, the digital twin enables simulation of complex factory floor operations including AGV navigation, proximity alerts, obstacles and rare adverse events. SAS CTO Bryan Harris emphasised that digital twins should not only function like the real world but also look like it, enabling more accessible decision-making for frontline workers, engineers and machine operators beyond traditional data scientist roles.

The collaboration extends beyond visual fidelity. SAS developed a plugin connecting Unreal Engine to SAS Viya, enabling real-time data from simulated environments to fuel AI models that analyse, optimise and test industrial operations. This approach allows organisations to explore "what-if" scenarios virtually before implementing changes in physical facilities, potentially delivering cost savings whilst improving safety and operational efficiency.

Marketing Intelligence and Customer Respect

Content on SAS Customer Intelligence 360 addressed the platform's marketing decisioning capabilities, including next-best-offer functionality and real-time personalisation across channels. A notable emphasis concerned contact policies and rules that enable marketers to limit communication frequency, reflecting a strategic choice to respect customer attention rather than maximise message volume. This approach recognises that in environments characterised by notification saturation, demonstrating restraint can build trust and ensure greater engagement when communications do occur.

Financial Crime and Integrated Analytics

Presentations on financial crime addressed the value of integrated platforms that connect traditionally siloed functions such as fraud detection, anti-money laundering and sanctions screening. Network analytics capabilities enable identification of patterns and relationships across these domains that might otherwise remain hidden. Examples illustrated how seemingly routine alerts, when analysed within a comprehensive view of connected data, can reveal connections to significant criminal networks, transforming tactical operational issues into sources of strategic intelligence.

Data Lineage and Transformation Planning

Content on data lineage reframed this capability from a purely technical concern to a strategic tool for transformation planning. For large-scale modernisation initiatives, comprehensive mapping of data flows, transformations and dependencies provides the foundation for accurate effort estimation, budgetary planning and risk assessment. This visibility enables organisations to proceed with complex changes whilst maintaining confidence that critical downstream processes will not be inadvertently affected.

Development Practices and Migration Approaches

Sessions included content on using Bitbucket with SAS Viya to support continuous integration and continuous deployment pipelines for SAS code. Git formed the foundation of the approach, with supporting tools such as JQ. Given the current state of manual validation processes, this content addressed a genuine need for more robust validation methods for SAS macros used across clinical portfolios, where these activities can require several weeks and efficiency improvements would represent substantial value.

Another session provided detailed coverage of migrating from SAS 9 to SAS Viya, focusing on assessment methods for determining what requires migration and techniques for locating existing assets. The content reflected the reality that the discovery phase often constitutes the primary work effort rather than a preliminary step.

A presentation on implementing SAS Viya on-premises under restrictive security requirements described a solution requiring sustained collaboration with SAS over multiple years to achieve necessary modifications. This illustrated how certain deployments are defined primarily by governance, controls and assurance requirements rather than by product features.

Technical Fundamentals and Persistent Challenges

A hands-on session on data-driven output programming with SAS macros provided practical content with life sciences examples. Control tables and CALL EXECUTE represented familiar approaches, whilst the data step RESOLVE function offered new functionality worth exploring, particularly given its capability to work with macro expressions rather than being limited to macro variables in the manner of SYMGET.

A recurring theme across multiple contexts emphasised that poor data quality leads to ineffective AI and consequently to flawed decision-making. The technological environment evolves, but fundamental challenges persist. This consideration holds particular significance in probabilistic AI contexts, especially where SAS aims to incorporate deterministic elements into aspects of its AI offering.

London Event

Overview and Core Themes

The London edition of SAS Innovate 2025 on Tour demonstrated the pervasive influence of AI across the programme. The event concluded with Michael Wooldridge from the University of Oxford providing an overview of different categories of AI, offering conceptual grounding for a day when terminology and ambition frequently extended beyond current practical adoption.

The opening session presented SAS' recent offerings, maintaining consistency with content from the global event in Orlando whilst incorporating local perspectives. Trustworthiness, responsibility and governance emerged as prominent themes, particularly relevant given the current industry emphasis on innovation. A panel discussion included a brief exchange regarding the term "digital workforce", reflecting an awareness of the human implications that can be absent from wider industry discussion.

Life Sciences Stream Content

The Life Sciences stream focused heavily on AI, with presentations from AWS, AstraZeneca and IQVIA addressing the subject, followed by a panel discussion continuing this direction. The scale of technological change represents a tangible shift affecting all parts of the ecosystem. A presentation from a healthcare professional provided context regarding the operational environment within which pharmaceutical companies function. SAS CTO Bryan Harris expressed appreciation for pharmaceutical research and development work, an acknowledgement that appeared both substantive and appropriate to the setting.

Get web links from Outlook emails and Teams chats to open in your web browser of choice

12^th August 2024

Making the LanguageTool embedded HTTP Server work on Windows 11

11^th August 2024

My choice of Markdown editor is VS Code or VSCodium, the latter being a fork of the former with Microsoft telemetry removed. In either case, I use the LanguageTool Linter extension for the required grammar and spelling checks. Pointing that to the remote web service offered by LanguageTool could get punitive, even if I am a subscriber. Thus, I use a locally installed equivalent instead.

In my usual Linux system, that is how I work. However, I have replicated the set-up on a Windows laptop for added flexibility. The needed the JRE, so that was downloaded from the Oracle website and then installed. The next step is to download the LanguageTool embedded HTTP Server zip file and decompress it to a chosen location. To run the server, the command like the following is issued from the Windows Terminal (the single line may break over two here):

java -cp "[Chosen Location]\LanguageTool-stable\LanguageTool-6.4\languagetool-server.jar" org.languagetool.server.HTTPServer --port 8081 --allow-origin

That is enough to get things going because it fulfils the default settings of the LanguageTool Linter extension in VS Code or VSCodium. The fastText application is unavailable for Windows, so I did without it. So far, things are operating acceptably, even if there is a way to address more memory should that be required.

Quickly changing between virtual desktops in Windows 10

12^th October 2018

One of the benefits of running Linux is the availability of virtual desktops, and installing VirtuaWin was the only way to get the same functionality on Windows before the launch of Windows 10. For reasons known to Microsoft, they decided against the same sort of implementation as seen in Linux or UNIX. Instead, they put the virtual desktop functionality a click away and rather hides it from most users unless they know what clicking on the Task View button allows. The approach also made switching between desktops slower with a mouse. However, there are keyboard shortcuts that address this once multiple virtual desktops exist.

Using WIN + CTRL + LEFT or WIN + CTRL + RIGHT does this easily once you have mastered the action. Depending on your keyboard setup, WIN is the Windows, Super or Command key while CTRL is the Control key. Then, LEFT is the left arrow key and RIGHT is the right arrow key. For machines with smaller screens where multitasking causes clutter, virtual desktops are a godsend for organising how you work, and having quick key combinations for switching between them adds to their utility.

Pondering travel device consolidation using an Apple iPad Pro 12.9"

18^th September 2016

It was a change of job in 2010 that got me interested in using devices with internet connectivity on the go. Until then, the attraction of smartphones had not been strong, but I got myself a Blackberry on a pay as you go contract, but the entry device was painfully slow, and the connectivity was 2G. It was a very sluggish start.

It was supplemented by an Asus Eee PC that I connected to the internet using broadband dongles and a Wi-Fi hub. This cumbersome arrangement did not work well on short journeys, and the variability of mobile network reception even meant that longer journeys were not all that successful either. Usage in hotels and guest houses though went better and that has meant that the miniature laptop came with me on many a journey.

In time, I moved away from broadband dongles to using smartphones as Wi-Fi hubs and that largely is how I work with laptops and tablets away from home unless there is hotel Wi-Fi available. Even trips overseas have seen me operate in much the same manner.

One feature is that we seem to carry quite a number of different gadgets with us at a time, which can cause inconvenience when going through airport security since they want to screen each device separately. When you are carrying a laptop, a tablet, a phone and a camera, it does take time to organise yourself, and you can meet impatient staff, as I found recently when returning from Oslo. Since checking in whatever you can as hold luggage helps to get around at least some of the nuisance, it also might be time for the use of better machinery to cut down on having to screen everything separately.

When you come away after an embarrassing episode, as I once did, the attractions of consolidating devices start to become plain. In fact, most probably could get with having just their phone. It is when you take activities like photography more seriously than the gadget count increases. After all, the main reason a laptop comes on trips beyond Britain and Ireland at all is to back up photos from my camera in case an SD card fails.

Parking that thought for a while, let's go back to March this year, when temptation overcame what should have been a period of personal restraint. The result was that a 32 GB 12.9" Apple iPad Pro came into my possession along with an Apple Pencil and a Logitech CREATE Backlit Keyboard Case. It should have done so, but the size of the screen did not strike me until I got it home from the Apple Store. That was one of the main attractions because maps can be shown with a greater field of view in a variety of apps, a big selling point for a hiker with a liking for maps, who wants more than what is on offer from Apple, Google or even Bing. The precision of the Pencil is another boon that makes surfing the website so much easier, and the solid connection between the case and the iPad means that keyboard usage is less fiddly than it would if it used Bluetooth. Having tried them with the BBC iPlayer app, I can confirm that the sound from the speakers is better than any other mobile device that I have used.

Already, it has come with me on trips around England and Scotland. These weekend trips saw me leave the Asus Eee PC stay at home when it normally might have come with me, and taking just a single device along with a camera or two had its uses too. While the screen is large for reading on a train, I find that it works just as well so long as you have enough space. Otherwise, combining use of a suite of apps with recourse to the web does much of the information seeking needed while on a trip away, which meant that I was not found wanting. Battery life is good too, which helps.

Those trips allowed for a little light hotel room blog post editing too and the iPad Pro did what was needed, though the ergonomics of reaching for the screen with the Pencil meant that my arm was held aloft more than was ideal. Another thing that raised questions in my mind is the appearance of word suggestions at the bottom of the screen as if this were a mobile phone, given that I wondered if these were more of a hindrance than a help given that I just fancied typing and not pointing at the screen to complete words. Though copying and pasting works too, I have found the screen-based version a little clunky. Thus, I must see if the keyboard one works just as well, though the keyboard set up is typical of a Mac and that affects word selection. You need to use the OPTION key in the keyboard shortcut that you use for this and not COMMAND or CONTROL as you might do on a PC.

Even with these eccentricities, I was left wondering if it had any utility when it came to backing up photos from digital cameras, and there is an SD card adapter that makes this possible. A failure of foresight on my part meant that the 32 GB capacity now is an obvious limitation, but I think I might have hit on a possible solution that does not need to upload to an iCloud account. It involves clearing off the photos onto a 128 GB Transcend JetDrive Go 300 so they do not clog up the iPad Pro's storage. That the device has both Lightning and USB connectivity means that you can plug it into a laptop or desktop PC afterwards too. If that were to work as I would hope, then the laptop/tablet combination that I have been using for all overseas trips could be replaced to allow a weight reduction as well as cutting the hassle at airport security.

Trips to Ireland still may see my sticking with a tried and tested combination though because I often have needed to do some printing while over there. While I have been able to print a test document from an iPad Mini on my home network-connected printer, not every model supports this and that for NFC or Air Print is not universal either. If this were not an obstacle, apps like Pages, Numbers and Keynote could have their uses for business-related work and there are web-based offerings from Google, Microsoft and others too.

In conclusion, I have found that my iPad Pro does so much of what I need on a trip away that retiring the laptop/tablet combination for most of these is not as outrageous as it once would have seemed. In some ways, iOS has a way to go yet, before it could take over from macOS, yet it remains in development so it will be interesting to see what happens next. All the while, hybrid devices running Windows 10 are becoming more pervasive, so that might provide Apple with the encouragement that it needs.

Dealing with an "Your insider preview build settings need attention" message in Windows 10 Settings

5^th September 2016

Having now upgraded all my Windows 10 machines to the Anniversary Update edition without much in the way of upheaval, I came across the following message on one of them:

Your insider preview build settings need attention. Go to Windows Insider Programme to fix this.

It appeared on the Update screen of the Settings application, and I believe that I may have triggered it by letting foolish curiosity take me to the Windows Insider Programme screen. Returning there offered no way of resolving the issue, so I had to try the registry editing tip that I discovered elsewhere on the web. Naturally, the creation of a System Restore Point before proceeding with changes to the Windows Registry is advised.

Typing REGEDIT into Cortana brings up a clickable link to the Registry Editor. Having clicked on this, I then clicked on the Yes button on the ensuing dialogue box that Windows 10 throws up every time you make a system change, such as installing new software. With the Registry Editor opened, I made my way to the following location:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsSelfHost\UI\Strings

Once there, I deleted every entry that mentioned "Insider" or "Windows Insider" to leave only two afterwards: "(Default)", "UnknownErrorDialogValues". That resolved the issue, and I now intend to stay away from the Windows Insider Programme screen in Settings so that the message never appears again.

Resolving Windows Update Error 0x80244019 on Windows 10

21^st August 2015

In Windows 10, the preferred place to look if you fancy prompting an update of the system is in the Update & Security section of the Settings application. At the top is the Windows Update, and the process usually is as simple as pressing the Check for updates button. For most of the time, that has been my experience, but it stopped working on my main Windows 10 virtual machine, so I needed to resolve the problem.

Initially, going into the Advanced Options section and deselecting the tick box for Give me updates for other Microsoft products when I update Windows helped. However, it seemed a non-ideal solution, so I looked further. When it was then that I found that manually resetting a system's Windows Updates components helped others, I tried that and restarted the system.

The first part of the process was to right-click on the Start Menu button and select the Windows PowerShell (Admin) entry from the menu that appeared. This may be replaced by Command Prompt (Admin) on your system on your machine, but the next steps in the process are the same. In fact, you could include any commands you see below in a script file and execute that if you prefer. Here, I will run through each group in succession.

From either PowerShell or the Command Prompt, you need to stop the Windows Update, Cryptographic, BITS (or Background Intelligent Transfer Service) and MSI Installer services. To accomplish this, execute the following commands at a command prompt:

net stop wuauserv
net stop cryptSvc
net stop bits
net stop msiserver

With the services stopped, it is then possible to rename the SoftwareDistribution and Catroot2 folders so you can refresh everything to remove them. To accomplish this, execute the following pair of commands using either PowerShell or the Command Prompt:

ren C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution SoftwareDistribution.old
ren C:\Windows\System32\catroot2 Catroot2.old

Once you have the folders renamed, then you can start the Windows Update, Cryptographic, BITS and MSI Installer services by executing the following commands in either PowerShell or the Command Prompt:

net start wuauserv
net start cryptSvc
net start bits
net start msiserver

Once these have completed, you may close the PowerShell or Command Prompt window that you were using and restart the machine. Going into the Update & Security section of the Settings tool afterwards and pressing the Check for updates button now builds new versions of the folders that you renamed, and this takes a little while longer than the usual update process. Otherwise, you could let your system rebuild things in its own time. As it happens, I opted for manual intervention and all has worked well since then.

More thoughts on Windows 10

11^th August 2015

Now that I have left Windows 8.x behind me and there are a number of my machines running Windows 10, I have decided to revisit my impressions of the operating system. The first Technical Preview was something that I installed in a virtual machine, and I have been keeping an eye on how things have developed since then and intend to retain a Windows Insider installation to see what might be heading our way as Windows 10 evolves as now expected.

After elaborating on the all important upgrade process earlier, I am now moving onto other topics. While the Start Menu is a big item, there are others, as you will see below.

Start Menu

Let's start with an admission: the prototype Start Menu that we got in the initial Windows 10 Technical Preview was more to my liking. Unpinning all the tiles allowed the menu to collapse back to the sort of width that anyone familiar with Windows 7 would have liked. If there was a setting to expunge all tiles at once and produce this state, I would have been well happy.

It was later that we got to learn that Microsoft was not about to consign the Windows 8 Modern interface entirely to history, as many would have wanted. Some elements remain with us, such as a Start Menu with a mandatory area for tiles and the ability to have it display full screen. Some are live, only for this can be turned off on a tile by tile basis and unneeded ones can be removed altogether. It is even possible to uninstall most apps by right-clicking on a tile or other Start Menu entry and selecting the required option from the resulting context menu. For others, there is a command line alternative that uses PowerShell to do removals. After this pruning, things were left in such a state that I have not been moved to restore Classic Shell so far.

While the Start Menu settings used to be in the same place as those for the taskbar, they are found now in the new Settings tool. Some are in the Personalisation section, and it has its own Start subsection for setting full screen mode or highlighting of new apps, among other things. The equivalent Colours subsection is where you find other settings like assigning background colours based on those in a desktop background image, which itself is assigned in it own subsection in the Personalisation area.

Virtual Desktops

Initially, I failed to see the point in how Microsoft implemented these and favoured VirtuaWin instead. My main complaint was the taskbar showed buttons for all open apps regardless of the screen in which they are opened. However, that was changed, so your taskbar shows different buttons for each virtual desktop, just like the way that Linux and UNIX do things. Switching between desktops may not be as smooth as those yet, but the default setting is a move in the right direction, and you can change it if you like.

Cortana

Though this was presented to the world as a voice operated personal assistant like Apple's Siri, I cannot say that I am keen on such things, so I decided to work as I usually do instead. Keyboard interaction works fine, and I have neutered things to leave off web searches on Bing to use the thing much in the same way as the search box on the Windows 7 Start Menu. While it may be able to do more than that, I am more than happy to keep my workflow unchanged for now. Cortana's settings are available via its pop-up menu. Collapsing the search box to an icon to save space for your pinned and open applications is available from the Search section of the taskbar context menu (right-clicking the taskbar produces this).

Settings

In Windows 8.x, the Control Panel was not the only area for settings but remained feature complete. However, the same is not the case for Windows 10 where the new Settings panel is starting to take over from it. Though the two co-exist for now, it seems clear that Settings is where everything is headed.

Though the Personalisation section of the tool has been mentioned in relation to the Start Menu, there are plenty of others. For instance, the Privacy one is one that definitely needs reviewing, and I found myself changing a lot of the default settings in there. Naturally, there are some other sections in Settings that hardly need any attention from most of us and these include Ease of Access (accessibility), Time & language, Devices and Network & Internet. The System section has a few settings like tablet mode that may need review, while the Update & security one has backup and recovery subsections that may be of interest. The latter of these is where you find the tools for refreshing the state of the system following instability or returning to a previous Windows version (7 or 8.x) within thirty days of the upgrade.

Successfully migrating to Windows 10 on physical devices and virtual machines

10^th August 2015

While I have had preview builds of Windows 10 in various virtual machines for the most of twelve months, actually upgrading physical and virtual devices that you use for more critical work is a very different matter. Also, Windows 10 is set to be a rolling release with enhancements coming on an occasional basis, so I would like to see what comes before it hits the actual machines that I need to use. That means that a VirtualBox instance of the preview build is being retained to see what happens to that over time.

While some might call it incautious, I have taken the plunge and completely moved from Windows 8.1 to Windows 10. The first machine that I upgraded was more expendable, and success with that encouraged me to move onto others before even including a Windows 7 machine to see how that went. The 30-day restoration period allows an added degree of comfort when doing all this. The list of machines that I upgraded were a VMware VM with 32-bit Windows 8.1 Pro (itself part of a 32-bit upgrade cascade involving Windows 7 Home and Windows 8 Pro), a VirtualBox VM with 64-bit Windows 8.1, a physical PC that dual booted Linux Mint 17.2 and 64-bit Windows 8.1 and an HP Pavilion dm4 laptop (Intel Core i3 with 8 GB RAM and a 1 TB SSHD) with Windows 7.

The main issue that I uncovered with the virtual machines is that the Windows 10 update tool that is downloaded onto Windows 7 and 8.x does not accept the graphics capability on there. This is a bug because the functionality works fine on the Windows Insider builds. The solution was to download the appropriate Windows 10 ISO image for use in the ensuing upgrade. There are 32-bit and 64-bit disk images with Windows 10 and Windows 10 Pro installation files on each. My own actions used both disk images.

During the virtual machine upgrades, most of the applications that considered important were carried over from Windows 8.1 to Windows without a bother. Anyone would expect Microsoft's own software like Word, Excel and others to make the transition, but others like Adobe's Photoshop and Lightroom made it too, as did Mozilla's Firefox, albeit requiring a trip to Settings to set it as the default option for opening web pages. Less well-known desktop applications like Zinio (digital magazines) or Mapyx Quo (maps for cycling, walking and the like) were the same. Classic Shell was an exception but the Windows 10 Start Menu suffices for now anyway. Also, there was a need to reinstate Bitdefender Antivirus Plus using its new Windows 10 compatible installation file. Still, the experience was a big change from the way things used to be in the days when you used to have to reinstall nearly all your software following a Windows upgrade.

The Windows 10 update tool worked well for the Windows 8.1 PC, so no installation disks were needed. Neither was the bootloader overwritten so the Windows option needed selecting from GRUB every time there was a system reboot as part of the installation process, a temporary nuisance that was tolerated since booting into Linux Mint was preserved. Again, no critical software was lost in the process apart from Kaspersky Internet Security, which needed the Windows 10 compatible version installed, much like Bitdefender, or Epson scanning software that I found was easy to reinstall anyway. Usefully, Anquet's Outdoor Map Navigator (again used for working with walking and cycling maps) continued to function properly after the changeover.

For the Windows 7 laptop, it was much the same story, albeit with the upgrade being delivered using Windows Update. Then, the main Windows account could be connected to my Outlook account to get everything tied up with the other machines for the first time. Before the obligatory change of background picture, the browns in the one that I was using were causing interface items to appear in red, not exactly my favourite colour for application menus and the like. Now they are in blue, and all the upheaval surrounding the operating system upgrade had no effect on the Dropbox or Kaspersky installations that I had in place before it all started. If there is any irritation, it is that unpinning of application tiles from the Start Menu or turning off live tiles is not always as instantaneous as I would have liked, and that is all done now anyway.

While writing the above, I could not help thinking that more observations on Windows 10 may follow, but these will do for now. Microsoft had to get this upgrade process right, and it does appear that they have, so credit is due to them for that. So far, I have Windows 10 to be stable and will be seeing how things develop from here, especially when those new features arrive occasionally as is the promise that has been made to us users. Hopefully, that will be as painless as it needs to be to ensure trust is retained.