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My Crazy June

30 Jun

What a month.

It started off really well with it being my turn to guest blog for John which brought me to a much wider audience. However it also prompted a few panic stricken emails to my hosts as it became clear that I was going to use my monthly bandwidth allowance within 6 days. Being the all round great bunch of guys they are (hi Marty, hi Khalid ;o) ) they found a way to let me keep going. They really are a great company with amazing customer support -but don’t take my word for it read the impartial reviews for yourself.

I was given some fantastic content by other people to mark the inaugural Autistic Pride Day all of which added up to a great day.

During the course of the month I got linked to from some fantastic blogs: Andy Clarke, AutismDiva, Orac, Jon Hicks, Ballastexistenz, BD4D, Alvit.de, forgetfoo, Neurodiversity, Martagnan, Euphemize, Skeptico, Bonni, Lisa McMillan and Matt amongst others.

Then of course was the big day – our Tabby was born and almost the same day I found I’d been listed on Unmatched Style, CSSVault and nv30.

All this activity took me from a sedate 1.6GB per month to approaching 17GB this month and taken my average unique visitors per day to over 2000.

So a big thank you to all who listed me, linked me or talked about me (and special thanks to John of course ;o) ) and here’s hoping I can capitalise on this extra traffic and get people talking more about the specifics of design and the rights of autistics.

Using MagpieRSS To Create An AJAX RSS Reader

23 Jun

When I recently redesigned this site, one of things that I got asked about the most was my Flash RSS parser. I built it in an attempt to try and ‘reedem’ Flash a little as it occassionaly gets misused in terrible ways and I thought it would be nice to see some practical, useful Flash applications.

However, its very limited. I can only parse RSS 2 feeds which excludes Atom users totally and seeing as a lot of my favourite authors publish in Atom I needed a way to parse this data too. I could’ve adjusted the RSS parsing engine that Flash used to accomodate Atom feeds but then I realised I was making life much more difficult than it needed to be. It seemed to me that switching to MagpieRSS which already accomodates all these feeds would be a much easier proposition. But then, the reason I wanted to use Flash would be lost – and if I used MagpieRSS then I’d need to refresh the page every time a new feed was selected.

Obviously you can see where I’m going with this; the next stage in my thinking was ‘is it possible for me to adjust MagpieRSS to serve its results via AJAX?’.

I didn’t know. Mainly as I’ve never used MagpieRSS before and neither have I written anything using the AJAX methodology before but I thought it might be interesting to find out and (as always, the best thing) teach me something new. So, the first step was to learn about how AJAX worked. As I understand it, AJAX can only be triggered through variables sent from form elements i.e. you can’t send data via a querystring appended onto a URL. This would mean some minor hackery on my part.

So, my AJAX application would entail a few distinct sections. First would be the links that a user would click to select a feed. This would then send the value of the name/value pair appended to these links to a hidden form field and hence make this value available to the AJAX toolset.

Next we turn our attention to our Javascript and setting up the XMLHTTP objects:

Next, the field value is turned back into a query string and appended to a URI that is sent to the behind-the-scenes MagpieRSS script. The MagpieRSS script then does its thing and our AJAX script returns the results back to our page and displays them in a div.

This is really a no-brainer. Because all the hard work is done by the MagpieRSS script it makes the job much easier. All I really had to do was fit it into the traditional AJAX framework. You can see the results here along with all the bits I couldn’t fix to make the page validate. Maybe you’ll have some ideas on how to do these things or maybe you can re-write this whole thing much better. Either way, I’d like to hear about it.

Its not live on my site yet as I haven’t found time to style it to my satisfaction but I can think of ways this will benefit the websites I work on as well as my personal sites.

I Am A Child Abuser

22 Jun

Some of the comments coming from Generation Rescue’s ‘Rescue Angels’ are getting scarier and scarier. This was posted to a Parents.com thread:

The problem is that doctors keep telling people that autism is not caused by mercury to cover their asses. They screwed up by giving our kids way too much mercury. Those of us who know this don’t like seeing unknowing parents allowing their kids to rot in the abyss of autism. Wake up and smell the coffee is approprite. Anyone who is not chelating to get rid of the mercury is guilty of child abuse. Every doctor who is not telling their patients to chelate is guilty of malpractice. There was no autism until Eli Lilly started putting mercury in vaccines. Aside from fragile X which some say is not really autism, it is all caused by mercury. Any parent who listens to the doctors tell them that there is no known cause or cure for autism is too damn stupid to have kids.

Parents.com

Now aside from the factual errors, isn’t that the most frighteningly, almost fascist, shivers-down-your-spine-hair-stand-on-end-uh-oh-here-come-the-fundie-whacko’s genuinely disturbing thing you’ve read in awhile?

This is a self-styled ‘Rescue Angel’ of Generation Rescue.

A Person’s Medical History Is Their Own

22 Jun

People who support the idea that autism is mercury poisoning get to a certain point in the debate (i.e. when they feel themselves to have no recourse to logical debate any more) they resort to asking you:

have you had your daughter’s metals levels tested? And NO…I am not asking for your daughter’s medical records. It’s a fair question.

They do this mainly as they are unable to debate on an intellectual level about the issue at hand but they also believe this to be an acceptable request.

In my opinion it is totally unreasonable and entirely inappropriate to ask someone to discuss any aspect of their child’s medical history unless they feel comfortable discussing it. Especially over the Internet with people you never met before and who you don’t trust the motives of anyway.

There’s a few reasons I feel this inappropriateate. Firstly, its nobody’s goddamn business but my daughters. How would she feel in 20 years time to stumble across this blog Googles cache and find me blithely discussing her medical history with total strangers? I know how I’d feel about it if it was me – I’d feel that my parents had crossed a line between whats acceptable and whats not.

Secondly, this blog is basically an online extension of my house. Would you feel OK about me being invited into your house and then questioning you about matters that are nothing to do with you? I’ll bet you wouldn’t. I’d bet you would tell me to mind my own business and to stop asking such highly personal questions.

Thirdly is the issue of legitimising the argument of innuendo. Every time I read some neo-biblical testimony from some set of parents about how after they started using Chelation the mercury was ‘pouring out of our kids body’ I think mainly of how utterly irrelevant stories like this are – true or not they are not empirical research and thus prove nothing whatsoever. This is why science tends to eschew circumstantial evidencence like this – it is representative only of that particular individual and as such, without proper scientific investigation into _all_ the variables that came into play in that situation its meaningless as decent evidence.

So to my way of thinking if I start discussing what my daughter has or hasn’t had and claiming it as incontrovertibleble proof of my opinion I’m doing the exact same thing. The *only* way I’d let my daughters medical history be used like this was if it formed part of a large study run by a large, well respected medical institution, headed up by a well respected scientist and we were assured of complete anonymity.

Autistic Pride Day: Us

19 Jun

So what did we do for Autistic Pride Day?

Well, basically we did all the things that Meggy loves to do. First of all we went down to Sainsburys so Meggy could have a bloody good sing in a really echoey environment (song of choice: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, once I caught a fish alive…)

When we got back we indulged her passion for DVD’s and basically gave her the remote and let her pick and choose whatever she wanted (age appropriate of course!).

Next up we went into the garden where Anthony (my NT 12yo son) and Meg indulged in Megan’s biggest love – water play. Megan would _live_ in water if we’d let her and its our ambition if we ever win the lottery to get a house with a wet room. She splashes so much in our current bathroom that it comes through the Kitchen ceiling so a wet room would be ideal. But for now this is the next best thing – outside in the garden with the tap on and a good natured brother to soak as occasion demands.

We had a great day all round, if you were marking the day, we all hope you did too. And next time someone starts banging on about the ‘hell’ of autism or how autism is ‘the enemy’ show them this post. We had a great day immersing ourselves in Megan’s world but most importantly, Megan did too.

Letter To JB Handley, Founder Of Generation Rescue

18 Jun

Dear Mr Handley,

I’m writing this letter to you to ask you to make textual revisions to the ‘generationrescue.com’ website. As it stands, your website is responsible for perpetuating untruths about the nature and causes of autism that can only serve to promulgate negative stigma and reduce funding into valid interventions.

On the website you state:

Generation Rescue believes that childhood neurological disorders such as autism, Asperger’s, ADHD/ADD, speech delay, sensory integration disorder, and many other developmental delays are all misdiagnoses for mercury poisoning.

and

There is no evidence to suggest that autism is genetic. No autism gene has ever been found and the search will be endless – how can you have a gene for a mythical condition? Autism is mercury poisoning.

These two statements (one an expression of opinion and one an expression of your opinion disguised as a statement of fact) are untrue and misleading. Whilst it may be true that there is no *proof* that autism is genetic, there is plenty of very good, valid *evidence* to indicate that there is at least in part a genetic component to autism. To baldly state ‘autism is mercury poisoning’ is facile. In fact, there is no proof that could lead you to make such a claim although, like with genetics, there may be some evidence.

I don’t have an issue with you claiming that autism _may in some cases_ be resultant from an environmental insult such as Mercury. It is your unfounded and belligerent claim of fact that bothers me so much.

Your organisation advocates the use of Chelation Therapy. In fact, I’m given to understand that you use it own your own son. If your son is Mercury poisoned then from what I understand of Chelation Therapy, it may work. Equally it may not. If it works for you then more power to you. No one wants to see children suffering. However, I’m of the opinion that informing parents that *all* autism is mercury poisoning and that Chelation is the answer is grossly over simplifying the case and tantamount to a willful misleading of people trying to do their honest best. And costing them thousands of dollars as a result.

Chelation therapy also has a dark side. One that has resulted in injury and death. Your blasé support of it as a therapy is worrying in respect of parents who may find only after the fact that they preferred an autistic child to a dead or seriously injured child. Your failure to advise on the potential dangers associated with such an untested and unknown procedure is also very worrying. What are the long term effects of Chelation Therapy for autistics? Where are the long term studies?

But by far my biggest worry in regards to your simplistic stance on ‘autism is mercury and nothing else’ is this: Every time that lie is perpetuated, every time its circulated and every time its repeated a little less attention and importance is attached to finding and researching valid interventions that can greatly benefit our autistic kids. Not only that, but you debase and devalue a whole section of society by effectively labeling them as ill when they are not. This is unacceptable to me.

As the parent of an autistic I face an uphill battle getting services that my child deserves. When you move your campaign to the UK (as I’ve no doubt you will) your dogmatic claim stands a good chance of even more seriously impeding my daughters ability to access services she needs. What could possibly be your reason for insisting to the detriment of autistics everywhere that autism is mercury poisoning and only mercury poisoning? Why do you desire to make the lives of parents like me even harder? Why do you desire to increase the stigma of autism?

I ask you from the bottom of my heart Mr Handley, as one Dad of an autistic child to another on Autistic Pride Day and on the eve of Fathers Day here in the UK – please, try and see your way clear to undoing the damage you are doing. I’m not asking you to disband your organisation or discard your beliefs. Instead I’m asking you to moderate your tone and please try to be respectful of autistics and parents of autistics who know beyond doubt that autism is *not* only mercury poisoning.

My best to your family.

Kevin Leitch

Autistic Pride Day: Jane Meyerding/Helen Ford

15 Jun

Another dual set of contributions here.

Helen is a friend I’ve known for a year or so and is a student currently enrolled at University. Jane I’ve only recently ‘met’ (in the online sense) but her fascinating website kept me reading for quite awhile!

— Helen Begins —

For me Autistic Pride Day is a chance to show the world, and that being autistic is not completely negative. It is to show the world that Autistics the world over do have a voice and are not afraid to use it. That we can help show parents that Autism is not a complete negative; that sometimes we can be amongst the best, and that there is hope for their children.

— Helen Ends —

— Jane Begins —

Autistic Pride is a concept I have to struggle with a bit. Not because of the autism part, but because of the pride part. For me, the only kind of pride that makes sense is pride in accomplishment.

I live in a part of the world where some people say (or put up signs saying) “I’m proud to be an American.” Occasionally those signs/sayings belong to people who became “American” (resident or citizen of the United States of North America) through their own efforts, but usually the phrase is uttered by people who were born into their U.S. citizenship. How can a person be proud of something so automatic and, indeed, inevitable? Perhaps they mean “I am proud of my country.” But if that’s what they mean, why isn’t that what they say? (And what exactly would it mean to say that?)

Similarly, I was born autistic. So how can I be “proud” of it? The only answer that works for me is: We can be proud that we have overcome the shame we were forced to feel for being our “weird” autistic selves. We can be proud to have gained an understanding of our autistic selves, despite the constant social pressure to “fix” ourselves or at least behave like non-autistics. We can be proud of reaching out to other autistics in order to learn from them, share our knowledge, and support each other.

Most of all, we can be proud to be autistics who are advocating for greater understanding and acceptance of autistics, for an end to separating us into categories (such as “high-functioning” and “low-functioning”) that contradict the realities of our lives, and for the kinds of accommodations and supports that will enable more of us to lead richer, more independent lives.

Autistic Pride Day thus is a day on which we re-dedicate ourselves to self-acceptance, mutual support, and advocacy. That’s what we have to be proud about.

— Jane Ends —

Latent Semantic Indexing And Google

14 Jun

Google has undergone a major algo change over the last few weeks. This change will have a significant on how well your sites do in Google.

Codenamed ‘Brandy’ by the SEO industry, this latest update is the biggest series of changes to happen to Google since Autumn 2003 Florida and Austin updates. Interestingly all three of these major updates are only really indicative of what Google are planning when examined together. Florida removed a lot of sites from Googles overall index. Austin out some back (people speculate that Florida went a bit further than even Google expected and Austin was an attempt to pull things back a little) and now Brandy seems to have reinstated almost all sites – we seem to have returned to a pre-Florida state.

However, there’s been a big change since Florida about the way Google now ranks sites and what it places importance on. Of course the very basic idea is the same – high quality, frequently updated content will always do well sooner or later – but the overall emphasis is changing.

It used to be that on-page factors were equally as important as off-page factors. For example, good use of Title and elements together with a keyword/phrase rich body would see you doing reasonably well. Particularly if you had lots of quality backlinks. Since Brandy it seems that these factors are not so important. Thats not to say they’re unimportant but Google is making a conscious effort to reduce the chances for SEO spamming to occur by lessening the impact these elements can have.

The big change for on-page optimisation factors is LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing). This is a logic system that Google have always been very keen on incorporating into their algo. What it does is basically study the theme of the page, then remove all associated keywords/phrases but look and reward words and phrases that share a semantic root.

A practical example: The site I run at work concentrates on Loans, Mortgages and Insurance. Traditionally I would use these keywords in the Title,

elements and repeat the keywords as much as possible in the body text. What the LSI system will do is ignore all these (or more likely lessen the impact they’ll have individually) but look for related words to support the theme of the page e.g. for a loans page it might look for mentions of holidays, new cars, furniture etc as these are things you might require a loan for and hence they are part of the theme of the page.

Latent semantic indexing adds an important step to the document indexing process. In addition to recording which keywords a document contains, the method examines the document collection as a whole, to see which other documents contain some of those same words. LSI considers documents that have many words in common to be semantically close, and ones with few words in common to be semantically distant. This simple method correlates surprisingly well with how a human being, looking at content, might classify a document collection. Although the LSI algorithm doesn’t understand anything about what the words mean, the patterns it notices can make it seem astonishingly intelligent.

LSI Definition.

Using this system makes it a lot more difficult for a SEO spammer to guess what semantically related words/phrases Google might assign most weight to in relation to the theme of the page.

Its also very likely that Google will be stepping up the importance of high-quality backlinks and will almost certainly use LSI techniques to judge the impact of these links. So for my Insurance pages it might be worth my while trying to get links on a holiday site (travel insurance related) or a dentists site (dental insurance related) or on a car sellers website (car insurance) as oppose to relying on big finance related directories.

This will probably have an impact on PR which may be used more ‘locally’ to distribute ranking around your site and reward each page due to the amount of themed pages that link directly (as oppose to through the home page) to it. As ever, text links will do better than image links.

You can read the whole of the article I linked to above at the Middlebury College site.

Autistic Pride Day: Larry Arnold/Dragon

14 Jun

As part of a continuing mini-series leading up to Autistic Pride day on the 18th June, I’d like to present two contrasting pieces. One from a perspective of youth, idealism and hope and the other from experience and wisdom.

Larry Arnold was one of the first autistic ‘voices’ I heard and his unique style and intelligence made me want to read as much as possible about autism as I could.

Dragon, whos screen-name I use rather than his real name due to his age, is a 12 year old British autistic. I’ll quote him first:

— Dragon Begins —

I think autistic pride day is a good time to express how you really feel about being autistic, its a chance to express our pride about it. In the past I felt like my autism was a disability, now I know its just a difference, and its something to be proud of. In the future I hope that the world will be a better place for autistics to live in. People should respect that were aren’t people with a disease.

— Dragon Ends —

And now Larry:

— Larry Arnold Begins —

I am not altogether sure what to make of the notion of autistic pride day, as in general I have spoken out against specific awareness weeks, as promoting the notion that all you need do is concern yourself about some specific issue at a specific time of year and then let it lie.

The same goes for notions of autistic pride, if I were only proud for one day, what would that achieve? Except when the worries of the world crowd me in and I am feeling a sense of despair, I am proud of what I am, autism being part of that. My own position on the autistic spectrum is not something I usually shy away from and try to hide. I am autistic and I do not care who knows it. At this stage in my career it would be pretty hard to hide it from any prospective employer or public authority as it is out there on the web and on video in all its glory. In a way I have no choice but to be proud.

I do not really know if one day “hits” will achieve anything outside of the autistic community as it currently exists, as I think we are still at the beginnings of forging any kind of credible movement, and facing a lot of obstacles from big money at the moment.

How can we make a bigger splash than the dollars and slick publicity put about by those who would like nothing better than to eliminate us from the planet, and probably expunge us from history too?

I think that can only come from being out and open about being autistic, and not trying to fit in all the time or making ridiculos compromises that smother our autism.

I can’t help being critical of some of the “big names” in Autism for leaning too close to those who would deny our existance by appearing at their events, but again I sometimes fear I am becoming too compromised myself.

I don’t think there is any badge of autism or colour of autism (except for the rainbow) I show my individuality and pride by not becoming part of the crowd, perhaps I am a Groucho Marxist, not wanting to belong to any club that would have me as a member, or wanting to march gloriosly out of step with everyone aware that marching together out of step is a paradox and the biggest paradox for me is wanting a world where it does not matter if I am autistic or not, just that I am and entitled to be in the world.

For those who have the opportunity to do something communal, and wave an autistic flag together, go for it, you don’t need old sixties and seventies relics like me making up your minds for you.

— Larry Arnold Ends —

Thanks to both. Hope and wisdom on one page – bookmark this one people as its an accomplishment I won’t be able to match on my own ;o)

Autistic Pride Day: Camille Clark

13 Jun

In the days leading up to Autistic Pride Day, its important to hear from autistics about what it means to them directly. Its all well and good listening to me say what I think but to really appreciate the importance of a day like this, its imperative to hear things as they are from someone who knows first hand what it means. To that end, I’ve asked a number of adult and child autistics to contribute a piece detailing what Autistic Pride Day measn to them.

Today, I’d like to introduce you to Camille Clark whos fascinating website has opened my eyes to a wide range of possibilities for my daughter.

Autistic Pride Day. Why June 18th, you may ask? It commemorates the day that Temple Grandin graduated from 3rd grade. It was the day that Stephen Shore first learned to make a noise while flapping his hands at the wrist. It was on that date that Gerry Newport’s autistic adult support group first met in Los Angeles, California. On this very day, the parents of Alex and Ben Bain met. It was on this sunny date in history that Michelle Dawson decided that she didn’t hate being
autistic after all. It was the first day of filming of “Rain Man”. It was the day I received my diagnosis of Asperger’s syndrome at 43years old.

Well, actually, no.

As far as I know, none of the above occured on June 18th and I don’t know why June 18th was chosen as Autistic Pride Day.

Nevertheless, you may be asking yourself, “What is Camille doing to mark Autistic Pride Day?”

It’s not likely that you are asking yourself that, I know, but anyway, here’s the answer:

Like every other day, I will think about the efforts of autistic people to live a satisfying life. I will do what I can to encourage us to keep up the good work, and try to help us deal with discouragement.

OK, maybe it’s unforgivably corny and trite, but I think every day is Autistic Pride day. All those on the autism spectrum, as a group, face an uphill battle every day and deserve so much credit for it.
When I look at the bunch on the Autistic Adults Picture Project, I’m proud of them. The same goes for the other autistics that I hear
about and those that I meet and know in real life. I’m proud of the other autism spectrum adult in my household. My own offspring, a wonderful person and a credit to humanity. Makes me proud, even if I can’t take credit for that beautiful personality.

What has happened in the last year’s time for us all to be proud of? Well, a little more than a year ago the Auton case was heard in Canada’s Supreme Court. The decision which was handed down in Novevember of last year, on whether or not behavioral therapy was “medically necessary” for autistic children, included mention of an adult autistic, Michelle Dawson. By so doing the court recognized that the voices of autistcs should be heard in issues that affect them. This was no small feat, as Michelle faced opposition from both sides, the government and the “parents”. They did not want to hear what an adult autistic thought about the case.

In the last year, 17 years old autistic, Alex Bain, also of Canada, distinguished himself as a runner and won several significant awards for his running on Prince Edward Island. Kathleen Seidel, mother of
an autism spectrum daughter, and webmistress of neurodiversity.com, wrote not only, “The Autistic Distinction” , but she also took on Lenny Schafer, which effort documented under the title; “Lenny Schafer’s Inquisition“, and recently challenged David Kirby and his backers with “Evidence of Venom” , to name a few of her major undertakings. Gayle Fitzpatrick and Charles Rankowski, parents of
Jan, went to bat for his right to play on a school playground while autistic. On December 20, 2004, autistic advocacy made it to the front page of the New York Times, again, this time with the article titled, “How About Not ‘Curing’ Us, Some Autistics Are Pleading“, the article included a photo of Jane Meyerding and quoted her, as well. That New York Times reporter actually went to Autreat. In March of this year, Autism Diva put on her tiara and started to set some facts straight.

And in this last year, several thousand autistic children, worldwide, graduated 3rd grade, many of them with memories of bullying and ostracism. Maybe, next by year “autistic pride” will become a more widely known concept and the autisic third graders will have fewer bad memories and experience more joy and pride in who they are.

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