Unit 11

How far have I come in this course? A very good question. I knew absolutely nothing about how to use Linux, Apache, MySQL, or PHP. The LAMP project that I worked on this Summer semester has been one of the hardest things I've done in school. Writing papers is easy but delving into the meat and bones of how a new computing system works in another matter entirely.

I had heard of Linux and my now ex-boyfriend uses it and has been religious about open source and freeware for years. He's been a part of the open source movement for over 10 years and belongs to some association or group that they have. But I digress... Although he helped me quite a bit in this course before we broke up a week ago. I will just have to find another mentor to help me with IRLS 675 in the Fall semester. I am afraid that course will be much harder than this one but, at the same time, it will also be easier because I have taken IRLS 672 and been exposed to new technology.

I still do not know if I will install Linux on my current laptop. Maybe when I purchase my next laptop I will explore doing a partition and installing Linux right beside Windows. My ex-boyfriend had completely removed Windows, then installed Linux and finally had Windows running virtually. I most likely would not want to get rid of Windows altogether. Plus I may invest in a Mac for my next laptop so I can learn how to navigate that systems as well.

I am more engaged in the world of digital information thanks to the many readings and assignments this course offered. Reading Neal Stephenson's In the Beginning was the Command Line really opened my eyes to the history of the open source movement and gave me a healthy respect for Linus Torvald and Richard Stallman. I am very eager to continue learning about command line interfaces, networked environments, relational databases, and programming. This course has been quite a roller coaster ride and it has been all I could to to hold on but in a very good way. Let the fun continue with IRLS 675.

Unit 10

Yes, we are sliding into the home stretch indeed. Thank heavens 'cause this stuff is hard! This week I learned more about databases than I will ever consciously remember. This unit was chock full of stuff to cram into my poor little head. I read all about MySQL and how to grant privileges, do queries, and construct operator strings, etc. Actually I did a lot of struggling during this week's unit. I couldn't log in to PuTTY or WinSCP with my virtual server's host name/IP address. I was so frustrated... PuTTY accepted my U of A log-in but would not accept my virtual server data. I went through the "Resolving Connectivity Issues" handout and everything worked fine according to it. Hmpf. Why weren't PuTTY or WinSCP cooperating, who knows!?!

Then I struggled and struggled to get the right syntax, spelling, host name, blah blah blah, so I could start granting privileges to the primary and secondary users. I used the virtual server command line interface and it took a long afternoon but I finally got it done in the end. I revisited Webmin and had to do a lot rereading to find out how to access it again. Just another hiccup in the road. Most of the time I can't remember what I did last week, let alone several weeks ago. lol

I really enjoyed creating the sample databases and running the queries on them. MySQL seems very easy to use as long as you are very precise. I used phpMyAdmin for the first time and found it rather user friendly. The professor's directions were easy to follow and the tutorials and cheat sheets he suggested were extremely helpful. I am still very fuzzy on the joins though... inner join, outer join... left join, right join... Some of the sample queries we did resulted in empty sets. I hope that was supposed to be the case. The wording of the join queries will take a while to get the hang of.

Compared to the other units in this course this one is comparable to learning about Linux in general. Lots of new information I'd never even heard of before. One of the most troublesome unit was on normalization. I hope next week's topic of PHP and scripting isn't as hard as the previous ones... but I have a feeling it will be.

Unit 9

This week's unit was on databases. This is really foreign territory to me. Not like this entire semester hasn't been pretty foreign... There were many concepts that were confusing at first such as ERDs (Entity Relationship Diagrams), data modeling concepts, normalization, etc. While reading a Wikipedia article I learned an easy way to differentiate between ER (Entity Relationship) types:
Common Noun -- Entity Type
Proper Noun -- Entity
Transitive Verb -- Relationship Type
Intransitive Verb -- Attribute Type
Adjective -- Attribute for entity
Adverb -- Attribute for relationship

I also learned about the three levels of data modeling: conceptual, logical, and physical. And how these models can be separate yet build upon each other. The concept of normalization was very confusing at first. 1st, 2nd, and 3rd normal form took some getting used to and I still don't have all the requirements down even after multiple tutorials and several readings. Crow's foot notation also helped to make things clear as mud concerning normalization. Then there's cardinality, optionality, atomicity.... the list goes on.

Overall I have a general grasp of what was covered in Unit 9. I hope it all becomes clearer with time and practice (as most things do).

Unit 8

The topic of this week's lovely readings was project management, strategic planning, etc. It seemed like I was back in management class this week. By the way, that was my least favorite class by far. In Michael Stephens article, Technoplans vs. Technolust, the term "living document" is used. That term really stuck out to me because any kind of plan, whether it be technology, strategic, safety, etc., needs to be ever-evolving so accommodate any changes and/or additions. Stephens also mentioned how important communication and staff buy-in are to implementing any sort of company plan. If the staff are kept in the dark about everything relating to the plan, there just may be a mutiny once it's unveiled.

Another term that was new to me is "environmental scanning," the topic of Environmental Scanning and the Public Library by Don Sager. In his article, Sager says that environmental scanning is akin to community study planning methodology. It sounds like a very viable way of creating a plan. It is imperative to look outside of oneself and the company at large to see what elements in the surrounding community may be impacting or will impact a technology or strategic plan. Sager advises readers to use environmental planning within the varied levels of an organization, not just for the whole kit and caboodle.

Information Technology Plans, by Robert E. Dugan, mapped out step by step how one would go about creating a strategic/technology plan. It was helpful to see how all of the necessary pieces are able to fit together in the end. In What went wrong? Unsuccessful information technology projects by Brenda Whittaker, she reveals the three most often reasons for planning failures. These include 1) poor project planning, 2) a weak business case, and 3) lack of top management involvement and support. Whittaker also enlightened me to the correlation between running over budget and running over time. According to her, "There is a correlation between schedule and budget overrun. However, this correlation is much stronger in cases with budget overruns, than in cases with schedule overruns. A serious (greater than 50 percent) budget overrun meant a serious (greater than 50 percent) schedule overrun as well in 91 percent of cases. But the reverse is not usually true; most of those projects with serious schedule overruns did not have a serious budget overrun as well."

Overall the readings were informative, and enjoyable, this week. Even though some of the material seemed to repeat what I learned in my management class, it is always good to have a refresher.

Unit 7

This week I learned about XML, eXtensible Markup Language. In a lot of ways XML is similar to HTML (the markup language I learned a little about last week).  Although XML is more fluid and allows for more creativity when it comes to tags and document structure. I used three XML tutorials this week. I first listened to a succinct 10 minute video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clJcs2-UB40 given by Cape Clear's Chief Technology Officer, James Pasley. It was very informative but seemed to fast paced and jammed a lot of important information into a rather short video.Wasn't sure who Cape Clear was or what their reputation was like so I went to their website and got redirected to workday.com. It turns out that Cape Clear, the Irish Web Services-based middleware integration technology company had been acquired by Workday back in 2008. Not that you wanted to know all of that but there it is.

Then I listened to a "brief" hour and forty-four minute video lecture at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozKg08td5mE given by Professor Bruce Fulton. This lecture covered many topics including MARC, Dublin Core, XML, METS, MODS, Omeka, and so much more. It was quite a bit to take in at one sitting and I will most likely need to revisit it again at a later date to refresh my memory on all of those subjects.


The third tutorial I used was at http://www.w3schools.com/xml/default.asp and is offered by w3schools. This was a hands-on tutorial in the way that I was able to click links and see the result of well-formed, valid, and error-filled XML documents. I learned that XML elements must have a closing tag; tags are case sensitive; elements must be properly nested; attribute values must be quoted; and there must be a root element in every XML document. What I found humorous when I first started the tutorial is that for XML I needed a knowledge of HTML and JavaScript. I don't know much about JavaScript so I went to its tutorial and found out I needed a knowledge of HTML and CSS. I don't know much about CSS so I went to its tutorial and saw that it requires a knowledge of HTML/XHTML. Phew!!!

All kidding aside, I learned a great deal about XML and other subjects this week. Now comes the hard part of turning my knowledge into action and hoping for the best.

Unit 6

This week I got the great pleasure of brushing up on HTML. For those of you laypeople... that stands for HyperText Markup Language and it's a completely foreign language to most people. The main website I used to delve back into the depths of HTML was http://www.w3schools.com/html/default.asp. The HTML5 tutorial at w3Schools.com was very easy to use and took me step by step through the varied aspects of the language including headings, paragraphs, formatting, links, etc. I really liked the tutorial and learned a lot from it. The second website I tried to use was http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/tut but the link didn't work. I took off the /tut portion and it took me to the Maricopa Center for Learning and Instruction's website but I couldn't find any links for an HTML tutorial. I decided to just trudge forward with my somewhat limited experience and attempt my new webpage.

Unfortunately my webpage making experience was very stressful. The writing of the webpage itself was rather easy with the example from the lesson and the tutorial help. The frustrating part came when I could not figure out what I was doing wrong in uploading my webpage to WinSCP. I thought I followed all of the steps for downloading both it and PuTTY. I went over and over the directions but I wasn't seeing the same things on my computer screen. After hours of wanting to scream and pull my hair out I finally figured out how to get it to work. Hallelujah!! Now I have the fruit of my labors at www.u.arizona.edu/~saf1/DigIn/ for all to peruse. Not bad for a hard day's work if I say so myself.

Unit 5

The networked environment was the topic of the week for class. There was a ton of reading to do for this topic which involved reading the lecture once and then going back over it to click on all the hyperlinks. And there were quite a few...

Out of the many formats the professor provided us with, including articles, podcasts, YouTube videos, etc., I prefer the interactive ones. Well, a YouTube video isn't exactly interactive but it has visual and acoustic elements unlike a static article that is hard to absorb sometimes. I learn more from the videos and podcasts where I hear someone else relaying the information to me. That is what I do in effect when I read for class. I have to read out loud to myself and hence it makes finishing a long article quite a chore. Having a mixture of these different forms of presentation is good for me though. It takes me out of my comfort zone, so to speak, and requires me to explore new ways of learning.