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.
Wednesday, June 26, 2013
Tuesday, June 18, 2013
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.
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.
Tuesday, June 11, 2013
Unit 4
Well after a frustrating time with the Linux tutorials last week, I can finally say that I think I'm getting a handle on things. I even went back to the .bashrc configuration and redid the exercise after going back to a previous snapshot. That worked perfectly!! Whatever I screwed up in the first place was all fresh and new with the snapshot so I was able to FOLLOW DIRECTIONS and try again. And yes, following the directions EXACTLY is the only way to have Linux work for you. I have learned this the hard way so far. But hindsight is 20/20.
This week was pretty smooth sailing during the three exercises for adding a user/group. The Command Line Interface (CLI) option was the easiest by far. Just type in what you want and there you have it. The Gnome desktop way of adding a user required a little more effort... I mean I had to watch an almost 10 min YouTube video explaining how to do it. ;) adding a user through Webmin was pretty cool, although it required a few prerequisite steps like locating the computer's IP address from the VM server first. Even my close friend who is a Linux guru had never used Webmin so I feel pretty cool right about now. ;)
When I tried to access the new users on the desktop edition everything was peachy keen but I had some frustration when I tried to login on the server edition. My first new user worked fine and then my second user was denied. I tried changing the capitalization and the password in case I typed it wrong (or wrote it down wrong). I was finally able to go in as my regular user self and see that even though all my other new users had Capital letters at the the start of their user name this one particular user didn't. It's kind of funny because I named my new users after the pets in my household and this particular cat I named this problem user after is a very problematic cat! LOL
I can certainly see some similarities between computer programs and persnickety cats... each must be approached in its own way and that is not always the way one thinks is right. Computer issues mostly stem from inept humans... now where did cats figure into this? Maybe it's a Schrodinger's Box kind of metaphor. Computer programs and cats are both paradoxes... at least the majority of the time in my world. Sorry about the tangent.
This week was pretty smooth sailing during the three exercises for adding a user/group. The Command Line Interface (CLI) option was the easiest by far. Just type in what you want and there you have it. The Gnome desktop way of adding a user required a little more effort... I mean I had to watch an almost 10 min YouTube video explaining how to do it. ;) adding a user through Webmin was pretty cool, although it required a few prerequisite steps like locating the computer's IP address from the VM server first. Even my close friend who is a Linux guru had never used Webmin so I feel pretty cool right about now. ;)
When I tried to access the new users on the desktop edition everything was peachy keen but I had some frustration when I tried to login on the server edition. My first new user worked fine and then my second user was denied. I tried changing the capitalization and the password in case I typed it wrong (or wrote it down wrong). I was finally able to go in as my regular user self and see that even though all my other new users had Capital letters at the the start of their user name this one particular user didn't. It's kind of funny because I named my new users after the pets in my household and this particular cat I named this problem user after is a very problematic cat! LOL
I can certainly see some similarities between computer programs and persnickety cats... each must be approached in its own way and that is not always the way one thinks is right. Computer issues mostly stem from inept humans... now where did cats figure into this? Maybe it's a Schrodinger's Box kind of metaphor. Computer programs and cats are both paradoxes... at least the majority of the time in my world. Sorry about the tangent.
Wednesday, June 5, 2013
Unit 3
Wow... this week was a doozy! The Linux tutorials were very time consuming for me. Maybe because I can be quite a perfectionist and I want to get everything just right. The VIM tutorial had 7 lessons and I went through each one and repeated the directions and practiced the applicable commands as I went along. I also took rather voracious notes so that I would have them for future reference. So far I have come to realize that dealing with Linux is going to require a LOT of reference materials.
I never completed the .bashrc configuration tutorial correctly. I tried over and over again. I added lines, spaces, hash tags, etc. to try and get it to work... all to no avail. The final tutorial assigned for this week was easy for me. Configuring the etc/apt/sources.list was a walk in the park compared to the .bashrc exercise for some mysterious reason... go figure. I was only following directions. Maybe the problem lies in the fact that I was used to VIM and was trying to use those commands in nano. I also tried the .bashrc configuration using VIM, or so I thought, and I still couldn't get it to function properly. Ah well, the joys of learning something new. All this Linux information, between the readings and tutorials, is exactly like learning a foreign language. Persistence, practice, and patience will be required if I want to succeed in the end.
I never completed the .bashrc configuration tutorial correctly. I tried over and over again. I added lines, spaces, hash tags, etc. to try and get it to work... all to no avail. The final tutorial assigned for this week was easy for me. Configuring the etc/apt/sources.list was a walk in the park compared to the .bashrc exercise for some mysterious reason... go figure. I was only following directions. Maybe the problem lies in the fact that I was used to VIM and was trying to use those commands in nano. I also tried the .bashrc configuration using VIM, or so I thought, and I still couldn't get it to function properly. Ah well, the joys of learning something new. All this Linux information, between the readings and tutorials, is exactly like learning a foreign language. Persistence, practice, and patience will be required if I want to succeed in the end.
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