Learning HTML

This week we were asked to talk about how we went about learning HTML and the resources we used.

I probably began learning html around 2001 or 2002 which compared to many people I know was late in the game, but my concentration prior to that only required I view web pages, not write them.

My first resource was my coworker and onetime supervisor Kirk. He gave me a lot of initial pointers and basically said to just look at other web pages and see what they were doing and try to avoid using "flashing" text. I also used the W3 school to get the basics and details down. I still use the school today. In fact, I had gotten so use to Dreamweaver and bouncing back and forth between the code and the WYSIWYG editor that I had to double check hand coding basic things.

Some of the more intermediate or advanced areas I looked at were table cells attributes like padding and alignment. I also looked into CSS which I use regularly in my work related dealings but not from scratch, so at this point I have not integrated a stylesheet into my class webpage. Since I'm coding just one or two pages (at this point) I'm not saving much time but if my page were to grow or become more complex I would need to invest the time into a seperate or inline style sheet to better handle the look of the page.

I really wanted to just hand make my class page without the aid of any GUI interfaces. For example Word (and products like it) is one of the worst ways to build a page as it introduces a lot of span tags and back end code you are not aware of and don't need. Some of those interfaces also have a tendancy to leave empty tags hanging around when you cut or delete content.

On an additional milestone I finally installed my practice system and eveything went well. I was able to ping by host name and assign static IPs to both my practice and VM servers. I was even able to see the webpages via m iPod which is connected to the network wirelessly. Now if I can continue to remember all the steps involved I'll be very impressed with myself. The only hangup I had was when I was pinging my practice system and got "host down." I had forgotten to plug in the ethernet cord.

Reflecting on Learning - course presentation materials for our Networking Unit.

This week in my Applied Technology course we had a variety of learning materials to work with including the standard lecture document, a chapter out of the Linux Administration Handbook, some videos and other links to technical materials.

First we had the course lecture. I had to read this one at least twice to grasp all the details and make sure I understood where Professor Fulton was coming from. That paid off, because as I went throughout the related/suggest links and readings everything came together and was reinforced.

Taking a look at the Linux Administration Handbook's chapter 12 (2nd Edition) on Networking much of the professors lectures were repeated but from a slightly different narrative and as usual full of details. Although the book says its not necessarily designed for beginners, I disagree, its a must have. The historical references and figures were a great compliment to the lecture materials. The footnotes also turned out to be just as important as the paragraph materials, particularly in the section dealing with the "Request For Comments" documentations.

The Wikipedia links were invaluable for their brief synopsis and their structure allows you to skim through if you choose and hit the highlights. Also, being able to drill down through subsequent term links helps build a better understanding of the subjects we're investigating.

We were also asked to watch a few videos about networking. TCP/IP - An Animated Discussion was a basic analogy of how the protocol works. Even though it looked like it was created in Microsoft Paint I found it effective and even entertaining for a subject that had me dose a bit in the Nemeth book. Heavy in humor and analogy the video can be watched several times and goes into the alphabet soup of Internet protocols and systems. The video reminded me of some old Annenburg educational videos I use to like watching in high school, so I found it very easy to watch and retain.

A far more surreal and even effective video was Warriors of the Net. Somehow the creators of the videos were actually able to personify things like "The Ping of Death" and "The Router Switch." This is a highly produced, animated video that takes a look at what happens when you click on a link and request a service (in this case the very video) from a web page. Perhaps seeing Tron as a kid helped me connect with the presentation. Either way, it really drove home the efficiency of information transmission and how "errors" can happen.

I consider myself a visual on hands (Active) learner so the activities we were given are always the most effective. The videos reinforce the readings and the readings reinforce the lectures and provide the details and history we need to move forward. But the complexity of what we are working with in many ways brings out my more "reflective" half as well. At times this is frustrating because I do feel like I'm getting behind (when 3 days after I've started a section and I'm still reading) but I also realize that if I don't do the preliminary work the rest is meaningless. Perhaps it's just getting me back to the way I learned years ago with flash cards and memorization over simple application and experimentation.

This multi-teared way of learning is interactive, interesting and well rounded. I also find the quizzes very helpful as they provide a sort of "self-diagnostics" on what we are learning and how we are interpreting the information. There were a couple of questions that I had to go back over and rethink to realize I was oversimplifying some of the concepts. I hope the rest of the course is structured like this.

Unit 4 Class Assignment: Adding Users and Groups

For the first time I had almost no problems running through our course exercises. Unit 4 deals largely with permissions and adding users and groups. Our main focus was learning how to add a user and group via the command line and then comparing that with a couple of GUI management tools.

To aid myself in working in the shell, and for future reference, I began writing the basic commands and articles on post it notes and putting them around my desk for easy reference. I used a simple name I could remember for the second user and using the various "sudo" commands as directed was able to add the new user, who was automatically added to a group, and then verify that all went well.

Next we used the Gnome Desktop Utility and being a GUI it not only went well it not only was very intuitive but allowed me to add additional information like contact phone number and address. That was a feature I didn't notice right away with the other adduser utilities. Also Gnome is a feature within the Ubuntu desktop. Opening it was a simple as going to the drop down menus and selecting the application.

Finally we used Webmin and of the three it was probably the easiest to use for actually adding users. The installation was a little more complex as we had to run some aptitude commands to install and configure it. Again I had no problems but had I made one typo or overlooked something I probably would have had different results. Webmin has a very friendly user interface but lacks the advantage of being fully integrated into the desktop (like Gnome) or as simply a part of the system like like the command line.

Altogether I really liked all three ways to add users and if I had to choose would probably use Webmin. However, one thing I wonder about is if you didn't just stick with one utility to add users and groups what issues would you have. Would one utility wipe out the functionality of a user that was created with a different utility if their formatting does not makes sense to each other.

Unit 3 Class Assignment: Text editors a hands-on experience

This week our class got a real hands-on trial working in the Linux terminal. To be honest I felt a bit lost at first. I've certainly had to unlearn what I have learned, step back and remember the good old days prior to having the graphic user interface crutch. I've also had to get use to not using a mouse to do almost everything. This was a first scary and wonderful step (at least for me) in to a world of much more control and responsibility.

The readings were not as numerous as before but they were still thick in detail and loaded with info. I wish we actually had an additional week just to go back and re-read everything from the past 3 weeks. Some of the information kind of blends together and when your dealing with commands you've got to keep them straight. Fortunately our instructions and tutorials are very clear and once I familiarized I was ready to go.

There were a number of commands we were asked to run this time around including downloading files ($ sudo aptitude install vim-runtime) which worked great, running programs (vimtutor) which didn't work so well but later after some guidance I was able to get a similar one to work (vim tutor), and we even did some configuring via nano where we made .bashrc alias the "ls" command so it would always show hidden files. That worked great.

Additionally I ran some connectivity tests by using a simple ping command and got the IP address of our VM server (ifconfig).

I found the VIM text editor to be fairly easy to work with and quick to understand. Although I had some technical issues at first, I was able to follow along and complete all of the tasks. The main hurdle was just realizing I was not in the actual command line anymore. The VIM commands make a lot of sense and I agreed with the the tutorials suggestion of using the H-L keys to navigate the screen. Once you get that down you actually can zip around quite quickly.

We were also asked to think about how we have done configurations in the past on our computers compared to configuring Linux files this week. I've almost entirely worked on a Mac at home so I've never really "configured" it at least in the way we did via the nano and vi text editors in Linux. So I can't say this is different than what I have done before since it really feels like a whole new ball game. But perhaps I've been "configuring" all along and just didn't realize it.

I certainly have created/changed folders (or directories) and files in the past by right-click selecting them and using key commands to create folders via the Mac Finder which is almost identical in function to a Windows Explorer window. I have also downloaded clients in the past to do batch name changes. This seems like something that I would be able to do just as well if I knew how in a shell. I just have to get those commands down.

Tutorials!

There were three main tutorials for us to go through in our Unit 2 section of class. Two pretty much involved understanding Linux and its history while the third was  a series of YouTube videos made by Professor Fulton on installing the Ubuntu server and (optional) desktop in VMWare.  

I already mentioned Arthur Griffith’s Introduction to Linux  in my prior post.  The next tutorial was a standard text based web page "Learning the Shell" which I printed out.  Using it as a guide I followed the suggestions for working within the shell (command line interface) of the desktop.  It was pretty thorough and I got a lot out of it even though I did not have and example to go by outside of the basic descriptions on the page.  The later sections were of less help however as they were more about listing commands and arguments version actually apply each set. I think the best way to learn anything is through practice and exercises. Talking about something doesn't get the applied knowledge necessary for conquering any skill set.  I need to know why and how to use terms, not just a list with basic definitions.

The installation tutorials were the most concrete and easiest to follow. I had a little concern since my version of VMWare fusion was a tad bit different than the one in the videos but everything ended up quite well.  Being able to pause and rewind to go over tricky spots proved extremely helpful.

There were other tutorials as well, but again they were mostly lists and or general refernce.  Although I have bookmarked them and will assuredly return for review and reference, the tutorials with hands-on lessons were the most effective.