My practice system is up and running! I'm almost ashamed to say that it went like butter (pronounced "leyk buttah"). I think I could use a few more problems to build my character (and now that I've said it out loud, I bet I'll have them. The gremlins are always listening).
UbuntuServuntu is a Dell Dimension 2400, nearly stock with the exception of an added CDR/DVD drive and 1 Gb of RAM. I've had it for years, and under Windows XP it was like molasses. Any interruption of its thought process in the first 5 minutes after booting caused it to flatten out its ears and drag its mule feet. I did have it set up to dual boot back in the Edgy Eft days of Ubuntu, but alas, I only really needed it for those little things you can only do in Windows. Now I've once again been justified in my general policy of never throwing anything away.
The Dell's a computer that's given me a lot of cussin' practice over the years, but it took to Lucid Lynx like it was born for it. Oh dear, did I just say that out loud?
6.30.2010
HTMLovin'
My first attempt to learn HTML came about four years ago, when I decided I was born to blog (ha!). Being a hands-on type with no real sense of my own limitations, I not only decided to blog, I decided to get my own domain name, set up hosting, code my own front page, and do my own Wordpress installation; a week and a LOT of googling later (with a little help from Laughing Squid tech support) I had accomplished my goal. I then proceeded to update on a geometrically decreasing curve, crashing and burning entirely about a year later. Oh well (see Blog Fail).
I wrote that first page using only online resources, including w3schools, Dave Raggett's "Getting Started with HTML, and HTML.net. These three were my staples, but I'm not proud - I'll use any resource I can find, and I'm pretty sure I don't write anything that could be termed well-formed code. If you were to navigate to that primitive page (which I am not linking, you'll notice), you might find it to be eerily similar to the current state of my SIRLS site. I love that backhoe.
A couple of years after the blog experiment, my partner and I wrote a book, and suddenly we needed a website. Cactus Camping was born, in a flurry of ill-considered frames. I wish I could take credit for its current appearance, but my co-author got tired of waiting for me to fix it and took a web design class through ASU. My only consolation is that it's still under construction, too, and my frame-riddled version worked reliably under IE (so there).
I wrote that first page using only online resources, including w3schools, Dave Raggett's "Getting Started with HTML, and HTML.net. These three were my staples, but I'm not proud - I'll use any resource I can find, and I'm pretty sure I don't write anything that could be termed well-formed code. If you were to navigate to that primitive page (which I am not linking, you'll notice), you might find it to be eerily similar to the current state of my SIRLS site. I love that backhoe.
A couple of years after the blog experiment, my partner and I wrote a book, and suddenly we needed a website. Cactus Camping was born, in a flurry of ill-considered frames. I wish I could take credit for its current appearance, but my co-author got tired of waiting for me to fix it and took a web design class through ASU. My only consolation is that it's still under construction, too, and my frame-riddled version worked reliably under IE (so there).
6.21.2010
Matters of style
This is the part where I wonder if I'm really a creature of the modern world. I really don't like video tutorials. I should probably amend that - I really don't like video tutorials over 5 minutes in length; I mildly dislike shorter ones. (On a side note, I absolutely despise manuals in video form. I don't want to watch the pretty pictures when I'm troubleshooting.) I am glad to have the UACBT resource (note that many of the segments are under 5 min. Yes.), but in general I prefer to read my way through tutorial material at my own pace, and I'm enjoying working my way through Prof. Fulton's assignments.
This may have to do with the fact that I learn much more effectively when I'm doing. Somehow, the attentional shift between reading and doing is not as disruptive for me as between watching and doing.
In the search for condensed knowledge to read, Wikipedia has been a close companion for a long time now. I understand the reservations many have about it as a source, but for brief summations of technical subjects, generally with helpful links, it's a winner.
This was our time to read about learning styles, but I'll have to fess up that the first thing I found was a podcast built around the contention that 'learning styles', at least as they're bandied about in education, are a load of codswallop.
I do think that individuals tend to favor certain interactions with the world with more attention and thought than others, but I won't even try to guess as to whether this is learned or innate. My department has, in fact, built a multi-year research project around the idea that kinematic learning is superior to butt-in-seat-eyes-front for many K-12 students; preliminary assessments seem to bear this out. The project also seems to be accumulating evidence that the right learning style for any situation is affected by a complex combination of individual preference, content, and environmental context, and may vary for each individual from circumstance to circumstance - which isn't going to take well to tidy categorization.
I think, if the term 'learning style' is to have any useful meaning, it can only be determined by an individual during the learning experience, and is largely a matter of 'know thyself'.
P.S. I have been reading a rather neat book from the Pragmatic Programmers called Thinking and Learning - it's worth a perusal.
This late, late post has been back-dated to keep things in order.
This may have to do with the fact that I learn much more effectively when I'm doing. Somehow, the attentional shift between reading and doing is not as disruptive for me as between watching and doing.
In the search for condensed knowledge to read, Wikipedia has been a close companion for a long time now. I understand the reservations many have about it as a source, but for brief summations of technical subjects, generally with helpful links, it's a winner.
This was our time to read about learning styles, but I'll have to fess up that the first thing I found was a podcast built around the contention that 'learning styles', at least as they're bandied about in education, are a load of codswallop.
I do think that individuals tend to favor certain interactions with the world with more attention and thought than others, but I won't even try to guess as to whether this is learned or innate. My department has, in fact, built a multi-year research project around the idea that kinematic learning is superior to butt-in-seat-eyes-front for many K-12 students; preliminary assessments seem to bear this out. The project also seems to be accumulating evidence that the right learning style for any situation is affected by a complex combination of individual preference, content, and environmental context, and may vary for each individual from circumstance to circumstance - which isn't going to take well to tidy categorization.
I think, if the term 'learning style' is to have any useful meaning, it can only be determined by an individual during the learning experience, and is largely a matter of 'know thyself'.
P.S. I have been reading a rather neat book from the Pragmatic Programmers called Thinking and Learning - it's worth a perusal.
This late, late post has been back-dated to keep things in order.
6.17.2010
Colonel Panic comes to visit...
...but at least he didn't bring his adjutant, Major Issue.
For those of us working with VMWare on MacBooks, a lesson learned:
My laptop is my primary machine at work as well as at home, so I rarely shut it down. It goes for weeks at a time, sleeping and waking several times a day. I didn't think twice about sleeping it with VMWare open and the virtual machine suspended, until last night. When I opened the lid at home, a smooth translucent gray shade dropped down over my desktop, and this soothing message appeared:
A first for me in OS X!
Step one, as always, was to Google Up (on another machine). That's how I discovered that this was Apple's civilized way of presenting a kernel panic, which I'd only seen in its raw Linux command line form. Most of the links I found referred to RAM problems, but my configuration's been stable for a long time, so I was ready to look for a different culprit. I rebooted and browsed my way through Apple's ample crash reporting dialogs. Choosing "More Details" took me eventually to the right log file in Console, and there were VMWare's footprints, all over the house.
So, short story long, I'm shutting the virtual machine down and closing VMWare before sleeping now, and the Colonel seems to have moved on.
For those of us working with VMWare on MacBooks, a lesson learned:
My laptop is my primary machine at work as well as at home, so I rarely shut it down. It goes for weeks at a time, sleeping and waking several times a day. I didn't think twice about sleeping it with VMWare open and the virtual machine suspended, until last night. When I opened the lid at home, a smooth translucent gray shade dropped down over my desktop, and this soothing message appeared:
A first for me in OS X!
Step one, as always, was to Google Up (on another machine). That's how I discovered that this was Apple's civilized way of presenting a kernel panic, which I'd only seen in its raw Linux command line form. Most of the links I found referred to RAM problems, but my configuration's been stable for a long time, so I was ready to look for a different culprit. I rebooted and browsed my way through Apple's ample crash reporting dialogs. Choosing "More Details" took me eventually to the right log file in Console, and there were VMWare's footprints, all over the house.
So, short story long, I'm shutting the virtual machine down and closing VMWare before sleeping now, and the Colonel seems to have moved on.
6.09.2010
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