Dreamweaver

This week I struggle with Dreamweaver attempting to create a simple web page and find I am a bicycle rider suddenly thrust behind the wheel of a Ferrari!

University of Arizona's Computer Based Testing (UACBT), I find, has 9.5 hours of Adobe Dreamweaver CS4 tutorials and, despite the simple results you can see here, I employ many tips from this series but find that I often fall back on the simple tips and the free Fugu that my instructor gives us as a baseline. For instance, one does not need Fugu when using Dreamweaver if one knows how to use the sFTP included in the software. I, however, fall back on the familiar and use Fugu after preparing my page in Dreamweaver, like driving your Ferrari to the store and taking a bike the last few streets!

Cat Naps and Learning

I include a photo with this post of my favorite study method: the cat nap. This week I studied networking and the networked environment of today's computer users. This post concerns learning materials as they relate to my own personal learning style.

Once, when I studied cancer and issues of epidemiology especially as related to questions of the law and liability, I had an epiphany about education, my own and others more generally.

Cancer is difficult to litigate when one seeks the cause of the cancer in the victim. Cancer's causation is multiple and time sensitive. Exposure to cancer-causing agents occurs in different time increments, at different ages and sensitivities of the victims, and different carcinogenic agents interact and produce unclear causation when lawyers seek to claim compensation for their clients. Cancer, to top it all off, is not so much a disease as a syndrome, a breakdown of normal body function that manifests suddenly after years of erosion within the body's cellular function. What is the cause of cancer? Multiple exposures to a multiplicity of carcinogens over extended periods of time and over various stages of human development.

Although a macabre analogy, this realization concerning cancer dovetailed perfectly with my conception of my own learning style. I do not know how I learn exactly. I expose myself to reading, video, audio, and write and speak in the form of notes and assignments. Some of these methods work better or worse at various times, and some do not seem to take or even seem a complete waste of time. However, I find the recall even of lessons badly learned can be astonishing and amazing. I catch education the way some people catch cancer, through multiple exposure to a variety of materials at different times of mood and day. This week I admit to barely understanding many of the larger issues connected with networking and this is my first exposure to an in-depth discussion of the topic. I plowed slowly through the readings and videos this week and wondered often if anything was sinking in. After a couple of cat naps in the summer heat of Tucson, I find I am ready to continue my exposure and look for signs of positive results although the real revelations are probably some years away.

Groups and Users

This week found me adding and manipulating Groups and Users in both my Ubuntu Linux distro that I have installed on my VM software on my Mac and on a remote desktop running at the University of Arizona where our class practices in what is dubbed the "Digital Sandbox." I used the CLI and Webmin on my Ubuntu server and was meant to compare and contrast the experience of the CLI versus the GUI. I found them both kind of fun, honestly, which is great as one of the primary goals for me of studying technology is to overcome apprehension and needless worry concerning all things electrical.

I also used a GUI on the remote desktop for the first time which was most interesting as I have only ever used the CLI on the remote desktop. Many of my fellow students have complained of the lag in the response in the remote connection and I think this (although it has had little impact on my own experience so far) exacerbated in the GUI. Perhaps there is a lesson in this? Is the CLI more responsive than a mouse-centric interface like a GUI over remote connections? I would have to say yes at this point which makes me again say with surprise that I am beginning to prefer the CLI in some situations. Especially situations that I can see myself working in, or just having fun in, in the future.

On another note, study of Linux has had some unexpected collateral benefits for this WordPress dog! After abandoning my WordPress blog about six months ago because I could not get a photo to upload, I again reengaged the problem the other day for no apparent reason. Immediately upon investigating the situation, I now realized that I understood much more about WordPress than I used to. I now understood, for example, what it really means that WordPress is open source for the first time. I went to help forums for help. I recognized, for the first time, a by now not wholly unfamiliar structure of directory name that had those familiar slash marks. And, last but not at all least, I have grown much more bold when it comes to seeking support (especially when you often have already paid for it!). So, after learning many great things and having quite a few a-ha moments, I got my blog just where I want it thanks to the support personnel at my friendly neighborhood web-hosting service. People this old dog was paying for the past three years and had never once called upon for help! Technology's bark is the shout of a dog yelling "Hello, friend!" and there isn't usually a bite, just like real dogs.

Becoming Larval

I enter my Ubuntu Linux system this week to configure the system using the text editor. I follow the assignment without always comprehending every input but with a growing awareness of what an operating system is and what configuring one means, it’s like changing the settings on an Atari or an iPhone. Only there’s this CLI instead of the GUI to which we’ve all grown accustomed, the mouse has been killed by the cat and the text editor is modal. (The one question I cannot answer correctly on this week’s quiz is in regards to which text editors are modal. Any help?). All my system configuring goes smoothly and, although I am new to the CLI and OS configuration at this level, I am reminded of all the devices that I have had to install or build in my life and I just follow the instructions and everything seems to work well.

I learn a number of funny terms this week such as the verb “to glark,” which means to learn something from context. And I learn from personal experience that a debbie can skip the newbie stage, proceed straight to larval hacker, and then decide by the length of facial and or other hair that one has reached the stage of hacker pure and simple. I’ve probably got at least ten years to go.

B.A.W.
B.A.T.

When is a remote desktop like a cat in the snow?

Accessing the remote Linux desktop this week for the first time I feel a sense of accomplishment as I employ a Virtual Network Computing application through a Virtual Private Network and begin exploring the command line interface. I do not spend much time on the remote desktop unfortunately as I run into problems with adjusting my screen resolution and find myself at the 24 computer support center on the University of Arizona campus at a very late hour. I will not alter my screen resolution through this portal for the rest of this semester.

The tutorials as created and provided by Bruce Fulton are lucid and very helpful in regards to setting up and connecting to the remote desktop. I also continue watching this week Arthur Griffith’s “Introduction to Linux” series and, while note-taking is advised, I find it hard to know just what is or is not noteworthy. As I am new to the CLI (command line interface), I am still swimming in information and just trying to keep mouth and nostrils pointed towards the air. Griffith is wonderful but for a newbie this stuff flies by and I find that I have to watch his lectures over and over until osmosis occurs.

I find that I am still searching for a sense of overall meaningfulness in what all these commands mean or lead to, and I admit to feeling a bit lost in Linux this week. I am hoping that more experience of the CLI on the remote desktop enables me to get the kind of reactions one expects from learning a new language, namely, a response like laughter or tears. I wait to make my audience respond significantly in this new language, even if the audience is a machine.

B.A.W.
B.A.T.