Progress!!

OK, great news.

I got back the questionnaire from the client and most things were answered! (link to document in the list on the right hand side of this page) .

Very exciting. I now feel I have some direction to put a wireframe together for the planned site and some direction re what kinds of technologies/codes I should be investigating... A good thing I have an extra week to get in my final version of the learning proposal.

One step forward...

I've had a challenging week.

I'm consciously incompetent.

I'm not having a go at myself, I think that's just the stage I'm at this semester, based on this learning model
http://changingminds.org/explanations/learning/consciousness_competence.htm

"As a conscious incompetent, you realize that you are not as expert as perhaps you thought you were or thought you could be. The transition to this state from being unconsciously incompetent can be a shocking and sudden realization, for example when you meet others who are clearly more competent than you, or when a friend holds up a metaphorical mirror to your real ability. You can also exist in this state for a long time, depending on factors such as your determination to learn and the real extent to which you accept your incompetence. "

I am counting on practice and sheer determination to get me to the next step...

So, in an attempt not to allow my underwhelming skill overwhelm me, I'm just taking things one step at a time (and for the sake of those around me, trying not to swear so much :-)

Now that I have established what (broadly) I will build for my final project, it's time to nut out some details. With this in mind, I've put together a questionnaire for my client to fill out, in order to give me some guidance re building her a site she will actually find useful (it might also give me an idea re exactly what I should look into learning re coding etc). I used this one on Web Redesign 2.0: workflow that works as a base and adapted it with my client and her business in mind
http://www.web-redesign.com/downloads/03_client-survey.pdf

I emailed that off today and gave her a week to fill it in (I figure the long weekend might work in my favour ie she might actually have some time to look at answering everything) (fingers crossed!). I'll upload it to the MIM server (when I get to a non-super firewalled PC) for your perusal.

In the mean time, back to CSS on W3 schools...

I don't like Mondays...

In brief...

Started researching Personal Trainer websites. Not many sole personal trainers on the web, most are companies/groups. Not sure if I'll be able to make my project idea complicated enough...we'll see.

Got the tick from W3 Schools for XHTML, now on to CSS...

Suffering from serious lack of sleep...very much looking forward to the long weekend!

Time's just flying...

How did a whole week just disappear??

Our last class was really useful, a good quick overview of XHTML, CSS and Javascript. I like the class pracs - it's great to be able to play with these new 'toys'/codes with other people around to answer all of my silly questions...

I had a quick chat with my 'client' for the end of term project - she's fine to go ahead with me building her a site! She seems pretty web-illiterate, and isn't even sure what sorts of things she might want on there, so the next plan for me is to check out what other personal trainers are putting on their sites, etc. Then I'll write up a quick brief for her, see if she has any feedback and start really deciding what I'll populate it with. I'm hoping I'll think of enough things to put my learnings into practice...I'd prefer to do one large project than two smaller ones...

Sorted...

Cyberduck saved the day...

Got the draft learning proposal up loaded. Follow the link in the right if you want to check it out...

I'm having a challenging moment...

OK, I've got my draft learning proposal in the XHTML template. It's presentable, but not at all glamorous - a work in progress!

I thought I'd got the hard stuff out of the way, but I've hit a stumbling block. It seems that my work pc has strict parents (an annoying firewall) and isn't allowed to swap files with strange servers at uni...will have to see if there's a way around this (without having to stop by campus on the way home tonight to upload it)

Anyway, I just noticed when I went back over the class materials from last week that I was supposed to reflection on what we'd covered. Better late than never...

I thought it it was a good starter lecture, covering the basics re how the internet worked. I thought the little movie was corny, but was useful as I finally got the whole firewall thing (and could actually visualise my problems this morning...). I've pinged and been pinged before but had no idea why or what i was actually doing. Nor did I understand what the four sections of an IP address represented. I now feel enlightened...

Indecision...

OK, at this point I'm toying with two ideas for a project.

1. A pilates teacher at my gym has just taken time out of her nursing career to launch her own personal training business. She has spent money on developing a great logo and business cards etc, but I noticed she hasn't set up a website. Next time I see her, I'll have a chat with her and see if she minds me turning her into a uni project...
2. Set up my own hub website. I'd like a central website that can showcase my online/electronic portfolio to use when I start applying for MM jobs, as well as a place I might be able to sell my jewellery from. Not sure how complicated the whole e-com thing will be to set up, might need to chat to someone about this in class next week.

I don't know which one I will go for at this stage. The first one might not be complicated enough (depending on what exactly my 'customer' will want her website to do, it could just end up being a basic web-ad). The second one could either be too complicated and large scale, or could suffer from not actually having enough content at this point (read: there's nothing in my portfolio yet!). Might see where discussions lead before developing either idea (or both!)

Going back over ancient ground...

Once upon a time, I used to have a couple of blogs that I'd built from scratch using HMTL. They weren't anything to look at, but I was still very proud of my (brief, amateur) webmistress status.

The other day I decided to start learning more about at least one of the new languages we will be looking at in DMT at www.w3schools.com. I figured XHTML would be a good place to start, being under the impression that I knew HTML. Just for a laugh, I thought I might quickly do the HTML test that they had a link to...and got back a mark of 60%!! And a recommendation to 'Study harder'!! Excellent...not! As it turns out, the version of HTML that I used to play with was not the current version (4.01) and on top of that, it had been a while since I'd used it... *sigh* back to square 1, HTML all over again (at least refreshing is easier than learning from scratch).

This being said, I was pleasantly suprised to find myself OK about having to submit our first project in XHTML - especially as we were given the template! Once I saw it up on the screen, and could basically follow it, I breathed a deep sigh of relief. If we'd been asked to write it from scratch at this point, it would have been a different story altogether...

Got to start somewhere...

I tried to start this a number of times in the past week, but kept stalling. I wanted to start off with a really cool looking site, with a really profound first post. But I know at this point in my MM career, I simply can't do what it is I want to do - yet! So I decided it's all about the journey blah blah blah, and I have to start somewhere, and why not start off with what I am capable now (i.e. something less than ideal) so I can be really proud of myself at the end of this subject when I can compare the finished product with what I started out with? So welcome to Planet J@net...version 1.0