Saturday, December 6, 2008

Assignment 7 - about 12/03/08

Class date: 12/03/08

Making this post later than usual because I spaced out on Wednesday. Our teacher was sick so he just checked our sites so far, and suggested I add a background colour to mine. I played around with the colours and ended up making my table colour the background colour, and the tables a slightly darker blue. It does look nicer this way.

Other than the colour change, my site is mostly finished. I'm planning to add some pictures of my main characters, (if I can spruce the sketches I have up), and still considering a page of random information that didn't make it into the novel. Except the novel is now in the editing stage, and those details could be contradicted any second, depending on my muses' moods. ;)

Anyway, I spent most of class helping Dolce code her site. I'm not very good at teaching people, but she said watching me helped her understand the coding rules better. So I feel like it was a productive class. ^^

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Assignment 6 - about 11/19/08

Class date: 11/19/08

Today in class we focused primarily on E-bay and how to use HTML to make a nice looking page for your goods for sale, because a well-organized page (with lots of pictures) has been proven to up bids. We did a quick run-through on listing and the importance of feedback, and the rest of the class was focused on the HTML. We also created a mock page for a storm sail for sale, using thumbnails of pictures.

Currently we are supposed to be working on our webpage projects. I have the basic structure of the tables on my site finished and will be adding the details in the coming days. I've decided to make my personal site be about the novel I wrote for this year's NaNoWriMo. I just recently finished it so all of the details are fresh in my mind. I have an index page, a page for characters, and a page for information about the novel and the stats, (wordcount per day, etc.) If a third page is needed I'll probably separate the info and stats into two separate pages, or possibly a "deleted idea" page for ideas that didn't make it into the story.

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Assignment 5 - about 11/12/08

Class date: 11/12/08

Class was cut short today so we hurried through the topics. In preparation for making our website, today we looked at tables and created a fake page using tables to organize the contents. The assignment is to finish the page we started in class. I'll be modifying it, mostly because I'm a cat person and our test page is about dogs. ;) The finished page will incorporate four pictures, a "bread-crumb trail" of links leading back to the fake home page we created last week, and various attributes of tables which we studied today. (align, colour, vertical alignment, borders, etc.)

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Assignment 4 - about 11/5/08

Class date: 11/5/08

Soon in class we'll be creating a small personal website, and today was the introduction to HTML and web building. We created directories and copied them to our zip drives, and made a practice home page. We also discussed the colour wheel and complementary colours, along with combinations that will make your eyes bleed and you should never ever use them.

The assignment was to discuss HTML and the such on our blogs. I'm familiar with the basics of HTML, as I took three years of web design in high school and the HTML class here. Coincidentally I just last week coded a new profile page for my personal blog, where I typed all the code manually, not using any WYSIWYG programs. I did use WYSIWYG programs, specifically FrontPage, for many school assignments, so there are plenty of tags I don't know. But I do know where to find them online and where to find instructions for how they are used, and consider myself a decent HTML coder once I settle into the rhythm. One of my new favourite tags is the table tag, because I like being able to restrict text to exactly where I want it. That particular tag came in very useful for organizing my profile. I haven't yet used it to its full ability, however.
I have never used CSS, so that will be new for me. In my web design class we used a tiny bit of Javascript, but I've never had to code it myself. So if we end up going into either of those in class, they will be unfamiliar territory.

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Assignment 3 - about 10/29/08 & downloading

Class date: 10/29/08

Today's topic was mostly about downloading open-source software and Bittorrent, a client that is safer than LimeWire for downloading files. (Though I dislike downloading ANY executable file I don't know for a fact is safe. Most of my downloading time is spent on music.) I've never used Bittorrent, so I poked around its Wikipedia page and found a link to Torrent Guides. (Amusingly, the Featured Site is The Pirate Bay, a public tracker we were warned against in class. xD) From there I found a link to Brian's BitTorrent FAQ and Guide, which turned out to be really informative. And I learned something new about courtesy in file sending with Bittorrent. Generally when I share files with someone, I zip the file for easier sending. With Bittorrent, you shouldn't turn the files into a .zip or .rar file. Instead you should put them in a directory and then leave them alone. Rar-ing or zipping the files just adds an extra step and irritates the downloader.

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Assignment 2 - about 10/22/08

Class date: 10/22/08

Since it was raining I left a little early to drive down to class. I made it as far as Bahia Honda before the rain got so bad that I couldn't even tell what side of the road I was (or wasn't) on, and had to pull over. It wasn't getting any better while I waited so I just decided to call and see if the class assignment today was something I could do at home. Since it was, I turned around and came back home. (Really, I was not up for getting in a head-on collision today. xD)

Today's class was, I believe, going to be a speaker coming in to discuss social networking, Facebook and MySpace in particular. The assignment was to make a Facebook page (thankfully FB, since MySpace irritates the heck out of me with its horrible interface and ridiculous drama-causing abilities) and post on it. I used to have a Facebook page but I never used it, so I just deactivated it and made a new one for the assignment. Here 'tis. Since I wasn't in class to get the full instructions, I just hope I did the project right!

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Assignment 1 - about 10/15/08

Class date: 10/15/08

Today we set up a Google blog to use to submit our class assignments, the first of which is to write a paragraph each week about what we did in class - hence the tag. We spent all of class today creating our blog, setting it up, and playing around with the features. Blogs are useful to know how to create and use, and can have many uses. This one is for a class. Other people use them to ramble about their lives, which I do on my LiveJournal. Other people create amusing blogs to give their visitors a laugh, such as Cake Wrecks, one of my favourite daily blogs to visit. I'm relatively familiar with blogs already. I have two different LJs, one for rambling and one for posting my stories, art, icons, AMVs, and generally anything artsy I feel like sharing. I have never had a Blogspot blog, however, so for the "something cool" I learned, I guess today that is simply learning my way around another of Google's features. Being able to use a new feature is always helpful - it might come in handy down the line.