Let's learn...relearn how to make websites

Recently I've been feeling that I'm growing out of touch with a lot of the newer coding standards out there. Last time I coded a website from scratch was 9 years ago! That's just crazy. So I'm all about making myself better and making myself more marketable. The fact my old website is so dated (gosh, 2006 is dated...) due to the fact I haven't updated it in such a long time, I had to do something. So why not relearn how to make a website again, but more learn the newer concepts out there. With HTML 5 being the standard, I've seen how HTML has changed since I last touched it. It's definitely a little bit easier and more straight forward, but CSS is still a beast.

So I was perusing the web and stumbled on Dash. It's a free site that has little projects to build websites and learn the basics of website design. It looked promising and well I started today. I love it. It's pretty basic right now but I do like the step by step nature, clear slides, and knowledge checkpoints where you can code and see the output of what you're doing all at the same time.

There are 5 projects and I'm looking forward to doing the rest!

If you're interested in trying it out, here's the site for Dash: https://dash.generalassemb.ly/

Here's the outcome of Project 1: https://dash.generalassemb.ly/caroleners/build-your-own-personal-website

After this, I feel like learning Adobe and Photoshop might be the next step.

Stanford Database Class: Part 2

Goodness me. The student in me just kicked in and could not stop until I got all answers correct and submitted. It took me two days of pure mind numbing logic to finish the homework for the Stanford database class. Relational algebra's fun to a point where the homework says "this is REALLY challenging, so be really proud of yourself if you get it right" or something like that. So I got all of the homework done, but it was really ugly. I really hope it doesn't get worse than this. Also I hope the midterm and final is unlimited in time because I don't know if I can think that fast to solve all the problems. Really hope that we get to use the validator and all the tools in homework.

Anyways, I haven't been able to do python in weeks, which bums me out but it's that or complete sanity. Work's been really heinous and on top of that is this class and other activities. I should learn how to limit my activities, but that wouldn't be me now would it?

I may or may not do something tonight as I am getting over a huge headache and stomach ache. I can only think how much longer I can keep up till my body completely doubles over. Health first right? RIGHT!

Hopefully will get around to doing a little bit in the next couple weeks.

Stanford Database Class

I decided to take the Introduction to Databases free online class thinking that it might be interesting considering I work with databases for the applications I support for work. I was close to just backing out since there seemed to be a lot of work for the class, but apparently there's no penalty at all for just not doing the work. So I decided, why not. If I have time, I'll do the work. If I don't, it won't hurt me, but it'll just skew the stats they're gathering for this experiment. Well it's Stanford also so I can skew all I want. Go Bears!

So I'm listening to the professor talk. She sounds a lot like Ellen Degeneres. I did the first XML quiz last night and it took me about half an hour since the questions were multiple choice and had symbols which were not covered by the lectures. I appreciate them wanting us to do a little more learning past the lectures, but man it was late at night and my brain power was at an absolute minimum. Today I decided to tackle the DTD writing and I might say, I like writing these things. Albeit that the XML file they were providing was so big and without having to do trial and error, I don't think anyone would've gotten it in one shot unless they really looked at the file closely. Good thing there was validation prior to submission.

Right now I'm learning about Relational Algebra and getting quite a kick out of it. Reminds me a lot of Chemistry. I find it oddly fun and interesting. I know I'm a nerd. I think this final quiz is going to be a breeze as I've passed all the mini quizzes in the lesson so far with flying colors.

If you have any time on your hands and want to learn about Databases, this class is at a comfortable pace so far and not too late to join of course: http://www.db-class.org/

You get a certificate of completion (if you complete it) at the end and a wealth of knowledge that will stay with you forever....ever....ever. :) Though for me it's more for making sure my brain's not deteriorating and that I'm possibly still smart in there.

Anyone else out there taking this class? What do you think?

Quiet Time

I know I didn't end up doing much coding this weekend except for the jumble game, but I needed a little break due to sickness. I've been a bit under the weather (though not completely visible) and I've been feeling exhausted the whole week regardless of the amount of sleep I get or try to at least. Today's going to be hectic with work and another Girl Geek Dinner (this time with Microsoft!). I do have Friday as a day off, so expect another post then! Until then...

Good night world.

Coding on a Saturday Morning

I woke up pretty early today. Not particularly sure why, but I just couldn't go back to sleep. So, I decided to get up, run the heater, put on a bad movie (in this case it's "Four Christmases"), and code that Word Jumble program. Here it is:

The book does a good job explaining all the bits and pieces of the code, but I'm not 100% sure if I would be able to write this myself. I think what I'll need to do next is do the challenge sections so that I can code without a cheat sheet!

Here's the first challenge this chapter. I needed to write a program that asked for a start number, end number, and a number to count by from the user and print it out.

Second challenge is to get a word from the user and spell it backwards:

What I found challenging regarding this was how to use range and splicing. I couldn't figure out which way to count and which to do and was getting frustrated in seeing my first attempt having the index being out of range. So what do I do? I decided, let's print out what the 'i' is and see what's going in. After that it was smooooooth sailing. Huzzah!

It's funny, through this experience so far, I got easily frustrated, but thought of a different way to figure out the issue and I would get it right. It's the whole programming and debugging process that's actually making this enjoyable. I guess that's why I liked correcting other people's code. Being able to debug and fix and figure out the issues folks were having and being able to help them out. Well there was the additional helping people aspect that made me feel accomplished? No that's not the word. It's rewarding.

Well that's it for this morning so far. I might do more and another post will come its way.

Hello world and good morning.

Loop de loop

As I'm feeling worse than I was yesterday, I decided. Let's keep going on Python. I know. I'm crazy. Right now the thought of not making Silicon Valley Code Camp is bumming me out since I'm getting sicker by the minute.

Anyways, onto for loops, strings, and tuples!

What I find pretty nice is that the for loop for Python is super flexible. You can use it to traverse a word and it would stop at the end of the word.  It also pretty simple and straight forward.

for <variable> in <range>:
   DO SOMETHING!

So you can do something like:

for letter in word:
   print letter

This will print each letter on a separate line of the word. So simple!

OMG you can do "in" statements too to do comparison. It's like heaven. Built in! So you can say

if "a" in phrase:
   print "There's a letter 'a' in your phrase."

I use "in" in SQL all the time. It's like crazy nuts. OH...well you can only use single characters for "in."

Indexing is a little weird. So say:

word = "Flouncy"
print word[-2] --> c

That's right you can do negative indexing. That's just weird to me as it's not standard to what I've learned. But what's crazier is slicing with negative and positive indices.

print word[-4:5] --> un

Get it?

Tuples is just a list, but unlike other languages, it's not restricted to be one type of list. So you can create tuples with integers, strings, candy, muffins, pie...I guess I'm hungry.

I'm actually super sleepy, so I'll have to code this chapter's work another day. Good night world.

God Speed Steve Jobs

Yesterday, I drove home and was getting ready for the Journey & Foreigner concert when I get a voice message from my gal pal. She's like, "I just heard Marcus D say that Steve Jobs is dead." I was standing in front of my mirror putting on concealer as I heard this message. It was shocking. Part of me thought, it can't be. He JUST left his position as CEO from Apple. But I guess his cancer was much worse than we had thought. I bet Steve was a very proud man and didn't want the world to know how severe his sickness was. He probably also didn't want to have any pity. So I hope he had a quiet and unpainful death as no one wants to die in pain. I hope that he also was surrounded by all the people he loved.

I remember the first time I had a computer. It was my cousin's Apple IIe. I played some type of summer games video game on it. Then in school we would have computer lab and play on macs. I would say Spellavator, Oregon Trail, and Carmen Sandiego were my top games. Macs were very prevalent in my younger life and less in my older as they were too expensive for my family. I just recently purchased my Macbook Air and about to embark on my journey to iPhone development.

I think yesterday is and will be remembered by all those in technology. You'll remember where you were and how you heard it.

Steve Jobs was a vindictive man with many dreams who made them come true at any cost. I can only strive to be a dreamer as he was.

God speed Steve.