8.11.10

Battle of the CMSs

So far, we've looked at several CMSs to create our online collections. This week, I am comparing most of them-- Drupal, DSpace, EPrints, the PKP Harvester, and Omeka. The comparison is from the point of view of a person using my websites. My comparison is based purely on what I can do with them. In other words, I have seen very cool things done with EPrints, but I can't do them. My EPrints website is horrible looking. In the real world, the same criteria would apply. If I'm deciding on a CMS, and I know I can do ABC but not XYZ, it doesn't matter much if other people can do XYZ. I can't, and my website will reflect that.

I think it will be easy to ferret out my preference.


2.11.10

Me as a farmer

This week I became a data farmer, and I harvested collections from other repositories and archives in order to populate my own fictitious website. I sort of felt like the Lady of the Manor, what with all the power felt in thousands of digital objects now in my control. Sort of.

At any rate, another assignment was to poke around the Open Archives service providers list and look at some of the sites, do searches, etc. Personally, I find the list a bit confusing, even though names, URLs, and descriptions are provided. I think it's because any one service provider doesn't do (or isn't) exactly the same thing as other providers on the list. So, I wasn't ever 100% what I was looking at.

I checked a few out. One is the Perseus Digital Library, because I knew it has some Classic material and my collection has some as well. I didn't really like the layout and I felt it was a bit difficult to navigate. Unlike a classmate, I didn't think it was clear what repository an item was harvested from-- unless most are at Tufts, where Perseus is located. Another site I looked at, whose layout I also didn't like, was Avano. Both of these sites had stark-looking search boxes. The browse feature in Perseus was pretty good, but all I found on Avano was a way to browse providers, not topics.

Cyclades was undoubtedly the strangest site. That they recommend new users read an explanatory document before beginning on Cyclades should tell you something. It had very few materials on it (that I could find) and they were of "minutes." Not sure of what. Maybe I should have read the manual.


The layout on GEO-LEO was a step up. Obvious browse topics pop up on the home page. I could find search results easy enough-- but never could actually get to the object itself. So that was no good.

Without a doubt the "best" site I visited was the Sheet Music Consortium. It had attractive images, easy navigation, and search. The browse feature was pretty terrible, as it actually brought me back to search; other browse-type menu items were crummy too and hard to read. But in using search I could find items easily and was taken to the original site in a new window.

The best type of federated collection would include:
  • Attractive site
  • Obvious navigation points
  • Browse by topic, collection, and providers
  • Thumbnail images (if images) that link to original
  • Metadata that is listed in a non-library way that will make sense to users and will link to other metadata (e.g. subject/topic metadata)
Huge federated sites would need to break apart tasks to different work groups so that objects are not lost in a sea of data.

Europeana is an excellent example of a consortium that, while not perfect, has many of what I consider to be important elements.

27.10.10

Consistency? What's that?

I absolutely love, love, love metadata. For whatever reason, assigning names, subjects, dates, and the rest makes my heart go pitter-patter.

The problem? I'm a bit over-analytical. Sometimes you can really think yourself into a hole when decided how to organize things.

At first I tried to apply metadata similar to the way The Arizona Memory Project has done. The problem, though, is with my collection, that wasn't a great fit. I need to be able to say, for example, "What kind" of hero the object is about, for example, "real-life," or "comic-book." Those aren't normal subject headings. I did also try to use the LCSH as much as possible in Drupal and DSpace. In these two CMS, we can enter the subjects free-hand, so I was able to do that. With EPrints, you select from previously supplied subject terms. I had originally thought I was going to be able to use LCSH and the Name Authorities, but I misread: EPrints had the LC Classification previously installed. That was absolutely incompatible with my collection! The closest I could get to assigning a subject to the song "The Ballad of Paladin," for example, was History-- United States. That narrows it down.

So with EPrints I went back to some of the items, such as Type of Hero, that I created in Drupal (used in addition to the free-hand). So, I guess I'm sort of consistent (which doesn't sound very consistent at all).

The best part is, though, I feel as though I'm getting a little better at devising taxonomy each time I try. And it's still F-U-N!!

19.10.10

Installation: Almost Impossible

OK, Jim, I chose to accept my mission and installed eprints. And I'm glad I did. But, boy, I earned my paycheck!

I think I had more trouble installing this than Drupal. And I kept making the same mistake over and over, entering one password when I should have been entering the other. So, I guess I'm the goof-up, but it doesn't mean it took me any less time to install.

I also pretty much sucked at branding eprints into something cool, though I will say that I really got to know the files and directories, having to go through them to look for all mentions of the "logo.gif" and changing them to my new logo, Luke Skywalker. Oh, I guess Jim Phelps wouldn't know anything about Luke Skywalker. He's an orphan who carries a sword that shoots laser beams, almost kissed his sister, discovered his dad was really alive when his dad cut his hand off, and then saved the galaxy. Anyway.

After having looked at other eprints sites, I know that a lot of cool things could be done with the branding, look, and feel. I hate to say it, because I still have a grudge against Drupal that goes beyond this class, but Drupal has the best look and feel to it. DSpace is still the most intuitive from the administrator end for me, and eprints the least. I do feel that if I worked with eprints a while, I could do pretty well with it. But if I had to work with one right now, and be pretty much responsible for it, I'd probably put eprints at the bottom of the list and go for DSpace.

11.10.10

A gaggle of CMS options

Wow-- I don't think I ever realized how many CMS options were out there. When I first started the DigIn program, I heard a lot of people talking about Fedora. I wasn't sure what it was, though I was pretty sure it had nothing to do with hats. I'm still not sure I understand exactly what Fedora is, though at least I understand it better, as well as other content management systems as well.

It's pretty exciting to see the work being done to help store, organize, preserve and allow access to content. Digital objects that might otherwise remain in obscurity are now (potentially) available for others. Not only that, but the CMSs I've seen can add value as well. As much as DSpace is more intuitive to me, I see that Drupal really has a lot of flexibility and functionality, a combination website / CMS. It offers various modules and allows people to interact with the objects and each other.

It's also pretty daunting. With so many CMSs out there, interoperability is a big issue. As is preservation, of course. But the glimmer of hope in the data deluge is that we're aware of the problem and trying to stay ahead of the danger.

3.10.10

DSpace Rocks! DSpace Rocks!

Unbelievably, I had absolutely no troubles with the installation. Bruce's directions are always dead on, but I don't always follow them without making mistakes... heh heh heh. In fact, when installing Drupal, I had so many problems and had to clog up D2L with all kinds of goofy questions. This week was a breeze. I think it was partly due to the fact that I broke up the installation-- I didn't try to do it all in one sitting. Also, partly luck.



As for whether I could do it without any IT help, heck no! That is, I would have to have some kind of help, even if it were to Google the instructions. Hopefully I won't lose the instructions Bruce made, because they may come in handy some day.

26.9.10

How do I feel ambivalent about thee?

Oh, Drupal. I hardly knew ye. Really. I just don't get you.

That's because I'd have to spend months with you just to understand how to even talk to you. And then months after that for things to really work between us. And I just don't have the time, Drupal. Not now, anyway.

You're a confusing piece of work, Drupal. I managed to download a few modules, and even a theme. But did it work? No.Well, yes and no. I found the modules, I configured them, but they just sit there, stupidly, not knowing that I want them to do something. And you didn't tell them to do anything, did you, Drupal? Because I didn't know how to tell you to tell them. So my plans of allowing "Top Terms" to show users the most popular terms used on the site went up in smoke. So did the thesaurus I thought I was building with the module "Similar by Terms." They would have been useful, I think. Especially if my collection were bigger. But, it was not meant to be.

And the theme. We could have had a grand time with CleanFolio, with its professional-looking colors of green, cocoa and brown. But you ruined that, too, didn't you, Drupal?

I'm sorry.I shouldn't lash out. It was just as much your fault as mine. I don't really understand you, not like I should. Can you provide interactivity to users? Can users group and collect items into their own, personal gallery? Can you be that flexible, Drupal? If you can, maybe we can get back together some day. But for now,

see ya.

21.9.10

Drupal for Heroes?

I've got five items uploaded to my website.They're described per the metadata profile that I set up. (Which took way longer than I thought... isn't that always the way?) I'm honestly not sure yet if Drupal is right for my collection. I think I want users to be able to create their own hero page-- by that I mean, select objects from those I have on the website and have them appear on their own pages. So they create a mini-collection. Maybe Drupal can do this; I don't really know.

I am getting to understand Drupal a little better. I had worked with it previously and thought it was HORRIBLE but I didn't really understand that it is a content management system, not just a "website." I'm liking it much better now and do find it more intuitive, once I knew what I was dealing with. However, there is still a very negative aspect to Drupal. Whenever I hear that word, Drupal, this image pops into my head:

It's Droppo from the stupidest movie in the history of mankind: Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. As you might guess, that is no hyperbole. So pity me and despise Droppo for what he has done to me.

14.9.10

Ice cream... or study?

I feel really good about the pacing for the tech assignments-- it's just enough to be challenging but not so much that it's stressful. This week was an anomaly for me in that I usually get my assignments done before the last minute (*cough*), but I was sort of co-opted into babysitting my nephew on Friday and went to the other nephew's birthday party on Saturday, which ate up a lot of my usual study time. However, I did partake in a very scrumptious cherry soda with vanilla ice cream at Swenson's, so maybe it was worth it.

It is a little tough for me so far to make strong connections between the management portion and the tech portion of the class, though the connections are definitely there and I think will be stronger with time.

I'm pretty anxious because I haven't done my SIRLS mid-point portfolio yet, and it's past due. I'm also anxious because it costs a lot of money to go to school, so I should hurry up, but when I graduate, will I get a job? Eeek.

But as far as the class goes, I'm enjoying it and learning from it.

3.9.10

Weeping and screaming

A summary of the article "Building a collection development CMS on a shoestring budget," by Regina Beach and Miqueas Dial, published in Library Hi Tech, vol. 24, no. 1, 2006.

The authors work at Texas A&M in Kingsville (TAMUK)-- a satellite of the central campus in San Antonio. The Southern Association of Colleges found deficiencies in the library system, especially regarding the availability of appropriately challenging resources. Both faculty and students felt that the curriculum was necessarily "dumbed down" as a result of the inadequate resources provided by the library.

It was decided that a Content Management System (CMS) could be implemented to help faculty and other appropriate TAMUK employees order resources more efficiently. Beach and Dial envisioned the CMS also being integrated with distance-learning instructional software, such as Blackboard, and eventually allowing instructors to use online textbooks for class.

A significant portion of the article was devoted to explaining how the CMS would improve efficiency in the technical services department of the library by reducing the number of times bibliographic data would need to be entered-- to one. This would be entered by the requester. At the time the article was written, the authors used Microsoft Access to create a relational database with resource information and user interface to order the resources. They were also concerned with compatibility; for example, they had initially wanted to use the ISBN as a unique identifier, but Baker & Taylor do not print ISBNs on their invoices.

The most significant portion of the article to me came when the authors implemented their plan and "the primary author took order cards away from the acquisitions production environment. There was literally weeping and screaming." One take away here is, as the authors point out, change is sometimes a slow and painful process. The other take away is, how much collaboration was there in this plan? How much input did the acquisitions people have? Could this plan have been implemented differently so that most people were walking with them, as opposed to digging in their heels?

30.8.10

Holy Heroes!

So one of our first tasks in our Advanced Digital Collections course is to collect 15-20 digital items that we'll eventually use when we build our little mini online museums/archives. (I think.) I actually had a bit of trouble deciding what to collect. I'm sure I made it more difficult than it really is, of course. As it always does, my mind eventually drifted back to-- what else?-- Star Wars, and I hit upon my theme-- heroes.

Since the day I discovered Joseph Campbell and his ideas of the hero archetype, I've been fascinated by the type of stories that, for whatever reason, belong to the human experience whatever the culture.

So, my collection idea started from there and branched out to include a pretty broad definition of heroes-- real-life heroes, ancient heroes, superheroes, and movie heroes. Songs about heroes, radio stories of heroes, pictures of heroes, videos about heroes, and stories of heroes. I even included a satire of heroes.

Here's a list of the items in my collection:
  1. Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech (video)
  2. Editorial about sports heroes (audio)
  3. Interview with "Sully" Sullenberger (radio)
  4. Superman picture (image)
  5. Luke Skywalker picture a la Obama "Hope" design (image)
  6. Luke Skywalker picture w/ lightsaber, black background (image)
  7. Luke Skywalker picture in flight suit w/lightsaber, fire background (image)
  8. George Lucas discussing Joseph Campbell (video)
  9. "Have Gun Will Travel" song (audio)
  10. "Superfriends" (1973) opening credits (video)
  11. "Superfriends" do "Office Space" (video)
  12. "The Odyssey" (pdf)
  13. "Clash of the Titans" movie trailer (video)
  14. "Holding out for a Hero" song (audio)
  15. "What is a Hero?" CBS news segment (video)
  16. Subway Hero CBS news segment (video)
  17. Herakles killing the Nemean Lion vase (image)
  18. Hercules comic book segment (pdf)
  19. "Profiles in Courage" excerpts (pdf)
  20. "The Woman Who Dared" editorial cartoon of Susan B. Anthony (image)

There could be many ways to access my collection. I might use "real" and "imaginary" as descriptors. "Ancient" and "modern" could also work. Describing by format image, sound, video, document, etc. might be useful. Keywords such as "lucas," "georgelucas," "george_lucas," "star," "wars," "starwars," star_wars," "skywalker," "lukeskywalker," "luke_skywalker," etc. can get out of hand right away. I think I'd like to enable user tagging to make keyword more efficient.

As to who might access this collection, I would think teachers, schoolchildren, and anybody with an interest in heroes. It's a broad enough subject that it should appeal to many people. It's not, however, the place to do serious research.

7.8.10

forewarned, forearmed

This week, in reading about project management, I was amazed at the advice Make sure to have a plan. Or, more to the point, I was amazed that there was a need to give such advice. Who would attempt a project in which other people were counting on you, and not develop some sort of a plan first?

Apparently people do. Crazy people.

I was really fascinated by some of the software out there to help keep projects on time, on budget, and on track. I wish I had one of those for everyday use. I already pretty much do mental Work Breakdowns, but completely underestimate the time needed to complete the tasks.
How long will it take me to finish my homework today?
About two hours.
Wrong! PERT says twelve hours. You forgot to factor in eating, sleeping, laundry, and staring off into space at random intervals.

I think this kind of software would be invaluable to a project manager who is in charge of a lot more than just herself and her homework!

So that's what the PM wants to accomplish. The other piece of good advice from the readings this week was preparing for possible risks. I loved the idea of the "cube" in Cervone's readings, where risks can be plotted and assessed as to risk, probability, and effect. This also seems like a sensible way to prepare for possible obstacles and avoid pitfalls.

Even though there are many types of program plans, each with their own processes and sub-processes, it's worth toting around a tabbed binder with project plan details to get the project where it needs to be.

1.8.10

learning curve

Learning anything new is a little exciting, a little tense, and a little frustrating. I definitely felt all three as I plodded through the units-- I say plodded, because the unit learning and exercises were fine and precise, and sometimes I felt as though I was extremely clumsy, like trying to knit with mittens on. Nevertheless, I have emerged from the course knowing a lot more than I did before about what goes on underneath the user interface of a digital collection.

Even using the word underneath with more confidence is a boon-- the layers of applications, protocols, scripts, and compilers makes more sense to me. At the very least, I should be able to talk to an IT person and have a semi-intelligible conversation!

As a former schoolteacher, I pretty much involuntarily use metacognition when I'm learning something new. I can't help but take a step back and analyze how I am learning something, and where I am in the learning process. I noticed that with almost every unit, I compared my learning-- not the content, but the learning process-- to when I learned HTML. HTML is the most recent computer language I've learned (and really only one of two, the other being BASIC, a language I was somewhat traumatized by in the 9th grade).

At any rate, when I learned HTML, through a combination of self-teaching and later through a Pima class, I got to the point where the syntax and vocabulary became second nature to me. Learning CSS (I kind of threw CSS in there with HTML as one of my two computer languages) was a little easier, having had experience with HTML. I'm no expert in HTML or CSS, but I consider myself competent. I could experiment a bit, using my understanding of the syntax and vocabulary. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't, but I was comfortable enough to try.

Another part of my HTML/CSS learning is that when I was finished, and I loaded the page, and something was wrong, I was confident enough to understand that I had the basic principles correct in my coding, but I probably had a typo somewhere. (With CSS I allowed that I may have made a mistake, but not a gross error.)

With the information and skills we've studied in this course, I'm definitely still a novice. I haven't acquired the familiarity with the concepts to be able to experiment much, or know that my errors are probably just typos and not a misunderstanding of the material.

But, novice is on route to competence, which is what we're aiming for (if I wanted to be an expert, I'd be in a computer programming school!). And I feel as though I'm ready to tackle the similar/brand new challenges of the advanced course. Because I know that the more I work with it, just as the more I worked with HTML and CSS, the less foreign and the more familiar the concepts will be.

24.7.10

son of SQL

Who knew that I prefer the world in 2-D? Relational databases are a labyrinth I can't seem to navigate my way out of. It's not that I don't know whether to turn right or left. I don't know if I'm upside down, which exit I'm supposed to be heading for, and I forgot how I got into the maze in the first place!

I think part of it is because I'm new to it. If I spent some time with it, I'd probably feel more comfortable with it. But, SQL (and relational databases) are in many ways non-verbal-- which is my strength. And my weakness is spatial orientation. I can remember, quite vividly, driving back from California on a Sunday night, sitting in the passenger seat, insisting to my friend that we were driving parallel to I-10. It was Phoenix, it was one o'clock in the morning, and no one was out except us. I was almost frantic; I wanted to get home so badly and I was so sure that we were never going to make it back to the freeway because we were running parallel to it.

And then we got to the on ramp. I felt internally disoriented now. Like a slap in the face, I was reminded once again that spatial orientation-- not my strong suit.

This is what relational databases look like to me:

Only maybe insert a few more going in at different directions.

So using MySQL under these conditions is just a wee bit difficult. Mostafa says, we can be precise with our MySQL queries. Sure, if you know what the heck you're doing!

The written examples in our Assignment packet helped me tremendously, especially because I chose to use the database provided, and I could use the examples as a template. I'm verbal: I saw the words, could see the pattern in the words, and could eke out a few queries that way. And there's nothing like seeing the query results table come scrolling up the screen instead of, "Error. You are a dummy and I can't understand what you are trying to tell me."

So, yay for the scrolling results, a small feeling of victory, and one step closer to wrapping my mind around MySQL.

16.7.10

bridge to nowhere

So this week I was pretty psyched about the readings and the exercises because the types of commands that are in MySQL make sense to me (pretty much). I think MySQL might work how my own brain works. I kept thinking, Maybe you should have been a programmer, or a database engineer or something. You've got this!

And then I tried to create my own, extraordinarily simple database proposal regarding three images. Three. And I cannot tell you how frustrated I got! It's not too often that I feel that inadequate. I kept drawing tables and writing in entities, then decided that they were attributes, then decided, no, they're values. My head was spinning in circles about what, exactly, to do with the attributes. Do they get their own tables? Doesn't that make them entities? And all the foreign keys, when should they come into the picture? Arrrrrrrgh!

On top of that, my "simple" database just got more complicated when I realized that I ended up with a many-to-many relationship between two tables-- one art piece was created by two people, because one died partway through painting it. I knew I had to make a bridge table to connect the piece table and the creator table, which I thought I did... but since it wasn't recognized as a bridge, I think I need to revisit that concept a bit. Stupid artist, why did you have to die right then? Now you've ruined my life.

Oh, well, he couldn't help it, I guess. I think what's in store for me is re-reading and /or re-watching some of the stuff on database modeling, to build a better bridge.

11.7.10

the other twenty percent

Of all the reasons non-profits such as schools, libraries, archives, and museums to use a technology plan, one stands out to me above all the rest: narrowing the digital divide. The changing nature of technology means that when one area of the divide is narrowed (say, mobile phones), another widens (currently, high speed Internet access). As gaps slim, but don't meet completely, some people are satisfied that the digital divide is closing, citing statistics such as over half of Americans now have Internet access at home. First of all, as if over half is an acceptable amount, and second of all, as if it were that simple.

This is where the 80% rule usually comes in to play. Some people convince themselves that if most people benefit from technology, that's the best we can do. Many people in all walks of life do strive to satisfy 80% of their constituency. And that's a good start. But, as John Carlo Bertot says,
It is one thing to design programs that work for most; it is another task to go back and ensure that the intended benefits of a program have reached those who are most in need, often despite the system's design, regulations and procedures.
The other 20%, or those whose needs are not met by the initial design of the technology plan of a non-profit, are just as important as the majority of the constituency.

I'm pleased that Arizona's five year LSTA plan does acknowledge that libraries are one place to balance the inequity of the digital divide. Some of its programs, such as instruction that introduces its constituents to computers and the Internet, address the imbalance. Arizona's technology plan, while comprehensive, isn't very specific. In some ways, this benefits the description of the programs, which can be modified to fit the needs of the users of particular libraries.The questions are, of course, in what manner will these programs be implemented? Will the Needs Assessments done by the libraries really define what the constituency needs? Will the 20% avail themselves of the programs? How will local politics affect the effectiveness of the programs?

Where ever I am fortunate enough to find employment after I finish my graduate work, I hope to be able to narrow the digital divide as much as possible. Outreach has to be a major part of that work. The knowledge and skills I'm learning and fine-tuning in both SIRLS and the DigIn program will arm me with the know-how to at least be a part of that conversation.

I'm lucky to belong to the 80%. It's time to take luck out of the equation.

4.7.10


We last left our intrepid heroine on the brink of disaster, lost in Linux's Labyrinth, a sinister lair riddled with rabid daemons, ports to nowhere, and sockets with jaws of steel. In search of her companion, Apache Web Server, our plucky heroine must battle the evil forces that threaten sudo shutdown at every turn...





If our heroine had directions, written in HTML, to help her navigate the treacherous labyrinth, it might look like this -->

She wouldn't make it past port 22 with that bit of unhelpful information. Our heroine would have to make her best guess as to which port is that port, where is there and what thing is that thing. The HTML jacks up her adrenaline with all the bold and the italics and the large font, but that's about it.



Our heroine would do much better with directions written in XML, because metadata is included within the document itself. Should she want to know which port to avoid, well, it's


Luckily for her, our heroine had previously taken two courses which helped prepare her to understand XML: Organization of Information followed by Cataloging. Her cataloging instructor spent a couple weeks exposing the class to XML and working with it a bit. She was able to reread those sections in Lois Chan's Cataloging and Classification in order to remind herself what she had previously learned.

This is not to say our heroine remembered everything from the cataloging course. As a visual learner, and one who usually learns better through a person than an inanimate object such as text, she used Mark Long's lecture series in UA CBT almost exclusively. Mark Long's lecture is pretty good, because he explains what he's talking about as opposed to merely reading the slides.

As an adventurer, and one who is fond of derring-do, our heroine attempted to learn more about XSLT through w3schools. After perusing through that, and HTTP Request, and XPath, our heroine determined that the best use of her time was to prepare for her work with Apache Server. (Never fear! Our heroine has not been defeated by XSLT, much like the Swamp Fox of the American Revolution, she's run away to fight again!)

And so, our heroine reviewed the basics of what she had learned last semester, and solidified her understanding of what XML can be used for, and dabbled a bit in more advanced XML-- mostly via video, with a dash of w3schools thrown in. 

She felt confident in her basic understanding of XML, ready to tackle the dangers of Linux's Labryinth! Stay tuned for the thrilling conclusion to our story: "XML Marks the Node;" or "XARGS: Revenge of the Gnomes."

26.6.10

Torpedoed!

So, this week one of our assignments for class was to design and post a basic web page. I've been dabbling in HTML for a few years-- took a community college web design class and tweaked the web page I used for my class when I taught school. Last year, for 504, I created a simple web page and was able to not only revisit some of what I already knew, but also dabble a little bit more with CSS. What nearly killed me then tried it again this time.




Float.


I suck at float and one of the reasons is that I don't do much with HTML or CSS on a regular basis. I have to retrain myself to a degree each time I tackle a web page. For this assignment, I looked at what I had done last summer and revised it. I had used div to float my picture and caption then and it when I looked at it again this summer, it looked ugly. Not to mention that apparently I had another div class for a second image that was not in my html (and a background image property that I didn't have either). So besides editing and changing the content and some of the style, I deleted some of the extraneous stuff.

Oops.

When I refreshed the page, my picture slammed back over to the left side of the page. The caption went from red italic to blue roman (matching the rest of the text). Any and all edits I made in CSS were not recognized by the HTML page. Just to make sure I had the right page open, I changed content in HTML. It showed up in my web browser; I knew the CSS was the problem.

For almost an hour I researched and looked at examples of floating, and everybody's got a different way of doing it. Some use one class, some use several. I tried everything. Finally I decided that since I only had one picture, I didn't want to use a class anyway. I wanted to use an ID. As I was doing that, I noticed something very peculiar... and it was the hideous


 

curly bracket of death.






What I had been researching, in a macro-analysis of the problem, was what I had done wrong with the code. I'm not brilliant with CSS or any aspect of web design. I make hideous mistakes all the time. I knew I had made one this time, too. What I should have been doing was reading what I had typed-- or rather what I hadn't typed-- a little more closely. Open curly bracket: yes. Closed curly bracket: oops.

I closed the #dm section of my css with a curly bracket, refreshed, and... We have a floater.

I can't tell you the sense of satisfaction of seeing a doofy little picture move from left to right. It's embarrassing in the grand scheme of things, but boy did I feel like I accomplished something.

Oh, I also cleaned up the caption's style and learned how to place margins in the body of the web page. So, in the end it was OK, I guess, that I spent so much time looking for something I didn't need to know.

19.6.10

I'm going to tell you a little story about myself and then I want you to guess what kind of learner I am.

When I was in 5th grade, Rubik's Cubes were all the rage. Naturally, I needed one. I loved that little thing. In the first minute I had it cut open from the its plastic wrapping, I had turned it every which way. I liked to solve sides at a time and make little checkerboard patterns. The ultimate solution always eluded me, however, which frustrated me to no end. My dad bought me a Rubik's Cube solution book. It was about 60 pages long with diagrams, none of them color. I didn't get past page two. 

One day at recess I noticed one of my classmates with a perfectly solved Cube. I knew he'd had it a while, so I asked him to teach me how to solve it. He got out his pocket knife. We could carry pocket knives to school then. "I pop out the pieces," he explained. I asked him to pop out my pieces because I wanted a perfect Rubik's Cube again. He complied but managed to break one of the little squares a bit, so that it always fell out if tipped the wrong direction. Also, he scuffed up the white stickers so much that we had to take them off, creating one black side. 

But I had my perfect cube again. I loved making little checkerboard patterns that were mirrored all over the Cube. I didn't twist it every which way again, though I had kids grab it and do that (a yellow piece always dropping and the kid crying in alarm, "I didn't do that!"). But of course by then I knew how to reassemble my little broken Cube.

I did feel guilty about tearing it apart and "cheating." I felt that I was punished for that when the one little yellow piece breaking. It also wasn't so much a puzzle as a gadget to make colored patterns with. However, I was no longer frustrated. Only defeated.

So, the moral of the story? The type of learner I am?

An impatient one, for starters. I like to start out by doing and then stop once I get the feel for something to read up on it. I like big picture somewhere along the way to help me understand why I am doing the small steps. Unfortunately, with Rubik's Cube, I could never see the pattern of the twists and turns: why when I twisted it this way, that would be the result. I suck at spatial orientation. So I sucked at Rubik's Cube.

If I had ever seen an animated video showing me the Rubik's Cube pattern, I may have done a little better, as I am a visual learner far and above verbal and tactile. But I doubt it, because it would still involve too many moving parts (literally), something I have trouble with when learning a concept. However, I do remember the animated TV show Rubik, the Amazing Cube, in which three Puerto Rican kids fight bad guys with the help of Rubik, the flying, talking crime-busting cube. It must have been the absolute dumbest TV show ever. Good times.

So I try to take advantage of various videos, diagrams, and images to help me understand a little better and see the patterns that help form the big picture. Sometimes it works, sometimes I have to talk my self out of mind-implosion from TMI and not enough patience to let it settle in. 

I wonder if Rubik knows how to convert decimal to binary, or create a subnet ID? Probably.


13.6.10

The great and powerful

So I got a taste this week of the POWER OF THE SYSTEM ADMINISTRATOR. It's fun adding users who can't use my system until I'm done adding them... and I will be done when I'm good and ready! And only giving users permissions I want them to have. They will have to be nice to me. Ha ha ha ha ha.

Don't make me release the flying monkeys!

I actually had a small bump in the road on my way to becoming the System Overlord, receiving a message akin to this as I tried to install the libdm5-perl component:



Heh, Heh. Oops. It seems I had some trouble unhashing hash marks in last week's unit. Oh, well, not to worry, I just went back and redid all of unit 2's configuring and the second time I attempted to install the libdm5-perl component, I basically got this message:



So, all was right with the universe again, and I went about creating and destroying lives as I saw fit as the SYSTEM ADMINISTRATOR!!

Ahem, if you would, please do not tell anyone that while system administrators are great and powerful, like Oz, they are in reality merely men (or women) behind the curtain. In reality, all I was actually doing was following instructions on a little piece of paper (virtual, of course) and adding pretend users to my pretend system. If I were actually in Oz, I might have expressed my week this way:



Oh, you liquidated her, eh? Very resourceful!

I need brains to be a systems administrator. Duh. But in this week's learning, I was once again reminded about using your brains to work through a problem. When I wasn't given permission to download the perl component, I knew I hadn't done something correctly last week. In discussion boards, classmates had said something about doing Unit 3 over. I went back and looked at the assignments-- sure enough, I saw some things about getting permissions. I went back to my first snapshot and started all over again: it worked. And, I was also reminded once again, much like saving your work as you go, take snapshots. It only takes once to learn the lesson. Usually.




I should have felt it in my heart.

I need a heart to be a systems administrator. Or, rather, ethics. Which, luckily, I have. Systems administrators have Super Powers. Powers most people don't even know about. You know that paranoid feeling you get when you rip on a co-worker in a company email? Hang on to it. Systems administrators can read your email. And anything else on your system, except your password, and big whoop on that because they can always reset it, anyway. Systems administrators can determine who can do what on the computer. I suggest you bring them candy and flowers on a regular basis.




You are talking to a man who has laughed in the face of death, sneered at doom and chuckled at catastrophe.

And you need courage. At first, you need courage in abundance. I'm the kind of computer person who feels just enough courage to try things but doesn't have enough brains to pull them off each time. But hey, that's what snapshots are for, right? So as I'm reading about the commands we've used  I'm also fiddling around with commands to see what works and what doesn't. I know from experience that fiddling around with computers is really the only way to understand them. Many of us are self-taught, and we do pretty well, because we learn the tricks as we go. Sometimes the hard way. Right now I think most of us are feeling pretty courageous just using the command line. So, we're getting there!

So while systems administrators are all-powerful, ultimately they are just people behind the curtain who can be revealed by little Scottie dogs and the FTC. And unless they have brains, a heart, and courage, they really won't be very good at their job.

But, please don't tell anyone that because I like them all to be afraid of me. VERY AFRAID! HA HA HA HA HA.


I accept chocolate any day of the week. Goodbye, folks!

5.6.10

The VI editor, in the directory, with the pipe

Do you remember playing Clue? Of course you do, and so do I. Do you remember announcing to your competitors, "I suggest that..." with a smug look on your face, then opening the envelope and discovering that you were dead wrong? And then feeling inadequate to the challenge of the game, and realizing that maybe you're not as good as you thought, and deciding that everything you thought you knew about the world was in fact, a horrible lie?

Me, neither.

But I felt a little bit like that this week! I, the person my family and friends turn to with computer problems, know now, with firm conviction, that I am an absolute idiot! Or, at least, that I've got a ways to go in learning about Linux.

This week I used the VIM editor, and wheeeeeeee! Not really sure what I was doing in there, haha, but I did go through the tutorial step by step and did very well at the exercises. My favorite little personal triumph was using a number followed by "GG" to get me back to where I was when I exited. "Oh, I think I was at around 600," I'd muse to myself, typing in 600 GG!! I still do not know if I believe the tutor when it assured me that I would eventually LOVE the H, J, K, and L directionals. Hmph, if you say so. I shall trust in the process.

I felt pretty proud of myself, hitting "i" to insert and "a" to append. I followed all the directions and felt pretty good about understanding until I took a step back and thought... Where am I in the computer? What am I doing? When I make a file in VIM, where is it? What is the difference between : and ! ??  I can do what the tutor wants me to but I can't understand why! I need my dunce cap now. Hopefully, I can take it off in a few weeks, as it all starts to make sense. (Trust the process, trust the process.)

Still, I must claim a small victory. Back in the shell, I decided to try using the pipe in a command. Nothing fancy, something simple.

cd lib | ls -l

And what happened? In one fell swoop, I changed the directory to lib AND listed the contents with their permissions.

VICTORY IS MINE! 
IN YOUR FACE, COL. MUSTARD!



29.5.10

Peanuts, Castle Wolfenstein, and Me

Accessing the remote desktop and playing with commands in the terminal brought back some memories for me. I can still recall Computer Basic class, my freshman year, writing little programs that calculated compound interest and that repeated my name infinitely. Also, playing Castle Wolfenstein if we finished early. We were on little Apples with dark brown screens and amber text (weeeee, not the usual green, we thought we were cool, but we so, so weren't). So typing in commands, yeah, I can remember that.

Of course, what I'm doing now is a bit more complicated than

10 HOME
20 PRINT "Valerie Kittell";
30 GOTO 20


Or whatever Basic was, I can't really remember any more. I got a C in that class and am still pretty bitter about it because I really, really tried and my teacher just sat there at the front of the room reading paperbacks.

Anyway, command lines. My usual technique when starting something new is kind of a cross between Linus and Lucy. By that I mean, like Linus, I start by trying to learn more about what I'm doing. But I temper that with a bit of Lucy, and try to jump into the action a bit sooner than Linus would.

So, I went through the Arthur Griffith tutorials and took notes as I listened. That took forever, I gotta say, but it always does if you try to take notes during reading/video watching. But since it usually helps me learn better by writing down (I have to know what I'm writing), I kept at it. The Learning the Shell articles I printed, as Bruce suggested, and that's where Lucy came in! I opened the remote desktop and  worked through the Learning the Shell sections as I read, referring back to my Arthur Griffith notes (and using Arthur Griffith's voice to "speak" the text in my mind). And Linus popped back up as I added more notes to a new Command Line page, which may or may not end up being useful as there are no doubt better lists already online.

I was just grateful Charlie Brown didn't ever show up. That's when you give good faith, honest efforts but the world conspires against you. I did have one incident regarding the mv command, trying to move a file from one directory to the other. I figured it out (Linus-style, by researching on the Internet) before I resorted to Lucy's solution (drop kicking the computer). Overall, I was fairly pleased with my rudimentary understanding and performance.




40 END

19.5.10

Gnome Power!

Ever since I started library school, I've been struck by the heaps of acronyms used in the discipline. I truly thought that education had the corner on that market, but nothing doing: AACRII, ALA, DDC, DOI, FRBR, LCC, LCSH, LISA, LISTA, MARC, MARC21, MeSH, OAI, OCLC, OPAC, XML, and Z39.50-- just to name a few! While my list might sound like a robot roll call, the acronyms are practical and logical.
Not so the terminology at Ubuntu forums, which I'm assigned to read as part of my Introduction to Applied Technology course. My first venture into the Absolute Beginner Talk forum introduced such words as Gnome Power, Grub Rescue, Lucid, and Gwibber. I wonder how long it takes for a person to say those words out loud without any discomfort? Personally, I think they're cool, albeit über-geeky. It also leads me to wonder how intuitive, if at all, these terms are? So I set out on a journey, accompanied by my side-kicks Shibboleth and Worldcat, and explored some of the Ubuntu and Ubuntu-related terminology.
First, of course, must be Ubuntu itself. My hunch that it stems from an African language is correct; Wikipedia explains that it derives from Bantu and is a classical South African philosophy. They quote Archbishop Desmond Tutu as defining Ubuntu thus:
A person with Ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed.
The Ubuntu operating system, then, is so named because the motivation for Open Source,  
       sharing and helping one another, is a reflection of the greater philosophy.

Next, my eye was caught by Plymouth because I own a Plymouth Duster, similar to the one in the picture, though mine was white until I smashed it and its new panels are blue. I'm sad to think of it sitting in my carport awaiting overhaul, so I'll let that go and explain what I discovered about the Plymouth bootsplash. It's a graphic representation of what happens when your computer boots up and it supports animation. In the Ubuntu forums, many of the threads about Plymouth were about wanting to customize the graphics, which you apparently can, unless you can't, which is what some people are complaining about.

I couldn't wait to see what Gnome Power! was all about. Well, I was sad to see that when I looked more closely, there is no Gnome Power! It was a thread about a Gnome Power Manager failure. Actually, Gnome is an acronym- GNU Network Object Model Environment. According to Wikipedia, Gnome "is a desktop environment—a graphical user interface that runs on top of a computer operating system—composed entirely of free and open source software" and not the little creatures carrying out tasks in your computer. Which is a shame. About a third of the threads on Ubuntu regarding Gnome were questions about customizing, and the other two-thirds were users experiencing problems. One user's thread title told the tale of terminal border thickness in Gnome. Poor Gnome.
Grubs. Pesky and gross. Many threads indicated the users had Grub Problems. Welcome to the club. In Ubuntu, grubs are what allows a user to have more than one operating system on their computer. It's an acronym, too- GNU Grand Unified Bootloader, which according to Wikipedia is a play on the grand unified theory (physics). Hence the picture, which is not of a disgusting grub. Personally, I feel that the grossness of a grub outweighs the ha-ha of the pun. I would have gone a different route, perhaps When EnErgizing Vehicle, I eLect this operating system (WEEVIL) or COmputeR Name when BOoting up Right hERe and now (Corn Borer). The user needing a Grub Rescue had, when updating Ubuntu, been prompted to check boxes regarding Grub, and, since he didn't know what Grub was, he did what any of us would do. He checked all the boxes. Ever since, he's been in Grub Rescue Mode. The striking thing about this thread (which I find on so many forums) is the helpfulness of other users.

This is one thing I really love about the Internet.
P.S. Grubs are gross.

Lucid. Lucid Lynx is version 10.04 LTS of Ubuntu. Imagine my surprise (and delight) to see that each Ubuntu release has a cool, alliterative name, such as Dapper Drake, Jaunty Jackalope, Karmic Koala, and Maverick Meerkat, the latest (as of the Wikipedia article's last update). Which makes sense, because as I scroll through the thread titles, I see all of these terms. It's actually a bit more comforting to know that since these are all  
                versions of Ubuntu,
these terms that are listed in the forums aren't all different words to learn-- they're all versions of the same thing.

Lastly, in my journey, the Gwibber. What is the Gwibber, you ask? Good question, my friend. The answer is not as exciting as I would have hoped. It sounds like the language of Gnomes, doesn't it? Well, actually, it's a microblogging client that supports the most common social computing platforms, such as Facebook, Googlereader, Digg, and, of course Twitter, from which it probably derived its name. Since it works in Gnome, I guess it is kind of a Gnome language, and I prefer to think of it that way. Almost all the threads I looked at regarding Gwibber were problems, mostly that it would not install, especially after the user had upgraded to the next version of Ubuntu. Some of the Gwibber problems are known issues with patches and fixes being worked on. Again, friendly people helping other people. Nice to see!

And so ends my first journey in the Ubuntu Forums. To summarize, the Meerkats were fed up with their grub problem and called upon Gnome Power for help. The Gnomes sped to the rescue in their Plymouth Duster and destroyed all the grubs with a resounding bootsplash and a hurrah in their native Gwibber.  

And there was much rejoicing.