More Alphabet Soup

And now I'm feeling a bit out of my depth.

XML is not an unfamiliar acronym, neither is its meaning, or what it looks like; but what it does and where/how it works isn't yet particularly clear. However, I know that we are being taken logically, step-by-step through a process -- as I've read how others have struggled with things that have been easier for me, I've known that they will 'get it' in time and are just expecting to understand all at once.

So, even though I understand the syntax presented in the tutorials on XML and don't know yet how to apply it to the management of digital collections.... I know that all will (should?) become clear in time. One step at a time, just like Linux, just like HTML.

Following the glowing remarks by classmates about the VTC tutorial by Mark Long, I chose to work through the beginning sections of that first. Thorough, understandable, and more than sufficient to create the XML document for the assignment -- at least I hope so! Never one to try to reinvent the wheel, I took a stroll through the digital collections webpages of my home university library. Within the Advanced Search options was a drop-down menu of all the fields. I selected the subelements for my data elements from these fields (which somewhat correspond to MARC fields).

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!-- Holding type can also be identified by first portion of id, e.g., "0001" are documents; "0002" are illustrations; "0003" are sound recordings. -->
<images>
<holding id="00001-379">
<title>The Birth of Venus</title>
<creator>Botticelli, Sandro</creator>
<type>Lithograph</type>
<subject>Goddesses, Roman</subject>
<time_period>15th Century</time_period>
<collection>Art Education</collection>
</holding>
<holding id="00002-115">
<title>Los Gatos Black</title>
<creator>Morales, Yuyi</creator>
<type>Illustration</type>
<language>Spanish</language>
<source>Los Gatos Black on Halloween</source>
<collection>Children's Literature</collection>
</holding>
<holding id="00003-411">
<title>French Resistance: a Diary</title>
<creator>Girard, Marie</creator>
<type>Sound recording</type>
<language>French</language>
<subject>World War II</subject>
<time_period>20th Century</time_period>
<collection>Oral Histories</collection>
</holding>
</images>

HTML &me;

I've pretty much learned HTML on my own, though not taking a formal class wasn't for lack of trying. I approached my local community college about 10 years ago and -- believe it or not -- the respsonse was, "What???"

Between friends and online assistance, like WebMonkey, and checking out source code, I've usually been able to make my pages look how I want them to look. I started with Geocities in 1996, using their online text editor and also Netscape 3.04 Gold's editor off-line. Guess I'll be moving all that to another server sometime soon; I see Yahoo! is going to shut down GeoCities.

I finally jumped on the blog-wagon in late 2003 with Blogger. Though I never learned any scripting, or how to create CSS, I could use the templates and then edit to my heart's (and the extent of my knowledge or trial-and-error) content. The most frustrating thing now is that I do not have enough knowledge to work in the new templates, so I'm stuck (for now) with the widget templates.

About two years ago I set up a domain, installed the free WordPress, but unfortunately have not had time to really learn all I need to know to work easily in that environment. I hope to have time soon to do that. Having it does provide me space for photos and files... and actually, I think I remember I have already copied all the GeoCities files there -- but the work up updating all the links will take *SO* much time!

I'm glad to have the links to more advanced coding tutorials provided in the unit lecture and assignments this week. Even paging through the basics, I learned things (like in the future certain tags will require closing tags that haven't needed them in the past -- so I'm closing my paragraph tags in this post), so I plan to keep working through the tutorials.

I like to work in code rather than WYSIWYG. It's like knowing a secret, akin to working on the command line versus working with the GUI.

Learning Styles

I consider myself fortunate that I am able to learn from the written word, and might go so far as to say I learn that way best, except that I also learn well by class lectures. I do *not* like to work in groups in artificial situations, such as group projects for classes! In real-life, working in groups is fine with me, though I prefer my responsibilities to be clearly outlined.

What confuses me about the way learning styles are most often defined is that to me, learning by reading is a visual style -- it is my eyes doing the work, not my ears, not my hands, and not someone's mouth. I think Felder & Solomon rather than to identify "learners" actually identified elements of learning. How people learn is a fascinating subject to me; Psychology of Learning was one of my favorite courses as an undergraduate.

The variety of presentations in this course keeps the material interesting, and provides materials at different levels of interest/ability to the students. If one wants to pursue more in-depth look at the topic, the source is readily available.
I probably use the tutorial videos least -- to this point -- as said, I prefer reading text.

Pick Your Style

Creating the new users in the server and desktop platforms of Ubuntu this week went smoothly, following the instructions in the class assigments. I forged ahead to the assignments only lightly reading the class lecture and readings, planning to do in-depth reading/reviewing during an upcoming road trip.

It was so quick to do create the user by CLI, I think it would be my preferred method. However, one has to remember the correct command and syntax. With the GUI formats of the Ubuntu desktop and the Webmin interface with the server, it is a much simpler, albeit longer, process using menus and dialog boxes.

The most frustrating aspect of using the server interface so far is the "hiccup" -- something which doesn't appear to work one moment and miraculously works at the next use.

Playing catch-up

Nothing like three days being sick and a weekend out-of-town without (unexpectedly) Internet access to put one way behind...

I have had no luck at all, despite several reinstalls of the VM server, at reaching the VIM tutor. However, I managed all the Nano edits with no problems (other than typos). Following the last re-install, the sudo aptitude install vim-runtime appeared to execute successfully, but not the sudo aptitude install vim-full. I am anxious to know if the other student, having the exact problem as I, has had any further success.

The question was posed, "why don't you need the sudo command [to reconfigure the .bashrc file]?" The .bashrc file is located in my home directory, so I have permission to edit the file. No one else can edit the file without employing the sudo command, however -- unless the permissions are changed (I think).

It has been so long since I have edited files with MS-DOS, I really do not have any memory of exactly how it compares to Nano. I do recall writing and editing .bat or batch files, for results much like the alias command used in Assignment 2 of Unit 3 -- i.e., using one command to reach another.

Using batch files, I was able to create a text menu in DOS that presented upon boot-up, and the batch files corresponded to numbers on the menu. Selecting a number ran the batch file, which generally executed the steps necessary to begin a process or program. Somewhere, I actually still have that stuff on a floppy!

As noted in the lecture, I've used Notepad extensively within Windows to edit (or peruse) source files for internet documents, either my own or those of others.

I feel a bit like a wallflower. Invited to the party, but Vim Tutor won't dance with me.

VM Installs

I was reminded Thurday night how much slower my old little (as in tech specs) Averatec laptop is than my new little (as in overall size) Asus EeePC netbook. It took about two hours for the VM install of the Ubuntu desktop on the Averatec (working from the ISO file on the hard drive). Friday morning (working from the ISO file on a flash drive), in 35 minutes I was logging in to my VM Ubuntu desktop and accessing a terminal window.

There is, of course, a great difference in hard drive space between the two laptops (40Gb vs. 160Gb), as well as RAM (1Gb vs. 2Gb), though little in processor speed (1.53GHz Mobile AMD Athlon vs. 1.6GHz Intel Atom). So, I have to wonder how much “thrashing” was going on the night of the Averatec install.

My next query was, with the installation of Ubuntu as a VM taking even 35 minutes -- that’s a lot of "evening" time to someone who works full-time and spends nearly 2 hours commuting each day -- can one leave the VM running? And if so, for how long? The answer is that is installations can be suspended or powered off, waiting to be rebooted as required. In just a few minutes, the Ubuntu desktop or server is ready to go.

Tutorials

A variety of tutorials was provided for the "Command Line" unit this week, including print and audio/video. Having audio and PowerPoint like presentation video is a nice change from long readings and class chatrooms of my previous on-line courses. It was more like being in a classroom/lecture environment, which I do miss from face-to-face classes as an undergraduate.

I am fortunate that I learn almost as well with print materials as I do with audio/visual materials. Still, having both types available for tutorials is beneficial. Employing multiple resources reinforces the content, but also provides various means to understanding.

In particular, I appreciated the DOS to Unix summary page link provided in the unit assignment text.