Project

I was going to check for any blog comments Patrick may have left, when I realized that my blog entry on my grou's project proposal somehow didn't get published. So, here I am getting another go at it to make sure it gets published on my blog. Hopefully it won't hurt my grade - I honestly dont know why it didn't get posted last night:

Team members are Jennifer L., Steffan M., and Ben L.

At this point, we have decided our project will be some sort of calendar that allows user to login with their user name and password. Select dates in which the user is available for a meeting or other purposes, and submit it to a server. Therefore, users who want to meet with each other will get to enter their information and it will be displayed for everyone to see - which would make setting up meetings easier.

Programmer's Block

Instead of writer's block, I think I have programmer's block.

I've been doing a lot of thinking lately. I don't know why it was so hard for me, but it took me a long time to even come up with an idea that I wanted to do for my weekly programming exercises. Last week was just to make a simple html page - I could barely do that. No, it's not because I was having trouble coding, I was having trouble coming up with an idea on what to do for the exercise. Although I liked that we were free to do whatever we had wanted on the html page, the freedom opened up an expansive chasm of ideas that I could not single out to choose from. After trying out multiple layouts, I couldn't figure out what I wanted. At the end, I spent more time trying to figure out what I wanted the layout to be rather than actual coding. In the end, it turned out to be something simple, yet has a touch of creativity. I plan to make more images similar to the one on the main page.

It wasn't the first time I made a website. My first website, actually, was kind of horrid. I could have finished the assignment by simply taking my old website pages and submitted it. But no - I wanted to create something new, and at least be of some importance to myself.

Meanwhile on the group project's end, I'm not sure if we are any closer to deciding what to do for our project. My hope is that it would have something to do with website content such as html, css, javascript, xml, xslt. Those are the things that I am most familiar with. Though I don't claim myself to be an expert, I should be able to work with proficiency - if I know exactly what is needed.
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Blah

So we got to form our groups last Thursday. It's kinda cool to meet new people! Our group is going to be pretty big because we have 6 people. It would probably be harder to coordinate things in a larger group such as this, but then again on the bright side, the more people there is means a lot more ideas and more quickly things can get done which means (I dare to say) less work. I just hope I can contribute to the group and not have other people do most of the work.

There has already been some interesting ideas being posted on our group blog. Everyone who posted has a solid idea that the group could work on as a project. How we are going to decide what to do is going to be another thing. We are just brainstorming ideas right now, so it might be some time before we arrive at anything conclusive.


For this upcoming week, the class will be reviewing and learning javascript. I suppose most of the things aren't that new to me. I know my basic javascripting, but I feel once I get to the arrays, things start getting tricky. So i might have trouble programming anything dealing with arrays because I have never done anything that requires using arrays before. Therefore, I think I should devote myself to becoming more familiarized with arrays.

Throwing ideas around

I have been some thinking about the projects that this course would entail. I'm not sure what to expect, but I figure that it would have to do with perhaps redesigning some existing interfaces to improve learning curves and ease of use. I feel that I am fairly new to programming anything. Whether it's java, javascript, or html. I only recently finished an introductory web programming course, so anything html related is fairly fresh on my mind.

I don't have any ambitious ideas about creating any new interfaces at the moment... but I am sure that as the quarter progress, something will come to me and get me excited about doing it. I suppose what I am most afraid of in this course is that the projects will take a huge amount of time to do. However at the present moment for the sake of this entry, I have to admit that there is actually something I might look into as a project for this course -- I've always appreciated how different websites have different ways to navigate through the pages. I think a creative and interactive navigation system in a website makes an enjoyable experience. So perhaps for one of my projects I could develop an interface design for a webpage! It's just an idea to throw out in the air right now, so maybe I will look into it in the coming weeks.


Things I have learned this week:
-AJAX

I never even heard of the term AJAX until I came to first day of class last Tuesday. It seems complicated when i was looking at the diagram, but then it occured to me that it's actually already something I already learned about in my last web programming course. If I understand it correctly, AJAX is just a technique used in webpage design that utilizes javascript, xhml, xml and xslt. I'm not exactly sure what is meant by an "AJAX engine", but I assume that it's the conglomerate of the listed techniques used to retrieve and send data to a client conntected to a server.


-Along with most other people in the class, I have taken cogs 120, so Vannevar Bush, James Berner Lee and the brief history of the Internet isn't all too new to me. However, I do find the defination of Web 2.0 and its comparison to the old "Web. 1.0" kind of interesting. Web 2.0 is described to be a new shift in Internet technology and techniques to service people. Basically Web 2.0 is what the internet looks like now, and Web 1.0 is how the Internet looked and worked 5-10 years ago. It is almost like the Internet itself evolves and transforms itself.

Hi

Well here it is! I really like this new web blog design, who knows.. maybe i'll switch to this blog from my livejournal. Anyhow, I guess I will be using this for my class blog. I haven't read any of the week 1 articles yet, but I plan to start tomorrow afternoon... but in the meantime, it's 2:25am and i don't feel one bit tired. So i'm going to go to sleep before i spend tomorrow snoozing in class.