Your Domain

A bit awkward, this one. One of my goals is to research the possibilities of worthwhile education online for free.

This Challenge, the fifth of Webcraft 101 from P2PU is to research Domain Registrars and register a new domain name. I have found some webhost companies who will include a free domain registration, but the hosting itself is not free.

A the moment, I am not intending to go live with a website - I'll probably use Wordpress or Blogger while I continue learning, which is free if a little limiting. However, for the purposes of this Challenge, and because I feel that it gives a sense of where I'm coming from, I've investigated '.co.uk' domains and would probably go with Joker.com as my Registrar.

This has to be a Nominet member but quite honestly, after looking over their list of members and checking out review sites, there were too many to research individually. So I've gone with a Registrar used by a company I know and have complete confidence in.

HTML Hunting in the Real World

First part of Challenge No 4 is to research the following HTML tags, div, blockquote, p, ol, ul, li, nav, menu, span, time, q, and img.

Take the easier things first. Lists. A list item is tagged (li) and the list itself can be either ordered (ol)) where the position of the items in the list is important, or unordered (ul), where it is not.

So, in this picture of a bookcase, (div) is the bookcase as a whole, each shelf is an unordered list (ul) of books or stopclocks. If the books were in alphabetical order, the list would be ordered (ol) and I would be a much sadder individual.

I guess the Radio, being a single item could just be an image (img) within the div ?

This task is taking me much longer than expected, mostly because I'm having to find out so many things apart from the HTML, like how to resize an image for Blogger. I expect it will get easier.

Some time ago, when I was learning Morse Code there were definite plateaux of learning. I would struggle with a speed of five words a minute for ages, then suddenly it clicked and I got it, in fact it seemed easy. There were several such plateaux before I got to the required speed (only 12 words per minute). It just takes lots of practice for it to sink in. But when it did... I found I was mentally translating everything I saw into dits and dahs. Signs, car number plates, book titles...

I hope I can begin to Mark Up in HTML after a while - at the moment its a bit of a struggle.

And there's a lesson I've learned. I really need to find out how to use quotes or blockquotes as my original post included all the HTML tags verbatim which played havoc with the layout! Half the post disappeared and the rest was all misaligned because it was trying to obey my listing instructions. I've replaced the arrow brackets with round ones which seems to work. This is a steep learning curve for me, but I shall definitely use Preview before publishing from now on!

Choose your weapon 2

Can any one tell me what a 'shebang' line is?

I typed my hand written code into Text Wrangler and asked it to 'Run in Terminal' but this is the response I got.

"This file doesn’t appear to contain a valid ‘shebang’ line (application error code: 13304)"

This is what I typed:

It looks OK to me, but...

Google, here I come!


Update....

I saved it and ran it in Safari and it worked! I'm amazed. I still don't know what a 'shebang' line is, though.

Choose Your Weapon

Well this has been a little more difficult!

Previously I have used TextEdit which is functional, if basic. And it seems I do have VIM but, as a complete novice, I haven't got a clue how to use it.

My principle on this journey is to explore free education but although the Text Editors suggested on P2PU have free downloads, they are not open source.

So I searched for free text editors, and having looked at the recommendations, I decided to try Text Wrangler. I downloaded it from CNET as it said it would work on my OS (Mac OSX 10.4), but the install screen warned that it doesn't.

I have just found an unsupported earlier version which is said to work on my system - I'll give it a go!

Writing HTML by Hand

Challenge 2 - Writing HTML by Hand

It took several goes to remember to close all the tags.

Webcraft 101

Hello World!

My attempts to become more fluent in html continue.....

This time, though, I'm going to try the benefits of open learning with the P2PU School of Webcraft.

And this is the first Challenge - Introduce Yourself!

OK, then. I was first introduced to a Computer way back. It occupied a complete suite of rooms, could only be accessed by punched card or tape and was bilingual - Algol or Fortran. My final year project was the first in many failures to communicate properly with the Binary Beast. I never did get my stick man to bounce his ball on the ground. It still grieves me!

Some time later, the Sinclair ZX80 entered my life, the first of many Personal Computers, and I could say "Hello World" with the rest of the family. But life leads you to other things. I didn't make the time to learn programming skills then but now I can take advantage of the wonderful opportunities on the Internet to have another go.

My goal is a website for Family interaction and a placeholder for personal interests and information.

I have taken some hesitant steps already but I respond best to goals and challenges and the School of Webcraft seems like a good fit.

How exciting!

Learning Inkscape

My challenge for October is to learn Inkscape.

So far I have completed two tutorials, this one, to make a simple shiny button

and this to create a Coffee Cup and Saucer.

I'm quite pleased with the results, but realise how much there is to learn - not just about using the software, but more importantly about really seeing what I'm looking at and translating that into vector shapes.

My next problem is finding how to get the results of my work into a format I can use on Blogger.
Update January 2012, I've managed to get the pictures uploaded, but I've lost all the blur effects - so much to learn!