If you've ever been involved in any sort of industry or scholastic discipline for any amount of time, you've probably come to realize that there is a ton of industry/discipline specific jargon out there, and adding insult to injury, in the world I live in, there are a lot of acronyms. Not are there only acronyms, there are generally-accepted TLA's (three letter acronyms), shorter two letter things and even one-letter language names.
I suppose I should back up a bit here and try to define what I'm personally out to do.
I'm interested in data, plain and simple. Getting to the data, interpreting the data and presenting the data raises additional questions for me. So, ... I think my blog needs to take a few sideways steps; partly to help me keep track of where I'm going, and partly to keep the blog interesting.
So, for starters, I try to keep these posts relatively short (*if too short, please let me know via comment!). I also try to keep them relevant- right now, primarily about my database. I also usually start out with some pretty normal accounts of the day or past few just to keep readers from falling asleep!
I've been thinking, though, about my I.T. journey- where I've been, where I am and where I'd like to be. I've also considered this blog to be a vehicle to disseminate arcane I.T. information to the masses (*I fully realize that "the masses" don't read my blog, but it 's a handy reference for those that do!)
So, without further ado, away we go!
The wonderful world of I.T. is populated by all sorts of people ("peeps"), hardware and software. In my world, spheres collide, and I interact with peeps, hardware, software, hardware gonks and software gonks... and I'm fairly certain this list is incomplete. FWIW, my definition of a gonk is a human that interacts with computer hardware and/or software.
So, I'm going at the data somewhat backwards... in an attempt to see how data is driven... or drives. Which brings me to HTML, or Hypertext Markup Language, which is one of the few four letter acronyms that I know. HTML is THE language of the internet, so this is where I am starting my "formal" coding. I'm playing around with HTML and hope to have a test/dummy website running sometime at some point. The challenge is not getting this site running, but rather making it large enough to learn from! I have a few books on HTML, CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) and web design, so, to slightly paraphrase Walter Matthau's character in "Hopscotch", "I'm loaded for bear!"
Finally, a few numbers from data: 9508 rows with a primary key assigned (just a bit over 39%), two new tables, and some added data in the database. Change from last count- approximately .05% growth.
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
Showing posts with label HTML. Show all posts
Showing posts with label HTML. Show all posts
Monday, May 13, 2013
Thursday, May 2, 2013
Panic @1700!
I had a plan yesterday, and it was a good plan. I found out early on that I would not be working that evening, so being the diligent, studious fellow that I am (ha,ha!), I blocked out some time to settle down with the laptop and my HTML book and write some code. It was a good plan, really it was! I got the laptop all set up and deployed the catshield powercable protector, plugged the external HDD in and the 8GB flash drive where my HTML projects live, and I was ready to go! Jennifer and I had planned to watch the cable TV show "Psych" at 2100, so I had a good block of time to get some serious coding and learning in.
I went down to the Secret Underground Lair to get the book I've been using, and it was not where I thought it was. A trait of mine is that I love organization. The problem, as Jennifer has often (and most pointedly) observed is that my flavor of organization closely resembles the leftovers and castoffs of various space programs that orbit the Earth: it doesn't look like organization to the casual observer. Still, I can generally amaze her with my ability to find the things I claim to have organized.
Back to the book. I had taken it downstairs the previous day, and was going to give it a home, whereupon I discovered that no suitable shelf space existed. As a good many of our overflow books are in a similar homeless state, they typically end up in stacks, double-parked on shelves in front of other books, or on any available flat surface. So, I remember doing a bit of reorganizing of just my I.T.-related titles to make space for this one smallish (just over 400 pages) volume, and many books had gotten moved, and the HTML book presumably had found a new home. However, when I went to look for it, it was just not anywhere. And I did look everywhere- several times. At one point, I had the sinking feeling that it might have been mixed in with several library loans we returned earlier in the day. Jennifer was fairly confident that this was not the case, and after a bit of discussion so was I.
After about 30 minutes of frantic searching, I decided to give it a rest. In lieu of coding, I tackled my spreadsheet, which after the evening's work is now up to 9100+ rows that have their new ID, ~36% of the total. I still have a way to go, but it certainly felt good to put a dent in it. I also added a small bit of data to a few of the tables in the database.
Finally, as 2100 approached, I went downstairs to grab a soda to have with dinner. I grabbed a Diet Pepsi and turned to go back up. There was the book- I had walked past it at least a dozen times in my earlier search! I grabbed the book and described my discovery to Jennifer. Then I said, "See, I even got something that won't keep me awake."
She smiled knowingly and said, "That's diet, not caffeine-free."
Well, at least I found my book.
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
I went down to the Secret Underground Lair to get the book I've been using, and it was not where I thought it was. A trait of mine is that I love organization. The problem, as Jennifer has often (and most pointedly) observed is that my flavor of organization closely resembles the leftovers and castoffs of various space programs that orbit the Earth: it doesn't look like organization to the casual observer. Still, I can generally amaze her with my ability to find the things I claim to have organized.
Back to the book. I had taken it downstairs the previous day, and was going to give it a home, whereupon I discovered that no suitable shelf space existed. As a good many of our overflow books are in a similar homeless state, they typically end up in stacks, double-parked on shelves in front of other books, or on any available flat surface. So, I remember doing a bit of reorganizing of just my I.T.-related titles to make space for this one smallish (just over 400 pages) volume, and many books had gotten moved, and the HTML book presumably had found a new home. However, when I went to look for it, it was just not anywhere. And I did look everywhere- several times. At one point, I had the sinking feeling that it might have been mixed in with several library loans we returned earlier in the day. Jennifer was fairly confident that this was not the case, and after a bit of discussion so was I.
After about 30 minutes of frantic searching, I decided to give it a rest. In lieu of coding, I tackled my spreadsheet, which after the evening's work is now up to 9100+ rows that have their new ID, ~36% of the total. I still have a way to go, but it certainly felt good to put a dent in it. I also added a small bit of data to a few of the tables in the database.
Finally, as 2100 approached, I went downstairs to grab a soda to have with dinner. I grabbed a Diet Pepsi and turned to go back up. There was the book- I had walked past it at least a dozen times in my earlier search! I grabbed the book and described my discovery to Jennifer. Then I said, "See, I even got something that won't keep me awake."
She smiled knowingly and said, "That's diet, not caffeine-free."
Well, at least I found my book.
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
Wednesday, April 24, 2013
Tag... you're it!
I've been working pretty hard to get some better utilization of time into my days. I'm still in hot pursuit of a full time day job, but am also keenly interested in amping up my technical skills and moving my database project forward.
The past few days we've been keeping an eye both on the local conditions (water level) and the forecast, as the Des Plaines River officially crested at 10.92 ft (3.3284 m)- a new record. It's been pretty dry, with some light rains the past day (Tuesday). In the "Official News" department, Jennifer and I made our way to the township offices to appeal our real estate assessment. For whatever reason, our property is consistently over-assessed in comparison with other properties in our neighborhood, so every six months we have to file an appeal. In all honesty, I have to give a shout out to the Assessor's staff of Maine Township- they are friendly and helpful.
I've made time to do a bit of HTML work over the past few
days, and working on the laptop has become a bit of a challenge, as the keyboard is not full-sized. Not a huge issue, as it is a very nice keyboard, but a problem arises whenever I need to use a shifted character: on the compact keyboard layout, the SHIFT key is approximately 50% the size of a standard keyboard, and it is directly above the left arrow key. Not much of problem so far. On the bottom row, however, directly next to the left arrow is the CTRL key. Because of this arrangement, I've rediscovered a plethora of <CTRL+> commands that are quite useful when one actually intentionally executes them. So, after a few days worth of research, I almost purchased the Logitech G105 keyboard. Amazon was offering it at $56.97 USD, which is not too bad of a price for an illuminated keyboard. Upon further searching, though, I found the same keyboard, but with the Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 logo for $27.95 USD. The only difference in the the two models, apart from the logo, is green lighting vs. blue for the full-priced model. So, I went with the less expensive one.
All of this leads me to the title of this post.
So there I was, happily plugging away on the new keyboard. I decided it was time to do some coding, so I went to HTML DOG and opened up my project. I was all set to start typing when I discovered that my code did not look like the example code. It took a bit of comparing three or four pages before I discovered that my code was okay- the website was using an earlier bit of code to continue with the lesson. Problem solved- I pressed on, entered the code from the new lesson, and posted it. It worked, but one of my headers was tabbed out of line. Back to the three or four pages of their code vs. mine. The error, of course, was mine, and it was in the form of a missing tag: once I added the </u> tag, my errant text popped back into place. It made me happy.
Last of all, I got a bit of work done on the database. I got about 200 rows in the spreadsheet updated; only ~19K to go! The fact that there is absolutely no way to automate this part of the process is what is making it so slow going.
Timehack 06.15.13 1030
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
The past few days we've been keeping an eye both on the local conditions (water level) and the forecast, as the Des Plaines River officially crested at 10.92 ft (3.3284 m)- a new record. It's been pretty dry, with some light rains the past day (Tuesday). In the "Official News" department, Jennifer and I made our way to the township offices to appeal our real estate assessment. For whatever reason, our property is consistently over-assessed in comparison with other properties in our neighborhood, so every six months we have to file an appeal. In all honesty, I have to give a shout out to the Assessor's staff of Maine Township- they are friendly and helpful.
 |
| The new keyboard |
days, and working on the laptop has become a bit of a challenge, as the keyboard is not full-sized. Not a huge issue, as it is a very nice keyboard, but a problem arises whenever I need to use a shifted character: on the compact keyboard layout, the SHIFT key is approximately 50% the size of a standard keyboard, and it is directly above the left arrow key. Not much of problem so far. On the bottom row, however, directly next to the left arrow is the CTRL key. Because of this arrangement, I've rediscovered a plethora of <CTRL+> commands that are quite useful when one actually intentionally executes them. So, after a few days worth of research, I almost purchased the Logitech G105 keyboard. Amazon was offering it at $56.97 USD, which is not too bad of a price for an illuminated keyboard. Upon further searching, though, I found the same keyboard, but with the Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 logo for $27.95 USD. The only difference in the the two models, apart from the logo, is green lighting vs. blue for the full-priced model. So, I went with the less expensive one.
All of this leads me to the title of this post.
So there I was, happily plugging away on the new keyboard. I decided it was time to do some coding, so I went to HTML DOG and opened up my project. I was all set to start typing when I discovered that my code did not look like the example code. It took a bit of comparing three or four pages before I discovered that my code was okay- the website was using an earlier bit of code to continue with the lesson. Problem solved- I pressed on, entered the code from the new lesson, and posted it. It worked, but one of my headers was tabbed out of line. Back to the three or four pages of their code vs. mine. The error, of course, was mine, and it was in the form of a missing tag: once I added the </u> tag, my errant text popped back into place. It made me happy.
Last of all, I got a bit of work done on the database. I got about 200 rows in the spreadsheet updated; only ~19K to go! The fact that there is absolutely no way to automate this part of the process is what is making it so slow going.
Timehack 06.15.13 1030
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
Tuesday, April 16, 2013
A World Without Love
*I started this on the 04.14.13, and the title has absolutely nothing to do with Monday's event.
No, I'm not going all soft and stuff here. Or oldest son works at Sam's Club, and he asked me for a ride home after work today (Sunday). As Sam's is pretty close, I agreed, and we did a bit of shopping together. As we were getting close to the end of our shopping, we stopped to look at the Blu Ray selections. A number of James Bond movies were on the shelf- older 60's and 70's titles, and for some strange reason the Paul McCartney-penned "World Without Love" which was recorded by the British duo of Peter & Gordon popped into my mind and just would no leave. Getting a song stuck in my head is no big deal, but this song had absolutely no association with any of the James Bond films, as far as I know.
On to html, which is looking more and more like rocket science every day. This is partly my fault, as I've been trying to make progress, but using three different computers with three different operating systems, I don't know all- I do know for certain is that the progress has been slow.
I need to turn briefly to Windows 8. At this point, I'm neither a fanboy (and the likelihood of that happening is small) nor a hater. I actually had to look up the correct spelling of likelihood as my first spelling earned me a red squiggly underscore. Who knew that a spelling error would lead to the following-
"In statistics, a likelihood function (often simply the likelihood) is a function of the parameters of a statistical model, defined as follows: the likelihood of a set of parameter values, θ, given some observed outcomes, x, is equal to the probability of those observed outcomes given those parameter values." Thanks, wikipedia.
Who knew? Well, I suppose any statisticians that may be reading this blog. But, other than those? I digress... back to Windows 8. There are some things I really do like about it, like the really fast launch and shutdown. It's also pretty easy to move between applications, similar to Windows 7. Applications also launch pretty quickly, and I'm okay with using the touchpad like a smartphone screen. One thing Microsoft missed the mark on is the display, though. If it's designed to work as a touch interface, but most PCs don't have a touch interface, why not just enable the mouse to emulate touch?
Now for the unpleasantness. Everything is hidden. I'm not going to get into the whole "Start" button debate, but I had this experience: I was doing something a few days ago and wanted to make a quick calculation. Normally, the sequence of events would be something like Start>Programs>Accessories>Calculator. In Windows 8, the sequence is something like this: look for the calculator. Fail. Search the entire HDD. Ah- there it is! Now, what did I need the calculator for?
I just now tried to locate it again, and again had to go through the same search the whole HDD procedure. I give up- I put a shortcut on the real desktop. On the plus side, it's really nice calculator.
I think that, with that, I'm going to put this post to bed (figuratively speaking, of course, as it's ~1230 and the sun is being cheerful. Too bloody cheerful for my faux sour mood).
Have a joy joy day. Me? I'm off to look at pictures of kittens on Facebook, although I'm not certain that even kittens can bring me out of my faux funk.
No, I'm not going all soft and stuff here. Or oldest son works at Sam's Club, and he asked me for a ride home after work today (Sunday). As Sam's is pretty close, I agreed, and we did a bit of shopping together. As we were getting close to the end of our shopping, we stopped to look at the Blu Ray selections. A number of James Bond movies were on the shelf- older 60's and 70's titles, and for some strange reason the Paul McCartney-penned "World Without Love" which was recorded by the British duo of Peter & Gordon popped into my mind and just would no leave. Getting a song stuck in my head is no big deal, but this song had absolutely no association with any of the James Bond films, as far as I know.
On to html, which is looking more and more like rocket science every day. This is partly my fault, as I've been trying to make progress, but using three different computers with three different operating systems, I don't know all- I do know for certain is that the progress has been slow.
I need to turn briefly to Windows 8. At this point, I'm neither a fanboy (and the likelihood of that happening is small) nor a hater. I actually had to look up the correct spelling of likelihood as my first spelling earned me a red squiggly underscore. Who knew that a spelling error would lead to the following-
"In statistics, a likelihood function (often simply the likelihood) is a function of the parameters of a statistical model, defined as follows: the likelihood of a set of parameter values, θ, given some observed outcomes, x, is equal to the probability of those observed outcomes given those parameter values." Thanks, wikipedia.
Who knew? Well, I suppose any statisticians that may be reading this blog. But, other than those? I digress... back to Windows 8. There are some things I really do like about it, like the really fast launch and shutdown. It's also pretty easy to move between applications, similar to Windows 7. Applications also launch pretty quickly, and I'm okay with using the touchpad like a smartphone screen. One thing Microsoft missed the mark on is the display, though. If it's designed to work as a touch interface, but most PCs don't have a touch interface, why not just enable the mouse to emulate touch?
Now for the unpleasantness. Everything is hidden. I'm not going to get into the whole "Start" button debate, but I had this experience: I was doing something a few days ago and wanted to make a quick calculation. Normally, the sequence of events would be something like Start>Programs>Accessories>Calculator. In Windows 8, the sequence is something like this: look for the calculator. Fail. Search the entire HDD. Ah- there it is! Now, what did I need the calculator for?
I just now tried to locate it again, and again had to go through the same search the whole HDD procedure. I give up- I put a shortcut on the real desktop. On the plus side, it's really nice calculator.
I think that, with that, I'm going to put this post to bed (figuratively speaking, of course, as it's ~1230 and the sun is being cheerful. Too bloody cheerful for my faux sour mood).
Have a joy joy day. Me? I'm off to look at pictures of kittens on Facebook, although I'm not certain that even kittens can bring me out of my faux funk.
Saturday, April 13, 2013
Post XXV
Twenty-five is one of those things that just looks good in Roman numerals. There's a fair amount of geeky yuks and thrills going on at Ye Old Secret Underground Lair, so I thought an update was appropriate.
So, I guess starting with last night... well, actually, early Friday morning... yup. Friday morning. I've got this quote (I think it's from Larry-Boy and the Fib from Outer Space), "HTML, good buddy!" At the beginning of this particular VeggieTales episode, we find Bob the Cucumber trying to explain some fairly ordinary technology to Bob the Tomato. Bob, of course, is a technophobe, and Larry is trying to encourage him to get with the program and stuff. In the course of the conversation, Larry spouts off some geek terminology, and "HTML good buddy!" has ever since stuck in my mind. And this, one may wonder, has just exactly what to do with a blog which has the unifying theme of a database?
Well, while data is certainly the muscle and substance of the internet, HTML and a few other languages are its skeleton. I finally took the plunge, at around 0230 Friday 12 Apr 2013, into HTML. I'm starting at the very beginning of HTML 5- the moral equivalent of "HELLO WORLD". And this starting point is somewhat humorous, because for the relative briefest of moments- sometime between 2000-2002 - I was a webmaster. I'm not going to mention the firm, but it was small and privately held, and dead set on NOT doing business on the internet. I think they still are, as even though the information on the site is up to date, it still has the same pre-2000, very non-interactive design that it had while I maintained it.
So, I'm starting from scratch. After a fair amount of casual research over the past few weeks, I sat down last night at the laptop and started going through the first tutorial on htmldog.com. I also have a book in my tech library HTML5 for Masterminds by J.D. Gauchat. I skimmed the first chapter of the book, and it looks like it will be helpful.
Next news is that Big Kitty (officially known as Schwarz) breached the defenses of the Secret Underground Lair on two fronts. The second will be dealt with this weekend, but the first, main breech was the door. The door is old, and the door knob is also old. Some inner part gave up the ghost earlier this week, and the door would no longer stay shut. Fortunately Wonderwoman (officially known as Jennifer by most and Mom to a select few) removed the defective workings and put in a gently used but functional new latch-thingey.
And finally, as I've mentioned that XXV is something of a special number, I'd like to take a moment to thank my world-wide audience for virtually hanging out with me for a bit and taking the time to read my meandering musings. Although I know very few of my readers by name, I hope that a shout out to your country will suffice as far as thanks goes. After all, readers are the driving force of blogs.
Thanks to the kind folks of: Australia, Austria, China, The Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Japan, Malaysia, Poland, Romania, Russia, Sweden, Ukraine, United Kingdom, United States and Vietnam. I guess I'm a bit naive at times, but having readers in seventeen countries is pretty cool- and a bit humbling. So thanks again, everyone! I promise not to go all maudlin again until post fifty.
So, I guess starting with last night... well, actually, early Friday morning... yup. Friday morning. I've got this quote (I think it's from Larry-Boy and the Fib from Outer Space), "HTML, good buddy!" At the beginning of this particular VeggieTales episode, we find Bob the Cucumber trying to explain some fairly ordinary technology to Bob the Tomato. Bob, of course, is a technophobe, and Larry is trying to encourage him to get with the program and stuff. In the course of the conversation, Larry spouts off some geek terminology, and "HTML good buddy!" has ever since stuck in my mind. And this, one may wonder, has just exactly what to do with a blog which has the unifying theme of a database?
Well, while data is certainly the muscle and substance of the internet, HTML and a few other languages are its skeleton. I finally took the plunge, at around 0230 Friday 12 Apr 2013, into HTML. I'm starting at the very beginning of HTML 5- the moral equivalent of "HELLO WORLD". And this starting point is somewhat humorous, because for the relative briefest of moments- sometime between 2000-2002 - I was a webmaster. I'm not going to mention the firm, but it was small and privately held, and dead set on NOT doing business on the internet. I think they still are, as even though the information on the site is up to date, it still has the same pre-2000, very non-interactive design that it had while I maintained it.
So, I'm starting from scratch. After a fair amount of casual research over the past few weeks, I sat down last night at the laptop and started going through the first tutorial on htmldog.com. I also have a book in my tech library HTML5 for Masterminds by J.D. Gauchat. I skimmed the first chapter of the book, and it looks like it will be helpful.
Next news is that Big Kitty (officially known as Schwarz) breached the defenses of the Secret Underground Lair on two fronts. The second will be dealt with this weekend, but the first, main breech was the door. The door is old, and the door knob is also old. Some inner part gave up the ghost earlier this week, and the door would no longer stay shut. Fortunately Wonderwoman (officially known as Jennifer by most and Mom to a select few) removed the defective workings and put in a gently used but functional new latch-thingey.
And finally, as I've mentioned that XXV is something of a special number, I'd like to take a moment to thank my world-wide audience for virtually hanging out with me for a bit and taking the time to read my meandering musings. Although I know very few of my readers by name, I hope that a shout out to your country will suffice as far as thanks goes. After all, readers are the driving force of blogs.
Thanks to the kind folks of: Australia, Austria, China, The Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Japan, Malaysia, Poland, Romania, Russia, Sweden, Ukraine, United Kingdom, United States and Vietnam. I guess I'm a bit naive at times, but having readers in seventeen countries is pretty cool- and a bit humbling. So thanks again, everyone! I promise not to go all maudlin again until post fifty.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)