Dorking Out

whooooo! new colors for the new year! ok, i’m a little late at the update as it’s february already, and i’m super overdue for a blog redesign, having kept the same template since this blog’s inception in 2003, but hopefully this color switcheroo will mark the start a new yearly trend. (does it look ok? not too bright nor dull?)

what inspired the change? glad you asked! let me tell you about this nifty class i took on web development, courtesy of Learning Tree International (and my employer’s dime). i spent last week in glorious Costa Mesa, shacked up in the (shit hole) Days Inn for four nights, with days spent at the nearby Radisson Hotel where i learned all about what it takes to build a web site from the ground up.

and holy shit, it’s complicated — like really, really complicated. i spent the week lost in a fog of acronyms and applications, hearing such terms as PHP, Perl, JSP, applet, ASP, SQL, XML and CSS. and to think i took the class to learn basic HTML, which we did only on the first day. i thought being a copy editor would up my aptitude for learning this stuff, as i’m already ridiculously detail-oriented, but this kicked my ass. apparently, it’s not as easy to spot errors in code as it is in copy.

i’m trying to learn it, though it is a new and foreign language. one time in class, it took me ten minutes to realize the instructor had switched topics to database management and SQL, which he kept pronouncing as “sequel,” causing me to scour course notes in search of the prequel to his sequel until the phonetics of it finally dawned on me. but i wasn’t entirely without my successes. i did learn much useful HTML, including:

• how to create buttons:


• how to make text bigger and smaller


• how to create checkboxes: <-- Check me!


• how to color text


• how to create text fields:


• how to create radio buttons: Love it! Hate it!



• how

  to

  create

  tables



• how to create horizontal rules:



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check me out! it’s like that day i learned how to use the advanced formatting features in Word. so invigorating. in any case, i definitely intend to continue learning HTML and CSS through additional classes, books and programs. i got a long way to go before i’m fully dorked out and can truly develop a web site from the ground up, but the class has made for a lovely start.