Back Story (M): Summer Came To Visit

M is for Miscellanea, remember?

It reached the eighties here in the Twin Cities yesterday. That was—though deeply unusual (a phrase which here means "record breaking")—quite enjoyable, early in the day at any rate (more on that later).

I stunned my son Riley when he got off the bus from kindergarten when I said "I have to go back to the house for a few minutes, then how about we go to the park?"

First off, I don't think the thought had crossed his mind yet this early in the spring—and trust me, this is a kid that does think of the park very early in the spring—and secondly, even though I can usually enjoy taking him there, I never am the one to suggest it.

So off we went to the park for a while, and he was mighty miffed when I told him it was time to go so I could get dinner on the table before I had to leave for my class. (I'm taking Internet Programming - Client Side at Saint Paul College, as I work toward a Web Developer Certificate.) I finally got him to head for the car, but not without hearing about how we're coming back to the park again tomorrow (which would be today, now) and every day next week (during his spring break).

The bad part about summer showing up for a day is that folks at Saint Paul College had no idea how to switch on the A/C I guess. It was sweltering in our classroom, a condition made worse by all the computers turned on in the room!

Our first order of business at class? A quiz! I started off real good—I really know this stuff rather well—but then the heat started to get to me and I found myself struggling over stuff I knew that I knew. What an annoyance!

The rest of the class went well though; we're really getting into some cool JavaScript stuff now, which I cannot wait to apply to my Web Developer Quest site, not to mention what I might be able to do for this blog!

And being that this is primarily a "book talk" blog, I guess I could mention that the textbook we're using (New Perspectives on JavaScript by Patrick Carey and Frank Canovatchel) is really excellent for learning JavaScript from. And it is even better for learning JavaScript with a teacher, but I think most educated individuals could do quite well with only this book.

So—back to my story—summer visited, as I was saying.

For one day.

Today it is back to being what I—with my seriously thin blood—would have to call "mighty cool".

So guess where Riley and I wound up after he got off the bus today?

Right!

The park.

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I thought I was going to be a Web Developer! [From my "Web MaJoR" blog]

Okay, it turns out what I'm doing for my friend Rob is more graphic artist and video post production than I thought I'd be doing, and less web development, but I'm still going to use this blog to discuss what's going on in my professional life. That will include what's going on with the above endeavors, plus my own journey to become a better web developer (self-study, classes, projects personal & professional, etc).

So, who is this Rob guy and what are you doing for him then, you ask? Well, for starters, Rob is a personal trainer. Rob also loves helping people, especially where it comes to personal fitness. As such, he has under development a number of projects (videos, ebooks, a membership site, et cetera) that I will be linking to when it goes live later this year. I've been doing some web work for him, but mostly lately I've been doing video production (using Adobe Premiere Pro, Adobe Encore DVD, and Adobe Photoshop), and have been working with him on the companion ebook for this product.

Since this product has to do with improving your posture (a problem that most people that sit in front of a computer for any length of time have — whether they're aware of it or not — that can cause a number of other problems for them), but is still under wraps, I'll refer to it for now as Project Quasimodo.

So, what are am I doing for myself then?

Well, I am still very interested in becoming a full-fledged web developer.

I did this kind of work for a brief time for my former employer but, as was typical at this company — in a very Dilbert kind of way — I was given training, put to work on a project, and then once that project was over (long before I could really master the skills) I was put to work on something completely unrelated to web development. Shortly after that project ended, I was laid off and have done very little with my own website since (being busy with "stay-at-home dad-hood" will do that to you!)

If I could master the skills I"d like to master, I'd be a wiz in the following areas:

• web graphics (I'm taking a Photoshop Class at Dakota County Technical College (DCTC) to work on that)


• Client side & server side web programming (which I will probably obtain while pursuing a Web Developer Certificate from Saint Paul College)


• PHP5/MySQL (also part of the above named certificate program)


• XHTML/CSS (actually part of client side programming, but I'd really like to know these areas well)


• AJAX (something I'll have to find a class for sometime, or teach myself)

Right now, I'm reading Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML because, as I said, I'm really rusty at web stuff, and I've never done all that much with either css or xhtml, and I'd like to (one look at my blogs and you'll see why!)

Oh, and I'm about one third of the way through this book in what is — for me — record time, and I'm remembering a good deal (it does help though that almost none of this part of the book is new to me, just rusty!) Still, if you're new to this stuff, these "Head First" books are the way to go.

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