I’ve updated my site to WordPress 3.0. There are a few new things, most of which I’ll never use on this blog. Though I do enjoy the new theme (now default) that WordPress has included with 3.0.
I’ll be playing around with it for a bit to see how the new features can best be implemented into other projects. Really looking forward to finally creating a theme or two. Been holding off until this release was finalized.
Thursday was technicaly the end of the week as far as school is concerned. However, I have yet to receive my text book or any homework. With 5 classes this semester, each class is only 3 weeks long. Now that I have only two weeks left, that will either leave quite a bit out, or make the next two weeks Hell. Uggg.
I was actually looking forward to learning a bit about Visual Basic.
Week six of school is now behind me, and with it should be the “Website Design” class, or like I’ve called it before, the very basic introduction to HTML. As I mentioned last week, I wasn’t exactly sure what was going on since we really weren’t getting any assignments. On Wednesday, which was technically the next to last day of the class, I emailed my instructor to see what was up. For better or for worse, that evening he gave my class two chapters worth of work. I guess that makes up for over a week of nothing.
While I highly doubt my classmates actually got the work done, I was easily able to finish it in about 9 hours spread over the weekend. It’s not like it was anything difficult, all it covered were links and tables. Yeah, real tough stuff. I’m disappointed that the class didn’t cover forms, CSS, JavaScript, or even mention HTML5. Granted, there isn’t a whole lot you can teach in three weeks (12 days), so maybe we will get into those areas further down the road. If not, this class was a total waste and pretty much useless if any of my classmates were looking into becoming a real web developer after graduation. Ahh well, at least it was an easy “A”. Now I just have to try and forget all the deprecated things that I learned in this class.
Next up “Introduction to Programming” otherwise known as Visual Basic. This should be real interesting for me, since I’ve never done anything in VB. Though I’m not expecting much of a challenge over the next three weeks.
June 11, 2004 a date which will live in infamy… no wait, that was something else. Six years ago, Farrah and I said our “I Do’s” and started our happy lives together. That beautiful, blushing bride is still the most beautiful woman in the world to me. I love her so much, and I’m thankful for every day I have with her.
I don’t want to sound like I’m complaining, but I’m kind of disappointed so far with Fountainhead’s Online Programming degree so far. I’m sure I’ll be eating these words down the road, but right now I don’t feel like I’m getting my money’s worth out of the program.
Today marks the beginning of week six, and the third and last week of our second class “Website Design” or as it should probably be called the most basic introduction to HTML possible. I tried to sell myself out if this class and several others from the first two semesters on the account that I am a professional developer. Maybe not the best one, but I do make a living at it.
This semester is broken up into 5 classes, so each class runs for only three weeks. One would think that these classes would be packed full of assignments, but they haven’t. At first I contributed it to technical issues the school was having as it started a new round of students. But that should be long out of the way… and what I’m seeing if more than technical issues.
I have a friend that is in the exact same program that started about 8 months ago. Aside from different books, everything else is pretty much the same. In their “Professional Development” class they worked on resumes and did some team and individual presentations. I wasn’t looking forward to this, but accepted that it had to be done for a good grade. The class came and went, and all my class really did was work on a resume and read the updated version of “What Color is Your Parachute?” I swear I read a copy of this book in high school.
So, professional development came and went. Three weeks and all we did was a resume. Now we are on to the HTML class. Boring, I know. Each student is suppose to create a “web portfolio” and upload their assignments. Out of my class, I’m the only one that has done that. You can see the wonderfully bland school page here.
So far, we have covered a little on the basic theory stuff and in Chapter 2, we covered the basics of HTML. No mention of CSS, JavaScript, DOM, or anything really outside of <body>, <head>, lists, paragraphs, and the <hr> which you can clearly see in the assignments I have posted. Chapter 3 and 4 get into such complex subjects as links and tables.
My friend in the other class complained often that his instructor had them coding (and validating) everything to a strict doctype. While largely useless by forcing them to the strict doctype, they at least developed good skills for the future. We’re still talking about the deprecated bgcolor and align properties. I wanted to bang my head on the keyboard. Why are they teaching this???
I know I expected the first several classes to be an easy “A”. However, I had no idea that it was going to basically be a free “A”. I know, I know. Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. I’ll be wishing for days like this down the road when we are working on C#, VB.net, and JAVA. Maybe I should just go in and see just how many assignments in the HTML book I can get completed, if for no other reason than for the heck of it. Maybe I’d find something in there I didn’t know.