There are simply too many things to learn. But that is ok. Guess that will make me a lifelong learner? Whatever that means.
So we covered SQL, HTML, CSS and JavaScript this week. The good news is that I can now read the inspect element and source code of a page and puzzle it out. The bad news is that there is so much more to know about Javascript than is possible to learn in one day of lecture and one study day.
I started reading my 3d game programming book that teaches JavaScript, but it won't teach me how to get Javascript and HTML talking properly. So, I ended up going to Barnes and Noble and plunking down nearly $100 for two books. The crap part is that if I bought the book they had in stock at Amazon instead, I would have saved about $14. But, I would have had to wait. So, it's all good and I'll be reading up on JavaScript for the next few nights.
As a language, I don't find it all that daunting. It's just learning all the tricks to get it to modify the DOM (Document Object Model) that will occupy most of my attention.
Today was a study hall day. I figured out two of the three parts of our last lesson. Got help on the third from Wendy. In turn, I helped her with one that she was working on. No, I didn't tell her the exact answer, just pointed out what I learned after a rather extensive Google crawl on "JavaScript getElementsByName" and some other random words that appeared in the exercise. The key point was that getElementsByName returns an array and it helps to get a specific item from said array in order to change an image. Not sure why yet... maybe the book will help.
Instead of reading up on anything or doing some of the exercises again, I decided to start building up some of my glaze calculator app. I started yesterday with just hard coding a recipe and feeding the numbers into a function to get the kilos. Today, I added some data requests from the user, created a dictionary to hold the name of the ingredient and its volume percentage and got that data manipulated by the kilo function (dividing the percentage by 100 and then multiplying by 1000). I hope to update the code to test if the weight is given as a percentage or by a decimal... you know... you can't trust users. I also have to start adding classes to some of the functions. Time to go review that game we worked on. Also have to try making up the logo. Can't decide between some cute wriggly insect or a mechanical/tech-y looking G with dangly dongly bits...
Tonight, I fully intended to do some clay work for that art show in December. Instead, I came upstairs, ate bad food, finished a loom knitting project (sweater for my parents' kitten!), made one of my cats model said sweater and watched Quickdraw on Hulu.
I'm determined to go to sleep shortly and get up early. Tomorrow, I definitely have to work on my latest clay project. I also have to meet with my third mentor, go to Clay Planet to take photos of some glaze samples (and post) and also make some tags for Julie at Steepers... Yes, I can do it all!
I am determined. I shall post tomorrow to see if I actually get it all done.
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