Day 22

Well hello again!

Glad to say I've definitely made some progress. I began work on a couple more pages for the robotics website. Sad to say, but I might have to redo them. But only the colours. I think the colours work well as is, but I think with the new design and all I should redo the colours too. Change the banner up a little as well. I think things will go nicely.

Now, I'll have a couple pictures of the other pages down at the bottom. One thing I seem to be struggling with is making two <div>'s work in harmony side-by-side. This is exemplified on the Safety (first picture) page. The only reason they seem to be working on the other pages is because I'm using a table. I'm trying to get away from that though. I'd like to be able to use divs for pretty much everything because they're easier to adjust than a table. Like on the "outreach" page, the pictures and the ruler are in line, but they're off to the left, and weirdly placed and I'm having a frustrating time with that.

I know I'll get it soon! I also found a good way to make the menu items also have cascading menu items. I'll implement those soon, once I finish with the designs.

That's really I have for an update right now. So, I guess I'll talk to you in a few days to check up on how things are going then!

Happy coding!

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Day 19

Well, hello again.

It's only Day 19 and I've really made progress, guys, I'm really proud of myself. I really started in on the robotics website and I've almost finished the first page. It's taken a lot of tweaking and Googling and refreshing, but it's finally almost done. And all in one day too! I'd say, for someone building a web page from scratch, that's pretty good, especially for not having ever done so. I found a really cool navigation theme...thing... while browsing /r/web_design today. I posted the progress (when I was about half-way done) on our team's Facebook page earlier today. They seem to like it. It's a whole lot cleaner, but I still have to figure out some better colours.

I'm using tables, is that a bad thing? I've heard a lot about how people shouldn't use tables. "DON'T USE TABLES" they say. It seems to organize my content quite nicely. I guess I'm just not as advanced as they are. Or maybe they're just table haters. Either way, I'm using tables until I find a better way to arrange content.

I'll upload the pic(s) of the home page at the end of this post, I think it's looking pretty great. I might post the code up here some time, even. I'm really getting the hang of practical applications of HTML and CSS.

I guess that's it for now. Will update soon with the rest of the progress. I also need to get started on my own personal/portfolio website.

Until next time, happy coding.

Day 15

Well hello again, my fellow web designers!

I've been doing some research around on the internet. I actually have had to take a couple days off from coding for work and school and such. Since it's now Thanksgiving break I'm hoping to get back into it, maybe make up for lost time.

I know that I started this journey for a reason, and that reason was originally to learn Ruby and then Rails and do front/back-end web dev in order to either have a major head start for college or head right into the work force with my awesome portfolio. That has changed to doing HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and probably JQuery, for front-end web design. I haven't looked, but I would say that there are about as many jobs for front-end designers as there are for back-end developers.

I did some thinking today, looking for online courses/tutorials for proper programming and web design and all that jazz. I found a course on Python, I believe it was, where the end-game was building your own search engine. That sounds like a really awesome project! I also found another which helped one build a blog. I got to thinking "I've kind of got my blog figured out, using Blogspot and all, what else could I build?" Then it came to me: A forum! I happened to be browsing Reddit at the time. :P So I decided that at the end of my journey, I was going to have a fully functional forum with at least 50 members. Maybe I'll also build a wiki; I've been interested in those for a while.

End-game goal: Make a fully functional forum with at least 50 active users.
                          Have a portfolio website set up
                          Have several mockups of various templates and themes for websites
                          Build and maintain a wiki

I like those goals, I think they are quite realistic. As long as I stick with it, that is. You might be wondering how I'm going to build a forum. "But Luke," you say, "It's going to be hard to build that from scratch!" Well, maybe it is, but have no fear! I'm going to use my knowledge of Python! I'll do the Django tutorial, mess around with it, learn it quite well, and make a forum. Simple! But I have to make sure my HTML and CSS are up to how I want them, and that will take a little bit longer.

Wish me luck on my journey! I might have a ways to go but I'm learning a lot!

Happy coding.

Day 11

Well, it's day 11 and things are going well. I finished the Codecademy track on Web Fundamentals. I even got quite a bit of work done on the Robotics website, and I've started to design my own portfolio/personal website. I think I'm actually getting the hang of it. I also started into the JavaScript track on Codecademy so I can make websites more interactive!
I'm pretty excited. Can you tell?
I also got the new iPod Touch (5th gen) to go with my Macbook. I also got it because the Zune Marketplace is now officially offline and that pretty much means the Zune is useless now. So I had to make the switch to Apple. It's actually not bad. The camera's great with 1080p and the equalizer is set to Bass Booster so the bass is amazing.
If you're wondering what the point of that little aside was: Music helps me program. It keeps me focused, especially if it's instrumental because the lyrics are a little distracting sometimes. So I'm going to download a bit of wonderful orchestra pieces and listen to those. See? Perfectly reasonable to bring up in a blog post.
The iPod was half an early Christmas present too. My girlfriend wanted to buy it for me, but that's a lot of money so I told her either I get to pay half (at least) or I'm getting it myself. So she agreed to the half. I was going to get a 64GB but the 32 was a little over $300 so I decided that was enough.
So that's it for now, I'm just working on building my portfolio and stuff. There's a copy/graphic design store in town and I might ask them if they want to hire me to do web design. Work out some sort of a deal or something. I'm looking forward to it!

Happy coding!

Day 8

Okay, so I know it's been a few days, but I'm working SUPER hard. I've decided to focus mostly on website design for now (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and JQuery), and then once I get that well under my belt I'll return to Ruby and learn Ruby on Rails or maybe I'll use my Python knowledge and use Django or something. A few days ago I got a Macbook Pro from a friend so I've been using this to do all my programming. Speaking of which, just two days ago I spent about four hours and did 100 lessons on Codecademy's HTML/CSS track. It's going really quite well.

I've set up a business plan for freelancing/starting my own web design business. I've got prices and everything set up, I'm just working on my portfolio. First, I've got to finish redoing my school's robotics website. It's some weird stuff, since we use a website building...well, site to make it and we just drag-and-drop the elements and type in text or upload pictures or whatever. One of my classmates saw me working on it in class and asked me about it after class. Apparently he works for Blue Beacon International doing some programming and also he's doing their website. I might have to try and recruit him to help me do this so I don't have the entire load of the website on my shoulders. I've got to get it up and running before kick-off (January 4, 2014).

In the end, all things going well. I'll have an update in the next few days. Happy coding!

Day 3

Well, I've been making some good progress on Codecademy's Ruby track. I also decided to revamp my HTML/CSS skills by completely reimagining my school's robotics website. By working on this at the same time, it keeps my front-end designing skills up to par while I work on getting my back-end skills up to par. Of what I've got drawn up so far, the website looks a lot cleaner and more organized. I'm also going to go through Codecademy's Javascript track. I mean, I was around when they first started, and JS is the first language they had, so really I'm just going to finish the track.

I think the next couple months are going to be really fun :) Hope you'll all follow along!

Day 0

Today marks Day 0 (haha, programming jokes) of my Ruby/Ruby on Rails excursion. I'm currently working through (and rather quickly, mind you) Codecademy's Ruby track. I'm not new to programming, so all I really need is the syntax, which makes learning the language so much easier. Maybe I'll get myself ahead of schedule on the month-to-month schedule. Maybe I'll be proficient by the time I graduate. That'd be nice. Spend the summer freelancing and such. I hope learning Rails goes as easily as Ruby is. Will update more later! Until next time, fellow coders!