lewro’s blog - 2.1 - web designer beginner

Next week I suppose to go on holiday as I planned at the beginning of the year. It is going to be Grand Canaria island. After very busy half year I really feel I do need to re-charge my batteries. The plan is to relax and enjoy the weather but at the same time I am taking my Canon 40D so I expect to get some pretty good shots in those conditions. That was the second target for this year. I hope I can get at least one excellent shot which I can then enlarge and frame.

If I am right, Grand Canaria is the biggest island in Canary Islands so do not expect us to lay on the beach all the time. We will explore the country around us. I am also taking my PHP book so I will not get bored from all that relax on the beach bellow umbrella.

Taking a book with me (which is quite massive - about 700 pages) brings me into the dilemma I am having for last couple of weeks. Should I be buying more paper books? The reason for this question is new technology. There are devices on the market which can store hundreds of books and the readability comfort is very high. They do not use back-lighting so your eyes are not going to be tired after half an hour of reading. Another reason why I am thinking about this option is space in the room I live. I have collected about 30 books during the last 2 years and there is really no more space in our room.

Do you guys have any experiences with eReaders? My favorite so far is the lattes Sony one even I would prefer one from Apple if there was one but unfortunately there is none. The Amazon one seams to be OK but I am not very keen on design…

As you might know from my previous posts I have been studying PHP course during the last 2 months. I have really been enjoying the course. I found it very interesting and useful. Just imagine, after only 9 lessons I am able to create simple web application. Actually it is blog again. I have not chosen the subject. It came from our professor.

What have I learned during those 2 months?

Short story long I have learned how to use php functions, how to interact with database using SQL language.

What it means in reality?

I am able to insert and retrieve data from MYSQL database using html forms for example or have login and registration system, using sessions to define what content is user able to see when he/she is not loged in. I have also learned how to send data from the web form using POST and GET methods. How to pass variables from one page into the other. This is for example used on the blogs when you click on the category and you can see which blog posts belong to this category.

What next?

I want to use the knowledge I got from this course in my fist private web application. It is going to be project management tool which I will start developing immediately after I build lewro’s blog 3.0 . I am also going to sign up for the advance PHP course which is going to start in October. I have not finished yet reading my 2 PHP books but there are not that many pages left. I might buy another one though. There are some PHP podcasts I have found so all these will keep me in for the next couple of months.

Oh yeah and the most interesting at the end. Here is the link for the blog I have build for the course-work: my php blog . You can register (just name and psw) to see the whole application. I have only use simple CSS just to give it some kind of structure so it is not pretty, pretty.

Life has been extremely busy during the last couple of weeks. So I have decided to check if I am on the way to my targets. As I wrote at the beginning of the year I have specified 8 targets for this year so lets see how am I doing.

Learn PHP

I sign up for PHP Course in City University as I wrote before and it has been perfect experience so far. I have got about 7 lessons behind me but I have already realized how much I could do once I learn only the basic stuff. The course is very interesting and I enjoy it a lot. I am already able to create simple web application with user registrations, querying and updating data from the database. Server side validation. Working with functions etc. I have decided to take the advance class once this one is finished. When I finish my new blog I am going to be building my first PHP application. It will be project management tool where I will organize all my projects, including related tasks and so on. It is going to be very clean, “CODA type” interface.

French language.

I have been listening to my French audio podcast 3 times a week. I have managed to go true 3 lessons only but I am quite happy with that. Slowly, slowly. There is no rush. This task is not that important as the other one. The most important thing is that I have not stopped.

New design for my blog

I have spent quite some time on this task. I have got all the templates designed in the Photoshop and I have already build 2 templates. There are about 5 more to go. This is quite time consuming but I hope I will get this done very soon.

Part time projects

I have had a time to start a new part-time project and I still have one open. I will probably reconsider this task and might just finished the open one. If there is a time at the end of the year I might take one more but I am not sure because the time is very tight.

Sport

I am doing just fine on this one. The gym is going well during mornings but I should start running at least 2 times a week because I promised to take part in half marathon in February 2009. The weather was nice couple of weekends so we went to Hyde Park roller blading several times. I am sure we will spent lots of time there this year.

Holidays

We still have not decided where are we going to but we are considering nice countries with sea like Croatia, Portugal, Italy. It might be a last minute shot.

Organic garden

This task is not going well at all. I have just recently moved to different house and It looks like we are going to be moving again soon. So this all depends on the new house. If there is a place for my plants I will definitely continue with this project. So far it has been put on hold.

Photography

I have made couple of “OK” pictures in our small weekend holiday in Torquay and I hope I will do some really good one during the summer holiday. If I do not forget to charge my camera battery like last time I might shoot some photos in the London as well :o).

So thats about it. It is going pretty well and there is still half year in front of us to reach all the targets. Wish me luck and I hope after all this moving and school extra busy times I can post more articles about CSS, HTML, JS and PHP.

I have discover one really cool CSS technique I want to share with you. It is about changing 2 background images at the same time on hover. It is very impressive, looks like java-script but no, pure CSS, just need to find time to write about it.