It's been a while since I updated here.

After switching schools, I had a semester of non-tech classes. Nat science & history. Tried to make a few personal projects happen, but they din't an' I pretty much fell outa the computer for the most part.

In six days I should be much more back. I'll start Object Oriented and Web Based Design and Development classes, and that should respark the processes. I'll be here dumping out the clutter that builds up along the way on projects and assignments.

Can't wait. I don't like the time between - it makes me fell unfocused and out-of-sorts; at frazzled loose ends.

T'will end.

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Jus' found a script using PostgreSQL on unixathome.org.

It really seems everything I'm doing leads me back to the Unix/Linux world...

Interesting. Until around the last 6 months or so that wasn't the case... Maybe 'cause I'm looking at a lil more than installing ASP scripts now. And looking a lil further rather than avoiding anything in a tar file. *Smile*

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Having become quite a bit more negative and angsty lately, I've decided to cut outa web socialization - and most text or personal interaction altogether - for a bit. This included the creative writing and opinions journals, as well as the personal one and the boards I converse on. Best to just focus tech for a bit.

( I can't do anything the simple, straight-forward way!Collapse )

In school news, this morning I did 50 of the 55 questions from the Science take-home test. Then I put it aside to come here and do this a bit.

Found an article on oceanic energy and printed it off for the assignment on alternative energy sources and need to read and be able to explain it for Wednesday. Also, for my weekly "Science in the News" assignment I found an article on CNN about the remains of the University of Alexandria being found in Egypt. Need to write a paragraph overview.

And that's that.

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So when I was havin' all the problems where I couln't get into any of my ASP sites over the weekend, I decided to look over some PHP. And I REALLY like PHP. Yeah, a bit flighty, as always. But I've got a basic understanding of both languages now. I can at least find my way around the code in a script. Can't write it or anythin' - but I can read it a bit.

I've got limitations here on each side. Python for the web's jus' out until I learn more about general web programming. My ASP space's not real stable, and I'm not MySQL enabled there. I have MySQL on the PHP sites, but can't find instructions on how to put it in their special bin and don't really feel like asking. Frankly, the thought of learning MySQL at this point just isn't something I care to do. I don't like how limited the availability is, so I'm uninspired there. Don't really feel like learning to stick everything in a flat file at the moment. Even though Access is not on this computer, it's on my laptop and I wanna use that.

So I'm gonna spend the day tryin' to learn to do something not-terribly-popular. PHP with an ADO connection to Access.

The rub is that I can't find a free script that has one, so that I can study them.

I did, however, find an example of the connection, whatever the hell this is, and an article on how to use that thing. Armed with these and a beginner article to build a very simple login script written for MySQL, I'm gonna be attemptin' the unpopular.

Never claimed to be a band-waggoner (or I wouldn't be workin' towards Python at all. In fact, I probably wouldn't wanna be a programmer at all!). But hey, maybe this will become one of my schtics. Writing PHP scripts with Access databases for the unwashed masses.

Current Mood: okay

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Spent a lot of the day searching through a database of ASP scripts for things marked "beginner". Simple things that I could upload and learn from. And it's wonderful when other beginners offer their early code for the benefit of people like myself.

However I have a small request. Before you put your code in the database for newbies to download, please TRY TO RUN THE DAMNED THING AND MAKE SURE IT WORKS!!! 90% of these flippin' scripts don't run. And sometimes it's an easy find - they put the database in the same file and have the connection set somewhere else, or some such frickin' thing.

Free ASP hosting for people tryin' to learn ASP advise - Websamba over 1ASP Host.

Ads: 1ASP has a huge text-link at the bottom of each page. Websamba has a few small ones at the top and a couple of tabs. Both I find annoying.

Both file managers are a bit of a pain-in-the-butt. 1ASP has the nice advantage of allowing you to click-and-view your page.

DECIDER: If there's a problem with the ASP script, 1ASP shows an error page. If there's one at Websamba, they tell you in what script, what line, the problem was encountered. Priceless when tryin' to debug.

The one-of-10 scripts that does run from the "newbie" batch I collected is a great one, though. Guest book; Access database. One a stand-alone db-connection page (YaY!!! I've wanted to find a really simple one of them-there!), one a sign page. The other two are in the admin folder. Password protect, allows delete or edit.

This is gonna be a great learning tool.

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Small Rant...
Ya know, it's hard enough for someone like me to pick my way through technical tutorials without the author throwing in words like "ancillary" and "abstruse" jus' for fun. And I can't jus' skip 'em. I'm not like that. So every time I read an article or tutorial, I gotta keep Mirriam-Webster at the bottom, ready for me. *GrumbleGrump*

(Seems the author of this tut began memorizing the dictionary but only got through the A's...)

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Went to sleep around 2:30 this morning an' din't get up until around 9. Been dreaming writing code again lately, so I awoke still in-the-thought-process from last night an' ready to get at it. (I do this shit. During a period of time when I was very involved in chatting with a particular group I would dream typing all my conversations. And with a message board and my journal, when I'm deep into it I'll dream finding responses and replying. My subconscious and conscious seem to be pretty close to each other at times, so it can get pretty literal.) (Just spilt coffee in the keyboard. I don't recommend this method of cleaning it.)

Mostly I've been worshiping The Monkey. WebMonkey, that is. Listening to Alanis Morissette, chair-dancin', an' reading about ASP and relational databases (yeah, I had the class in programming Access SQL. Not only, though, was that a few quarters ago, but they never showed us how to then use the with web pages</a>).

Last night I did half my science take-home test and found the article I need to summarize in a few paragraphs. (Something about finding the differences from our dog-breeding in the doggie-DNA, and how this study will help us find better treatments for human diseases.)

Lots to do today!

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Wow - jus' realizing how very base-level this forum is! Which is great for what I'm attempting, but I've gotta keep a running list of what all I wanna do. And I don't wanna get overwhelmed. Wish I could figure out how to common file this thing.

It orders by descending, but based on the date of the original post. Gotta change that to be reply.

I want to make this multi-thread compatible. If I do that right away, shouldn't be too much of a deal. Rename "default" and change all references, make a table to hold thread names, and HTML that as the new default. Make an admin page to change that. (I'm sure on one of my simple scripts I have an edit database form I can pull over. One thing I don't lack is resources for scripts to glean insight from!)

Then we gotta do the members thing...

Smilies are bein' bumped further and further down my list!

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Fixed!

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So here's a bug. When I post a reply after having deleted a topic, it messes up my reply count. I'll have to hunt that out.

Next this weekend is probably gonna be beginning to figure out members and log-ins, and to move the deleting into a special admin section.

There's so much I wanna do with this script!

But first I gotta figure out what I did to that damned reply count!

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Success!
YaY! I managed to take the two "delete entry" forms from the guestbook script and reconfigure them to the message board database without a whole lotta trouble! T'was just a matter of figurin' out what they wanted as opposed to rsGuestbook and that ID_No is msgid. It's now deletin'.

Also got rid of the email request (from all script references and database both) and the views.

I'm zippin' right along! And I understand these scripts much better than I did an hour ago.

Gonna have to find how to put smilies in soon!!!

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*Smile* Jus' opened the guy's database from the simple board (still havin' to use the laptop for Access. The editor I got crashes every time I try to open a mdb). He named his table "thing".

That's so damned cute!

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Working in circles around ASP, and some of it's starting to sink in. Din't get to do a thing with it yesterday 'cept a tiny bit of surfing, 'cause I went back to working four days a week and was just beat by the time I got home.

I'm still very confused about database connections and how to divide up the scripts. The guestbook cut-and-paste I did was supposed to be pretty simple, but they jump from a one-star difficulity to a three-star. This was three, and I'm still green.

The guestbook script is four verylong asp pages, an HTML one, and a database. Tonight I tried combining the database connections into a common file, but it din't work. Realized that was because the pages have different recordset objects. Which was good to note - helps me understand better how these run - but I still don't get ADO. I'm absorbing little-by-little.

Then I found a really simple message board script. Five short ASP pages, an HTML, and an mdb. The database set is not correct, but that was an easy debug. So my plan is to start from this, impliment the guestbook's ability to delete or change database records from a webpage, delete a few things like the required email and views (I loathe views counters on boards), and start adding things. Back before school, this was the main way I started when tryin' to learn something. Not from tutorials, but from working around in scripts and pages and trying to make things function.

At first I'll probably be using some generated JavaScripts, and just ASP-glue 'em in. Eventually I'll wanna attempt to rewrite the JavaScripts in VBScript.

I've decided to come away from the idea of rewriting the Math program in ASP. At least for the moment. This was the perfect way to start learning Python, because I was trying to learn the language and then hit the wall with taking it to the web. Right now with this, I'm approaching from the other direction. Trying to learn a bit more about using languages and databases for the web specifically. If I approach taking an exe there first, it's too big a project for so new a level. Messing with the board seems a better choice right now.

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It's unfortunate that this is the week I take on Thursdays as a fourth day at work, 'cause I was kinda on a roll yesterday!

Started working with Access databases, and I found that I remember from about three quarters ago how to make them with no prob. Looked over a tiny bit on MySQL, and from what I gather they don't have a "design view". But I did real well in the programming Access when I had that, too, so it shouldn't be too hard to pick up.

Also did a couple of cut-paste simple, no-frills scripts that show how to connect them. I'm still pretty confused about al the steps and the ADODB and all of that kinda stuff, but when I get home tonight, I hope to pour over the junk and see what all I can put in a "common" file. One of the connections I did was from Web Wiz, and I've got all of Bruce's scripts. I'll compare a couple of his commons and see what all can just be kept as a "connect" script I throw in any time I use a database.

Found out, too, how to use JavaScript as the default language for ASP. But only if I use it as an external script. Still can't figure out how to do it right within the main page.

In any case, I'm gettin' somewhere. Just as the free time I work on it has been cut back. Hopefully, though, that's only for six weeks or so.

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Now here I am, confused.

Using ASP just seems to be a matter of using <% and %> around a scripting language. And while VBScript is the default, it seems using JavaScript with ASP is simply a matter of putting <% @ language = "javascript" %> at the top. There may be a lil more to it, but I don't think it's rocket science.

There are a kabillion readily-available JavaScript generators available to do everything under the sun and make things all quicker-and-nicer for you. But just about no free ASP, or VBScript generators available.

Why?!? If so many people are working in ASP, and there are about a trillion free ASP scripts written to do everything under the sun (which is a turn-off for me, by the way. As is the availability of PHP scripts, coupled with how easy they are to install. Upload and there you are. No interaction with the script at all. No intimacy. May as well push a button - which, really, is all it takes. Hit [upload] an' you're all done), but few have taken the time to make us shortcuts. Odd, that. Someday, when I gain a bit of proficiency, maybe I'll make creating generators and making them freely available by web a project of mine. Give back, since I gratefully make good use of all that's offered me free.

While the ease-of-coding in Python turned me on to it, the complete mind-boggling-bafflingness of implimenting it or doing the tiniest thing (reference the weeks it took me hunting out three different scripts needed for me to convert to an exe file) is a turn-off. But the relative unavailability of ready-made web aps, the ugliness and uneasy configurability of what there is, and the actual potential of the language is what calls me. This is not a language web designers have caught on to, for prettying-up. This is raw and gritty.

I wanna learn enough to hang curtains.

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Holy Poop, Batman! Just playin' around in the Access and ASP areas on the EasyASP editor. It's simplifies things so much I almost feel cheap using it!

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Workin' on the ASP tonight. And as usual, I found a really great tutorial that just... stopped. Seems the author either hasn't made any more installments lately or lost interest altogether after explaining loops and forms and ifs. He was supposed to go on to explain building a website, using databases and all. But that's okay. I learned a bit there, and then went to WebWizGuide for the next phase.

I've found a way to work around not having Access on this computer to build my databases. The first tutorial strongly suggested using a text editor, and he listed links to a few. Only free one was Arachnophilia, and you have to install some Java stuff first before you can install that. Since I'm on dialup I spent an indecent amount of time last night downloading and installing them - only to find that it doesn't include ASP. (However it does Python and a few other things that look neat, so it mayn't have been a complete waste.)

Today I was at work a few early so I surfed around a bit, seeking for other free editors and emailing the links home to check tonight. Found and s-l-o-w-l-y-d-o-w-n-l-o-a-d-e-d two good ones - Gaspy and EasyASP. But the important thing is that while you have to download and install two VB components first (increasing setup time), EasyASP includes an Access Database Utility!" I've got databases here - jus' couldn't open them to edit. But now I can! YaY! Yes, you can save quite a bit of time payin' for things if you have the money, rather than seeking out, downloading, installing, and setting up free stuff. But if you pay for it you can't as easily then compare what may be better. And you don't always get out of all the other stuff anyway, so why bother? I keep sayin' I got more time than $$$ on my hands. If I let myself start payin' for all the shit I want for web design and programming, I'd never be able to make enough money to cover it. Would be like back when I sold Avon and bought so much I lost money on the deal. So this seems to be a good way to work it. Promise Den that I'll keep to the free stuff, and if I can't do something I wanna for free, find a way to mickey-mouse. Interesting that this is what is leading my interests more and more towards the open source technologies, and I'm pickin' up a lot of skills on the trip. (Although few are really well-formed yet.)

So next we build the two hit counter scripts at WWG (ick. Don't care for hit counters. But I'll do them for the practice with the language) and then they have a slightly-harder guestbook one, which uses a database and tells you how to connect. Probably only fitting that I'm using Bruce's tutorials for this. His scripts are what first got me wanting to learn to program. And other than the fact that I din't pick up his wonderful habit of commenting until I turn blue (I so appreciated that when as total step-one web newby was tryin' to muddle my way through messing in his scripts!) I've very much adopted his layout style. Which earned me a lot of comments in classes regarding neatness, compactness, and readability. *Smile* Bruce Rocks. (And then Brinkster was free, and he made his scripts easy to run there - although they took forever to upload a few files at a time. An hour manually on the earlier forum. The current one would be impossible. And Brinkster went paid, anyway. But I digress...)

Next step will be a few more tutorials where I build something, then move my math program into its third language. And the first on the web. I hope to be working on that by this weekend, but it'll take me a bit of time to envision how I wanna lay it out to pages rather than the lil blackandwhite executable file.

Looking ahead, I will then learn to take my Access database to MySQL, ASP to PHP, PHP to Python (there seems to be some good, simple info on the web about how to do that translation, although not straight to web in Python or ASP to Python), MySQL to ZODB, and from there we'll see where.

Gonna take a long time, and I'm not gonna try not to rush it so much that I don't gain even the tiniest level of proficiency in one before going to the next, so this may well take up my next six-months-to-a-year. Or it may go much quicker than I expect, but probably not. I'm flighty and will probably dart off to other web technologies in the middle a few times. But by the time I'm done, I'll have touched on four languages, three databases, and shifted a bit more towards Linux.

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ASP
Gotta love this site!!!

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Today I began going back over a JavaScript tutorial for use with ASP. Took the class last quarter but it was more debugging than writing. And I realize there are generators that do almost everything. But after watching a friend try to remember how to center something in HTML and failing miserably 'cause he'd used code generators so long (I write all my HTML by hand in notepad. Sick, I know) I decided I really wanted to know how to write it properly.

So I was almost done with the tutorial, remembering a bunch, when I looked at the ASP tutorial. And was reminded it's usually written with VBScript and defaults there. No big deal - you can reset the default to JavaScript with just one line of code at the top. Bucha know me. Now I gotta go look at a VBScript tutorial.

There ain't an awful lot of difference between VBScript and JavaScript. JS is a bit more like C++, and there are a ton of generators out there for it, while there aren't for VBScript.

So here's the plan:

I've got the basics of JavaScript. Gonna learn ASP using that and generators to make a few very simple aps (like a link poster and guest book). Then I'll translate them to VBScript. (Thinking about how it only took me a few days to translate my C++ script to Python. It's so much easier to translate from a working script than to write the working script in the first place! But from what I see, only if you wrote the original. Otherwise it can be pulling teeth, if you don't find something simple enough.) Then I'll learn to work it with a flatfile database, then take it to an Access one. Then I'll translate the ASP to PHP, upgrade it to a journal, possibly to a forum along the way, then the AccessSQL database to MySQL, then the PHP to Python. (By then hopefully I'll have enough to get space at SergeForce and make it an open-source project.)

Yes, Virginia, this is going to take forever and there really is a method to all this madness. Just don't ask me to explain what it is...

In any case, by the time I'm done, I should have gained an little bit of knowledge about an awful lot of web shit.

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See, now here I am. An unhappy gal again.

Part one of three of that guide, from the January issue, tells a bit about Zope. And I have to say I now understand it better. So on to learning how to use it, eh?!? Yippie!

Problem is that parts two and three have not been written lately. There was a new issue of the mag put out May 2, and no part two.

Yippie.

I seem to keep getting to the same places before getting stuck again. I'll read pages of the same basics eight times, picking up a tiny new bit of info from each go-'round, then flatten into a wall.

We're gonna cast about a bit, methinks, and learn a bit more about straight web-programming with a different language before approaching this again. If I'm on my own, I gotta find a better path than trying to figure out all the Zope/Plone/Python/Web/Database stuff at once.

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