08.03.99
Rave Reviews and Reviewed Rants
I got some preliminary results from the class feedback sheets that each of the students filled out. Woo Hoo. 🙂 The Guy In Charge, John, said that the whole compiling and filing process needs to be gone through before I have anything in my hands, but the phrase “simply fabulous” was used in describing what he read so far.
One of the students personally told me that I have ‘a gift’ for teaching. Wow….. I was dumbstruck.
I’ve got a number of changes that I want to make to the class, but I’m really excited about this fall’s course. I’ve finally made the syllabus http://www.ordersomewherechaos.com/rosso/webdev/psu_sum99.shtml available here. I’ll be rearranging some of the topics, like putting the monitor technology discussion much further towards the begining, but overall I think this first stab worked pretty well.
My brother called tonight. He might be looking at a new job with a significant pay raise. It’s a great opportunity for him, and I hope it works out. He says that he’s a bit more slow to change his situation, as compared to me, the one with 5 jobs in 5 years. 🙂 It would involve moving his family to the SF bay area, but I’m all for him getting what he’s worth.
In addition to the syllabus, I posted a new version of my 404 error page. It now automagically repairs URLs that have the incorrect .html extension and replaces them with .shtml. I’ve updated the Error page article in WebDev to reflect the new capabilities.
(I aught to drop a note to Vicki Jean about this as her site does the same thing.)
The JavaScript is a modification of the one I developed for the ESCO site that will allow people to switch between languages easily. I’m quite proud of it. I don’t deploy JavaScript as a general rule, but I’m making exceptions in the cases where the JavaScript is very small and I’ll be able to easily debug it on other platforms.
I was so proud of the script that I e-mailed Jacob Neilsen http://www.useit.com about it. He had written an article on linkrot that had a sidebar on File Not Found error pages. I thought he might like to share my Automation techniques with his readers. However Jacob liked my Trash Can article more than my 404 error information, and he said he was going to link to it this week. Cool enough. 🙂
Oh and I added a link to my Portal page at http://www.ordersomewherechaos.com/rosso/portal/ It’s a little strange in how it works, and I haven’t even tried it on IE, but I like it, I use it and that’s why it’s a Personal Portal.
I’m still looking for suggestions for Mac image map editors. Anyone? Anyone? Beuller? Beuller?
Watch out. I’ve got tons of stuff to write about and there will probably be a lot of entries this week. Oh, and please note that the Web Coffee at the Millenium Cafe is still on for the 14th. E-mail me for details.