A Yiddish proverb (advice for Psy 409 members):
If you want your dreams to come true,
don't sleep.
How difficult was this week's task (lumping all the sub-tasks together)?
Circle one.
Very Easy 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Very hard
This week's rating= 7
How much negative emotions did it cost you, in all?
Very Little 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Very much
This week's rating=8
How valuable for later use is this knowledge or skill going to be
for you?
Not useful 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Very useful
This week's rating=10
How likely is it that you'll be getting good at this week's tasks?
Not likely 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Quite likely
This week's rating=10
How satisfied are you with the computer and Internet systems?
Not satisfied 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Very satisfied
This week's rating=5
How hard did you try to get through this week's tasks?
Gave up easily 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Refused to give up
This week's rating=9
This week was full of unexpected problems. Just when you thought it
was safe to go back on the Internet... A major difficulty for me was
getting to week2.html. Guess what I learned? The address needs to be
capital WWW.soc.hawaii.edu/club/leonj/student2/p12/week2.html, or whatever
I type on pico doesn't transfer over to my home page, even when I hit the
exit function, which includes a save function. I reloaded over and over
again. This is another fossilized error, no? It took me about three to
four hours to discover capitalization was necessary. I committed another
RLFP (Repeated Lapse Faux Pas): I had forgotten my human resources. In
the large chunk of time spent as well as emotion, I had gotten nothing
accomplished, but repeatedly (another fossilized error) typed my week 2
report, which was subsequently erased. When I realised my error and asked,
it took all of 15 minutes. During the first 5 of those minutes, however,
I sat quietly and merely watched the computer monitor type at the speed of
light. I recognized a fossilized error that I resolved to fix, and began
offering solutions. Granted, they weren't very advanced solutions, but I
tried. What is amusing is this: all the commands and abbreviations,
encypted and complex, didn't matter because the eventual solution was
not anything which could have been arrived at by using them. It was a
simple case of trial and error. It had not required an advanced
solution. Which meant something important to me: there is no reason why
I should suffer from fear of offering a simple solution to something as
complex as an Internet problem. This does not answer the original
question as to why I couldn't punch it up the same way as week1, which
was a WWW address completely in lower-case. Any advice? The computer
monitor is still confused; a "strange thing", this.
I loved playing with the buttons, the different commands. The screen
is now a labrinyth, and every icon I press, every heading leads me
someplace new. The options are folded up, all files of information. The
only difference is in always being able to come back to where I began,
without necessarily winding my way back with the same steps.
Instantaneous. Marvelous. So when I began the subtasks, I found the View
exploration was not too hard, once I had played around with everything.
When I came to Source, I saw the "blueprint" for the homepages, the
original documents in HTML form. I learned a lot about what certain
formats were supposed to look like, by going through every file I could
find to look at the source file. My problem (read: fossilized error) was
trying to type right on the screen, and not writing the information I
needed down, which resulted in repeated returns, taking up a great deal of
time. Reload was informative: it is a way to update the homepage/file
right then and there. That way, I can get instant feedback on how my page
looks, and fix any problems much easier. I'm still not sure what refresh
means, other than it cleans everything up a bit. It didn't do much when I
hit it, and I hit it plenty. Another fossilized error: for some reason,
I kept thinking if I hit it more and more, something would happen. Some
days are magic, and some days just aren't.
Go was interesting, but I didn't make too much use of it. In View
History, I got a listing of the httl files I had accessed, and it let me
know where I had been, like a windows function on a word processor. The
general listing below it shows the files I had gone through, without the
specifics, and also showed with a check mark which one I was on at the
moment. Back, Forward and Home are the same functions as the icons on
the left hand side of the screen. This came from putzing around for a
little while, with less frustration than putting up this week's page.
Aaaaack!
Sending an e-mail to myself wasn't so bad, either. I typed in
cc:lmorita, and a copy came up. I sent also to:lmorita from:lmorita, and
I got my own mail (not too bad when you're lonely...you can always have
something in your mailbox...).
The search engines were fun, because I also have the topic as a team
project. The things are really user friendly, and I hooked up
with a free trial for Infoseek. Using the WWW, I am copying
documents for the query "search engines", "virtual libraries",
and "online libraries". There are over 200 entries for each
query, and I saved about 180 of each. Each of those 180 has a
link, and the WWW Infoseek doesn't cost to call up a document.
I'll have to go and see how far that takes me. I was impressed. Infoseek
also sent me some e-mail about their program and later answered my e-mail
questions about their system within 15 minutes. Pretty darn cool, those
Infoseek folk. Yep, yep, yep. However, I had repeated lapses on how to
go back to my personal newswire, and ended up going all around till
finally reaching it.
Saving an image was a serious problem. I didn't know what the hey I was
doing. Still don't. About this, I feel lacunae (I like this word), but I
don't know if "inadequate" is really fair to myself. It connotes an
overall state to me, and I know I will be able to work with images
eventually. In a nutshell, I have hope. I suppose I feel frustrated a
bit by not being able to put enough time into working with them; I let
myself get caught up in the search engines. Something I have noticed is
my need to prioritize my activities on the Internet. It is very easy for
me to get carried away by a new piece of information.
Finally getting something accomplished, like finding a way to
get this on the WWW, makes me ecstatic at times. In the
computer lab, when things finally work (usually after 3 hours
or more and a lot of walking around in the halls), I jump and
smile my face off. Today I went out into Keller's 2nd floor
hall and did a little dance of joy. So if anybody heard
something that sounded like many hands clapping, mea culpa, mea
culpa.
The negative emotions for me come from sitting for hours and hours and
trying different things one after the other. A funny thing,
though: it also is so absorbing for me that time passes and
before I know it, someone's saying "we're closing in 15
minutes". It's nice to be that involved. Maybe it's an anal
quality, but I refuse to leave any project without getting some
satisfaction out of it, no matter how small. And believe me,
on occasion, it has been minute. I suppose the negative feelings come
from hitting brick wall after brick wall. But as in the preceding
paragraph, those breakthroughs can make my floppy shake with joy.
They say the world is round, round, round, like a marble, like a
god's eye. Is it valuable to know how to maneuver e-mail, run through
search engines, find what I need in the matter of an electronic blink?
I say yes. The most valuable thing this week for me was the free trial
on Infoseek. I found universities in France, homepages from Germany,
people who I may never see but can get to know and get information from,
a whole world of people outside of this small island. And I can reach
them, their knowledge, through search engines, or find out how they
program by calling up their files and accessing the view source. It
makes me feel part of something, although exactly what, I cannot say
right now. It's just a blur at the moment, a big blur of potential and
letters and things I never knew I could get my hands on. How likely is it that I will be getting good at this? I seem to always
think that if I put enough time into it, enough practice and effort, I
will get good at something. And although I grumble like a PMSing
fishwife, hey, I really enjoy sitting and writing, exploring, "going
where none of my past experiences has gone before". (Insert music
here.) Do I have the time? I don't know how that's going to go. Like
many college students, I'm job hunting. But for now, I'm putting in
time. Afterwards, I'll negotiate schedules. Hopefully, by the time
I've secured a job I really want, I'll be making maximum use of whatever
hours I will have for the Internet. (I am an optimist; could you
guess?) I am happy to report that I get a much greater deal of satisfaction
from the Internet and the computer, although I am not prepared to say
that this satisfaction comes from the tools themselves. As was the case
last report, I realise I am yet not able to divorce feelings of
satisfaction with myself from any such feelings about the computer
systems. Since it is such a leap in emotion from last week, the euphoria
of "breakthrough" is probably affecting my ratings. It will take some
time for me to see the Internet systems and the computer as entities unto
themselves, and assess them on their own virtues (or no virtues). I am
working through my own feelings of inadequacy as an overall state, of
incompetency as an overall state, and though it is not pleasant to admit
this, reporting everything I have done has forced me to look at why I was so
anxious and frustrated, and it is not because of any
machine. The progression that I see this week comes from delving into my
assignments more thoroughly. While last week I moved to passing on
information, the information I passed on was fairly general, at no risk
to me. Navigating on Infoseek involved registering with an international
cybercommunity, something I had not done before. I became a member of
the Cybervillage. It felt quite nice to have a place there. I am not
afraid that I may call Zimbabwe by accident and be charged next
semester's tuition for it. I am more aware of the safeguards, which
relieves me. I really do need to prioritize my Internet activites,
though. Next week, this is in stone.