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Introduction
- Welcome to my Report 2: My Adapting to the Internet for Traffic Psychology 459. This report contains my progress as I attempt to learn about the Internet through this class at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. My goal was to be able to understand as many functions, codes, and commands the Internet possesses. Before taking this class, the only thing I knew about the Internet was how to use E-mail. But at the end of the first day of class, was convinced that there was much, much more to the Internet than just E-mail.
Week One: Introduction to Psy 459; An Unexpected Start
- The first day of class was not quite what I expected. I went to class thinking that my instructor, Dr. Leon James, was going to hand out a sylabus and give a short introduction of the course. Not quite. In addition to the sylabus and an introduction of the class, he gave a survey. He also asked the class to jot down the letter grade each person thinks they will to get in this class. The common grade given was an "A". Dr. James said we are a confident bunch. Dr. James requested that following this class, to obtain an uhunix account at Keller Hall. For those who already had an account, they were to supply Dr. James with their address and login name by the next class. I took a couple pages of notes since he had written some stuff on the board. As far as understanding what the notes meant, I had no idea. This kind of confusion would continued as week two came.
Week Two: Confusion Continues
- Dr. James gave us a handout with things we needed to do. Some of the things that needed to be done following our second class meeting included getting on the computer and practicing all the commands which was listed on the handout such as cd, cp, rm, dir, ls -al, mkdir, and many others. These commands were to be practiced in UNIX. In addition, he suggested that we use Netsacpe and go any where in cyberspace. But before practicing the commands in UNIX, I wanted to know what each command meant. So it was helpful that we went over the commands in class.
- Following the second class, I went over to Keller Hall to get the program needed to run Netscape from my home computer. All I had to do was give two formatted disketts to Keller Hall and in return, they gave me two disketts with the program on it. That was easy enough. Loading the program on to my computer was fairly simple too. But getting the program to work was a different story. Basically, the problem I encounter wasn't the program itself but connecting the server here at the university. Till today, I still don't understand why I'm able to connect to UNIX but not able to get Netscape from home. As a result, I was unable to use Netscape from home.
Week Three: Exporting??
- Week Three included more confusing stuff like exporting. This week we had to practice exporting files from our UNIX account to our CSS account. Following the lecture portion of this weeks class, we went to the computer lab to practice. Complete confusion at this point. But due to the kindness of Lori Morita, a student from Generation 2 (G2), Lori taught me how to export files from UNIX to CSS. Much Mahalo Lori. She also taught me how to copy icons, pictures, background and many other things. At this point, though I was still confused, working on the computer was getting to be fun.
- Another thing we had to do was to visit Dr. James Homepage and explore the topic of "Traffic Psychology." He suggested to visit Kevin Bogan, Cybercommunity Internet Coach to obtain helpful information about working with the Internet.
Week Four: Creating Files
- In week four, we began creating our files and dir's(directories). But before creating a file, I needed to clarify more words such as links, anchors and more codes (at least that's what I call them) like "title", "h2","h1" "a href", and much, much more. We went over these words and codes in class but it seem as if it made no sense to me. Furthermore, following the lecture portion of class, we went to the computer lab start creating our files which was even more fustrating. Since I didn't understand what the codes were for, I didn't know where to put them. Then I began using the "copy-paste" method. This method helped me out a lot. It helped me understand what the codes were for. Once I understood some of the codes, I was on my way to creating files.
- The first file I created was my "Traffic Psychology Resource" file also known as Driver Support Group; My problem is that I can't stop changing lanes impulsively! file. To create this file, we had to gather information that related to our individual topics. For example, my topic is "My problem is that I can't stop changing lanes impulsively!" I ran into trouble when I created this file. One problem I had was concentrating too much on the appearance of my file. For example, I wasted too much time looking for backgrounds, icons, colored-bars, and pictures instead of concentrating on the content of the file. So here is a word of advice to future Psy 459 students; "Finish the content of your file before making it look nice."
Links?
- Links. What are they? First of all, what do they look like. Links can appear in several forms such as icons, pictures, and most commonly words. Links in the form of words have a distinctive blueish-bold appearance given that the creator of a link doesn't alter the appearance of the link which is possible to do. Other links in the form of icons and pictures have a blueish border. What do links do? Links can't do anything. They just sit there until a visitor of a website activates a link which once the link is activated, it connects websites to one another. For example, if you wanted to visit my Instructor's Homepage, you could do so by clicking on it. Try it. It's pretty cool, but be sure to come back and finish reading my report ok. Links can also be used to connect to an anchor which allows a user to go straight to a certain place on a website. For example, if visitors wanted to see what I had to say about Sharla Supnet comments on Tailgating, in My Report 1: My Travels through G1 and G2,they could do so by clicking on the link. Try it. Now you know a little about Links, let me tell you about Anchors.
Anchors?
- What are anchors? As mentioned above, anchors supplements a link so the link knows where to connnect to. If it seems confusing, that because I'm having a hard time explaining what a anchor is. I know how to use it and where to put it and what is does, but explaining it is difficult. What does an anchor look like? As far as I know, anchors can be any character which can on ly be seen in "view source" an option on Netscape. For example, if you were to "view source" this report, anything that begins with "a name=" is an anchor. Anchors can be use to link things together within a file or with another website.
Copy and Paste Master
- I'm almost certain that upon reading through all the different subheadings listed at the top of this report, you may have wondered what the hell is "Copy and Paste Master." Well, I consider myself as a copy and paste master since I have became very good at doing it. For example, for an assignment which we had to export a file called Netsurfer from our UNIX account to our CSS account, we had to execute exportation with a method(code) called "ftp" and a couple of other steps which I forgot. I could have avoided those step by using the copy-paste method where whatever I wanted to export from my UNIX account or from anywhere else, I could do so by copying and pasting. I learned how to copy phrases, documents, icons, and pictures too. One way this method was really helpful to me was because I didn't have keep retyping those long address for my links. So here another advice for future Psy 459 student; Learn how to copy and paste.
Connecting from My Home Computer
- Though it may have been an advantage to have a computer with a modem at home which I did, it wasn't as easy as I thought it would be to do the necessary assignments at home. There were a bunch of problems which I ran into as I attempted to do my assingments at home. First problem I encountered occurred while trying to view Netscape on my home computer. I began by getting the necessary program needed to run Netscape on my Mac from Keller Hall. I then loaded the program on to my computer which was the farthest I got because I tried using the program countless amounts of time with no success at all. I tried to get help from Keller Hall and all they told me was that "something might be wrong with the Server." A lot of help that was. As a result, I had no way to view my reports as well as the reports of others. Most importantly, I couldn't surf the Net.
- The next problem I encountered occurred when I tried to connect to UNIX. This problem still occurs today. It takes a very long time to connect to the server from my home computer. To add, once I do get connected, I sometimes get disconnected without a warning. For example, while doing my Report 1 and Report 2 (this report) at home, my friend called me and I was immediately disconnected. I lost both reports in a flash, so I thought. Luckily, the computer automatically saved whatever I was working on. I didn't find that out till the next day after telling my instructor that both my reports were gone. The computer saved my report under a different filename. For example, my Report 1, filename "report1.html", was saved under "report1.html.save". If I knew that, I wouldn't have told my instructor that I lost my files and I would have gotten an "F" for my mid-term grade. Dr. James allowed me as well as other members in this class to make-up the grade which I'm doing right now.
- Another problem I faced was the use of a diskette. The problem wasn't using the diskette, but the fear of using it to save my work. I didn't want to save my work on a diskette at home and then take it to a computer lab in school to put it on my CSS account and visa versa. I was afraid that I might catch a virus and mistakenly put it on my computer. As a result, I was forced to go to a computer lab to do all my work which was another problem.
- The problem with going to the labs for me was finding the time. Being a fulltime student and manager of a snack bar, I was always pressed for time. During this semester, I felt 24 hours wasn't long enough for a day. Also, the little time that I did have to go to the labs, the labs were closed. So time management was a very big problem for me.
Enjoying the Internet
- I'll be the first to admit that this class was very frustrating in the beginning. I was completely lost as I tried to make sense of many different word like Netscape, pico, ftp, export, and many others. But once I understood what was going on, I was able to enjoy myself while working on the internet. I enjoyed creating the files needed for this class since I could be as creative as I wanted to be. For example, for each file we created, we could put all types of neat things like backgrounds, icons, pictures, and many other cool stuff. Later, I found that I spent to much time on making my reports look nice instead of filling the reports with text. So here's my advice to future generations of Psy 459. "Fill your reports with text first before making your reports look nice because there will be a lot of time to make your reports look nice."
- I also enjoyed searching for cool backgrounds, icons, and pictures which was used in the creation of my files. There are some many websites out there on the internet that has cool stuff. I was able to use LYCOS as wellas many other search engines to search for the various websites which contain cool stuff.