Endless Wheel Spinning

For the most part, this week was fairly successful for me as I worked my way through the seemingly endless Python tutorials on Code Academy. I guess my failure in completing 43% of the tutorial in the span of 8 hours in one day was that I simply could not wrap my mind around the practical application of the commands I was learning.  In my productiveness, I only failed on the theoretical level. I suppose if I ever needed to calculate a tip or keep track of grocery supplies in the most complicated way possible, I would have the tools and knowledge to do so. However, I'm definitely not comprehending how in the world I will be able to use "defining variables" and finding 6^12 equals on my website directly and for any research-based application.

Can I learn about real pythons instead?

As I was told, the tutorials for any new program (or language, really) always start with the most basic of terms in order to build a foundation that can be used in other settings. This makes sense to me, but I can more readily see the usefulness of asking someone their name in a newly learned spoken language than making strings of zoo animal names in a program designed to ensure your inventory is intact. As a medievalist, the theory about learning and interpreting languages makes sense to me, but the practice is, thus far, lost on me and I truly feel as if I am spinning my wheels while I complete lesson after lesson.

Additionally, I am still on a quest to figure out QGIS  (again, tutorials become horribly mind-numbing after a while) and how I might be able to use it practically. I have a concept that I think might be solid enough to not completely hate what I eventually create, but I still have to get there. Spatial relationships have never been my strong suit, so seeing this part of the project as useful or worthwhile is a tough sell.

Putting Things in Places

Every time a break of some kind comes 'round (that whole once per semester reprieve we all wait for), I always tell myself that I will use this time wisely and catch myself up as much as possible. For our DH class, this would prove to be a monumental feat. My goal was to create a landing page for my website as well as the holding pages for "Research," "Courses," and "Digital Humanities." I also wanted to update my CV page to match whatever the landing page looked like and possibly figure out QGIS in order to have something on the DH page. Ambitious, I know. A bit too ambitious.

Repeat.

Thankfully, Fall Break was not a total failure. I spent over four hours creating a landing page that I think suits my needs as far as the website is concerned and looks halfway decent (I guess). I was also able to begin changing the CV page so that it didn't appear (as obviously) that they were not created at the same time or using the same mental design. The next part is where I ran into a major problem--one I haven't seemed to figure out quite yet. I realized that I have no idea how exactly to connect the pages together so that they will show up on the same site. I realize it has to do with linking directories, but I can't seem to figure out where the links are (I'm really not explaining this properly). I have everything uploaded in FileZilla (I think), but the directory path isn't really clear. 

Hours of endless frustration!

Needless to say, this is where my success stopped. I guess you could call the rest of my to-do list failures along with trying to put things (links to whatever directories) in places (the website).

Python Bit Me

I've been continuing my work through the Python tutorials, and two things have gotten me pretty perplexed. First, the "pushd" and "popd" thing is still bothering me even though we seemed to disregard the need for it in class last week. I can do it with the tutorial's examples, and I understand how to make a new directory and all that business, but when I attempt to do the "Now You Try" quests, I fall miserably short. Is there something I'm not completely understanding? Can I only push and pop within the same directory? That seems kind of useless when you can just use the cd command with a certain number of "../../" to get you backtracked, but that's what the tutorials seem to imply. I'm so confused.

Second, I am having trouble copying items from one directory and putting them in another. It seems like any time I need to move within two or more directories, my mind (or possibly computer) just can't handle it, and I get error messages. I really hate error messages when I know that what I'm doing should work because the example works. This reminds me of when I took Calculus in high school, and nothing ever seemed to work the way it did in the book. Grr! I'm still stuck on these two parts of Python, so any help you can offer would be useful.

Ok, that's my failure for the week. I don't know that I can call it productive, but that's what I've got to offer.

Down the Rabbit's Worm Hole

Productive failure is a concept that I am very clearly not comfortable with, and this class for me has so far been 99.8% failure. That, hypothetically, is supposed to make the successes all the sweeter, but most of the time I feel like the successes are nothing but flukes. I sometimes know why these successes happened, but that's not always the case. When it works and I know what's going on, there's another new addition that makes it seem like I am traveling through the white rabbit's hole into Wonderland. Unfortunately, there is no tea party, growing or shrinking food/drinks, talking animals, or bitchy queen trying to chop my head off.

It worked for Neo, right?

The white rabbit is quite a tricky little leporine that seduces you with promises of answers and further knowledge.  The same goes for working through programming tutorials.  They suck you in with assurances that you will understand the programming world more thoroughly and be able to apply what you learn to your own work. Well, as I go through tutorial after tutorial, I'm continuing to tumble through the rabbit hole getting glimpses of the furry little devil's bushy tail, but only that....glimpses.  I keep hoping there will eventually be an end to something, but it instead hijacks and takes me down yet another section of the hole.

I guess an example would be helpful here rather than my convoluted metaphor.  On our DH syllabus, we were to use the Google Map simple program. I had the hang of it and felt like I might actually be grasping (at straws, maybe), but then the next instruction to make it fancier throws me way off. There always seems to be such a disconnect between the two tutorials that I don't even have a solid direction anymore.

Can I use markers and watercolor too?

 

And so, I continue on with my "productive failures" while working through what the experts call simple tutorials attempting to resist the temptation to throw my computer at a wall. Perhaps one day I will catch that white rabbit and make him tell me why he's always such a jerk.