Unit 5

It was interesting to read the articles on learning styles, I had not given it much thought.  I know that I prefer to watch the videos than do the readings but I'm not sure how much of the information I retain. I feel like reading the lectures, doing the assignments then doing the quizzes helps to reinforce the information that was covered. OK this is nerdy but I really like doing the quizzes then seeing what I got wrong and going back to find the information. It seems that as I reread the lecture a new aspect is always revealed, something I might not have understood the first time around. Frankly I wish I could go back and reread most of the material but time barely allots for one reading. I also like how how the assignments are arranged so that it is possible to go through them like a check list, there is a feeling of accomplishment even though the purpose of some tasks is not always clear. I'm still battling with the meanings of some of the terminology, I could probably memorize the meaning of  something but not be able to explain how it's actually works. Like with POTS, I still don't understand how the phone coverts your voice to data that is transmitted through wire and sent to the other side of the world. The science continues to elude me.

Unit 4

Installations of Webmin and creating users went quite well, no real problems to report. I'm still feeling a bit lost as to exactly what we are doing, I don't have problems following the step by step instructions but left to my own devices I'm pretty clueless. Learning the command language seems like a daunting task but every time we do an exercise I feel like I'm retaining a little bit more. I'm still uncomfortable with the fact that a typo in sudo mode could cause serious problems so I try to check and double check all the commands I enter, so I'm still cautiously moving along.

The only problem I can say I had was working on the remote desktop because it was so slow, but that was really more of an annoyance.

I was surprised when I took the quiz this week, I didn't expect to get 6 out of 8 correct on the first try, that was a moral boost but, I'm still stumped on Q1.

No tips or trick to contribute at this time, but hopefully I'll have something by the end of class.

Unit 3

A bit behind but, catching up. I got stuck in the vim tutor for a while and finally escaped by shutting the whole thing down, then a friend suggested :q instead of q!. Navigating in the tutor was alright and I like that you do not have to take your hands of the keyboard to move around. I am accustomed to using shortcuts in Photoshop, except there is a whole lot more commands to remember. I feel like the environment is becoming more familiar and I have a better understanding of directories and why Unix is set up differently than Windows. However I'm still scared when I do commands as super user but the snapshot feature is reassuring. Also the terminology is extensive, the words are familiar but the definitions not so much, for example one of the readings states that /proc is the directory that is used as a kernel information access hooks....so things like that are confusing.

unit 2

This week was interesting, I find that installing new programs is kind of exciting. I had no problems accessing the remote desktop or installing Ubuntu. I was extra careful to go through the steps and watch the tutorials closely while doing these just to make sure that nothing crazy happens to my system. It's been a bit nerve racking because you just do not know what could go wrong, but so far pretty smooth sailing. Now entering commands on the remote desktop was a bit of a different story. I watched all the VCT tutorials and took notes but found that when I went through the Learning the shells tutorial, that my notes made little sense. I was able to follow pretty well up until lesson 5, manipulating files it got very confusing from there, but the more I review the information the more it comes together in little pieces. I'm still feeling confused about what it is we are looking at and what super powers the CLI has. This weeks lesson leaves me with the impression that the CLI makes it easier to organize large amounts of information found on databases.