The age old query.
I've always been asked, "How best do you learn?" And it's such a tricky question. I've gone through times when I can pick up a book and (I'd like to say burn right through it gleaning all of the famously pertinent information, and devouring it from cover to cover!) - actually it's more like, I devour it rapidly for the first 40 pages. And then my interest peders out, and chances are good, I rarely if ever venture to use what I've learned other than the few samples attempted as coded in the book. The other venues for learning - the ones that happen daily - are more of an "I can't get this shit to work", variety - and is a sloppy combo of trying something, it not working, and seeing who else has run into it, trying more things, till I invariably learn something and/or fix it, not necessarily both as is sometimes the case with CSS and browser specific issues.
The other times I've felt truly engaged in learning has been in class. I'm not talking about the classes I drug myself to as a 20 something undergraduate. There were quite a few of those that had value. That I will never forget. For one the Belgian TA who taught me how to write. And I had always gotten A's in English - written well - but this woman took the gloves off and truly taught me a lot about writing. None of it evident here, of course. I'm sure she'd thank her lucky stars that I can't remember her name. But the classes, strangely, that I always loved, were math. In grade school, I moved from New Mexico, which must have been one of the crappier schools in the region to attend Notre Dame catholic school in California. My math skills were abysmal and I had to bust ass just to get up to speed. But it seemed like with the struggle came the fascination. I started spending my time in the math room at lunch. Don't get me wrong - I could have done other things! I actually CHOSE to be a social parriah. Or so I tell myself. But I enjoyed going into Ms. Williams' class at lunch. Then Mrs. Anderson's. And later in my second round of college (post-bachelor's dalliance with returning for a computer science degree - that I never got!) I found myself in the office hours of my calculus professors.
There was something about being in a group pouring over the problems that didn't quite make sense, or sharing what you'd figured out - that made the environment - one that some would consider a punishment - fun. Recently, at work, I've rediscovered this environment. It's not quite as fun as the few programming classes I took in college. We don't do anything that in depth, and it's not as nerdy as a daily math commune in the lunchroom. But we've started, as a group, reading Jquery in Action. Simple sliver of a book. (Note to self, one way to finish a book is to pick smaller ones. Brilliant!) Jam packed with relevant doo-dads. I'm only on Chapter 4. Been doing a chapter a week, which would seem penny-ante. But that's more than I would have read solo. And I'm actually applying it. Simple stuff like adding classes, adding event listeners, etc. Which I could have done with a simple getElementById, onmouseover etc. But it's so much simpler. I have to know so much less, to do so much more. It's really powerful.
So the technical book group is my new best friend as far as learning tools go. I'd really recommend it.
What I’m Reading
Well this was actually what the "What I've Been Up To" post started out as, but it felt weird posting a reading list after being gone for so long. So... I was going to update my links section and realized, I'd been reading a lot lately, but couldn't figure out what. I've been reading on line as needed to solve problems: inDesign tutorials, the occasional visit to Veerle's blog to see what new shennanigans she can show me in Illustrator, or trying to figure out how to keep from getting this one error when experimenting in ActionScript 3.0 (very small and unexciting experiments - hoping to go into more detail when I actually GET somewhere!) But the majority of my reading lately has been in... get this: Books.
I finally gave myself the ok to spend money on books. I used to have them at my old job - resources that belonged there that I got used to having, or just the new book on a certain thing we were learning. I never owned them myself. Or if I needed, I could order them from the university library - ahh.... the things we take for granted!
And upon moving here, I've been pretty limited since Felipe needs the car for work. So my adventures are relatively limited. I've been riding my bike to work and not venturing too far into social or geographical newness. But I do have one place I absolutely love. I've frankly, been geeking out by going to my safe place: Powell's Technical Books.
It's akin to IKEA, Home Depot or Costco in that there must be some unwritten law that assures you don't get out of any of those places for less than $100 per visit. By the way, I think it important to add, that while I'm in dire need of a haircut, I'm reluctant because it will be so expensive - and here I go and blow... well you get the point.
So since I've been here I've picked up:
The first buys were Bulletproof Ajax and Transcending CSS: The Fine Art of Web Design. I had borrowed a friends Transcending CSS and it was a must have. Although it later led to buying CSS the Definitive Guide 3rd Edition. I had the 2nd edition, but there were some references in Transcending CSS that I didn't get the point of: some of the attribute selectors that I'd not used before, and didn't at first understand the uses for. My initial thoughts when I saw something akin to p[class="rant"] was why you didn't just have p.rant and do whatever the hell you wanted. But then realized that the rant class could apply to anything, applying one type of style, while a paragraph of that attribute could be styled upon even further. And div[id=content_main"] vs. just #content_main allows that you could in one page (given IDs should always be one per page) you could use < p id="content_main" > but in the pages where that style is applied to a div, it behaves in a specific way.
Not sure anyone cares, but in the new world of touching pages that I didn't write and don't always know how a certain class is used throughout the site, these might afford me some power.
The 'new' job, I shudder, as it's been 6 mos already! Has pushed my envelope in the marketing areas. Who knew I was a fount of inspiraitonal copy? I made a web banner the other day. One of my first. It had to be an animated gif! So it was almost as though I had to go through the evolution of the web in my learning process. I think I'd made maybe 1 animated gif in my life. And was right proud of that fact. Flashing things unless they are useful in specific ways tend to piss me off. But I think I managed to make a relatively tasteful one here (especially since I'm catering to some with a predilection for flashy). Not going to win any design awards soon, but at least I was able to work in Fireworks more than I have in my life. And it wasn't the last time.
I've also been pulled to make some print work. Which I've really enjoyed. They spent a large sum on a postcard campaign targeting interested students and alumni. I was called on kind of last minute to do the design. So I got to learn inDesign in a rather rudimentary fashion. (Shout out to Noah who I made sit me down briefly before I left ASU and show me a few tricks.) I hope to get some screen shots into the portfolio soon.
I was also called to work on the catalog. To redo the cover. I literally did it in 4 hours. And honestly, I wish I could just redo the entire thing over and from scratch. But I have a deadline fast approaching for something else, and oh yeah, I have this other part of my job I seem to never have time for: curriculum design for the Master Program!
But that should explain all of the inDesign purchases!
So much for a quick entry on what I'm reading! Needless to say I've read a few chapters in about each of these. So Jill of all trades and master of NONE! But it's fun, and while more expensive than a haircut, ponytail holders are cheap.
Oh and when not reading this, I'm trying to finally finish: A Confederacy of Dunces, which I always vowed to read because the title was brilliant.
In a nutshell:
User Design, Getting Real and a 4 Day Work Week?!?
I know I have a whole side panel dedicated to what I'm reading but usually it's websites not books. And since these were stirring immediate thoughts, I thought I'd share them here. I finally broke down and purchased Getting Real on Friday. I was interested in the contrary ideas of "Scale Later" which seem anathema to what I've always been told/taught regarding design. It's also followed by chapters of "Half, Not Half-Assed" which then talks about the idea of starting with one simple idea. Which would help the "Scale Later" aspect of the project, I suspect. Haven't gotten through it yet, not that it's a hard read. It's enjoyable.
Also ran across Designing Interfaces by Jennifer Tidwell. There is a web version which, I hate to say, I liked the readability of better. I guess it speaks to the interface design! I liked being able to see all of the types of designs and click on them to see them. The book may be easier and more enjoyable to read cover to cover. But I liked the reference aspect or shopability of the site.
The Four-Day Week Challenge: While I admire where he's coming from, he does acknowledge the impracticality of this. In an ideal world where I could influence large bureaucracies like State Universities, I think what he's saying is right on. It's not as though he's unsuccessful or doesn't love what he does, meaning his placement of family and "a life" adds to his abilities - not detracts. Since I don't see the 4 day week happening anytime soon in my office, I thought I'd take just part of it away. As we are gearing up for another semester's start, the anxiety of having to work weekends is making me want to hide. Last winter was probably the hardest semester we've faced yet. In talking to my co-worker Friday, we realized that we've now been understaffed for about a year. Mostly due to the lackluster job pool - which either reflects our inability to write a good posting, the change in the job market, and/or our move to PeopleSoft for job application submission. (Or as my husband says, there's apparently a Mexican saying, we're "asking for the Virgin's pearls" aka asking for too much.) We've now got a decent pool and the prospect of having another person to take the load off, is doing wonders for our psyche. However, they won't be in place until AFTER summerI starts. So I'm trying to take the concept of this article, as well as the "practical tips" and apply it to a 5 day week! i.e. Get it all done during the 8 hours. It may kill me. But if the idea of having to work weekends and something like two 80 hour weeks is making me want to crawl in a hole, then giving this a try would seem a pretty good idea.