Unit 11: Trial by ordeal

When I began this course, I was allergic to the command line. Okay, well that's what I would tell people so I could avoid it, but even then I wanted a degree of familiarity with the shell whereby I could at least navigate around to where I needed to go, open directories, run executables. I didn't even understand what configuring meant before starting this class actually I hardly knew what the LAMP server setup was about when I read online materials for the DigIn certificate about four years ago while investigating SIRLS. But it seemed impressive as an accomplishment. What's funny is when I first moved to Tucson in 2007 my immediate goal was to do a series of Flash projects thinking that there was a future in Flash, but a series of jobs involving large collections of paper and digital items and a series of questions about production bottlenecks led me to thinking long and hard about enrolling in a program in the technological aspects of library studies. I was very fortunate to have a very good school in that field right here in Tucson, a city that frequently underwhelms me in most fields of endeavor not related to the U of A.
As always, the conceptual stuff was easier for me, but the practical part is still really difficult and frustrating, but at least the frustration isn't irrational or completely emotional like it was before. I have now done things in the CL environment, had I had those skills two years ago I would have gotten an IT trainee position in the same library where I am now just a late-night info desk guy. I think my interest in MySQL and my desire to learn whatever I can about databases has motivated a deeper interest in wanting to get better at using Linux and comprehending php. I guess I needed a functional model in my mind. Previous experience with the CL left me wanting to avoid it at all costs, but I knew I'd have to use it if I wanted to use the remaining components of the LAMP stack. Another thing that was really useful for me understanding how the LAMP configuration work in the framework of the dynamic web (a.k.a. Web 2.0) was the first 8 and a half minutes of Prof. Fulton describing it in a video in my IRLS 504 core class that gelled it in my mind. in the run of this class I finally got a laptop, I'm going to have to invest in a second download of Ubuntu for that machine and try to set this LAMP stack up on that machine to be able to work on it in a more flexible fashion (like anytime after 8pm) than my current setup of a desktop in a room that has been taken over by my toddler child. Yeah, that would have been a much better situation than what this has shaken out so far, but live and learn, I guess. But if I can create a database like the photographer one, but for my own purposes it would all be very worthwhile.