I’m going to start my own business.

Wow – look at that – one little sentence and my whole life is about to change.

Now, this is not a lightly-made decision. I have thought about little else for days, made lists of pros and cons, discussed it with my husband and daughter, my sister, my best friend, my jobs counsellor at Emploi-Qébec, and several of my former classmates. The real deciding factor, however, was the advice of the man who for eight weeks was my supervisor at the company where I did my internship. He told me he would write me a letter of recommendation anytime I asked, but that he thought I should start my own business.

This is a man who has worked in this field for some time, and I value his opinion and trust his judgement. When I added his input to all the other reasons I had for considering this option, it began to seem like it had a real possibility of success.

Now I have to research what resources may be available to me, and figure out how to go about starting this new enterprise.

Wish me luck…

For over a year now, I have been part of a group, focused on learning, adhering to a schedule (mostly), and with a clearly defined path to follow.

Now the program is finished, and I feel like I am lost in the wilderness.

It is amazing how comfortable I became, having some outside power dictate my timetable, no real decisions to make, day flowing into day in a predictable pattern. Yes, there were tough assignments, and on any given day many minor decisions were made, but in the larger picture, I was happy to relinquish control and walk the predetermined path.

Now that path has ended, and I find myself at a crossroads. There are choices in front of me, and so much depends on making the right decision – it’s nerve-racking. Look for a job, start my own business, find another program and go back to school? Which direction should I take, and how do I know it’s the right one?

I’m going to take a couple of weeks and just decompress, re-connect with my family, play in my garden, play with my horse, let my feelings settle down a bit. Then I’ll take a fresh look at my options, and hopefully they will not be as scary as they seem right now.

Dreamweaver is my own personal Red Ryder Rifle.

I have worked my way, sometimes with pleasure, sometimes painfully, through this program, with the promise of Dreamweaver ever held out as the carrot at the end of the stick. I struggled through Linux, javascript, Database design, Applied Database with PHP and MySQL (and a pox on the creator of the relational database…but that is another story). I got through what is possibly the most condensed course on Photoshop in the history of the program, and zipped through Flash on a revised schedule. And finally, on December 7, we started the Dreamweaver course.

I had a myriad of questions going in. How do you position divs so they show the same in the design view as in a browser? How do you use SmartObjects from Photoshop?  How can you enforce the use of one template across a whole site? What about editable regions and repeatable regions, and can you convert one to the other? Imagemaps?  Consistent navigation? What’s a Spry? How does it differ from a sprite? And what’s a Spry Asset, then? What’s a snippet and how do you use it? How do you make those nifty accordion thingys? How do you embed Flash?  And on and on…

I know how to create an Imagemap in DW now, and I know one way to use SmartObjects to edit images without having to open Photoshop. I am fairly confident that I can tell the difference between an editable region and a repeatable one (since the tabs are labeled that way), but I am very shaky on the application of a full template. I can hand-code those accordion thingys (Thanks, Sayed, for leading me through javascript) but have not figured out how to get Dreamweaver to do them for me. I manage consistent navigation by putting it in the header and just copying the whole div to every page. Positioning is still a quest to be gone on when I have the time.

And why, you ask, is Dreamweaver such a disappointment? It is not the program itself, and certainly not the teacher, who is interested, helpful, and consistent. The fact is, we have spent the last week doing nothing more than Database, using Dreamweaver.

Database – in Dreamweaver?!? How can such a thing be possible? Well, I have to say; that being able to create recordsets and have them repeat and be accessible from multiple pages is a great idea. We did it in PHP by creating functions outside the page and calling them whenever we needed to, in any page.  And most of us (OK, I had problems but I also have perseverance and a whole Web full of tutorials to draw from) can do it more simply, with tighter, more secure code. Just for one example, in DW you can create a “secure” login page.  But, to use a login page you first have to have a registration form of some kind, and without using regular expressions to check the validity of the registration, you’re likely to get some real garbage written to your database. And also, just my opinion, of course, but automatically telling people what usernames are currently in use as part of a login error message – well now any potential hacker has 50% of what he needs to get in – not a good scenario.

I think the extra stuff Dreamweaver does is going to be a boon for any designer who does not have coding skills, doesn’t have the time or the will to learn any, and hasn’t got any programmers to work with. But the problem with trying to make one size fits all is that it will never, ever, look tailored. (If I had a buck for every time our poor teacher had to ask us “Did you use the program to do that or did you hand-code it?” I could buy a Green Tea Frappuccino Blended Crème Grande for the whole class!) Dreamweaver is meant to be primarily a design program, and as such it is an amazing tool. Just understand that you cannot rely totally on the program to do all of your work for you – if you do, it is likely to smack you in the eye.

They’re out there – the cyber-outlaws, riding around the net in their virtual black hats, hijacking, impersonating, stealing data, and generally raising hell online. Most normal users of the Internet go about their daily chores, blissfully unaware that these outlaws even exist, let alone how vulnerable one can be to an attack. Until they ride into your site, that is.

So this week we are learning about black-hat hacking and how to prevent it. Now, I love reading novels about this kind of cyber-crime – but I always wonder how much of what is being written is actually possible. These fictional cyber-geek-criminals seem to have way more self-taught knowledge than I could hope to accumulate if I did this program 3 times over! Well, apparently the answer to my question is – all of it and more!

One of the things we are learning about is how to keep our sites safe – how to avoid being scammed, impersonated, or hijacked – how to avoid leaving ourselves and our sites vulnerable to SQL injection, Cross-Site Scripting, or session theft, how to foil all these evildoers who would corrupt our databases, run off with our information, redirect our visitors, and generally cause mayhem on our sites.

To that end, we are going to try an experiment – we are going to try to hack this site.  So circle the wagons, and stay tuned for updates.

Apparently no data is totally secure.  Public keys, private keys, certificates, hashing, encryption of data right down to e-mail messages, digital signatures, CAPTCHAs – there are so many methods of protecting our information out there and all of them seem to be one big step behind the capabilities of the evildoers who want the information.

Brute force attacks, denial of service, spambots, zombie computer armies – even something as seemingly innocuous as content scraping (imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery but I draw the line at out-and-out plagiarism) – there are more ways of misusing information than there are of protecting it.

That said, there are some things you can do to keep your data safer than if you did nothing.

1. DON’T SHARE YOUR PASSWORDS! It is amazing how many people ignore this simple safety rule.
2. Use unique passwords. DON’T use your birthday or your dog’s name – use as many varied characters as permitted by the environment requesting the password.
3. Use a different password for each environment that requires one. (Using your bank password for your Facebook account is asking for trouble!)
4. Do not store your password list on your computer. If you have too many passwords to remember them all, make a list on a USB key or some other removable medium and keep it in a separate location.
5. If you have to keep a hardcopy of your passwords, keep it somewhere secure. A safety deposit box is a good idea ( put your will and the deed to your house in there too).
6. If you have to keep sensitive data on your computer, password-protect the folders or files.  (See the rules for passwords above…)
7. Don’t reply to e-mails asking for sensitive information. If your bank really needs you to update your information, they are not going to ask you for it by e-mail! If you are not sure, call them up and ask!
8. Don’t send any financial information by e-mail. Bank account and credit card numbers can be stripped out of e-mails at the server level, without you ever knowing about it.
9. USE A GOOD ANTIVIRUS PROGRAM. Set it to run at least weekly (I run mine daily) and update it regularly.
10. Use a firewall. Whether a software firewall or a hardware one (router).

There are many other ways to keep information and data secure. Do a web search for “personal web security” and you will find  literally millions of listings. It really is enough to make a person a tiny bit paranoid.

And me? I’m not all that paranoid, but I’m wondering if a tinfoil hat could pass as a fashion statement…

Anyway, I decided to do some research online and find out what kind of “posting Interval” was considered optimum. Imagine my (appalled) surprise when I found out that most bloggers manage to write something every day!  Are they NUTS?! Or are they all living at home in the basement and still getting Mom to do their laundry and cook their meals? If so, that won’t work for me – I may fit the “nuts” part, but in my family I am the Mom!

During the course of my research I found out that not only was I supposed to post way more often than I have been doing, but I needed to make my posts available on many of the different “Social Networking” sites. My social networking skills are at best rudimentary, but I will get my daughter to coach me and will soon catch up, I’m sure. Eventually I may even get to the point where I don’t have to look up my Facebook username every time I log in…

As well as social networking, I’m also supposed to SEO the blog.  There are actually people out there who make a living (!) by writing articles for other people’s blogs, based on a list of keywords given by the blog’s owner. Apparently, the more often you update (and outlink and backlink and loop-de-loo) the better your blog will rate in the search engines. Since I have e-mailed the URL of this blog to everyone I want to read it, I’m not going to worry about that right now, if ever.  If strangers find it, and have comments to make, well and good.  I see that a couple of folks I don’t know have already commented on what I have written (Anna, I will reply to your comment as soon as I finish writing this post). It is flattering, if a little unsettling, that people I don’t even know will take the time to read and comment on my stuff.

So, apparently, once you start a blog, you are required to keep adding to it. I have no problem with that. But I am still not convinced that posting often, even if you have nothing to say, is better than posting less frequently, when there is something you want to put out there for examination and discussion. If there is a specific interval that is decreed as the optimum for adding stuff, I’m not sure I could adhere to it even if I could find out what it is.

After all the varied and sometimes very confusing information I have gathered about blogging in general, and specific blogging tactics in particular, I have come to the conclusion that the way I started out is, for me, the best way to continue. So I will write whenever I feel I have some comment to make, and whoever reads this can just make the best of it. Sorry, Jess.

But seriously, folks – Javascript. I find it easier to understand than PHP – although it uses many of the same operations; strings, functions, if statements, while loops, switch statements, regular expressions, etc.  Maybe I do actually remember some if the PHP I learned (was it only a couple of months ago?). I am also aware that a great part of the appeal of Javascript for me is the instant gratification  – being a client-side language, I can see the results of my work instantly – more to the point I can see my mistakes right away!

And the mistakes are really what I learn from. I find I can draw some parallels from the classroom experience to my “real life”. For example, just yesterday I had written a piece of code to fulfill an assignment in class. It was running perfectly on my classroom computer. I had the teacher check it and she said it was fine – then she left for the day.  As soon as I loaded it up to the server it went all catawumpus. None of my smaller images showed up – at all! I tried everything – I checked and re-checked the punctuation (those single and double quotation marks will be the death of me…) Got a couple of classmates to look at it – they were as much in the dark as I was. I made sure I had the divs where they should be and that the CSS was good. I validated the HTML  and the CSS with the W3C Validators. All good. Downloaded it and uploaded it again (well, it’s Windows – you never know…).  It still worked great on my computer. It still wouldn’t work properly on the server. I was going nuts.

So I went home. I had a soft drink and sat on my deck and looked at my gardens. I thought about  other things. I cooked supper and ate it, and finally went into my “office” and sat down at my computer.  I opened my FTP program to download the files from the school server to my home computer, and VOILA!  There, clear as day, was the answer to my problem.

I was looking at a list of the files on the server, and I saw that the ones that were not showing were the ones with capitalized file extensions.  The program I had created the images with automatically saves in that format and I had forgotten. I went in and changed the extensions to lowercase right on the server, and as simple as that, it’s fixed. It runs perfectly. Took less than five minutes. I am  happy. (see it HERE)

And the parallel is, not to bang it home too bluntly – a paraphrase of something my Mom told me years ago – If you have tried everything in your power, everything you can think of, that’s the best you can do. Leave it alone for awhile and come back to it with fresh eyes. Maybe you’ll see a solution then, maybe not, but fretting and worrying over something you can’t fix is a waste of time and energy. Take a break, go do something else, and come back to it when you are calmer. I have to keep reminding myself of this, and these reminders are a pretty nifty side- effect of this whole back-to-school experience.

But seriously – Javascript? I wish they had called it something nicer – maybe named it after something I truly love – why couldn’t it be called Coffee Code?

Never being one to sit around being bored, I was always working at something – just not for someone. I owned and operated an organic market garden for about 7 years. I taught Motorcycle safety Training for the Canada Safety Council, I cleaned houses (other people’s houses, not my own!), and eventually I started to volunteer at my daughter’s school – in the computer lab.

Much to my surprise – I found that I loved working with computers. And I was pretty good at it, compared to the other folks at the school back then (we’re talking 1996-97 here). Pretty soon a need was perceived to have a Computer Committee for the school. Since I had been volunteering for upwards of 30 hours a week in the lab, I guess the fact that I was on the first Computer Committee comes as no surprise. By the second year of the Committee, I was the Chair.

One of the things I enjoyed the most about this time in my life was a course I developed and taught after school to some of the Grade 4, 5, and 6 kids.  I called it WebMonsters, and it covered a lot of ground, including online safety and “Netiquette”. But the most fun part was teaching these incredibly bright and computer savvy kids how to make their own website.

Now, one of the things that I am continually finding, is that the things I learn (and relearn, again and again… some lessons need repeating) in one area of my life are generally applicable in almost every other area of my life. I suppose this is no great revelation to anyone – I myself know it to be true, and have known it for years, and yet it hits me like a newsflash every time (this is where the “some lessons need repeating” part comes in….). Go figure.

Anyway. one day during WebMonsters, while I was trying to explain how to create a link on a page, and the difference between relative and absolute links ( these are 8 to 12 year olds, yeah?), I noticed two of the boys at the back of the class, talking away and paying no attention. I was more than a little bit ticked off at this lack of respect – so I quietly made my way back to where they were, anxious to explain to them that the soccer game or new skateboard were topics best left for after class.

Imagine my surprise when I heard one of them say to the other – “Well, yes, but if you use that if-then statement there, you close the loop and end the level. You’d be better to use an if-else statement.” OK. These 12-year olds were writing code for a computer game. I wandered off, and left them to it.

The deeper message? Try to find out what’s going on before you act. Easy to say, sometimes hard to do. But usually the wisest course of action.

Oh, yeah – the game? They finished it about a week later, and brought it in for the class to play. It was great!

As of March 2, 2009, I’m attending a very intensive Web Technology program at my local College, by way of a midlife crisis – er, career change. I have been writing bits and pieces of notes to myself, kind of like a journal,  and they are scattered all over my (way too huge) hard drive, saved with names that no doubt made sense to me at the time but that now are impossible to find…

One way to keep this all straight, force myself to be a bit more organized, and preserve the memories I am making during this extremely intense experience, is to put it online. So, it looks like I, who have been extremely reluctant to join the “bloggers”, now find myself in possession of my very own cyber-soapbox.

I have always felt that bloggers are basically narcissists only interested in establishing a Cult of Personality (a paraphrase from Peter Isackson) or bored teenagers seeking to expand the possibilities of future embarrassments (once it’s online, it lives forever…). But I HATE Facebook. So that leaves me thinking it’s time – yes, that’s right, me – Anti-Blog-Woman, starting one of her very own…

So I’ve been looking at the eighty-million-and-one definitions of  the word “blog” (online, of course) and I’ve come to the conclusion that a blog can be almost anything the author wants it to be. In my case, I’m going to use this blog to chronicle my evolution into WebMom.

So here goes…