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Santa Claus is Coming to Town
Christmas is over. So why haven’t I taken down my extraordinary (pink) Christmas tree? If the preceeding question doesn’t answer itself, then we have nothing left to talk about.
But I wanted to explain (read: brag about) my awesome side projects (Christmas presents) that were done in addition to completing a quarter at school and setting up an entirely new website at the internship (to go live sometime this month!).
First challenge: A “Worry Wart” website for Mom/every woman in the world to store worries for them. This needed a database, tables interacting with each other, a somewhat secure way to access, read, and write to the database, login, log out, create a new user, store session variables, count worries that came true vs worries that never happened, add and delete worries. Whew! I think that might be about it.
If you’re interested, check out worrywart.jessicawicksnin.com. If you’re really interested, check out my code on git hub (jwicksnin).
Second challenge: A “Benjamin Speaks” app for Dad/every retirement-savvy person to aid them in financial decision making. This took CSS to create a neat shadowed “quote bubble” and awesome jQuery to take a submitted question, find a suitable (random) answer in a text file, and output the random answer. Nothing too fancy, but the image of a $100 bill that I gleaned from Google addressing my dad directly is really cute.
Third challenge: A “Facebook for Two” for my boyfriend/every couple who too busy actually having a relationship “IRL” to document every stage of their relationship on actual Facebook. This took some serious JavaScript because a text file wasn’t good enough – I was determined to use the word AJAX as much as possible. I ended up using a quick PHP file to write from JavaScript to the existing XML file on the server. So now I feel very comfortable reading and writing XML files based on user input via AJAX requests. It’s basically a poorly-styled Facebook, which made me question the value of Facebook at $100,000(?) a share if I can build the same thing in a couple weeks with nothing but Google and Web Programming Step by Step (thank you CSE at UW) for help.
Be Still My Beating Heart
This morning my mind was blown. I read a chapter about J Query and understood it! I also understood how to combine “unobtrusive” with “J Query” and so one of my big goals now is to eradicate regular JavaScript from my own page (not from my portfolio pieces) while maintaining separate JavaScript, HTML, and CSS files. I realized I am beginning a love affair with J Query because while I was brushing my teeth because I kept fantasizing about all the wonderful things J Query and I will do together this summer. Me and J Query getting Ajax. Me and J Query listening for events. Me and J Query creating children (and appending them!). Gee, I hope J Query likes the way I fixed my hair today…
One day, my dream is to use PHP to do cool stuff, which will probably start with making user names and passwords. The great thing (warning: sarcasm ahead) about this is that I can also use REGULAR EXPRESSIONS. I don’t know why they called them that, but the abbreviated Regex (read: Rejects) is much more apt. It’s not that I don’t love REGULAR EXPRESSIONS (who continue to insist that I write them all in CAPS in addition to personifying them), it’s just that they make me so depressed I actually want to tear the pink keyboard cover from my computer. And that is saying something.
Another challenge I actually am excited about is the magic wand of HTTP Special Chars. If you’re not sure what that means, I will tell you. Generation Y people think they’re really special because their guilt-ridden divorced parents continually told them so. HTTP Chars actually are Special because they will encrypt your s**t. While I may not be the Marines of web security, I think I could at least pass for a mall cop because in addition to those Chars that are Special, I have some other tricks up my sleeve. And those tricks involve many acronyms that I can’t remember right now.
Well, I’m off to go spend the afternoon on the couch (and the dining room table, and the kitchen, and my desk) with J Query. Please hold my calls.
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