Andrew Tuline -

My résumé

atuline — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 11:11:14 -0500

I am currently enrolled at the MDIA program at BCIT and am interested in a term position in web development. Feel free to contact me at atuline at gmail dot com.

My BCIT assignments are located at:

http://webapps.bcit.ca/A00292269/

MDIA 4305 Course Review

atuline — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 10:02:44 -0500

This course provides the students a background in XML and really seems to take HTML into a different slant.

My understanding of XML is that it's purely used to store data records, and we covered that in the course. What's more intersting is the way we used XML in the assignments:

Assignment 1 - Create a file called index.xml which contains the various fields of an invoice.
Assigment 2 - You are provided an XML file with 37 Shakespeare plays and are expected to create an index.html which will list those play and link to each one.
Assignment 3 - Take those same plays and format them using XSL stylesheets.
Assignment 4 - Using the MS-XML DOM, we were to render a page using Javascript, which linked an XML and XSL file.
Assignment 5 - Starting with XML and XSL files, we were to create an HTML file using a parser.

As you can see, we went well beyond the basics of XML data structure definitions. Did I like the class? Many folks I talked to had a tough time with this course, however I thought it was interesting and gave me a better appreciation for XHTML and web standards. One big thing I got out of the course was a better understanding of the use of 'CDATA' within XML files.

I was quite happy with my final mark of 96%.

Drupal Development Resources

atuline — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 09:59:27 -0500

Drupal Books

Learning Drupal 6 Module Development
Pro Drupal Development

Other resources

W3Schools

MDIA 4205 - Business of the Web Course Review

atuline — Wed, 05 May 2010 10:48:02 -0500

This is a critical course for independent consultants, as it clearly shows that the 'techie' portion of our business is only one small aspect. I recommend this course as it's a wake up call as to what it would take to get your web design practice up and running.

My final mark for this course was 91%.

MDIA 4305 - XML and XHTML

atuline — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 11:03:06 -0500

This course is starting out well. The instructor had the forums configured to support each of the assignments. In addition, she had a Link area to each of our assignments as well. That's a pleasant change from the previous courses I've taken.

On the downside, some of the information is a bit out of date (ie using Netscape Navigator 7 in the web browser comparison chart), however that's nothing new compared to the other courses in this program.

Some of the work in xml seems to be bleeding in that it only works on certain browsers. I do, however like the fact that in assignment #2, we're given xml and it's up to us to style it. Too bad it's xml and not xhtml though. Shades of the CSS Zen Garden. Great practice.

Unit 7 is using the XML DOM, and uses a proprietary Microsoft version. This is unsettling, as a standards based XML DOM does seem to be available. More research required. . .

Getting into the home stretch of this course, and it's getting a bit strange. Some assignments work with IE but not Firefox and vice versa.

I recommend this course, as it provides us with an introduction of some of the emerging web standards.

So far, the Instructor gets a B, course gets a C.

MDIA 4325 - PHP Course

atuline — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 14:40:08 -0600

In the PHP course at BCIT, we learned some important concepts, such as:

sessions
cookies
arrays
file management
MySQL
output buffering
regular expressions
and more . .

The text used to support the course was 'PHP Third Edition' by Larry Ullman. The text provided background material for all of these topics, and was supplemented by course material (located at http://webapps.bcit.ca/mdia4325/).

To me, the course was marred by the mistakes in the course materials as well as examples that didn't work.

Top Drupal Things

atuline — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 16:11:54 -0600

In December 2009, the Surrey Drupal Group met to discuss the top Drupal modules, tools and other resources that make our life easier. This PDF file is a copy of the results.

Backups, Backups

atuline — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 12:45:54 -0600

It's time for the bi-annual operating system refresh for my home office, so I decided to upgrade my laptop from Windows Vista to Windows 7. What I didn't realize was that my backups were on the edge of failure.

Publishing Contact Lists

atuline — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 08:45:22 -0500

In my role as a web site administrator for a few soccer organizations, I have to publish contact lists (on my Windows based computer) for the executive and coaches. These lists are generated by volunteers and are always in Microsoft Excel.

The challenge that I have, is that Microsoft Excel spreadsheets often don't translate well when being cut and pasted into a HTML based WYSIWYG editor and then published to the Internet. I have seen things like:

General Thoughts on BCIT's MDIA Program

atuline — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 12:26:46 -0500

Introduction

This article provides a brief review of BCIT's MDIA program for aspiring web designers and developers as well as their new Desire 2 Learn to support online classrooms.

The D2L Environment

The new Desire 2 Learn environment provides features to simulate a classroom environment such as:

Discussion Area
Presentation Area
Quizzes & Surveys
Content Publishing
Calendar
Email
And more . .

This environment looks a lot like Microsoft Sharepoint and is configurable for each class. There's also an overall Portfolio section as well a a blog. One thing I appreciated is that they can keep your previous classes online long after they have ended.

Rating: A