The project

This week you need to create a client requirements document based on the following scenario:

Your customer has turned up at work with a box of video accelerator cards and 10 copies of Quake III Gold - he has a hair brained scheme to set up a LAN party for his suppliers and best customers in order to create better social bonds between them.

Your task is to write a client requirements document for the project. In it you will need to cover the following areas:

1. Project description.
2. Specs of the target computers (hardware and currently installed software).
3. Specs of the software and hardware to be installed.
   
4. The scope of the project: what you are prepared to do for the customer, and (more importantly) what you are not prepared to do (i.e. teach them how set up and start the game but not how to win).
5. Network setup (what software/hardware might be needed).
   
6. Possible problems (and proposed solutions).
7. Sources of information (i.e. drivers, game patches etc.) .

Please produce this document and submit with a cover sheet by 20th November.

Image: 'Q3A on IRIX'
http://www.flickr.com/photos/78624316@N00/2814620657

waving goodbye to faultfinding

Sadly, we've come to the end of our timetable for locating equipment, system and software faults. It's time to wave them goodbye.

For the final assessment you should have the following documents completed, stapled together and handed in by the 30th Oct.

• Assignment Cover Sheet.doc (85K)
• Identifying appropriate information gathering techniques activities.doc (37K )
• Fault Finding Tools Actvities.doc (42K)
• Analysing complex system problems.doc (45K)
• Determine and plan problem resolution activites.doc (31K)
• Rectifying faults and testing activities.doc (29K)
• Creating a system support log activities.doc (35K)

Image: 'Whitewater Swimming'
http://www.flickr.com/photos/30674396@N00/220510703

dreamweaver and database web sites

1. pick up the latest copy of the fred database from http://www.bathurst-tafe.nsw.edu.au/~pshanks/icab4169a
   
2. open the phpmyadmin application on your personal web space (something like: http://www.bathurst-tafe.nsw.edu.au/~yourname/phpMyAdmin )
3. import the fred.sql tables into your database.
4. start dreamweaver and create a new project: fred, pointed to a directory on the Bathurst TAFE server where you'll be creating this project (you will need to ftp into the site to make this directory) - this should look something like: http://www.bathurst-tafe.nsw.edu.au/~pshanks/icab4169a/fred
5. 
   

adding a splash of colour with css

Sorry that I won't be with you today - snow has closed the highway.

Still, I can point you to the assignment entry below, and to a couple of pages I was hoping we could work through today.

So far we've been looking at HTML as a way to present content (as opposed to formatting it to look pretty). Tags like H1 and strong tell the reader (human or machine) about the importance of elements on the page.

But what about the esthetics I hear you ask...

How can you format the page so that it looks good too?

CSS (cascading style sheets) are the answer. To get a handle on them, work through the pages in htmldog's CSS beginner tutorial. By the time you finish this I'd like you to make an external style sheet file to set your 'things to do' pages' background colour, font colour and font style to something a bit more interesting than the browser default.

HTMLdog's intermediate tutorial also has some interesting material - for example the pseudo-classes for hyperlinks (that we looked at briefly a couple of weeks ago). You should apply these to your 'to-do' pages too.

Finally, you can use CSS to lay out a page, as explained in their advanced tutorial. This is an optional extra for this class, but I'd love to see some of you apply it too.

Oh, and one little extra: the assignment asks for an email link on one page. To save you a couple of keystrokes here's the Google search results

Image: 'Grapefruit Splash'
www.flickr.com/photos/11419506@N08/2272752165

assignment

An assignment for the HTML and FTP subjects

Make a sub-directory for the 'things to do' exercise you started 2 weeks ago and copy your files into it.

Add a link to it on your index page (the one pointing to the various exercises we've done so far).

Extend the 'things to do' pages by adding some images to the detail page(s) - perhaps found on the flickrCC site.

Add a new page to your 'things to do' which contains a calendar table. This table should list your to-do things in the left hand column, with years across the top and an 'X' in the cell when you hope to have achieved each one. Link to this page from your 'things to do' home page.

Inlcude an email link at the bottom of your main index page.

Upload everything to the bathurst-tafe server and give me a cover page with the URL of your finished work.



Image: 'My dream shopping list'
http://www.flickr.com/photos/28481088@N00

pigeons and ants

Time to upload a file.

First up, we'll need to understand what file transfer is all about - the wikipedia article's a good spot to find out.

Next, we'll need some ftp clients to play with. Peruse the list on wikipedia, or search google and select two that will fit your pocket and operating system (recommended: filezilla).

Install your client of choice and connect to the bathurst tafe web server using the login details provided (if you've lost them, or not received them yet, give me a call and I'll see what I can cook up). Once you're logged in, create a directory called: exercises then upload the index.html and other files you created in our HTML lessons and see if you can bring it up in a web browser: http://www.bathurst-tafe.nsw.edu.au/~yourname/exercises

Got troubles?

• make sure you're using Active rather than Passive transfers in your ftp client
  
• double check the user name and password
• remember, if you're in the computer lab, our ip address is different from the bathurst-tafe.nsw.edu.au address
• the web server can only see the public_html folder
  
• you may need to change the permissions on the file so that others can read it

Once you finish this challenge, write a short article on the experience. Make sure you mention:

• The name of your ftp clients
• The URLs you got them from
• any installation woes you encountered
• some comments on their ease of use
• $
• the platform(s) they work on
• the install file sizes

and any other interesting bits of information you came across. Let those pigeons fly!

Image: 'Venice: Pidgeons in Piazza San Marco'
www.flickr.com/photos/26597199@N00/2006494557

sql has a new home

to celebrate our combined CertIV SQL class I've created a new blog just for our database subject. You can see it and read all about our subject on:

http://certivsql.blogspot.com/