Maitta! Always - Daily Amazing Confusions -

Today, I finished the coding of my preparation work for the contest. Tomorrow, I will leave for Okinawa. This will be 5 hour flight. I'm too stuck with my coding to be scared. I'm preparing for travel now, and then I prepare for the disc I have to hand in before the contest starts.

I also have to prepare for my travel to the venue. If I wouldn't I would not able to even participate in the competition.

At least I'm continuing on my work. This is more important than the contest. Continuing on work after the contest is the priority, whatever the result of the contest. I will get the result a week later.

The time I can use to brush up my preparation work for the contest has been running out. Now I have to hand in my preparation work as is, with minimum modification to meet the minimum requirement.

Wasted time for pretending to be cool, in vain, I'm not really so at all - Being myself, just communicating my experiences as specific and as visual as possible. This perhaps is becoming the message I'm going to tell on my contest homepage. I'm working on the real competition less than a week later. There's no help in worrying. Doing needed actions one by one will help me prepare for the contest and the travel, and calming down my anxiety.

This weekend is the time to prepare for the contest, but more for my travel than my work. As for my work I have to finish my work to meet the minimum requirements for the contest.

All my resources is spent of making up a photo slide show, for a skills contest in Okinawa in the beginning of November. There are expected to be a few more tasks on the day of competition. My preparation for these task is about 50 %. I try hard to meet more requirements.

Going out for a walk? Editing a few icons? Looking up some web programing functions? While delaying my decision, night is getting deeper and deeper, getting too late for any of them.

One more step further? Perhaps in the next morning. For now even coming up with one word is not so easy for me. It's not until now that I have noticed that I have been so stuck and so tired.

Having my hands so full that it's hard to decide what to do next. My thought doesn't look like so clear. Pace down, lowering the requirement for my work, which is actually of lower priority in my real life, real work.

Already only few days available left for the contest. The progress of my preparation work is 20-30 percent. Now I'm adjusting layouts for smartphones. I checked on my iPod Touch, and struggled with its resolution feature. Looks like its viewport width is calculated as 980 pixels, although it looks so narrow, perhaps narrower than a fifth of my laptop's same resolution.

I'm making the requirement list for the homepage contest. According to this I have only fulfilled less than 30 percent of the minimum requirement.

In order to prepare for the contest, I updated my xampp setting. A problem happened. I uninstalled the old version without taking backup of my databases, just taking copy of entire xampp file. When I ran the new version, of course, I lost my databases. Just copying my old data files isn't enough. I got the error message "doesn't exist in engine". I additionally copied several config files, and even worse, mySQL wouldn't start any more. I repeated uninstall, re-install, and copying suspicious file, but I couldn't solve the problem. Finally I copied back to the working folder the entire copy of my old environment, and executed the old version. This time, I at least took backups of my databases through phpMyAdmin. Now I'm installing the up-to-date xampp, with php 7.2, and if I succeed in restoring the backup, all my problem will be solved, at cost of the entire time I can use a day for my homepage building.

I have only 2 weeks before the contest. I have to create a web page prior to the contest. Now I'm choosing photos to show on the page. Participants have to prepare at least 10 photos, and on each photo there has to be a copyright notation. Now I'm just looking fore rough appearance of the page, but the piece of copyright description will have to be done in a few days. I also have to prepare for travel at least a week before I start, so the time I can spent on the web page is pretty shorter than calendar appears to be.

The major programing part of my slide show for the competition has been done. The design part is the problem. To make matters worse, I have hardly any specific idea of what massage I want to communicate, while I like to learn specifics about computer architectures and programing languages.

My pace is getting slower these days. Jogging and programming, learning of apps helpful for web page creating.

On Sunday, my progress of learning of Photoshop was amazing. I was almost finishing the text book. But today on Monday ....... my learning pace is sharply declining.

5 a.m. it's still dark in an early mid-October morning, unlike that time in the summer. I often take a walk this time of the day, relieving shortage of exercises. Sometimes a canned-coffee is a motivation and a reward. Then I begin my early work, these days learning operations of Photoshop, and codes of web programing.

Keeping on taking notes of smallest idea brings me finally to a great improvement. Just recently I'm changing my stance on this blog. This blog stays blog of trivial things, daily update , and may get even more trivial to most of you, but I'm writing trivial ideas as many as possible at least meaningful to me. I'm changing mind, because I'm thinking, "I have been helped by my past blog entry so many times.". For example information about what I was doing at this time of the year of a few years ago help me decide when to begin a new action for some pieces of my schedule.

Photoshop practice => preparing for work and breakfast => Web programing status I think a new idea of task scheduling. I want to change the idea of scheduling, because I sometimes in a hurry near the time I need to prepare fore the next item of my schedule.

Still I have a lot to learn, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, SQL, and PhotoShop, for the competition 3 weeks later. Keeping myself in shape, however, is even more important. If I can't travel to the venue, I can't even stand the start line of the competition.

These days I'm struggling with PHP programing with MySQL. Almost every time I try test a code, I'm trapped by errors: parse errors, type errors, SQL syntax errors, and pointing at nonexistent databases or database fields.

I have waited for a week before I edit my first sample photo of textbook. Before I begin, I have had to learn several pieces of basics. It's likely I will be able to begin this evening, after Windows update for this month.

Shichigahama town (8:50 A.M.),  and, Shiogama Fish Wholesale market (10:50 A.M.) I spent shores on Shichigahama so long a time, taking photographs, and it was almost 11 A.M. that I arrived at the market, 2 hours later than planned.

Today's learning  - Learning basics of SQL through PHPMyAdmin My Mistakes and Lessons in Today's Learning  1. Have I really added a column on my database table, as well as my data contents CSV?  - import failure with a message "Invalid column count in CSV input on line 1"  (Solved by the following StackOverflow entry php - Invalid column count in CSV input on line 1 Error - Stack Overflow )   I made a table, then made its contents data by CSV format, and attempted to import the CSV.   At first I succeeded, but when I added a column onto the CSV, delete all data from the SQL table, and tried to import modified CSV data again.  It wasn't successful with an error message "Invalid column count in CSV input on line 1".  It was because I had forgotten adding new column to the database as well as I had just done with the CSV data.

3 weeks left for the competition. I spent three fourth of the daytime on JavaScript, building the logic of my slideshow. With all this struggle, I managed to get all parameters under control, as far as I'm concerned. I especially struggled with defining methods of an object with its prototype and other methods. In the evening, I'm continue on my learning of PhotoShop with a text book. There are so many to learn basic operations that I haven't edited even the first sample picture.

My battle against JavaScript setTimeout function has been continuing since the competition of 2 years ago, where I struggled with that function. Again this time, I'm thinking that this function is indispensable in implementing the requirements. This time, I'm almost giving one answer to the problem, preparing the core logic of the functions. Next problem will be how I'll show the function with the view I give with html, css and resources like photos.

Learning PHP along a textbook, now I'm in the section of learning about SQL databases. Inputting sample data with SQL sentences one by one, or even with PHPMyAdmin, it is pretty tiring entering as few as four or five rows. Importing data with formats editable in Excel, for example csv, save me a lot of energy. A SQL database and Excel are different things, but taking advantage of Excel's handiness sometimes help me putting a lot of data in the database.

Another missing parts of my home page creating are processing photos and arranging colors. I'm getting basic textbooks about these subjects in a few days. Before taking up reading them, my learning of script parts, JavaScript and PHP, will have to be almost finished.

Jogging right after supper is unexpectedly difficult. I have to choose and change clothes fit to jog, check emails I received the day, doing tasks if there are associated with those emails, and desirably writing an entry if I haven't prepared yet, all between the time when I return and supper. If I miss a few things, I may take extra 30 minutes or even an hour before I start jogging.

After being frustrated with suspended, delayed, and crowded public transportation, due to a typhoon that passed near here this morning, having a rest, having a good night sleep is my first priority. I have planned continuing my study of web programming, but it will be after I sleep enough and my condition gets better.

Recently I'm studying JavaScript with a textbook with a title like "10 days JavaScript". It's the second time I learn this programing language along this book. The first time, 2 to 3 years ago, it actually took as slow as a month; my learning pace was so slow. This time it's likely I'm going to go through every lesson in days, literally. In addition to that, I understand almost every piece of code I'm learning, and rename some variables according to my coding style. In the first time, I almost only seeing, typing and checking if the codes really run. Still, it help me understanding the language, and reading other textbooks which explain in details.