BlueWolf's Howl

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August 06, 2003

Update

I finished reading the Switching book and I'm doing the "intense" studying and practice... (why I'm so quiet lately). My Switching exam is scheduled for this coming Monday. I have all the concepts and theories down pat...now to keep the syntax of the commands at my fingertips. It won't be an easy exam by any means. There are three main types of switches (5000, 1900 and 2900XL/3500XL) and you have to know the commands for *each* switch. If you want to configure the hostname, or vlan, or put ports into a vlan... it's just slightly different for each of the three. And I have to know this off the top of my head. Some of the questions are multiple choice, but others are fill in the blank. There's also a number of "hands-on" lab simulations where you have to type in the command and just "do it"... (and I'm sure those exercises are weighted heavily, since they are supposed to demonstrate practical ability -- in real life, you can use the ? to see the exact syntax...but, that's another story).

I plan on staying home all weekend and studying my butt off... this one's going to be a challenge!

In my "spare time" I've been playing with RSS feeds. I've actually been keeping up with most of my "Blog Reads" list by using Awasu. I'm having a blast with it and I can keep up with updated sites using this simple tool. It's better than looking for an updated symbol on Blogrolling and can tell you which posts you haven't seen yet from each blog. Once I'm done with the test (above), I'll be revamping this site. I'm going to separate my "Reads" list into RSS feed blogs and non-RSS feed blogs (so I don't miss the blogs without the feeds). I'm also looking to incorporate some RSS feeds into the blog in some manner... I noticed that CERT (which puts out security advisories, etc) has an RSS feed!

I'm also looking at some other ways to redesign the site. I FINALLY got a book that I've been lusting after since before it was published... Information Architecture - Blueprints for the Web. It was written by Christina Wodtke -- whose site has been one of my reads ever since I started blogging. Every time I go to "Gleanings" on the Elegant Hack site, I *always* learn something. I'm not sure if any of you remember...but she was one of the people who participated in the early testing of Movable Type. If you go to the MT Changelog (which lists all the changes to MT since its initial release), you'll see her name on entries such as:

"Added MTEntryPrevious and MTEntryNext containers to refer to the previous and next entries, respectively. These tags should work in any entry context. (Christina Wodtke) "

Yeah... you've got great navigation on your entries by using the code provided in the templates. You use MT -- people can get around on your blog easily and it's already been provided for you as part of the system. Glad someone's thinking ahead for us all...

Anyway - I'm most of the way through the book. It's a really good read and easy to understand. Hopefully I can apply some of the concepts to improve this site and organize the content better...

Posted by BlueWolf on August 6, 2003 10:30 PM