I spent hours last night running around Norrath on Test, killing stuff and doing quests, just so I could write about the Void Storms coming in EQ2’s Game Update 46. Is the next expansion The Void? Or is this just a red herring? Regardless, the appearance armor and weapons are kind of cool and there are a lot more benefits besides, and you can read all about it over on Massively. Fair warning: You will be doing a LOT of cleansing to earn the nicer rewards.
Last week, I had the honor of being taken to a quick tour of the new 80+ Runnyeye instance, “Runnyeye: The Gathering“. Insert “Magic: The Gathering” joke here 😛 I didn’t get a chance to really explore the instance, but even the little part I saw showed that the devs must have had a blast when they designed the adventure. R:tG is this year’s Nizara — awesome loot, but it’s not going to be a walk in the park. You can read all about it on Massively as well.
Time was also spent helping my son with his epic (good thing I hadn’t transferred my troub and inq to Najena; both were needed), and feeling crappy in the hot weather and falling asleep on the couch while Chime urged me to go to bed (in My Life as King for the Wii).
…..
I’m having Dainty flashbacks…
Gawd not the pot…
I don’t mean to hijack, Tip. But I’m in a bit of an odd place… would you comment on this for me, oh great one?
🙂
http://bildos.blogspot.com/2008/06/validity-of-online-tech-training.html
I’d like to, but after a long, long reply, it crashed 😛
If you already know PHP and MySQL, probably a web course that shows how to use them both together could be really great. If you don’t know SQL, you should find a course that not only teaches SQL, but the differences between the various dialects, like Oracle, Access, MySQL, postGreSQL, etc, because you’re never going to know what your client prefers. If you don’t know PHP already, it’s pretty close to C and Perl. If you don’t know those, then I would learn one of those to get the concepts down before moving to PHP.
I have a basic understanding of PHP and MySQL, but part of me feels that I should take a nice long series of courses on SQL and Oracle before I go to PHP and MySQL, just because the ground work would be easier laid out by doing so, no?
My goal is to be able to do both design and development, mainly in the form of PHP and MySQL. Would it benefit me to get some compehensive training in SQL and other forms of database administration?
Well, normally a person in a web designer role will be working with a DBA who will specify the version of SQL being used and design the tables, constraints, indexes and all. Like, you’ll be interfacing to an already existing merchant or reporting system. While it’s a good idea to be familiar with the basics, you’ll be working with a DBA and likely a business analyst in order to make sure your design fulfills requirements, etc. Your clients will almost certainly have an existing framework.
If your clients are starting from scratch, you may find yourself customizing a turnkey solution, in which case, again, a familiarity with the underlying technologies would be useful, but likely you’ll be working at a higher level.
What sorts of things are you being asked to design?
You should take some courses in Database Administration. There’s nothing graphical or artistic about it, but you’ll have a solid base upon which to build robust, high-traffic websites. You may find you can use stored procedures to do a lot of the work you might use PHP for.
“What sorts of things are you being asked to design?”
Nothing at the moment that involves this. I just like to know as much as possible about the topics that interest me. I want to be well rounded in the fact that I can handle design issues and also more technical features of web development.
So then you’d suggest going for a course in SQL, then moving on to PHP development with MySQL once I’m comfortable there?
The way I look at it, the more I know how to do and do well, the better chance I have of finding a job. Web Designer positions are HARD to come by in my area and we don’t have the ability to move at the moment. But I might be able to liven my prospects if I can get a grip on database administration and/or PHP and MySQL.
Sorry for the double post, but would it really be beneficial for me to be an intermediate level SQL manager if what I’m interested in more is the development and design?
Then, correct me if I’m wrong, it would be far more practical to take courses on PHP and MySQL development, no?
I’m sort of confuddled here, because I’m not planning out the education path myself instead of student advisor sort of guiding me through it all.
I guess I don’t know much about your current skillset. I know you’re a graphic artist, and that you know HTML and CSS and I’m assuming JavaScript and ASP.NET?
Where I work, people with those sorts of skills are usually Business Analysts (BAs) who figure out what the site needs to do, what the pages should look like, how they work, how it meets client concerns and so on. They work with web developers like me, and DBAs.
It sounds to me like what you should look into is business analyst. You get to design and meet with customers and all that, and you hand the dirty bits to people like me to implement.
Im in ur pot.
Washin my harbling.
Aye, that’s me to a tee, Tip.
But is it odd that I want to know more about what YOU do and what DBAs do? I’m sort of addicted to gaining knowledge these days…
Thanks for letting me hijack your blog a bit. I’ll probably start with a beginner’s book on PHP and MySQL (likely the Visual Quickstart series since I’m a visual learner) and see how well that helps me. Not only will this type of learning help me professionally (in terms of landing my ideal job), but it will also help me out in my freelance design work.
Not to mention I just feel a sense of accomplishment from learning something new. Weird too, because I never gave a crap about this sort of thing in grade school. The beast came out during college for me.
Well, personally, I would start with a project in mind — like writing a new plugin for your blog to perhaps display your webcomics in a little scrolling thumbnail on the side — and just figure out what you need to do that. That will undoubtedly lead you into all sorts of new places, and you’ll get a better idea of what you need to learn and what you can do with all this webby goodness 🙂
Aye, that’s sort of the idea. I’m working extensively with WordPress just redesigning a theme right now. It doesn’t take a lot of actual PHP knowledge to do this, but as I play in it I suddenly want to know more about building a full theme from scratch and making little pieces of code to do things I want the tools to do.
Yep, I think I’ll get that book, and start playing around. I’d like to move from Blogger to WP soon, melding my professional design site with my personal blog so this is all part of that among other aspirations.