Project Journal - Week Two
6/9/04
GAAAAAAAH! I hate those horribly simple, terribly obvious problems that take you eight hundred years to solve. *bangs head against wall*
*sigh* At least I've got the cookies working in Camino. That's a start. Now I just have to figure out how to make them work in Internet Explorer. So far, no luck. The stuff I've found on the subject keeps telling me that IE uses JScript, which I guess is sorta like JavaScript but more different, and that it doesn't like cookies nearly as much. *heavy sigh* I swear, if I have to start this crap all over again....
Well. I think I've sort of narrowed down my problem area. Tomorrow I'll do what I can to test it. I have no idea where to find this information, though. Well, besides the magical Internet. If worst comes to worst, I can download Camino to whatever machine we end up using. I *know* it works there. I'd like for it to work in IE, but... well, we'll see.
Ooh, and the Powers That Be tell me that Lewis will be ready to start moving around tomorrow. Huzzah! I'll have to see what I can get done with him.
Goals for tomorrow: Start playing with Lewis. Make the JavaScript happen for proper on all the webpages and make sure I can get it back out again... in Camino. (Explorer can wait 'til next week.) Get going on the forms and hopefully run them by Mitch.
6/8/04
Wow. Right as I think I've got a handle on this, something comes along that says no you don't, either. With the focus on the easy part (the programming of the website), I'd forgotten about the hard part - the psychology. Consent forms and project approval and subjects - oh my! Just one more hoop to jump through.
The psychology aspect of this seems to be the more difficult side. No one's ever done studies like this. I have nothing that I can look back at and get/steal ideas for how to set this up. Makes this project a lot bigger and a bit scarier. Ah well. I have confidence in my ability to learn from my mistakes, so it's okay if I screw up. Right?
Well... no.... It's okay. I have people to look my stuff over to make sure I do things right. I'll be fine. I can do this. Wouldn't be here if I couldn't.
Oh, and I discovered that all those cookies I so carefully crafted don't work in Explorer. *cries* Camino, yes; Explorer, no. Well, mostly yes for Camino. *sigh* I really, REALLY hope this doesn't mean I have to go back to square one to get this to work.
Ooh, and Bill says the robot will, in theory, be ready for me to play with tomorrow. Another student here, Jim, is gonna be helping me with that end of the programming. Thank heavens.
Goals for tomorrow: Master the art of consent forms. Get IRB procedures started. GET THE JAVASCRIPT DONE! Maybe start with Lewis?
6/7/04
*heavy sigh* I didn't manage to get the cookie stuff functioning over the weekend. I did, however, manage to get Dreamweaver loaded onto my computer. This is a great happy. That means I don't have to be bouncing back and forth between computers, at least while I'm working on this stuff. However, that could be a while. I think I'm setting the cookie right, but I'm having issues checking and seeing if it's doing what I think it's doing. *sigh* Back to the grindstone.
(later) Okay, now, thanks to the glory that is prompt boxes, I'm even more sure I'm setting the cookie right. Why, then, can I not get the information back out? *grumblegrumblegrumble* *muntinymutinymutiny*
(two seconds later) YES! So I was reading it properly, but not setting it properly. I have it now. All is right with the world.
(much later) Well, almost. I was fine with my sample pages but all the information for that cookie is loaded in one page. My cookie needs to be writeable from many pages and readable from still a different one. Debugging that can wait 'til tomorrow. Oh, and Cindy says we have an appointment with someone in the psych department to take a look at my experiment idea. I fully expect it to get torn apart, but I'm used to things like that - try something, figure out why it doesn't work, debug it, figure out why it doesn't work again, debug some more, repeat as necessary. This is how life works.
Wow. I must be tired if I'm making deep metaphores from computer science and psychology. Time to quit for the night.
Goals for tomorrow: Finish the stupid JavaScript! Get constructive criticism from the psychology department. Maybe find a space to run the experiment?