HTML review and setting up the practice machine

This week I found myself reviewing HTML once again. It's a case of use it or lose it, I suppose. I don't use HTML very much at present, and even when I built an HTML website last time (back in the early 2000's), I used Adobe GoLive, which at the time was pretty good, although I wish I had worked with DreamWeaver instead, since it is now the de facto standard for web creation software, or so I gather.

HTML isn't that hard, and once I get back into it, a lot of it comes back. I would like to spend time learning more about cascading style sheets or CSS, but just haven't had the time to really get into it. I also am interested in how to use some of the other technology that allows for better placement of graphics on pages. The w3schools. com site is fabulous for learning just about anything on the web, including HTML. I also used it last semester for learning about XML and DTD's. It really works well for me. I love being able to try things out right then and there and apply the lesson quickly so I can remember it better.

I finally got out and purchased a used Windoze machine this week. There's a great place for deals on used equipment called Arizona Liquidation Station, and it's located near Cox Communication, just south of the intersection of Broadway and Kino. I picked up a Dell Dimension 4600C for $84, including a monitor and keyboard. An LCD monitor would cost about $60 more, but I decided to just use a KVM switch to allow me to use one monitor for an old Mac and the Dell.

I had some trouble setting up the installer disk for Ubuntu. It had something to do with the format of the .iso disk image that I downloaded and burned to a CD. The Apple Disk Utilities disk burner did it right after I tried unsuccessfully to use Toast to burn the .iso disk for installing Ubuntu. Once that got going, it was pretty easy. I shut down the computer for the night to save energy and all was well - or so I thought. This morning when I got back to the computer and tried to boot, all I got was a black screen. Nothing on the monitor at all. Apparently no video signal coming from the Dell! I decided to re-install the Ubuntu system and all went well again. I haven't had time to shut down and try to restart again, but I guess I'll have to do it one of these days. I would feel a bit wasteful leaving the machine on all the time.

I look forward to getting that settled and installing Webmin and some other software packages on the Ubuntu server machine. It will be exciting to dig a little deeper into the world of Linux servers in the coming week.