General Website Tips

I have had many people approach me for PHP.

They say they want to learn it, but they just could not begin to do it.

I learned PHP as my first programming thingy,not by forcing myself to do it, but by finding an excuse to do it.

I actually found two excuses. Art was my excuse at first. I wanted to have a website to show my art to people.

Then I opened the yellow pages, and called a nearby graphics company that said they also did web pages. I described what I wanted and they said they would charge me $4,000 bucks to make the few pages I wanted done. They would also charge me for revisions. This was in 1999.

You know the saying, something like, “You either feed them fish, and you’ve fed them for the day, or you teach them how to fish, and you’ve fed them for life.” So I figured, for just a hundred bucks, or less, I could buy a book and teach myself how to make websites myself.

So, get a hobby or an idea, and work on it, analyze what you need to do, and then just get a book on how to make the website yourself.

Val Zubiri

Programming by Val Zubiri
Art by Val Zubiri
Arts Global Impact.org / Original Art and Art Books for Collectors for sale
Chicago Art Movement.com
Get a Massage Contact and Shop using your mobile phone

How to solve your programming problem

Here’s a fast way to solve a programming problem.

Online, people post their profiles, which include their jobs and interests. For example, AOL and Yahoo have member directories and their emails are available as well.

Just type in the keyword, like PHP, MySQL, Java, C++ and read the profiles that come up. Email a few of them, together with your question and code and ask what you need to ask. Some of them will be helpful and able to solve your problem.

Then ask them if you can include them in your buddies list, so you can ask them questions as you program if you see them online. I made online friends this way, and eventually others began asking me stuff and problems which I can eventually answer.

Val Zubiri

Programming by Val Zubiri
Art by Val Zubiri
Arts Global Impact.org / Original Art and Art Books for Collectors for sale
Chicago Art Movement.com
Get a Massage Contact and Shop using your mobile phone

How I have been Learning a Computer Language Lately

This is a long introduction for a really short tip. lol.

I am not going to tell you what I have been trying to grasp lately. However, I can tell you I have been learning it faster than ever.

In 1999, I switched from a Macintosh to a PC. It was not because I didn’t like the Macintosh anymore, I just wanted to have a PC for a change.

I am an artist, and I had paid close to $300 to get to an art expo’s opening night. I also decided to rent a tuxedo, but I knew people can be in casual clothes, I didn’t care, I was weird and I still am.

I also just recently registered www.valzubiri.com, and I wanted to make a fast website, to match the personalized pens I had ordered, and the business cards I just recently had printed.

So everything was fast, and haphazzard, but I was satisfied.

Then I discovered PHP. The server had PHP and CGI as part of the features. I went to the bookstore, and at that time, PHP actually only had 3 titles. I eventually bought all three.

I basically slowly collected books on PHP and became familiar with what pages I should look up to program what I needed.

Getting my art online was my interest, which made me willingly learn PHP, HTML and others.

Through the years, I learned PHP as needed, but that was slow learning.

Here’s the next thing I did, which is so much more accelerated.

Just buy a book you can handle. Start with the first chapter.

Read fast, or don’t even read much, but go to the codes. Go to one topic with a set of codes, and type it on the recommended software (like Notepad). Compile it, and notice the errors and what you might have missed typing.

Then type it again, and try to understand what it is all about and see if new errors occur. Then type it again from memory and see if you got it right.

Then move to the next set of instructions and do the same thing over again.

You might wonder how fast you might be able to progress doing this.

At one time, I went to buy a simple book, brought my laptop to a coffee shop, got coffee and typed and began to understand and remember 5 out of 15 chapters in about 7 hours.

It’s not just a matter of understanding what’s going on. It’s also a matter of knowing the syntax, typing away really fast, and following a general convention that other programmers would understand, in case someone else needs to take over what you have been doing - that’s in a job situation.

Val Zubiri

Programming by Val Zubiri
Art by Val Zubiri
Arts Global Impact.org / Original Art and Art Books for Collectors for sale
Chicago Art Movement.com
Get a Massage Contact and Shop using your mobile phone

RSS feeds scare me

I think the moment people realize they have too many to read, they begin to read less. As far as my own blogs are concerned, I prefer just showing up on the search engines and be read as needed. I also prefer to read blogs as I see them on search engines.

I think not everything I say in my own blogs are important enough for the same person to keep reading.

Val Zubiri

Programming by Val Zubiri
Art by Val Zubiri
Arts Global Impact.org / Original Art and Art Books for Collectors for sale
Chicago Art Movement.com
Get a Massage Contact and Shop using your mobile phone