I don't have much to write about today, however, I will say that I'm rather annoyed that I can't complete Lab 3B yet.  I'm stuck at the very beginning where you have to create then activate the new scenario.  I created it just fine, but the problem arrises when I try to activate the scenario.  The log tells me something is still in use by another user and I'm not entirely sure what's happening.

Hopefully Professor Haines will know how to remedy the problem.

This past weekend I logged into my personal email account, the one that I forward all my UWM email to, and came across a disheartening realization: my EAI blog, yes, this blog, was spammed to hell and back.  The spam wasn't of the normal blog variety of comment spam, which I've become quite accustomed too, but rather trackbacks/referals from bogus web sites.  Just to clarify, I'm not talking about one or two emails, I'm talking around 75 emails in the span of less than two days.

I guess the thing I'm most curious about is how did a spammer actually come across this blog?  I know the blog statistics are sent out to technoroti and possibly a few other blog trackers, but there is no way these blogs appear towards the top of any serach results for any topic.  Furthermore, I wouldn't think a blog of this variety would be an ideal target for a spammer to spam.  The reader base is extremly small and it doesn't hold any weight with the serach engines.  However, the blog is hosted on a .edu site and I know .edu's hold more weight to the search engines than .com's or any other web site extension for that matter.  Nonetheless, thats neither here nor there.  The blog is new and the readers are few so I'm still at a loss for words.

If this continues, I'll be forced to turn off all trackbacks/pingbacks/referals etc. until the problem ceases to exist.

I logged on last night after work around 11 to finally take the exam.  Over all I think I did fairly well with all the information.  However my one drawback that I noticed is I spent way too much time paging through the book looking for answers.  Needless to say, the two hour time limit actually flew by quite quickly.  Hopefully professor Haines will get our grades posted quickly *wink wink*.

Anyway, I enjoyed the online format better than the contrary.  In my situation, it allowed me to prepare and take it when best suited my schedule.

In othe things, I've started looking up information on my term paper subject, Ajax, and have come up with some alright sources, but I'm having trouble focusing on the integration part of Ajax since Im more used to its presentation aspect.  Whenever I start my search for new information, I always get side tracked by finding some other interesting topic of how Ajax relates so some new cool design feature.  Nonetheless, there's still a month remaining until the paper is actually due so I still have time to gather the needed information.

Here's an awesome link describing how Ajax actually works.  It's slightly outdated (2005) and uses some old references, but there are some really helpful figures that demonstrate how Ajax interacts with servers and what needs to be processed on the server side vs. the client side.  Ajax alows for a huge decrease in bandwidth which means less wait time for us.  Huge companies such as Google are already using the technology; I'm sure more and more people will jump on the bandwagon in the near future.

 

I chose AJAX as the topic behind my term paper because:

1. I have some slight experience with it.
2. It's a fascinating topic that I want to learn more about.

As of now, I've used AJAX mostly in WordPress plug-ins, manipulating them in whatever way I need them.  Other than that, I've seen various websites that integrate AJAX into their web pages and it just creates a more fun experience for the user.

From what I do know about AJAX is it's able to update a specific portion of a web page without having to reload the entire page.  How it does this I'm not entirely sure, but I do hope to figure out after conducting more research.