12/3, Monday:

I worked on this journal entry, which seems absurdly long. I also created a worktable to plan Justin’s and my work. In class we spent most of our time coming up with an appropriate URL for the Lactobacillus Bulgaricus bacterium. However we did have time to create four pages.

I’ve found the PBWiki editor is not as open as I would have liked, since it doesn’t let me use CSS, which is what you use to control styles on a page. Alas, HTML still offers customization, although the overhanging “Frontpage” banner blocks out part of the text on the page for some reason. I’ll try and get that fixed, but I still feel using Yahoo!’s free hosting or FreeWebs might have been better.

12/4, Tuesday:

            Today in class we spent a lot of time trying to get into the approved databases. We were also told that we needed to make our work calendar more specific, which we promptly did.

            We also started our research, and found that our bacteria is pretty boring. It’s used to make milk into yogurt. I did find out a lot about the yogurt-making process however.

12/5, Wednesday:

            Today in class we learned how to evaluate non-approved websites. That should be really useful, since you can only gather so much information from the databases St. Andrew’s subscribes to.

            I’ve started organizing my notes, and have an idea for the first real wiki page. I just wonder what sorts of multimedia things Justin and I will come up with.

12/6, Thursday:

            While having all of the internet at our disposal is nice, there doesn’t seem to be that much scientific information about Lactobacillus bulgaricus. It’s a pretty benign bacteria, and sometimes I get a little envious of bacteria like Ebola, and wish that all yogurt was poisonous or something.

            On the website side of things, Colin showed me how to get to the CSS editor, but I’m not sure how well it works. I just can’t imagine having that much media on those pages anyway.

12/7, Friday:

            I think we have pretty much all the scientific information about our bacteria. It’s just challenging to present it in an interesting way, or without plagiarizing Wikipedia or something. I hope yogurt production counts as a fun fact, because that’s the most fun thing about our bacteria other than making Swiss cheese jokes.

            The webpage has some nice tools, but I’d still like to have it display PDF’s, although I’m not sure I’ve seen that anywhere. Also, the chart tools don’t always work correctly.

12/8, Saturday:

            The above-and-beyond part of the assignment is going to be hard. I haven’t found a bacteria game, although I’m sure one’s out there. I’d have to some searching, but I doubt that there’s a video specifically about L. bulgaricus. However, there probably are videos about yogurt and maybe even Swiss cheese production, which would supplement our information nicely.

If push comes to shove, Justin and I could always break out the old video camera, and create the most comprehensive video about Lactobacillus delbrueckii bulgaricus ever.

12/9, Sunday:

            The information about how Lactobacillus bulgaricus reproduces has still proved elusive, as with information on any sort of lactobacteria. This is really frustrating, and the search for media might not be easy either.

            Regarding the website, the CSS was not worth my time, because the HTML tags were done by the computer at PBWiki, and I didn’t really feel like redoing everything.

12/10, Monday:

            Since we had some time to work on the site in class, Justin and I were talking about not finding information about bacterial reproduction, something that has come to occupy my mind more than is comfortable. I lay in bed, thinking about binary fission, wondering how my bacterium diversifies its gene pool. While I’m not quite that bad yet, I’m getting there.

            Anyway in class, I decided to ask around about bacterial reproduction, which seems like a topic very few people were well acquainted with. When I asked Isaac and Colin how their bacteria reproduced, they simultaneously replied, “Asexually!” It was as deadpan a remark could be with an exclamation at the end, and only pushed me further towards the brink of going insane over the sexual behavior of a single cell organism I have never seen.

12/11, Tuesday:

            Today, about five minutes after I started, my dog chewed through the power cord to our router. Our modem only has one Ethernet port, and my mom was checking her emails, so I was left internet-less.

            I checked some of the old power adapters lying around the house, and a bunch of them matched the volt rating, but not the amp rating of our router, so I’ll have to wait till we get a new one.

12/12, Wednesday:

            No new router. We probably won’t get one until Friday, if not Saturday, so I’m either going to have to plug my computer in when my mom isn’t on, or go to my dad’s office.

            While neither of these things are hard for me to do, the reprieve from work is nice. [Note: On Sunday, I looked up reprieve and it is in fact used correctly in the last sentence.] Although, we still haven’t found how it reproduces.

12/13, Thursday:

            Today, I decided to plug my computer into the router. I was disappointed. I didn’t find how L. bulgaricus reproduces. However, I did save a bunch of money on my car insurance by switching to Geiko.

Seriously though, just about the only thing I found was exactly how fast my internet connection is, since my computer “discovered” the modem, and took me to the diagnostics page. I was sorely disappointed with what I found, though this isn’t the place for discussing that. On the bright side, I did find some multimedia stuff to put on the site.

12/14, Friday:

            We were at Sam’s Club getting gas, and I begged my mom to take me to CompUSA right across the street. I usually like BestBuy better, but CompUSA is going out of business, and while they don’t have any really deep discounts, it’s still a better buy.

            When I walked in, I was expecting to come out with either a DLink or Linksys router, and came out with a Belkin instead. Boy was I surprised. As a final irony, as I was setting up the new router, I look at the power supply, and it matches the one we needed exactly. Oh well. After I got online, I still didn’t find anything about the reproduction. It’s pretty much a lost cause, but I will fight to the end.

12/15, Saturday:

            Well, the final push to do everything has started. All the serious editing and searching is starting.

            The website looks pretty good. It’s plain, but a nice plain. This sentence makes for one of the shortest set of five sentences I have ever seen, and this is at least one third of the length. I’m not even going to talk about bacterial reproduction.

12/16, Sunday:

            This is it. The due date. Judgment Day. Though not final judgment day in any sense, since we have to present in front of the class tomorrow.

            Today is just going to be a lot of checking and rechecking, with us making a few last minute additions. Hopefully, this will all work out nicely.