Week 1 - Principles, Practices & Project Management
assignment
plan and sketch a potential final project
assignment
work through a git tutorial
build a personal site in the class archive describing you and your final
project
Assignment
plan and sketch a potential final project build a personal site in the class archive describing you and your final project
How to survive Fab Academy video series
I decided that the first thing I would do is to watch the 6 part series on how to survive Fab Academy. My main takeaways were:
What makes a good project?
1 - its simple 2 - it has a precise purpose 3 - it is beautifully designed
What makes a bad project?
1 - useless 2 - super complicated 3 - has no purpose ‍ • You end up with a bad final project when you start with a non existing need or start adding features and features and features that no one needs. If you can’t explain it in one sentence, its no good
• Write down everything you do as you do it. Record what happened, what problems you experience and how you solved. ‍ • Remember to ask Neil questions. Don’t be shy. He is one of the top 50 scientists on the planet and you get to ask him direct questions.
• Deliver your week every week. Whether good or bad, you submit your work.
• Embrace the beauty of the 7 day format. It is an amazing format that forces you to prioritise and learn when to stop.
• Create a debugging table. Keep a track of the things you’ve tried to solve it and whether it worked.
• Make sure not to push files that are too big to gitlab.
• Use linux and command line as much as possible. Get in the habit of using command line over GUI.
Webflow
My first week's assignment required me to make a website and upload onto their own site. I used a brand new tool that some friends had recommended. Its called webflow and it is truly awesome. It allows you to drag and drop the design you require without writing code. You can then export the html and css files before uploading them onto the Fab Academy site. I was unsure whether this would be considered cheating or just a smart hack to work efficiently. Its my intention that after creating my website template in webflow, all further edits over the next 5 months will be done directly in a code editor. I felt this was a good compromise in that I get a nice looking site quickly but will spend 90%Â of my time working directly with html code. Here is the webflow interface:
Box system
Webflow uses a box system where everything is effectively a box in a box in a box etc. Its very intuitive and feels rather like designing a document in a word processor. You can drag and drop headings, paragraphs, images etc. Once your design is complete, click the 'export code' icon and you have the files ready to upload to gitlab.
Webflow tips, tricks and reminders to myself
- Ensure everything goes into a single container that covers the entire page. • Its fine to have multiple containers within your main container • If you upload your code to gitlab, but your website doesn't look as you expected - CLEAR YOUR COOKIES OR USE AN INCOGNITO BROWSER!!
Git and GitLab
I'm new to Git and to be honest, its always confused me. My tutor Andrew helped me with this and once i got my head around it, I was absolutely loving Git! I can't imagine ever writing code again and not uploading it to a Git repo. Here are a few tips, tricks and reminders to myself: • When you're in a folder that you wish to keep updated with git, navigate to that folder in the Terminal and once inside, type 'git init' • Type 'git status' at any point to see the current status. Its good practice to do this through the git process, as a sense check that your files have been added/modified/pushed as you expected. • Type 'git add' followed by file name • Alternatively, type 'git add .' if you wish to add every file in the folder • Type 'git commit -m "your message here"' to commit the files. • Add a meaningful message when you commit the files, e.g. fixed broken link on About page • Type 'git push' to push everything you added through to your GitLab repo.
Fab Academy vs Self learning
I thought that this first assignment was a good example of the value of a course like Fab Academy. I've spent the past 12 months learning how to make things. I realise that the driving force behind everything I do is the excitement of a project and wanting to make it as quickly as possible. This means that skills like 3d printing, programming and laser cutting are all covered because you literally can't make your project without them. Git on the other hand is a really important tool but you could technically work without it. For this reason I never bothered to use it and its really caused a lot of problems with different versions of code in different places on my laptop. Now that this course has forced me to learn Git, I could never go back to writing code without version control.
Ongoing problems with my site - Update 23rd Feb
I've been having issues with my files not successfully uploading to Git. The error code (which I should have written down) said that the data was over the limit. I've eventually solved by doing the following: 1 - git reset --hard origin/master (this clears the files that you committed but were unable to push) 2 - push the files in smaller groups. i did this by jiggling all the photos into separate folders on my desktop, then copy and pasting a few at a time into the images folder of my website. I'd push each time IÂ added more files and then repeat the process.
New website - April 2021
One of my favourite tools for note taking is Notion. I noticed they have an option to export the content as html and so I decided to go ahead and create my Fab Academy assignments in Notion.
Notion is a wonderful tool that has apps for all of my devices; my mac, ipad and iphone. This is really useful because I can make quick notes through the week using the tool I have to hand, most often my iphone. I can use my mac to tidy everything up when I'm using a full size screen. The great thing about Notion is that it allows you to embed images, videos, code, web links, quotes and pretty much any type of content you can think of.
Final project idea and sketch
You can find my sketch and other details about my final project on my final project page:
Back to homepage:
