Week 1: Principles and Practices
Checklist for this week:
- ☑ Sketched your final project idea(s)
- ☑ Described briefly what it will do and who will use it
- ☐ Made a website and described how you did it
- ☑ Created a section about yourself on that website
- ☑ Added a page with a sketch and description of your final project idea(s)
- ☐ Documented steps for setting up you Git repository and adding files to it
- ☑ Pushed to your class GitLab repository
- ☑ Signed and uploaded Student Agreement
This week, there are more than 200 of us worked on defining our final project ideas and some started to getting used to the documentation process. I am thankful with the additional sessions from our local instructors to help us get through the first assignment. Right now, I could "Git Clone" (Do once only), "git pull", "git add", "git commit" and "git push" to and from my local hard drive.
I joined the student bootcamp a few days earlier just to set my own expectations on the challenges ahead. I watched quite a few of previous years' bootcamp videos and try to remember a few names that could be helpful in coming weeks.
First thing first, I create a html page for the student agreement. The last time I used html was more than a decade ago.
Project management
Working on Git
First, we downloaded Git Bash and installed locally. I am using Windows Command Prompt as I find it beginner friendly. Next, we configure the user name, user email and generating SSH Key.
Then we login to Gitlab to link up with the server using the SSH Key generated before.
First- Git Clone
After we linked up the server with the SSH Key, next we need to clone the entire site to a local drive using the "git clone ==paste here=="
During the second week, my local .git file is (suspected) corrupted and I couldn't pull directly from the fabcloud. I am not entirely sure what happened but to move on quickly, the solution is to git clone the entire site to my local drive one more time (since the fabcloud is the most up-to-date version).
Here is a link which might be useful in future for dubious ownership in repository.
Git add
We could also do a "Git status" command for checking.
Git Commit
The command that we used is git commit -m "updated index file OR any other comments"
Git Push
After performing 1. git add --all, 2. git commit -m "updated week 2 assignment" and finally 3. git push to upload all the files (that has been changed) to Fabcloud.
Additional tips: you could do "git log" to check all the previous updates and "git pull" to copy the changes from the gitlab.fabcloud.com to local drive.
To break away from the "git log" long command, press "q" to get back to command line.
IMPORTANT NOTE: We are limited to 10Mb of upload every (git) push. So plan your upload properly to avoid failure in uploading.
Learning HTML5
During the first week I followed through the html exercise using Brackets Editor. In the following week, I found out about Visual Studio Code and switched over quickly. VS code is a source-code editor made by Microsoft. One of the advantage of VS code is that it has plenty of "Extensions" that you could installed according to your need. Extension "Code Spell Checker" is definitely one of them that you should NOT miss as beginner.
One of the recommended website to learn about HTML5 is W3Schools.com. Some of the common HTML5 code includes following and all of them should be included within body:
- Adding a header
- Adding a paragraph of text
- Adding a list
- Adding a break (empty line)
- Adding a horizontal line
- Adding an image link
- Adding a video link
- Adding a external link / download
- Adding a table of content
| Header 1 | Header 2 | Header 3 |
|---|---|---|
| Row 1, Column 1 | Row 1, Column 2 | Row 1, Column 3 |
| Row 2, Column 1 | Row 2, Column 2 | Row 2, Column 3 |
Citation / Reference from URL:
- Install Git Bash
- Git Pull explained
- Git Add explained
- Git Commit explained
- Git Pull and Push
- Adding Images
- Creating lists
- HTML Hyperlinks
Other practices
Microsoft OneNote is created for taking note digitally during class and saved as pdf for online/offline sharing. Powerpoint is good for doing quick instruction making, cropping pictures, adding text box, and sketching/ doodling.
During the second week, I have moved on to using Visual Studio Code to edit HTML5.
I have read that Visual Studio Code could directly sync with gitlab.fabcloud.com without going into command prompt. However, the usual way to git push in command prompt is preferred.
For Video compressor HandBrake, setting as: H.264, Constant 25 FPS, Constant quality 29 RF (Avg Bitrate: 1024 kbps), Audio: MP3 (Bitrate:48). With this setting I should be able to compress the video to smaller size. The main reason being that we are NOT allowed to exceed 10 Mb of data to gitlab.fabcloud.com per upload. One minute of video length file should not exceed 10Mb.
During the Asia Regional Review on Tuesday 8pm (Singapore time), one of the mentor brought up the topic of AI, which I resonate well. I would like to incorporate AI into my Final project.