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Week01-principle and practice & project management

Have you answered these questions?

  • 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 your sketch and description of your final project idea(s)

  • Documented steps for setting up your Git repository and adding files to it

  • Pushed to your class GitLab repository

  • Signed and uploaded student agreement

Student Agreement

I downloaded, read, and signed the student agreement and using git added, committed, and pushed it in Gitlab Repo.

Git & Gitlab Setting up

Here we go, finally the Fab Academy journey starts. This is a different journey, not about learning by seeing and exploring the world, but about making and learning how to make almost anything. As I did not have any previous experience working with Git, I did some basic pre-study before starting the course. I reviewed all the topics at a general level to become familiar with the course. I installed Git on my laptop, which was easy and only required two clicks, as I installed it from the software center of our university.

I used this git tutorial to get familiar with what Git is and how it works.

GitLab is a powerful tool that uses a Version Control System (VCS) for project management. To start the Fab Academy course, I understood that knowing some basic Git syntax is enough to start the Fabacademy.

Git status shows the current state of files in the working directory.

git status

Git clone copies a remote repository to your local machine.

git clone <repository-url>

Git add stages file changes for the next commit.

git add <file or folder>

Git commit saves staged changes to the local repository.

git commit -m "modification description"

Git push uploads local commits to the remote repository.

git push origin main

Git pull downloads and merges changes from the remote repository.

git pull origin main

Before starting the first class on 21 January 2026, I did cloning (with HTTPS) and followed the tutorial how to clone:

Git clone

While doing this, I faced the following error:

What was the error and how did I solve it? My access token was not activated, so I activated it and then tried again. I opened the Command Prompt and repeated all the steps. This time, the process was successful, and I received the following message, which means everything went correctly:

On 22 January 2026, we had a productive two hour class with Ivan, who suggested using Git Bash instead of PowerShell. He also recommended cloning the GitLab repository using SSH, as SSH provides a more secure authentication method based on key pairs. This approach enables seamless, password-less access when pushing and pulling changes between the local and remote repositories during the Fab Academy course. So, I deleted my local repository and cloned it again using SSH. Since I had no prior experience with Git Bash, I spent sometimes after class practicing with it to become more familiar. My local repository after installing MkDocs, which I will explain later:

And here is main directory of my Fabacademy in the local computer:

Some of important notes from Neil’s presentation (21.01.2026 )::

  • What is a FabLab? What is FabAcademy? How can I make almost anything in Fab Academy?

  • The history of FabAcademy and the history of CNC machining.

  • Things from the meter scale down to nanometers can be made in a FabLab.

  • Transitioning things from the physical world to the digital world and back again.

  • We go to a FabLab to make machines, not just to see or access them.

  • Each week’s topics could take a year to fully master, but that is not the aim of FabAcademy.

  • How to complete and manage the weekly assignments? Do docummentation as progressing.

  • How to create documentation which is one of my personal goals in participating in Fabacademy.

  • What should be included in the final project.

  • In Fabacademy try do things, do not try just thinking, don’t hesitate doing mistake

  • Discuss ideas for your own FabLab

Fabacademy webpage setting up

For the webpage, I decided to use Markdown to start building the site, as I think it is straightforward for those who are not very experienced in programming.

Mkdocs is a fast, simple and downright gorgeous static site generator that’s geared towards building project documentation. Documentation source files are written in Markdown, and configured with a single YAML configuration file (reference). I installed mkdocs from here, and used this Fabacademy Oule template.

Before performing a Git push, I checked the website locally using local-ip to preview how it would appear. During this process, several warnings were displayed, which were caused by incorrect image file paths while configuring and preparing the MkDocs setup:

After correcting the navigation paths, everything worked as expected, as shown in the message below:

I used AI for grammar correction.