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1. State of the art, project management and documentation

This week we went through the different online networks fabricademy is using:

Mattermost chat:

• open-source chat program

Gitlab flatform:

• hosting platform where we build our website

Fablabs.io:

• centralized sign-in account for all academy platforms
• it is also engaging with the wider FabLab network

Nuaval:

• platform to evaluate students’ weekly progress and discuss feedback
• Login through fablabs.io account

Building website

We are building our website on Gitlab using a static site generator called MkDocs. It is using a “simple” markdown language to translate into HTML code.

What is Markdown: it is a lightweight markup language that you can use to add formatting elements to plaintext text documents.

During the first couple of days I was just doing a few small tweaks to the code and mainly focused on finding a way to convert my normal workflow into my baby coding language. I found that you can get quite far with even basic commands, but it takes some time to really understand how to use it smoothly:

Here is some of the basics steps that I was doing:

gitlab av Alve Lagercrantz

More detailed info you can find here:

Fabcloud
Google drive
MC Docs Material

Besides getting to understand the basics about coding I was also:

  1. Experimenting with embedding slides using Canva which is basically like a browser version of keynote, it allowed me to be more free with the design process.
    I found it to be especially useful for “instruction manuals” because I could add more content without that the website becomes a never-ending “string” of images that sometimes can be hard to navigate.

And it was also nice to not have to worry about file sizes.


In Canva I could also embed videos with a slightly cleaner UI experience than for example Youtube

  1. Few different experiments with GIFs using illustrator and Ezgiff. It is an easy-to-use generator where we have quite good options for adjusting frame speeds and blend modes.



Example:



In the end, I settled for the simpler and more readable version (see HOME page).

My big problems came when I got bit overconfident and tried to be a bit more experimental. I started to ad special commands in the yml folder. Since I had mader several changes without commiting to them it was really hard to troubleshoot and I was stuck for hours trying to solve the issues.



finally I managed to find the issue in the commit log:



Methodical and patience is problebly key for this...

Other useful links we learned about during the week:

Free Stock Video images

• Unsplash
• Pexels
• Pixabay
• Freepik
• Freeimages

Free Stock Video Footage

• Vimeo
• Videvo
• Pexels
• Pixabay
• Adobe Stock

Free Music Libraries

• Filmmusic.io
• Free music archive
• Bensoun


Last update: 2022-09-27