1. State of the art, project management and documentation¶
Gitlab - Markdown - ... : my first steps, tears, decisions and choices¶
What comes first? Maybe a good plan what to show and tell the new Fabricademy year about my person and work.
I tried it with the traditional analogue way using a notebook with notes about a dramaturgy and content. At this point I have to confess that my notebook is already full with all the input from the first and second call we already had. If I write down things by hand I learn better. After a sketch for a dramaturgy I started to pick some important images from my more or less messy organised files on my external hard drive. To not repeat the same mistake for the upcoming fabricademy I promised myself to work as much as organised and focused as possible on clearly arranged files.
(picture _ 1)
After the first class with some very basic information how to start on GitLab I was a bit confused and frustrated as I am not used to work syntaxes. It took me some time to gain the logic and overview behind GitLab and Markdown - and I lost some tears.
The presettings you find in the WEB IDE and tips for each page of your sites are useful and helpful but for me it was too much information and too chaotic. After I practised a while how to upload and add images to my site I made a decision:
To start on GitLab I have chosen a radical way:¶
Delete everything and start with an almost blank page¶
No worries, I made copies of the previous content just in case.
I started with a blank page and worked my way up step by step. I focused on the written content and on the images. I copied most of the texts from my business website , but I will shorten them up with a direct link to the detailed project page. The images, that represent my work, I collaged with photoshop but within the next days and weeks I want to try canva as I heard a lot of positive reviews about it.
I changed diverse visual settings like the colour of the "header" from blue to black, the highlight colour from purple to lime and even the font style to Open Sans . This was easy going with the pre-written tips in the mkdocs.yml. In general the pre-information you are given in the beginning is very useful, easy to understand but but it does not exempt you from going into independent research.
In general I recommend to start with the handbook but also do your own research. I did it a lot and my browser history is quite long. I find this summary very helpful to start with the most important functions.
The previous year participants sites helped me also a bit content wise but not really with the syntaxes - I was focused on finding solutions on my own and I also started to ask Julian via Mattermost some questions f.eg. regarding the control over my webspace storage size. With tinypng you can easily scale down your images and a size >100kb is the recommenadtion. What I was afraid of and Julian confirmed me via Mattermost is that once you upload an image file on gitlab and delete it later on, the webspace is occupied for ever.
Important Syntaxes¶
I focused on the most important syntaxes here that I used in the beginning to create a minimalistic but (in my opinion) clear site. I also worked with the credo: as much as necessary as little as possible - not to loose my focus on the content and create a clear & nice journal site. Check this well documented summary.
From Frustration to Fun - From Fun to Frustration¶
Working with GitLab/Markdown is fun and frustration at the same time. If you experience the same, don't worry you are not alone. It also reminds a bit of the moment in 1999 with my first computer and the very basic functions. The learning effect and progress was also a bit addictive. Surprisingly it also reminds me of the first lessons in weaving: once I got the logic it went easier. Patience is the key and low expectations on the results in the beginning. I prefer to work with less (syntax) information in the beginning but getting confident with them by time.
2. Motivation, first ideas & inspiration¶
Here I will tell you a bit about my motivation and first ideas for the final project I have already in mind.