This week's assignment
- Build a personal website for documenting
- Describe a final project
- Upload the website using git
Personal Website
Everyone in fabacademy should introduce about themselves, their project and upload progress of their assginments weekly. I made 4 menus in my website.
- About: brief introduction about me and fab academy
- Assingments: weekly assignments archive
- Final Project: project documentation
- Contacts: for any inquiries
Main purpose of making a webpage is archiving and documenting. Well documented webpage can be a good teacher. It should allow anybody to follow the steps of its contents. So every week, I have to state what I did, learned, succeed or failed and explain how I did.
Each students are received a personal number so they should put all of their files in thier folder. For example, we are 8 students in my local fab lab and my personal number is 366. What I will do from now on is only hepppend in my folder. Every students edit their files in their own folder individualy. And all changes will be merged. I'll explain this later at 'git' part. I must make a changes in index.html file in my folder.
I wanted to make a personal website from the scratch using html and css. There are several good tutorials where you can learn basics. I started from codeacademy and w3schools. Those are really good site to get to know essentials of building a website. For Korean students, coding everybody would be helpful.
When you start to building a website, you might need a source code editor. You don't have to use a source code editors for simple coding. But you will find yourself lost when the number of your source code lines exceeded hundred. A source code editor helps you write and read codes easily. There are several options for a source code editor. Notepad++, Atom, Brackets and more. I'm using Sublime text. Sublime text is free! What I love about it is the showing syntax, auto-indent and auto-complete function.
Let's just download free template and save the time!
At the beginning I started making a website from scratch. But beacase of time limit, I used free Bootstrap template for responsive website. My webpage is made with clean blog theme. I made minor changes such as typeface and appearance of page. Even for this simple task, I spent a lot of time for understarding which line of codes means which part of website. I don't have much experience on website developing so hundreds lines of codes is greek to me. And then a friend of mine gave me a good advice. A web browser, like chrome, gives the tool we can check the codes and appearance on web at the same time. Just select View -> Developer -> Javascript Console.
You can see the web page and its source codes in a window.
Resizer by google is also good site for building a responsive webpage. It illustrates how the web page looks in different mobile devices.
Final Project Proposal
It was difficult to decide a final project becasue there were several things that I wanted to make during the programme. First thing I chose was a gun-shaped camera which I got an idea from Susan Sontag's writing - 'On Phtography'
"Just as a camera is a sublimation of the gun, to photograph someone is a subliminal murder - a soft murder, appropriate to a sad, frightened time." - Susan Sontag
But I changed my final project on 3rd week because of practical reason - time limit. Recently I began working a startup and it is full-time job. I found that I cannot manage Fab academy work while working on my own startup project. That's the reason why I decided to combine two works into one. Since my role in my startup team is a hardware engineer and prototype maker, actually I can prototype the very first model during Fab Academy.
So, my final final project will be a 'DIY sextoy kit'. I know it sounds really wierd. But I'm currently preparing a startup to improve female sexual satisfaction. Our main goal is helping female be more satisfied when it comes to sexual intercourse. Before introducing the solution(or product), we began finding a critical problem. We did several interviews and surveys like this. Survey result may not tell us the true problem because it has low realability. But I reckon it gives me some insights. Followings are a glimpse of interesting results.
The total number of respondets is over 160 till now(Feb,2015) and problem no.3 and 4 were the top most agreed problems. It illustrates that more than a half of repondents said 'losing arousal' lowers sexual satisfaction. There were several possible reasons of losing arousal. We couldn't find an immediate cause but some possible causes seems connected. Especailly losing focus, distractions and fatigue. Those are all related to the problem of not 100% stay in the moment. It reminds me of this studies of correlation between staying in the moment and happiness. According to studies, not focusing on the moment has significantly bad effect on happiness and satisfaction. (For more details click here)
Anyways, another interesting thing what I found during interviews is that many of girls who are in their early 20's are insecure about thier body images. And survey results shows actually it hinders them from enjoying sex. What this result implies?
I found myself that I'm lost at some point. So I approached opposite direction and made a senario.
- Girls are insecure about their body images
- They start worrying about how they look, taste or smell like when they are having intercourses
- Their minds start wandering and they begin losing focus
- Losing focus cause losing sexual arousal
- Losing arousal affects female sexual satisfaction
Alright. I know there are some radical interpretation or assumption between situations. But still make sense, doesn't it? So what I have to do to solve this problem is basically solving the insecurity problem. But how? So here I admit that I cannot solve this problem. Nobody can make anybody feel secure. But oneself. Everyone should think about what actually makes them insecure. During the research period, I asked the same question to myself and also talked about it with many people.
As a result, I discovered what I used to have a problem with and what makes me uncomfortable when it comes to sexual context. I became know more about myself and I can say that it helped me to deal with my insecurity problem(not 100% solved but getting better). In other words, knowing oneself is the main key to feel secure.
So let's move back to my final project. How can I make people feel more secure about themselves? As I metioned above, discovering problems & knowing onself are really critical. Therefor, my final project is gonna be a something letting people understand more about themselves. My idea is a 'DIY sextoy kit'. The point is not a sextoy itself but the particiaption and process of discovering oneself by oneslef or with their partners. During the programme I will make a DIY sextoy and share the process. The ideal goal is making a accessable DIY sextoy kit for everybody.
I found some nice references. Last year in fab academy, Zenna already made a opensource dildo project called 'OPEN VIBE'. Also there is a company making a opensource& customizable dildo called 'Mod'
Git
Git is a source code managemen system. It is widely used for group project. The main point is using git for group porject is that all members can make changes together simulatneously. For more about git, check out here
Git tutorial is quite detailed, so all you have to do is just following it.
Once you had a access to a git, you should pull(download) files before you push(upload) files. If it's your first time to using a git, clone files from the server by typing git clone. To summarise the uploading process,
- git init
- git status: to check if there was any change
- git pull: for downloading the latest copy
- Changes files here
- git merge: merge new files and existing files
- git add .: add all changes
- git commit - m 'leave your message here'
- git push: uploading
Conclusion
What I succeeded
- Make a personal website
- Describe my final project
- Upload files using git
- Realise the gap between ideal and real
What I failed
- Make a personal website from scratch
- Plan a project with more details
| about final project | week 2 | Computer-Aided Design → |
|---|