Log in to https://kgcoe-git.rit.edu
Create a new repo called 'hfoss-YOURID' where YOURID is your RIT username, aka your DCE, aka the local part (part before the @) in your @rit.edu email address, aka the name you used to log in to the GitLab instance.
It might seem redundant, but it is useful to me, your instructor, when I clone it.
Create a README.md file in that repo.
Go into the left-hand sidebar, under Settings, Members, and in the Invite
Member tab, under where it says "GitLab member or Email address" add my
username, djaigm. Please add me as a Developer.
Later, at your convenience, you can create a folder journal and move the
README.md file into it. This will make it tidy in case we'd like to add
other files.
Add entries throughout the week. Add new entries at the top. Place a Markdown header at the top of each entry. I use a datestamp, but you can use another method if you like, so long as new ones keep being added to the top.
- 15 minutes each day
- 4 days
- so 4x15 == 60 minutes == 1 hr/week
Can shift around the days but need a minimum of 4 total over the 7 days from Sunday to Saturday.
The period falls between Sunday morning, 00:00:01 am, and Saturday night, 23:59:59 pm.
(My discretion as to how to count something datestamped in the 2 second gap)
Bare minimum of a hundred (100) words at a time. Try for two-hundred (200).
Starting in week 2 it will need to include or have explicit ties to things from class, but up to then can be any personal observations. Please try to keep it light (especially with regard, for example, to politics or to intense personal disclosures), but your course schedule, your hobbies, your daily routines are all fair game as topics, in the spirit of getting-to-know-you and to encourage the habit of writing more than out of concern for topicality.
More usefully, what software you use, particularly 'tooling' like languages, development environments, art production software can be helpful. You can begin to include course material earlier than the 3rd week but I want to give you some room.
Once the semester starts the journal is the place to "show your work" as you work on exercises and projects and your blog post and think about readings, lectures, and class discussions.
You are encouraged to use Markdown or other lightweight markup recognized and rendered by Gitlab, but it is not required.
You can make your edits through the Gitlab web interface, but the journal is your opportunity to get frequent practice making git commits and pushing them to a remote. As the semester progresses, that should be how you add to your journal.
The journal is about what is happening now, what you are doing and what you are planning to do or trying to do and what you are thinking about. It is informal. It is discreet. It can be a dump of bullet points or sentence fragments or bare links. It should have some full sentences and at least a good try at reasonable spelling and punctuation and grammar, but that's less a priority. This is first-draft kind of stuff.
In contrast, the blog is public. It is at least a little bit formal. Spelling, punctuation, and grammar matter. It should have some polish to it. It is a report, and is often the vehicle for submission of various assignments. Links to your blog posts are submitted to the public course repository in your YAML file.
The blog should be reasonably formatted and marked-up, using Markdown or other lightweight markups supported by Gitlab, or HTML. Links should work.
The journal is for work-in-progress. The blog is for work completed.
The journal should feed the blog: Keep up with the journal and pull from it to make your blog posts.