Github Pages, Part One - Simple Setup (with pictures!)

The blog formerly known as TheOddDolphin stumbles into IdeaTown. Weak, and hungry, it staggers into the town square, looking for something that will sate its unending thirst. "Content," it mumbles under its breath. "Need... content." All of a sudden, it spies the perfect target. Easy to demonstrate, simple to write about, extensive support framework so that the blog itself doesn't need to deal with reader's queries. Tongue lolling, the now actively salivating blog runs off behind the topic of Github Pages, knives out and ready to make a sacrifice to its strange and oppressive god.

In this new series of posts, I intend to run through the development and deployment of a static website on Github Pages, mostly to remove some of the taboos surrounding static website development, which I believe can be as good as (and sometimes more suitable than) dynamic websites for web pages in certain cases.

I also want to make fellow college students aware that something like Github Pages even exists. Too long have I watched them pay incredible amounts of money for hosting. I want them to know that with Github Pages, they can finally make a page that's as stripped down, simplified, and easy to load as their wallets.

EDIT: I think it would also be suitable to note here that Bitbucket, another popular repository hosting site, also offers the same hosting service. The major difference is that Bitbucket repos are private, and allow only up to 10 contributors in their free plan. I have used Github Pages here, but feel free to take a look at this page for instructions on how to set up a Bitbucket website.

The purpose of this introductory post is to run you through the setting up and initialisation of a PERSONAL Github Pages repository, something which the official Github Pages page already does more than admirably, so if you're looking for a good tutorial, follow that instead. If, for some reason, you find that tutorial too hard to follow, then this guide is fine, I guess. I'm mostly just setting up the scene for other stuff later, so if you're interested in the rest of this series of posts, then I suggest you follow along with this as well.

Setting up a Repository

The first thing you're supposed to do on your path towards greatness is set up a Github repository. Go to Github, create an account, and then create a repository. The name of the repository must, for some reason, be <your-username>.github.io, and this will also end up[ becoming the url for your Github Page website, so if you picked a silly username when creating your account, feel free to kick yourself now.

Below are the options I ended up with - nothing really new here. Note that I chose not to initialise the repository with a README.md, which isn't really standard practice. If this is your first experience with Git, I suggest you do so.

Get Git on the command line

This is really more of an intermediary step than anything, but it is critical that you actually have Git in order to work with Github Pages - it's the version control software through which all updates to your potential website will be maintained.

Ubuntu users, as always, have the handy apt-get command:

sudo apt-get install git

Whereas Windows users will have to get the immensely useful Git Bash.

If you're a Mac user, you are probably rich enough to pay for hosting will have to take a look at an external resource to find out how to install Git, like this one.

Clone the repository you just created

If you carried out the previous step correctly, then this one is fairly easy. Navigate to a preferred storage location on your hard disk, and clone the repository onto your hard disk. If you installed git properly, this is the command you must put into your bash terminal:

git clone https://github.com/<your-username>/<your-username>.github.io.git

Here's what I had to input, for example:

git clone https://github.com/clennam/clennam.github.io.git

Create a test file 

Now you've cloned the repo into your hard drive. You shouldn't have much in there already, seeing as you just cloned an empty repo.

Create a simple html file, so that we can push it and see if our brand new site works as advertised. You could open a text editor, create an html file, and save it into the repository folder, but you can simplify all this into one step on Ubuntu and Windows by doing this right from the command line:

echo message > filename.html

Or, in my case:

echo This is a test message > index.html

Commit and push the files

Our setup is all done, it is now time to push the files to the local git repository, and from there, send them to the online repository that we created.

This is really simple in practice, although there is quite a bit of complex theory behind it. The commands you need to run, in order, are:

git add .
git commit -m "Initial commit"
git push -u origin master 

 yey.jpg (ironically, the picture attached is a .png)

You're all done! Check if your new site is set up properly by going to the URL <your-username>.github.io. Here's what I got:

Take it as a keepsake of our beautiful time together.

Watch this blog for the next post in this series, in which I continue exploring the possibilities of this platform.

Resurrection, or: Regarding my Blog's Change of Name

In the forgotten city of blogspot.com, an ancient mystery stirs. An odd, dolphin-like monstrosity rises above the murky deep, and shakes itself off like a grotesque, wet dog. A disgusting hybrid monster, long dormant, finally awakened by the cruel whims of some capricious creator. It moans in pain, the pain of existence as much as the pain of this chafing rubber dolphin head. The monster is just some guy wearing a dolphin head, of a kind that probably briefly became popular after the death of Sharknado as a meme and before the birth of Horse Head Mask. He discards the shark pun and sets off into the sunset to wreak havoc upon the world once more, pensively stroking a book of Dickensian literature. "Little Dorrit? Nah, too mainstream," opines the former monster. "Oh, what about-"

My blog's changing it's name from The Odd Dolphin to Clennam's Compendium.

Why, you ask? Well, I've been rebranding everything else I have from TheOddDolphin to Clennam, because Clennam's Compendium just sounds more pretentiously appropriate than a shark pun. The Odd Dolphin, cuz it's a shark, geddit? Ugh. >:(

A lot's happened since my last post. I picked up an internship job at Virtusa! Not quite gamedev royalty, but I will undoubtedly learn valuable skills in the year I'll be there.

As usual, I only do a daily update when I have a slew of posts to put up (defeating the daily part of the label, but introducing a great mechanism of suspense, because I am nothing if not an artful writer). You, dear reader, should see the first of these posts soon.

Google I/O 17 SL, by Mobitel - Google IO Keynote Speech

We kick off the keynote to a quick animation, that outlines all of Google's Projects.

Without further ado, out comes Sundar Pichai. A couple of minutes of mandatorily plugging Google later, he gets into the real body of the Event.

To start off with, he casually announces a new service to be added to Google Mail. Smart Reply will be able to learn from you, and quickly allow you to reply to emails with a message-based experience.

The next big announcement is Google Lens, which is basically an integration of Google's myriad services with vision as an input device.

Coming on next, we have a kind of TPU, which is basically an upgrade to proceessing units. Offering significant upgrades to power and speed for the specific purpose of making computers more amenable to AI.

An announcement for developers - The Google Assistant SDK will be out for developers to integrate into their own solutions.

With Actions on Google now on mobile phones. we could be looking at a whole overhaul of how phones fundamentally work. It may not be a replacement of the app paradigm just yet, but it is coming pretty close.

Next up, updates to Photos. Smart sharing's now a feature. Google will now find pictures in your device. and suggest you share them with the people in them. Sounds simple; isn't.

As expected, Google Lens will be integrated with Google Photos, integrating computer vision with the capability to analyse images.

As for updates to Youtube. I'm not too impressed technically. The idea of "Superchats" is Youtube assigning a process and a name to an already existing process, which, while not too revolutionary, is definitely a great thing to see.

Moving on to the next section - Android. Picture-in-Picture, like Superchats before it, isn't really anything new, BUT is in fact something that many a user has definitely wished for before.

The upgrades to notification dots? Smart Selection? Vitals? More of the same. Streamlining of an already existing process to improve an existing user experience is something that can never go unappreciated.

A couple of big announcements for Android Devs, Kotlin is now an official language compatible with Android. With improvements to their profiling tools, and the Dashboard, where an Android app can be analysed and top issues can be highlighted. Also coming is the beta release of Android O, although it's only out for an extremely limited set of devices.

As a person that struggled with an Samsung S Duos for two years, Android Go seems like a great feature. It's nice to know persons with low-end phones will not be left behind.

Finally, there is Gboard, which integrates translation services and phonetic typing into a single keyboard, something which I, as a multilingual person, personally like very much. No more struggling with different keyboard layouts.

"Great momentum with apps, more Daydream-ready phones, and a standalone headset coming leater this year." Quick summary about VR from the presenter himself.

Moving on to AR, I find that the most interesting idea here is VPS (Visual Positioning System). It could be incredibly helpful to the visually impaired, and even just to people looking to navigate an area.

As an undergraduate looking to enter the job market, I find the idea of being able to find open job postings right through Google Search to be really interesting.

Looking at the keynote, it's clear that the future from scifi movies isn't so far off.

Google I/O 17 SL, by Mobitel - I Dream of 5G

The next major item on the list is a presentation on 5G, by Gobinath S. Govindasamy.

A criticism I've had of all the speakers so far is that they are far too technical for a layman to comprehend. Mr Govindasamy, the presenter of this paritcular item, however, seems to at least be aware that he is being overly technical, and seems to be striving to keep his presentation on common terms.

He states that 5G may not be as far off as you think. It could even be as close as 2018. The new 5G standard comes with vastly increased speed and bandwidth, to the point that it could even be used in an application that requires split-second timing, like in cars.

Google I/O 17 SL, by Mobitel - Drones - Its Revolution and Evolution

I'm back with the second major item on Mobitel's agenda. A presentation called "Drones - its revolution and evolution", delivered by Manju Gunawardene.

The presentation is, predictably, on the role of Drones in the future of Sri Lanka. Manju Gunawardene is a little technical -  and anyone that isn't conversant with the field may start to lose interest, as evidenced by looking around at the audience.

However, it sounds like the use of drones has really helped the government analyse the dump at Meethotamulla, and even identify difficulties in relocating the garbage and find even as much as an underground pond.

He goes on to illustrate the use of drones in precision agriculture, and other similar application fields. Their real strength is in data collection so that actual variances and differences can be detected by actual experts, then acted upon by the concerned parties.

Google I/O 17 SL, by Mobitel - InspireSL

Hi everyone. I'll be blogging about Mobitel's I/O '17 SL event over on Facebook, Twitter, and here. Thanks to Mobitel for hosting the event, and to Readme for the great seats!

InspireSL competition.
The first thing on Mobitel's agenda - the Inspire SL Competition's final round. Some excellent talent on display here. May the best team win.

Teams and products

• I seem to have missed the first team to go up, Plexa by Datacon.
• The second product and team, Lawyered by Hustlers, is a product that aims to make the law more accessible to the common man by deciphering the legalspeak usually associated with legal documents.
• The third product and team, Bazura by Verzions, is a product that all IT undergraduates have probably toyed with at one point or another - how to streamline the process of trash collection. This project, has a unique twist in that it allows people to bid on other people's trash, thereby streamlining the recycling process.
• The fourth product/team, SafeAgri by AgroInventors, a one-man team which makes their presentation in Sinhalese. Their product, SafeAgri, aims to solve the problem of the overuse of pesticides in commercial agricultural application via the use of a delightfully '60s sci-fi looking device, that apparently is capable of keeping away pests without the grievous harm to the environment. An impressive project to be certain.

Of the teams I've seen so far, technically, SafeAgri seems to be the most impressive. I do not know, however, if they will be able to win, seeing as they are working with the handicap of having presented in Sinhalese. I do love a good underdog story.

• The last team to come up, have a great, simple concept, IJX - Angel. A drone capable of flying to drowning swimmers and quickly giving them lifesaving gear.

EDIT: The winner will be announced shortly.
EDIT: The winner of InspireSL is SafeAgri! Congratulations!

Everything of Note From GDC 2017

Author's Note: This is the text of an article that I originally wrote to be published on ReadMe. Unfortunately, I did not manage to get it published in time, and due to the timely nature of the subject, it is now too late to do so. In case you, dear reader are interested, here you go:

Everything of Note from GDC 2017

The Game Developers Conference took place this year from the 27^th of February to the 3^rd of March at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. The conference brought out many innovations, especially in the fields of graphics and AR/VR, with speakers from giants in their respective fields – Facebook, Oculus, Google Play, AMD and NVIDIA, to list a few, speaking on several aspects of game development – game development, game promotion, game design, audience engagement and growth, and so on. Several indie developers also announced exciting new projects. Furthermore, this was the first GDC that was open for the public to attend, instead of having to watch from home, so there were much larger crowds than usual.

Here is a list of the most interesting announcements from the Conference.

The State of the Game Industry

Every year, the organisers of the Game Developers Conference poll attendees in an attempt to identify emerging trends in the field, which they subsequently release in a document titled “The State of Game Industry”. The key points from this year include:

• ·         Diversity

This year’s GDC showed a slight improvement in representation, with 20% of attendees polled identifying as women, 2% up from last year.

The geographical locations of attendees remained mostly the same, however, with 67% percent of respondents from North America, 3% from South America, and 22% from Europe. Pan-Asia accounted for 8% of attendees, and 0.3% percent were from Africa.

• ·         Business-wise

Most attendees felt that VR/AR was the future of gaming, with mobile AR as a specific focus going forward, with as many as 1 in 10 game makers working on a platform-exclusive VR/AR title, and 75% of attendees saying that they believed VR/AR had long-term sustainability.

The ESports industry is also on the rise in terms of investor confidence, with 90% of attendees professing confidence in its sustainability.

PC and mobile devices remain the mainstay of most developers, however.

• ·         Platforms and Hardware

On the topic of VR consoles, the HTC Vive was gaining popularity over the Oculus Rift. Don’t worry, though – the stats read 24% for the Vive, and 23% for the Rift, with the PSVR coming a distant third at 13%.

In the mobile arena, Android finally surpassed IoS in terms of developer interest (54% against 51%).

Interest in mid-cycle console re-releases, like the PS4 Pro and Xbox Scorpio, however, was mediocre at best, with many developers feeling that it would only further divide an already fragmented market.

Innovations in VR/AR

• ·         On the first day of the conference, a slew of new games was announced for VR devices, specifically for the Rift. These new games ranged from traditional first-person experiences to a wide variety of genres – strategy, tactical, turn-based, dungeon crawler, story-driven, procedurally generated, the list goes on.
• ·         Microsoft announced plans to bring “mixed reality” headsets to the Xbox and Microsoft Scorpio by 2018.
• ·         Oculus also made a surprise announcement – they would now sell the Oculus Rift and Touch in a bundle that comes to around $600, a price drop of about $200. On their own, each piece of hardware is about $100 cheaper, coming to $499 for the Rift headset and $99 for the Touch controllers. Hats off to Oculus for their efforts to make VR software affordable to a wider audience.
• ·         AMD have announced that they will be working with Valve to support Valve’s Asynchronous Reprojection on their graphics cards, a technology meant to enhance the VR experience and eliminate judder – a partnership that is a big win for AMD, who have been losing the graphics market share to NVIDIA.
• ·         Epic Games have announced their Unreal VR Editor, a ground-breaking extension to the Unreal Engine that allows developers to be in the environment that they are developing, helping to provide the right sense of scale to make realistic, believable environments and make it easier to navigate the environment while developing.
• 
  

The GDC Awards

On the 1^st of March, the Game Developers Choice Awards and Independent Games Festival Awards took place at GDC. Many much-loved indie games and many bigger, AAA-standard titles competed for the coveted awards. A quick recap of the more popular/controversial picks from the GDCA:

GDCA

• ·         The Game of the Year award went, unsurprisingly, to Blizzard’s new title Overwatch. They single beat out other nominees like Naughty Dog’s Uncharted 4, and Bethesda/Arkane’s Dishonored 2.
• ·         Niantic’s Pokemon Go won the Best Mobile/Handheld Game award. The previously almost unknown studio beat out Supercell’s Clash Royale and companion Pokemon title Sun/Moon, by Game Freak/The Pokemon Company.
• ·         One of the controversial picks, No Man’s Sky won the Innovation Award, the troubled game from developer Hello Games.

Find a full list of awards, winners and nominees here: http://www.gamespot.com/articles/overwatch-wins-game-of-the-year-full-list-of-gdca-/1100-6448326/