I have a pretty good idea now how hackaday.io works.  My first three months have resulted in a hodpodge of projects, pages, log entries, and links to a bitbucket repository.  Although I would like to salvage what I can from those projects, pages, log entries, and repositories, I feel it is now time to kind of "start over" to provide a better framework going forward.

The most important Hackaday "thing" is the now published link to the rPi bare metal vGuitar rig hackaday.io project and my three (3) followers :-)

Besides that, my general profile serves as a master container for subprojects and pages, and that entry point will also be retained going forward.

(1) I need to move the source code, generally out of Bitbucket and into GitHub.    Why?   I think I might trust Microsoft more than Atlasian, and I just feel like GitHub will be here for sure, going forward.

(2) Add lots of readme.md's to the GitHub project and subdirectories.    Why?   Because I like the idea of providing static or semi-static contextual information for the source code at the directory level.   In fact, I am not thrilled with using Hackaday.io for the long term preservation of static information about the source code, how to build it, etc.   I like the idea of information that is keyed to the commits I make, as the structure, semantics, and usage of the code is a moving target and can change over time.   Hackaday does not lend itself to versioning, it seems better for recording snapshots of a moment in time, and presenting them in a separate linear context. i.e. as a fixed index into the morphing github commits.

(3) Create GitHub "pages" for the long term documentation of the architecture, components, APIs, etc, in the project(s).   Why?   this is a tough one.   Mostly because they are a natural fit for linking from the readme.md's in the source repository directories and subdirectories.

Although in a sense I like the hackaday.io "editor" functionality, and the ability to upload images to their servers, etc, I sometimes find it constraining.   Even if I try to use the <> raw HTML feature, it is just the nature of WYSIWYG html editors that they stomp on the HTML and create lots of artificial constraints on the presentation.   One thing that I have always struggled with, even in pure html, is to get two images to present side by side with a caption underneath each.    It can be done in html, but I would be afraid to do it in the hackaday.io editor for fear that that it will get stomped on in some round trip to html and back.     I had a heck of a time just getting the bullet list on my history page to work consistently.  The editor seems to want to make it's own decisions about the font faces and attributes of the text and does not change well between outdended (no bullet list) and indented (bulletted) items.  It's not a slam on hackaday.  I've written these kinds of WYSYWIG editors and they are not easy and always iffy somewhere around the edges.

(4) Use hackaday to present the most visually appealing aspects of what I'm doing.   I think hackaday.io serves as a great entry point for people surfing the web looking for interesting things to look at.  I think there is still a role for hackaday "pages", like this one, for extemporaneous stream-of-consciousness writing.

I like the eye candy of hackaday. 

If anyone else was interested in joining the project, perhaps that is what hackaday would be best at.  Unfortunately (a) no one has expressed an interest, and (b) I'm wary of inviting people because a one-person project gives me ultimate flexibility.   In order to properly move to a multi-person project, a LOT has to be established between the players ... from coding conventions to areas of responsibility to processes and procedures.  I think I  am a fair ways from that, which would, at a minimum, require the highest level architectural and design documents to be in some kind of a presentable state themselves.

But I much prefer the color scheme of hackaday to the light grey default of github pages.   Hackaday seems more fun to look at, more immersive, wheras Github pages looks like a wiki.   In fact, I suppose that's another thing I should research ... "wiki pages".

(5) One problem, I think, perhaps, with switching to github pages, we'll see, is that it seems you may need a separate server for images? I'll have to play around with it.   I dont think you can link from a github source repository readme.md to an image in the same repository, inasmuch as github source repositories are basically not intended to be web-servers, but I would think that you can create better links between html and images in github pages, with meaningful, persistent, semantic names and a directory structure, than you can with hackaday's server generated image urls, which are basically strings of random numbers.  I have no idea how the life-cycle of hackaday io images are managed ... like if I delete an image from all pages does it disappear from the server, or what kind of guarantee, if any, I might have that an (unlinked) hackaday image url will remain valid.  Probably so .. they probably just archive EVERY photo FOREVER, but github pages would give me explicit control over the lifecycle of such resources in the presentation.

In any case, I have a few things I want to post using the hodge-podge of what I have before I embark on a re-organization.  I created ili9486/xpt2046 touchscreen drivers for Circle, I have started to write a wxWidgets-like event driven windowing system for it, I had a very pleasant two days playing around with the esp8266 and an adxl345 accelerometer I had laying around, and finally, over the last few days I have built a quick and dirty Zythian synthesizer.   Somehow I want to present these four additional things for perusing, even though I will probably just be creating extra work for myself in the long run, but I've been sitting on some of these photos for almost a month and I want to get them, and some new sub-projects, or pags, or log entries, up for them before I do a major re-organization..

I'm also getting my first 3D printer delivered early next week.   A Prusa I3 MK3s.   I am very excited about that, lots of 3D daydreams, but also just an additional layer of complexity on the whole presentation thing.   I have to assemble it.  Is that a Project?   We'll see :-)

Finally, btw, comments are appreciated.  On any of the projects, subprojects, pages, logs, or anything else I publish.

Thanks!

- Patrick