In the Spirit of Tech

As we progress through this course, and begin to actually apply our new knowledge of tech and computer language to our archive work, I thought it would be a good time to discuss the more ‘techy’ side of what I've figured out when working with Github as far as troubleshooting goes.

As a fairly basic Mac user, this course has definitely been a steep learning curve, as I've been trying to grasp the new technologies introduced by Professor Graham. While the first couple devlogs were especially hard, I did find some online resources that really helped for working backwards, in addition to the help of some lovely classmates.

The teamwork aspect of this course has been incredibly helpful for troubleshooting. When my first two devlogs wouldn't upload, I was able to figure out one of the preliminary issues with Chloe and Elise. The errors procured on this site are definitely a matter of attention to detail, and one of the first mistakes I made was forgetting the ‘.md’ in my devlog titles. Having additional eyes to assist with editing/troubleshooting really helps in this matter, as when you're frustrated and trying to figure out solutions, it's very helpful to have extra eyes searching for the missing links.

The joys of using Academic-Kickstart, as I came to know, is that there is an existing original codescript (or whatever you would call it) for the format. When doing my devlogs, I kept coming across what seemed to me to be nonsensical errors on Netlify, like: 5:43:40 PM: Error: Error building site: “/opt/build/repo/content/post/2020-01-23-CMHVisit.md:21:1”: failed to unmarshal YAML: yaml: line 21: could not find expected ‘:', which were incredibly frustrating. As I worked through issues like this I utilized the regular code on the Academic Kickstart github, linked here: https://github.com/sourcethemes/academic-kickstart

Through this troubleshooting, I figured out that the spacing before my final dash line on the devlog was incorrect. This is an error that I wouldn't have been able to figure out without working backwards, as when I googled the line error from Netlify, I was unable to come up with satisfactory answers. The online community of github has, however, come in handy on other previous error lines, and at least the conversations give an idea of what direction to go, even if some of the language used is beyond my current comprehension level.

As we move into the digitization of these archives I look forward to continue collaborating with my peers, and using the online resources I've found to be able to think around errors in this uphill battle with foreign tech haha. Integrating images is my next goal!