The Hacker Within

This is the website that keeps the blog posts for each THW meeting at the University of Birmingham, UK. The rendered website can be found here.

How To Be The Speaker

One very common reason that folks want to contribute to this repository is that they are planning to give the main skill sharing session for some week at THW. To be the speaker, you'll need to sign up, set up, show up, and speak up.

Sign Up

We try to decide the semester meeting topics at the beginning of the session. So, if you have a topic you'd like to talk about, please suggest it over the listhost before the semester starts or show up to the first meeting of the semester.

Set Up

We love sessions that have example code! If you have example code, please place it in an appropriately named directory in the master branch of this GitHub repository. Make a pull request or push your branch to the thehackerwithin/UoB fork. If you know how to do that, please go right ahead. If you aren't sure about forks and pull requests, here are some detailed instructions:

Getting ready to edit the Hacker Within pages

Use these instructions to get started editing the web pages, adding posts, or adding other content to Hacker Within repository, such as example code.

Let's say that your Github username is YOURUSERNAME.

1. Go to the UoB Hacker Within repository at: https://github.com/thehackerwithin/UoB.
2. Press the Fork button (you'll need a github account).
3. In your terminal, execute git clone https://github.com/thehackerwithin/UoB.git
4. Enter the new directory with cd UoB
5. Add a Git remote for your fork with git remote add YOURUSERNAME https://github.com/YOURUSERNAME/UoB.git
6. Fetch information about your fork with git fetch YOURUSERNAME
7. Start a new branch for your edits with git branch --no-track name-of-thing-im-working-on origin/master. For example, if you are adding a tutorial on Python, you might do git branch --no-track add-python-tutorial origin/master.
8. Check out your new branch with something like git checkout add-python-tutorial (where add-python-tutorial is the name you used in the git branch command).

Now you are ready to edit these pages.

Uploading Example Code

Let's say you have some code you'd like to share for a tutorial. Say the code file you want to share is called my_program.py.

Follow the instructions above to get the website code and start working in a new branch.

7. Check what branch you're in git branch. You should be in your new branch, that you made from the instructions above.
8. Move your code file to an appropriately named directory. Browse the root directory of the repository for directories other people have used to store code. Make a new directory if you prefer. Say you have chosen the directory example_code. Move your code file to the directory you have chosen, e.g.: mv my_program.py example_code.
9. Add the files to the repo, e.g. git add example_code/my_program.py.
10. Commit the file(s). git commit -am "I added files for the tutorial on my topic.."
11. Git push to your remote with e.g. git push YOURUSERNAME add-python-tutorial where YOURUSERNAME is your Github user name, and add-python-tutorial is the name of your branch (see above).
12. Navigate in your browser to https://github.com/YOURUSERNAME/UoB and press the pull request button to ask us to merge your changes into the main website.

Now you're done adding code example files! You'll need to edit the post related to your talk.

Add Your Tutorial to the Site

Rather than preparing a slideshow, please consider leading as interactive a session as possible. This is often done by leading the audience through whatever code examples you have merged to the master branch, using the procedure above. Supportive text can be added to the markdown file holding the blog post for your talk. To add text to that file and to edit your bio. You may need to both create and modify the post.

First, if you haven't done so already, follow the instructions above in "Getting ready to edit the Hacker Within pages".

Then, create and modify the post as in the sections below.

Creating a Post

In the directory that you just cloned (UoB), you'll notice a _posts directory. The post related to the day and topic of your talk may already exist. If so, skip ahead to "Modifying a Post."

If not, you'll need to create it. Thankfully, you'll also notice a _drafts directory. In the drafts directory, you'll find an empty template for meeting minutes YYYY-MM-DD-subject.markdown. If you're preparing for a special holiday meeting on March 1, 2015, then the proper name for the file you're creating should be something like 2015-03-01-katysbirthday.markdown.

You post is in Github Markdown format - see that page for ways of marking up your text.

• In the UoB directory, execute cp _drafts/YYYY-MM-DD-subject.markdown _posts/2015-03-01-katysbirthday.markdown
• Then, edit that file as you see fit.
• Add that file to the repository git add _posts/2015-03-01-katysbirthday.markdown
• Commit it: git commit -am "adds a post for march 1"
• Push it to your fork as above with something like git push YOURUSERNAME add-python-tutorial -u where YOURUSERNAME is your Github user name, and add-python-tutorial is the branch name you chose above.
• Check how your new post looks by going to https://YOURUSERNAME.github.io/UoB in your browser. Navigate to your new post. Some of the page styling will be broken, because your fork is not directly attached to the main Hacker Within website, but check the content looks right for the post.
• Iterate on this until you are happy - edit, push, review.
• When you are ready, make a pull request to have your edits merged into the main website. To do this, navigate in your browser to https://github.com/YOURUSERNAME/UoB and press the pull request button to ask us to merge your changes into the main website.

Modifying a Post

This is very similar to creating a post, for which, see the section above. The only difference in the process is that, when you are editing a file, you do not need to do the initial copy to create your new file.

Build the site locally

If you'd like to test the post before pushing or making a PR, you can build the site locally:

• Install Jekyll: gem install jekyll
• Run the jekyll server: jekyll --server

You should have a server up and running locally at http://localhost:4000.

Show Up

Please arrive 10-15 minutes before the start time so that you can set up your computer and test out the projector. Please figure out how to zoom in on text that might be too small from the back. Try command-plus-plus in the terminal and other applications. If you're an emacs user on a mac, you may need accessibility zoom enabled..

Speak Up

The Hacker Within isn't a class and no one is required to attend. We show up to have fun and to learn. Hopefully, your tutorial will teach something useful in a way that is enjoyable. To do this, please consider bringing your A-game. That is, find the enthusiastic tinkering problem-solver inside yourself (The Hacker Within yourself) and bring that version of yourself to share that enthusiasm with us. Enthusiasm is infectious!

About this website.

It's all based on something @katyhuff forked. It's called Left. It uses Jekyll. It was extracted from zachholman.com. That is, we use Left to lay out this Jekyll.

Left is a clean, whitespace-happy layout for Jekyll.

Content Licensing

The content of this blog is liberally licensed to The Hacker Within and to the individual authors of each blog post. Additionally, you're welcome to reshare the content with attribution, because it is CC-BY-3.0 licensed

Except where otherwise noted, content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. Copyright 2013-2015 The Hacker Within.

Please attribute any work with a link to its original appearance on this domain (i.e., "from The Hacker Within's blog entry 'Segmentation Fault' at thehackerwithin.github.io/blog/posts/segmentation-fault ").

Left Licensing

The Left layout is MIT with no added caveats. Left is the work of Zach Holman @holman.