Dinukaa's Blog

User Manual for Music Blocks  Music Blocks is a free and open source, browser based software, designed basically for students to learn music in fun and interactive way. To get started with Music Blocks, newbies need to have a fundamental understanding of the software, what are the things that can be done and importantly how things can be done. To address these requirements, Music Blocks has two guides: ' Using Music Blocks ' and ' Music Blocks Guide '. But the existing user guides lacks most of the important information about the software components, how each building blocks in the software can be related to music and especially some examples of how to create music with the software. Project Objective: To create a user manual which would be a comprehensive guide while providing samples and related explanations. Project Deliverables: In my project proposal , I defined following deliverables: Improve the Music blocks user guide content to be easily un...

Hello.. this is my update over last two weeks and happy that I passed the second evaluation! :D In my last blog update , I have mentioned about some issues to fix with PDF generation process. By now I have fixed those issues and PDF is generating properly. Created a user interface for ' Contributing to Music Blocks ' and currently working on database integration to this interface. Added content for 'Credits' page. Planned an approach for ' Examples With Music Blocks ' section by discussing with mentors and designed the summary page. For the example, 'Hot Cross Buns - First Form Discovery Start', one of my mentors shared a progressive series of 14 sub activities each adding one-two blocks and build up Hot Cross Buns and I am currently creating GIFs for those examples set and for other examples. Added the content to some pages in 'Components of Music Block's section. Box blocks Flow blocks Number blocks Sensor blocks Media...

Hello everyone... Over last two weeks I spent time on generating PDF of the Music Blocks User Guide. I tried two different approaches for this purpose. Using a JavaScript PDF generator to generate PDF from the client side. Using a PDF generator to generate PDF from the server side. - In my case PHP supporting PDF generator You can find my source code from here . In my approach, I looked into, Removing the navigation and blocks menus on the left side. Removing audio and video components. Adjusting texts and images fit the PDF pages.   Anyways, I decided to do PDF generation via a PHP library as it would give more control over the process. I played with several open source PDF generators over last two weeks. Majorly with FPDF library and TCPDF library. FPDF Library http://www.fpdf.org/ TCPDF Library https://tcpdf.org/ I decided to work with TCPDF generator for my GSoC project because of its supporting functional...

I am late in delivery!!! I should be done with the content creation for the user manual by now as per the initial timeline drafted by me but I am still half a way on it. You check my work so far from here . My updates since my last blog post are as follows: Fixing issues in blocks menu.  Drafted quick start and added content to the source code. ( Quick Start ) Added content to the Components section. ( Main Toolbar , Auxiliary Toolbar ) Added images to components section.  Added an example to the examples section. ( Hot Cross Buns ) Working on PDF generation process.  It took a long time to discuss on Quick Start approach and also it took a long time than expected to add images too. If you go to the palette toolbar you can find the added images to the content.  I will be completing the content creation and PDF generation process by 24th July as I have mentioned in my project plan.  Hope to get back to you all with next update before...

Hello everyone... I am in the mid of content creating for the Music Blocks user manual. I was unable to complete the work up to my planned level to due to university exams and funeral of a close relation. You can find the web pages from here  and thanks go to my mentor Devin Ulibarri.   For the past 3 weeks my updates are as follows: Created a Google Drive shared folder with mentors to share the content. Finalized the representation of Getting Started section after discussing with mentors. Drafted the Quick Start page for two contexts. Drafted the Introduction content. Spent some time playing with some tools to create GIFs and Lilypond software to create  solfège .  Added content for Palette Tool Bar to the source code - Pen, Boolean.  Added content for Auxiliary Tool Bar to the source code. Added content for Introduction to the source code.  You can find a GIF I created to add for Quick Start from here .  For the next two weeks also...

Hello everyone... GSoC coding officially started on 30th May 2017!  Over the past weeks in community bonding period I was able to work on my plan, Finalized the overall structure of user manual content with the support of my mentors. Finalized meeting times with mentors and other students who are working on Music Blocks related projects. Created mock prototypes into 5 themes for the content structure and shared them with mentors for suggestions and made changes as per suggestions.  Finalized one theme among prototypes as the Music Blocks user manual website theme.  Sticking to my timeline, I finalized documentation structure and the web template by the end of May. June first week is for me to build the web template and test it. Here you can find the code for designed web pages:  https://github.com/Tharangi/MusicBlocksUserManual-GSoC-2017 . For the next five weeks, I will be working on the content creation of the Music Blocks user manual with the ...

Hello everyone...I will be using Dinukaa's Blog as a platform to share my weekly progress reports on GSoC 2017 with Sugar Labs throughout the project process. It is not easy to get selected for Google Summer of Code(GSoC), I would say you should be smart and lucky at the same time! I planned to apply for GSoC since second-year at university and finally, in the final year, I was able to succeed from my first attempt for GSoC with Sugar Labs. You can find about Sugar Labs from  here . I was really happy when I saw my name under accepted students and for me it was a significant moment to share on social media too. You can find my project proposal from here . After the proposal submission and before the announcement of selected students, I kept my engagement with mentors and project. I conducted a user studies survey on Music Blocks and myself and mentors were able to get a rough idea on how newbies see Music Blocks. Now community bonding period is happening! ...

Hello everyone... here I am going to tell you a bit about my experience at Women Techmakers leads mini-summit APAC which was held at Google Singapore, Google APAC HQ on 10th and 11th March 2017. (From the left to right:  Erica ,  Malypoeur ,  Winni , Nhi , Hannah , Soma ,  Rakhshanda ,  Josan , Naz ,  Rara , me,  Syoko ,  Ngan ) It was one of the best experiences I've ever had in my life. I met these awesome ladies in above picture from different Women Techmakers and Google Developer Group chapters in APAC region.   It was wonderful listening to their stories at which I was inspired at the end  of the day.  First day had a good start with the breakfast where our host of the day, Erica Hanson , Program Manager, Developer Relations at Google took us to the breakfast area from guests lobby. I was late to wake up in the morning hence I missed the shuttle service from Hotel to Google office. When I arrived there, initial info...