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Tips on Writing the Final Summary Blog and Winning the Big Prizes

rscasny

Hi all participants.

The Experimenting with Waterproof Connectors is winding down with the final extra credit blogs due today.

On June 6th, I'll review the Forum participation and add points earned for each participant.

That leaves the big one task left to do: The Final Summary Blog.

The final summary blog is worth 300 points. I'll hand them over to the judges who will score them. Since I have two judges, I will average their individual scores into a final score and add them to the points earned for the rest of the blogs.

I wanted to offer some tips on writing the final summary blog.

1. The final blog should summarize all the work and experimenting you ghave done with waterproof connectors. Hence, a focus on the waterproof connectors should be prominent in the final blog.

2. The intro blog and the 5 extra credit blogs were added to the program for a specific reason: They can help you write the final blog (while adding points). Rather than simply linking these supplement blogs in the final blog, use the information they have to write a self-contained final blog. Now, if you want to add links to your intro/extracredit blogs in your discussion, that's fine. But our intention is to give the judges your final blog to grade your efforts.

3. The final blog should demonstrate the technical merit and your creativity around employing waterproof connectors in an electronics design. So, providing images, screenshots, and other media to lend to your tech finesse and creativity should be utilized.

4. Beyond the waterproof connectors, we provided the latte panda SBC in the kit. Show the reader how you used it, how you prepared it, and how you connected it to the waterproof connectors.

5. Articulate what your experiments were and how they turned out.

6. Draw some conclusions about participating in this program. They can range from what you may have learned about waterproofing an electronics design to what the successes and challenges were.

7. Make sure your final blog flows with some logical structure. The judges are going to read it for the first time. They want so see not only what you did but how your experiments evolved. Of course, this depends on what you did.

Like I said, the final summary blog is worth 300 points. We want the final blog to be an authoritative document. The more comprehensive it is, the closer it will get to the 300 points.

Good luck.

  • in reply to JWx
    JWx said:
    (maybe without most of the console output - it takes more space that is providing information)

    You can always upload files as either attachments or into the 'files' media gallery and link to them if you don't want to miss anything out.

  • Hello!

    as I have never prepared such a long blog I have couple of questions:

    - is there any official guidance about using external links? Using them seem to trigger anti-spam moderation requirement, but in many places they can add value to the material (linking official documentation, data format definitions, CLI commands that use URL as argument etc.). When publishing my blog 2 I have already gone through moderation process (with intermediate warning screens scaring away potential readers when text was under moderation), so now I have tried to remove as many links as possible while retaining as much information as I can but it seems that there are still too many of them...

    - is it correct that draft material can also be flagged as requiring moderation? This way moderators would have to re-check the same material many times (at every click of "save as draft" button probably) - I have experienced that already: my draft was moderated as OK, then when publishing it was sent to moderation the second time

    - Is there any method of preparing content off-line (some - for example - wiki-like markup language) then copying it into blog editor? I have just realized that my draft disappeared today (marked for moderation, already tried to logout/login, still no "unpublished" content - will probably ask at support forum but considering that material is due 06.VI there is limited time for troubleshooting) - I have some offline backup but within text editor so reformating (and picture/file reloading) will be needed...

  • in reply to JWx
    JWx said:
    is there any official guidance about using external links?

    You can use external links. I monitor the content that comes into the moderation queue, and I (have to) manually curate the permitted website domains that do not count towards the 'embedded link count' moderation, over time if some members keep suffering this moderation then I employ other methods to prevent it being a repeated issue for them.

    JWx said:
    is it correct that draft material can also be flagged as requiring moderation?

    Yes.

    JWx said:
    Is there any method of preparing content off-line (some - for example - wiki-like markup language) then copying it into blog editor?

    You could use OpenOffice or Microsoft Word and then paste it into the content, but this loses out on additional functionality you can gain from using the rich text editor and its functionality under the 'format', 'insert', and inserting images and video.

    You could create your content in HTML and then paste it into the source editor (under tools) though any unsupported HTML will be stripped out.

  • in reply to cstanton

    Thank you for clarification and prompt reaction! I think I will need to tune my content generation process to write mainly off-line, then publish as needed - this way web-editor time will be reduced and content aggregation easier Thinking

  • in reply to JWx

    It's a sensible approach considering there's no other method of "saving" the content, eg. if you don't get the opportunity to save as a draft, you can easily lose the entire blog if something happens.

  • in reply to cstanton

    My workflow uses MS Word too.

    I write the blog post in Word, and insert any photos or diagrams into the Word doc too. Once I'm happy, then I'll do Ctrl-A and then copy it all, and paste it into MS Notepad. Then Ctrl-A again, and then copy it from Notepad. That way all formatting is stripped, and then I'll paste into the site editor.

    I keep the Word document open alongside the browser window, and then one-by-one I'll use the Editor tools to format the headings and insert in the photos from the source jpg/png files, until the online editor content looks the same as the Word document. And then use the Table of Contents tool from the Editor toolbar too.

    Also, I will clean up some grammar in the online editor, because the spell/grammar-check (Grammarly) often picks up things I didn't catch the first time around in the Word document. 

    By the end of it all, there will be some differences between the online version and the Word version, but at least there is a backup in case anything serious goes wrong.

  • in reply to shabaz

    I use MS Word too - but I don't strip the formatting.

    I find that you can easily use styles (e.g. Heading 2, 3), bullet-points, bold/italics and they will transfer right over with no hassle. Just don't change the font or paragraph spacings from the default or be prepared for problems.

    I prepare the text in MS Word without the code and images - for those, I put in placeholders (e.g. text such as [photo-filename], [TOC], [code]). I then go through the editor online and search for "[" and resolve them one-by-one.

    - Gough

  • in reply to Gough Lui

    Hi Gough,

    That's very neat, I didn't know this was possible. That could save a lot of time!!

  • in reply to shabaz

    I use all of these methods, but I often compose the original in Notepad just so I don't need to strip formatting. Sometimes I use a separate editor because I want to retain some formatting, especially inter-line spacing and less spacing between headers and text when copying to the blog.

  • in reply to dougw

    I do that sometimes too. Another thing I forgot to mention is that I stick project notes into the same Word docs often (just at the end, and don't paste them into the final blog) such as things that didn't work, or paragraphs of text that were deleted, or text that might make a different blog, or console debug and so on! Often I have a separate project folder for files too, but a single file helps me. Some people use OneNote etc.

    From time to time I don't get around to completing a blog and the Word docs help me complete things at a later date. Although sadly some may never be completed. I'm on my mobile and found one on my phone which isn't complete but since it was formatted and readable, I e-mailed this one to someone who needed the info.

    image

    Another couple of half complete blogs, but making time to pick these up again is hard. I'll hopefully get around to it but having said that, these two are 6 months old, and 3 years old respectively.

    image

    image