Eric J Ma's Website

I've been playing a ton with GitHub pages recently, and so far, I've been impressed! My main use case has been in creating places where I can host Reveal.js slides online, and showcasing some writing that I've put together that doesn't fit in my "blog" format. My GitHub page showcases some of the best.

Along the way, I've learned a ton. Here's some of the highlights.

Firstly, I learned about standardizing project templates using cookiecutter, a Python package available on conda-forge and the cheese shop (PyPI). Initially, I tried hacking my own cookiecutter-ish hodge-podge of scripts, particularly for downloading the necessary components for Reveal.js, but that didn't really work out, and I was eventually confused by my own logic. cookiecutter eliminated all of the confusion, and was really easy to operate.

Secondly, because I was able to nail down a template for building Reveal.js slides, I managed to convert two of my previous talks (a Journal Club on the Earth's virome, and the other my Big Data Boston meetup talk, which were written in Markdown and converted to PDF, into Reveal.js versions. I dug a bit into the SASS toolchain, and found that Reveal.js used SCSS files that were then compiled to CSS, and made a few minor tweaks that standardized the font sizing to something more in-line with my tastes. I also used the GitHub pages to host an "HTML notes" copy of the slides that the audience can use to follow along.

Thirdly, in the process of building the HTML notes, I created a CSS style that I ended up liking quite a lot, and it formed the basis of all of the pages that I ended up creating. The learning journey picking up the CSS specification was quite enjoyable, as things showed an immediate, one-to-one mapping between code and placement on the HTML canvas. This type of 'immediate', closed-loop feedback is important for learning stuff. When I had to go offline, thankfully there was DevDocs where I could look up all of the styling options available to different types of HTML.

All in all, quite a fun experience! I have also put up my cookiecutter templates for talks and writing on GitHub, alongside a tutorial for the slides, with the hope that it's useful for others!