Student Krzystof and his experience in Google Code-in 2018 - Liquid Galaxy project community site

Student Krzystof and his experience in Google Code-in 2018

Notice about minors permission: Students have written those posts and sent the photos, 


and give permission to us to publish them. Still they are anonymous in the sense that we do not publish their authentic names, but his nicknames on the contest.

Krzysztof


My GCI 2018 Experience with Liquid Galaxy

First Impression
My first impression with Liquid Galaxy was really great, the first task I’ve done was quite challenging but fun! I had to create script that will show time-lapse of preferred city using NASA Earth API (https://codein.withgoogle.com/dashboard/task-instances/6414764872826880/). I love programming, so this task was perfect for me.

Tasks
Tasks were nicely balanced, from easy to challenging ones. But one thing connected all of them. The Creativity. You had to be either creative and have good research skills, because none of them was telling exactly what you have to do in order to complete them. Therefore I managed to complete 30+ tasks! To compare, in past year, I completed only 4.

It has huge plus from me, I don’t like tasks like: “Follow instructions and send us the result”. The only thing that was a bit confusing was tasks naming. I mean, I like the idea of top ten task or hardest task, but it is starting to be confusing if there is more, like “super top ten task”, “top ten task, winner one” etc. This is a small thing, and this is my personal opinion :)

Example Tasks
Now I’ll talk about some of the example tasks I’ve done, easy and more demanding ones.

Point of Interest set
Shortened description: Capture coordinates of interesting places from Google Earth and save them to special format.

This task I consider as easy, but time consuming. Because capturing POIs are easy, but again, you have to capture them quite a lot. In my case, for this task, it was 50.
Write SQL Queries
Shortened description: Create 3 tables (“Countries”, “Touristic Places”, “Points of Intrests data”) insert values to them and write 5 non Simple Queries.

This task was easy/medium for me. Because I used SQL maybe once in my life, and it took me a while to understand the syntax.

TOP TEN TASK: Create a handy manual series (4): Using the Liquid Galaxy (admins version)
Shortened description: Do a huge research, and create manual for admin of a Liquid Galaxy. Page has to be at least 10 pages long.

This task was strong medium. It required a lot of research, and it was extremely time consuming. It took me 2 days to complete it.

TOP TEN TASK: Make a Docker Container Image of LG
Shortened description: Create docker container image with installation of all requirements to run Liquid Galaxy.

This task was hard for me. I have never used Docker before, and I didn’t know how it works. So I had to research how to make Container Images, how they are working etc. And then create it for Liquid Galaxy. It took me a while, but I completed it.
TOP TEN TASK: install Peruse-A-Rue on Liquid Galaxy
Description: Install https://github.com/LiquidGalaxy/lg-peruse-a-rue app. You'll need a minimum 3 pcs LG installation.
It doesn’t sound that hard? doesn’t it? Well, following the guide surely wasn’t. But it was one part of task, then, I had to figure out why it doesn’t work, and It wasn’t included in guide. So I consider this task as hard.

2ND HARDEST TASK, but maybe the 1st most noticeable to win
Shortened description: Try to run multiples screens of the Google Art project.
It was definitely one of the hardest tasks. It still took me only about 2 hours to complete it, but It wouldn’t be possible if I didn’t complete Peruse-A-Rue task.
I had to think how to implement it, proof that my method will work and if successful, send video showing it working.





Community and Mentors
Mentors were really great and kind. I don’t have any objections to them :)

Community was surprisingly helpful. I mean, it was competition, everyone was fighting for a grand prize, but still, they were helpful if someone had a problem with a task. But most importantly, community was kind and nice to each other.

Conclusion
Tasks were greatly balanced, community was kind and helpful and mentors were great. What want more?

Google Code-in 2018 was one of the greatest competitions I’ve taken part in, working with Liquid Galaxy was super fun. And I am glad that I managed to choose Liquid Galaxy as organization to work with. I can highly recommend Liquid Galaxy for future students! :D







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