Git Event

Tripti Wani who is a team member here at nsquared attended a learn to git event in the Microsoft Store in the Sydney CBD on the 27^th April.

She joined the Women Who Code Sydney for food and drinks (kindly provided by the Microsoft Azure  dev. team) followed by a hands-on workshop on the essentials of Git.

She started off for a dinner at the ChatThai in Westfield, where attendees caught up and the first timers were introduced and soon jumped into the conversations. Needless to say everyone hit it off.

The event then moved to the Pitt St Microsoft Store and for the next 2 and ½ hours, attendees experienced Git commands and how to use them in the terminal, and the use of applications like SourceTree and Git Extensions.

Attendees learnt how to:

• work with Git
• clone a repository 
• create a branch and with those
• commit changes  
• push changes
• merge origin masters
• merge back into master 
• resolve merge conflicts 
• push your changes to origin 

.. and just understand what all the above means…

All that attendees needed was a laptop, background knowledge of Git and that it's used for version control. But no programming experience was required.

Tripti thoroughly recommends anyone to come and attend the next event. It only takes a few hours of your time which goes by so fast, but you still seem to be so much in a relaxed social atmosphere.

For more information from the event click here

Here are some of Tripti's photos from the event:

  

Microsoft Surface Dial

          Microsoft  Surface Dial by Microsoft

This week Dr Neil Roodyn is in Beijing and Tokyo for the Microsoft Partner hack for Surface Dial.

The Surface Dial, is not to be confused with Pocket Dial, like with your phone. 

Surface Dial, which looks like a round grey block of Camembert, is a standalone device that works with Surface Studio, Surface Book and Surface 4. As it’s using Bluetooth, it should work with any device supporting it.

Surface Dial is simply charged by two AAA batteries, which under normal workday use, should last you for a year. Surface Dial really zings with the Surface Studio, as you can simply position it on the screen to access its functionality. On other devices, like Surface Book and Surface 4, it needs to be placed next to the device for off-screen functionality.The main smarts behind Surface Dial is to give users another device for their "other hand" to trigger added functionality, without using your mouse or touch screen access.

Some of its features include:

1.Press and hold for menu
2. Rotate freely/continuously
3. Click activates a switch
4. Dynamic tactile feedback in custom increments
5. Zoom in or out, change colours
6. On-screen detection (only for Surface Studio).

There is a growing list of apps that support the Surface Dial like Windows Maps, Spotify, OneNote, or Groove Music, as well as graphics programs. Not all apps listed are Store applications either. So check the list online. However support differs from app to app, so do your homework before you start.


For Now
It appears that the Surface Dial has been developed specifically for designers and photographers, so it won’t help you with writing content. The Dial loses some functionality when off-screen, which I’m sure they will work on. It will also take a bit of time getting used to, especially when placed on the screen and not next to it.

But isn’t that the same with all new innovations?


You can check out all the videos of Dr Neil explaining how to use the Surface Dial on Microsoft Channel 9 here


Here are some of Dr Neil's photos from this weeks Microsoft events