Lori M Olson OPED — Lori’s Unvarnished Opinion
While the joke pictured above is funny, the underlying concept is so not funny. Never work for ‘free’:
- Not as an Intern The work interns do is valuable. The novice point of view is valuable. You should expect to be paid as one, and expect to pay for interns when you get to the stage of hiring them.
- Not for ‘Exposure’ Your work should always benefit you, first. Don't do work for someone who will benefit monetarily from your work, while you are expected to be happy with something as elusive as ‘exposure’.
- Not for ‘Open Source’ If you have the time and energy, you can and should donate your efforts back to the community, because you have benefitted from others' work. And if your employer is benefitting from open source, they should be paying you to work on it. But definitely not working all the free hours of your weekends and evenings because—ra, ra—open source.
Your work and your time are equally valuable. Treat them as such.
FITS — Featured in the School
One of the unfunny facts of creating content for technical subjects like programming is the need to regularly check and update to make certain everything still works. Because change is the only constant in our field, and every iOS update has the potential to change or break anything—and potentially everything.
So I have an offer for anyone who reads and enjoys my newsletter, and might be either un- or under-employed at the moment. I have ridiculous numbers of tutorials with accompanying code that need to be reviewed and updated.
If you have the time and inclination, reach out to me and I can set you up with an all access pass to the WNDX School RubyMotion content. As you learn all about RubyMotion, I will pay you for your efforts, when you can confirm each particular tutorial and its accompanying example code is still working, and also for time spent fixing problems you found.
If that sounds interesting to you, just hit reply and let me know, and we’ll get it set up!
TALK — Talk of the Tech
We have a couple of items for you from one of the two major DragonRuby/RubyMotion chat spaces, in this case Discord:
- Fade In/Out Sound Effects — George Lucas (yes, that George Lucas) is famously to have said that “sound is half the picture...“ We couldn't agree more. But good sound design dictates that not all sounds are created equal, and they shouldn't all be at the same volume all the time. That's why getting some control over [sound fade in and fade outs](https://discord.com/channels/608064116111966245/674410581326823446/1008482645698695178) caught our eye.
- Upcoming Price Increase — In these days of ‘runaway’ inflation (does anybody remember the late 1970s and early 1980s?) the only good kind of price increase is the price increase you know about well in advance so you can act before it does. So it is with a DragonRuby Pro license in the near future. [You've been warned](https://discord.com/channels/608064116111966245/815289039338340414/1009077283614629948).
And by the way, if you’re not already aware, the other chat space is Slack.
SPOT — Spotlight On…
The recently completed LowRezJam 2022 attracted some interesting entries. Here are four contributions from those at least some of whom who will be very familiar to readers of DRD: Akzidenz, Amir Rajan, Ferociousfeind and Kevin Fischer respectively. Click any of the following to take a look at the work product of the talented we walk amongst.
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TWIL — This Week I Learned…
What does the catastrophic failure of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, the effect of Mary Hart’s voice on Kramer and Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation have in common? Give up? They all illustrate the potential destructive power of resonant frequencies. We were familiar with the first two examples, but candidly the effect of Janet’s (“Miss Jackson, if you’re nasty”) 1989 megahit, that was a new one for us. It’s all carefully explained in this Microsoft blog post. Spoiler alert: that old laptop catching fire 🔥 every time it plays is no coincidence.
GAME — All Things Gaming
We have featured items from LittleBOxes (the “French Indie Gamedev in gestation”) in the past, and it seems that they always manage to come up with something interesting. This time it’s a lighting system. Finally, the spotlight all of us richly deserve.
APP — All Things App
One of the recurring themes of DRD is the hunt for interesting and original ideas for apps: which tend to ruminate on all the good concepts having already been taken. To which we say, with respect, what a lot of balderdash and poppycock. Here’s a great story from a coder we know from CodeYQL. His idea for an app (and it’s a great idea) came from simply reading a book. In this case, Storyworthy by Matthew Dicks. Betcha didn’t think there was an app in that, right? Turns out there is! Here’s a six tweet thread from Chris Rabl which explains.
HAHA — And They All Laughed
Here’s almost the ultimate in dev insider humour—funny (actually, hilarious) if you understand mocking objects used in testing:
And if don’t understand mocking objects used in testing, well, we’ll keep that little secret just between us.
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“If you don’t value your time, neither will others. Stop giving away your time and talents—start charging for it.” — Kim Garst