Issue 30

31 July 2019

by Lori M Olson

I’m going to start working on creating a couple of wrapper apps (iOS & Android) for a Rails application that I have built for a client. Eventually, the creation of these apps will be turned into an new course in the school. If you have any interest in this process, hit reply and let me know, and I’ll add you to my “behind the scenes” list, where I’ll be posting updates of the play-by-play as these apps are created. – wndxlori
#FITS—Featured in the School ——————————

We finally have a winner and our congratulations go to Bryan Konowitz who correctly answered our quiz question. For those keeping score at home, the correct answer was Robert X. Cringley. Bryan takes home FREE enrolment in RubyMotion Testing In Depth. What’s that worth? Well, we think it’s priceless, of course.

If you have ever wanted an opportunity to meet WNDXLori in person and you happen to be in or around Edmonton, Alberta on August 10th, you are in luck! Lori will be leading a DragonRuby/RubyMotion Jumpstart as part of the YEGRB August Meetup. It gets going at 1.00 pm sharp and it will be graciously hosted by Startup Edmonton at their HQ. That’s in the beautiful old Mercer Warehouse located at 10359 104th St. in downtown Edmonton.

Attendance is free but you will need to RSVP. You can do that from the Meetup’s page.

#DRGTK—DragonRuby Game Toolkit

Jack Oatley is once again hosting LowRezJam on itch.io. It runs from August 1st through August 17th. To support the event DragonRuby is providing—get this!—an entirely FREE license for the Game Jam edition of the DRGTK. Once you have downloaded it all you have to run the binary for Mac, Linux or Windows. Amir has even thoughtfully chosen to include a 64x64 sample app which will kickstart your LowRezJam efforts. Seem like a win-win: developers get a free license for the LowRezJam and DragonRuby gets a little exposure for the DRGTK.

Also, Leo Kiisi (AKA Goalaleo) brought up a very good point regarding his Finnish/Swedish keyboard layout. It has both the tilde and backtick characters behind modifier keys. As a result, he is not able to get the DRGTK console to open. This triggered a double-barrelled response from Amir who has both added it to the backlog and provided a workaround that should move things along for Leo until a more permanent fix can be delivered.

#MSH—Motioneers Slack Highlights

From the Motioneers Slack, this week, we have a couple of #RMW-worthy items:

First up, RubyMotion 6.2 has been released! This includes support for Xcode 10.3; 64 bit SDKs for the compilation of legacy apps; some internal updates to support the new Catalina Apple Watch chips as well a host of other updates. WNDXLori also provided some tips to make upgrading even simpler.

As is often the case with upgrades, there were some minor gotchas which surfaced. In particular, Andrew Havens was having trouble with the CoreSimulatorService. You many want to check out the entire chatty thread on the subject or, for the severely time constrained, you can jump right to Amir’s recommendation to reinstall the simulators.

This is just one more illustration of the benefit of being a member of the Motioneers Slack team. Become a member today if you haven’t already and join in the conversation.

#GOTW—Gem of the Week

It seems like more often than not here in the #RMW we have an opportunity to feature posts from Martin Kolb and this week is no exception. He has implemented a ‘notarize’ task in the OSX template based on a repurposed custom build script. The fruits of his labours can be found on his page on GitHub.

#COMM—Community

Don’t you love it when a problem almost solves itself? We do. There was a tweet this week from Paul Haddad where he said “[y]ou can no longer open DMGs if they aren’t notarized, even if the app within it is.” We love the fact he refers to it as a “nanny feature” which seems to describe the situation perfectly. That said, there is a subsequent tweetversation where the issue is further explored.

With all the badmouthing that Twitter gets these days, there are still good examples of it facilitating tightly focused conversations which are really helpful. We only wish there were more of them as opposed to the usual two polar opposite points-of-view shouting insults past each other. Sigh.

#AHOTW—App Highlight of the Week

Just so you know we would likely have featured this A as #AHOTW on the strength of the name alone: Flying Sheep Hunt. It’s by Jason Magee of Granite Games which is based on the lovely isle of Guernsey. This is the place where apparently the sheep, in addition to being wool on the outside and mutton on this inside, also FLY. We’re booking our ticket now so we can see this for ourselves.

All kidding aside, though, we love this simple little shooter game built with DragonRuby. Thanks for that, Jason.

#TWIL—This Week I Learned

This is one of those ‘holy crap’ #TWILs you really have to see for yourself to believe. It’s from Leigh-Ann Friedel and you really aren’t going to believe your eyes.

By way of example, do you find cryptocurrencies utterly baffling? We do, and to be honest, the Wikipedia entry (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptocurrency) is kind of over our heads as well. TL;DR territory for sure. What we want is a simple explanation. Problem solved. Turns out you can get that from Wikipedia, too, simply by substituting the word simple for the language. Thusly, our example for a simple explanation of cryptocurrencies, you would use https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptocurrency. Try it out for yourself. We know. Holy crap.

Besides, that’s probably all you were going to read of that long one anyway. Thanks for this, Leigh-Ann!

That’s a Wrap!

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Until next time, may all the explanations be simple.

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