Issue 34

28 August 2019

by Lori M Olson

Couple of things I wanted to mention today, as I don’t have anything deep to offer ;-)

First up, if you are a RubyMine user, the RubyMotion plugin is broken in the 2019.2 release (thus far, 2019.2 and 2019.2.1). The problem has apparently been fixed for 2019.3, but that release is a ways out yet. The good news is that the fix has been back-ported to 2019.2.2, so when that bug fix release is pushed out, you can upgrade safely, but until then, stick with 2019.1. And if you’re like… man, all these versions are a pain… you should download and use JetBrains Toolbox to manage your JetBrains tools!

Second thing is a reminder. Being kind costs us nothing at all, and can mean so much. – wndxlori

#COMM—Community

Have you ever wanted to look over the shoulder of an experienced dev as they work their way through a particularly troublesome bug and have them patiently explain their thought process as they do? In real life that doesn’t happen very often—if ever. The next best thing, though, just might be a recent post by Sean Heber to The Breakroom—that’s the iconfactory’s blog which is where Sean is apparently a member of their Twitteriffic dev team.

In any event, in The Curious Case of the Core Data Crash, Sean meticulously but still readably goes through a particularly tricky bug diagnosis triggered by scores of cryptic Twitteriffic Core Data crash reports. He also talks about his use of Apple’s TestFlight to aid in the diagnosis. The rest of the story is best left to Sean, who tells it well. Check it out when you have a couple of minutes to spare.

#AHOTW—App Highlight of the Week

“Meet you at ///troubles.track.herb at 21.30” is the only thing the Airbnb host said in their text. But if you’re in-the-know and/or one of the cool kids, you actually have enough information to navigate to within a few feet of the front door of that super-secret, really-hard-to-find loft weekend rental. That, plus the time you need to be there.

OK, so what the hell are we talking about? It was one of those face-palming, eye-rolling, “why didn’t we think of that!” moments when we read about the what3words app in What3words: The app that can save your life courtesy of The Beeb. Yeah, we know, that sounds a bit rich, but if you read the article you can kind of understand what they mean. Just read it. You’ll thank us later.

Thanks to HashashinTag for emerging from the Batcave (which is to say ///tunes.gosh.jumps) ever so briefly and tweeting our attention to this.

#DRGTK—DragonRuby Game Toolkit

Ever lament the lack of Ruby-like callbacks in DragonRuby? Just in case you have, there are a couple of tweets from Dublin, Ireland-based Jay-Ar Polidario which will in turn direct you to a couple of Github repos which will scratch that itch. In the dragonruby_callbacks tweet, Jay-Ar points you to his first kick at the can. Then, just a few days later, he tweeted out super_callbacks which “allows before and after” callbacks to [be added] to any Class”.

Thank you, Jay-Ar. And thank you again!

#FITS—Featured in the School

WNDXlori is nose-down-arse-up working on the native app wrapper for a Rails app. Just a reminder that you can still join her for a ‘behind the scenes’ view of this work which will soon become a new course for the WNDX School. You’ll receive many of the benefits of the future course—you might even influence its direction—and it will all be for free. BUT…you need to let us know as soon as possible—hit reply and tell us you want to be added to the mailing list. Also, the first email was already sent. If you didn’t get it, hit reply so we can make sure you don’t miss anything.

#DRSH—Dragon Riders Slack Highlights

Here’s an item which lept off the Dragon Riders Slack this past week: how to disable that annoying capture behaviour when you “hold the flower key and an area your mouse is over goes red” as calicoday succinctly stated. Did you know that behaviour can be disabled, if you so choose? In not, you’ll want to check out this thread. Nine responses and counting so it’s pretty much all in there.

Not a member of the Dragon Riders yet? This is the kind of thing you’ve been missing.

#GOTW—Gem of the Week

The recurring theme this week is quick, effective fixes for things that seem to bug us all, and our #GOTW this week is no exception. In this case, do you suffer from MVC syndrome? No, it’s not the latest attempt by big pharma to sell us a drug for a disease we didn’t know we had but rather Massive View Controller syndrome, which comes with the symptoms of the Controller simply having to do too much. Matt Green has the drug you didn’t know you needed and its called Elevate. What’s more, no known side effects!

#TWIL—This Week I Learned

In the #AHOTW in this edition, a clever fix is provided for humans trying to quickly, effectively and accurately converse about something really abstract (you’ll have to check out #AHOTW to find out exactly what, though). It made us think about other situations where lack of succinct terminology can make human conversation difficult. For instance, ever tried to talk about hex code and gotten tongue tied starting at 1A. A long, long time ago—1968 to be precise—somebody came up with cute words for 1A through FF. To be honest, we’re not sure it’s still all that practical, but we found it interesting nonetheless.

Thanks to Liz Henry for bringing this crusty nugget to our attention.

That’s a Wrap!

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Until next time…maybe we’ll see you at ///jams.apply.haven or ///crest.gossip.judges

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