Lori M Olson #OPED — Our Unvarnished Opinion
I have to confess, it’s been hard these last few weeks to come up with the OPED. On Tuesday evenings, when I would normally write this stuff, I’ve been teaching intro programming classes at the local tech incubator. Fun, but exhausting. Also, interesting crowd. There’s everyone from housewives, to marketing people, restaurateurs, and even graduate students in the class. Just goes to show, you shouldn’t make assumptions about audiences. I mean, check out this amazing 83 year old Skyrim gamer! I’m pretty sure she wasn’t one of the user avatars Bethesda Game Studios was thinking of when they created Elder Scrolls V.
#COMM — Community
We have a couple of great items in #COMM this week: first, we’ve noticed that anything with a standardized visual format creates an opportunity to use a modern mobile device’s scanning capabilities to do something really useful. Think about the way you add payment methods to Apple Pay: just scan the card you want to add and it does the rest. Along those same lines, y’know those black and white nutrition labels on virtually every packaged food? The FoodNoms app lets you scan them and turn them into useful data! So, based on that idea, what similar opportunities are out there?!
Also, for our second item, remember the good old days when you could send your app’s users to any Settings page with a simple URL? We wept a giant tear when that went way. Then, just recently we wept another when Apple brought that back. Yep, Federico Viticci explains in a recent tweet. These are super useful, no matter the language you are using.
#DRGTK — DragonRuby Game Toolkit
One of really important tasks in game development is creating authentic environments in which to play. Attention to detail is key but doing it right is very labour-intensive. Good news, because Andrew Havens draws our attention to this great room editor which includes a handy sample app. The even better news? It’s all written in our favourite development platform: DragonRuby. Thanks for letting us know about this Andrew.
#FITS — Featured in the School
For our faithful readers only we have a great discount on the RubyMotion Jumpstart—no less than a whopping 50% off for our October Newsletter discount. Hell, we’re practically paying you to take the course. All you need to do is provide the code OCT19JUMP50 at checkout. Oh right, and if friends and family want to get that discount they will have to…well, actually, do nothing. Just forward them this email with the code and get registerin’.
#DRSH — Dragon Riders Slack Highlights
Our friend Amir over on the Dragon Riders Slack lets us know he has updated the templates so that they auto-include all the dependent frameworks for AVFoundation. Simply run motion repo for the update. This is a huge time/worry saver—thanks, Amir, we really appreciate it.
#ANDROID — Nothin’ but…
It’s really positive when something comes along which helps out those who may not always be able to jump on the latest trend or technology. The Conceal crypto package for Android does exactly that. It’s specifically targeted at older Android devices with their much more constrained resources. You may want the latest gadget, but you won’t need it—at least not for this. But go get that latest gadget, anyway. Your secret is safe with us.
#GOTW — Gem of the Week
We’re starting a multi-week series covering the product with our favourite name ever—BubbleWrap. Who doesn’t love this stuff? In any event, BubbleWrap is such an über-gem, it’s worthy of extended coverage which starts with reactor. It’s an (almost!) complete implementation of the EventMachine.
Please note that BubbleWrap is one of the gems that moved under the RubyMotion Community umbrella, so it will be getting some of the care and attention it deserves. If you have reported an issue (or better, submitted a PR) in the past for BW that has not been addressed, please do followup now, so we can prioritize the work to the stuff that matters.
#TWIL — This Week I Learned
In last week’s #RMW we covered the free, sort-of-hidden screen recorder in your iPhone. We’re continuing with that trend with a free screenshot tool which is built into Firefox. Jen Simmons found this and we are forever in her debt for this neat tip.
That’s a Wrap!
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Actually, it seems like it’s already here in every way but on the calendar.