Issue 100

Lori M Olson Lori M Olson Follow Dec 12, 2021 · 6 mins read
Share this
DRD097: [TBD]

(image: Jake Weirick via Unsplash)

OPED — Lori’s Unvarnished Opinion

2021 in Review

It’s been a bit of a wild ride in 2021. Despite continuing issues and eye surgeries, we not only reached 1000 subscribers, but blew past that goal to over 1250.

We could not publish this newsletter without this community, our readers and your contributions. If you make something interesting, see something interesting, please DO send it our way. Msg @wndxlori in the Motioneers Slack or DRGTK Discord or on Twitter, or just hit reply on one of these newsletters!

Check out this summary of some of the stories YOU the readers found most interesting this past year.

‘Til next issue, be careful out there.

  1. "This week I decided to use the OPED and introduce you to a Mac app. Actually it’s a Safari plug-in, called [Hush by Joel Arvidsson](https://oblador.github.io/hush/?utm=dragonrubydispatch.com). I don’t know how many of you use Safari, but it’s been my go-to browser on the Mac forever. Sure, I use Firefox for the cool dev tools, and Chrome when I absolutely have to, but…" [(read more from #OPED in No. 77)](https://dragonrubydispatch.com/2021/02/03/Issue-77.html#oped--our-unvarnished-opinion)
  2. "I read [this tweet [by Eric Farkas]](https://twitter.com/ericfarkas/status/1347587654771208195?utm=dragonrubydispatch.com) a few weeks ago, and thought, but that’s not what ‘heads down’ means. To this person, ‘heads down’ was a phrase that triggered an association to another phrase: ‘grind’. As in ‘nose to the grindstone’. And I can see that connection being made. But I have to disagree, because that’s not what ‘heads down’ means to me..." [(read more from #OPED in No. 78)](https://dragonrubydispatch.com/2021/02/17/Issue-78.html#oped--our-unvarnished-opinion)
  3. "Did you know BuzzFeed was founded on a single, simple idea: curated lists of things of one sort or another...there’s obviously no denying the eternal appeal of the list, so here’s one more: [Top Games Made with DragonRuby GTK](https://itch.io/games/made-with-dragonruby-gtk?utm=dragonrubydispatch.com)..." [(read more from #GAME in No. 79)](https://dragonrubydispatch.com/2021/03/03/Issue-79.html#game--all-things-gaming)
  4. "I saw [this tweet from Nick Lockwood](https://twitter.com/nicklockwood/status/1371949219775459342?utm=dragonrubydispatch.com) and suddenly I was plunged back 15 years. Java. I was working with Java. I’d been working with Java for over eight years, from the very early days of AWT apps embedded in the web, through the Swing desktop apps, and then back to web development with Servlets and Tomcat..." [(read more from #OPED in No. 81)](https://dragonrubydispatch.com/2021/03/31/Issue-81.html#oped--our-unvarnished-opinion)
  5. "Our friend Amir and the gang over at RubyMotion are having a non-stop, 24 hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week [DRGTK RELEASE-A-PALOOZA](https://motioneers.slack.com/archives/C055RDLS0/p1618256940053100?utm=dragonrubydispatch.com). In what seemed like an incredibly short period there was discussion on Discord of no less than three: 2.1, 2.8 and 2.9..." [(read more from #TALK in No. 78)](https://dragonrubydispatch.com/2021/04/14/Issue-82.html#talk--talk-of-the-tech)
Tech newsletter content crunch? Intellog can help. And they have a special offer for DRD subscribers: they will curate and write the first issue of your newsletter for free. Find out more.  Sponsored
  1. "Amir Rajan has contributed [a great geometry library](https://github.com/DragonRuby/dragonruby-game-toolkit-contrib/blob/master/dragon/geometry.rb?utm=dragonrubydispatch.com) to the DragonRuby Game Toolkit. Clearly making a good thing that much better...." [(read more from #SPOT in No. 83)](https://dragonrubydispatch.com/2021/04/28/Issue-83.html#spot--spotlight-on)
  2. "So I stumbled across this blog a few weeks ago and was reading about [Comment Driven Development (CDD)](https://www.rubysteps.com/hop-off-the-tutorial-treadmill-with-comment-driven-development?utm=dragonrubydispatch.com). It was like a blast from the past. Not because in the past I used CDD, I mean, I do CDD all the time. It’s a super useful way of sort of ‘thinking out loud’, and getting the ideas out of your head..." [(read more from #OPED in No. 84)](https://dragonrubydispatch.com/2021/05/12/Issue-84.html#oped--our-unvarnished-opinion)
  3. "Do you make money from your apps? Amir answers that eternal burning question in a [recent tweet](https://twitter.com/amirrajan/status/1374480231940067328?utm=dragonrubydispatch.com)..." [(read more from #HAHA in No. 85)](https://dragonrubydispatch.com/2021/05/26/Issue-85.html#haha--and-they-all-laughed)
  4. "It occurs to us that we announce game jams quite often but, less often, do we report back on how it went. So we thought that now the [DragonRuby Classics Jam: Gauntlet Edition](https://itch.io/jam/dragonruby-classics-jam-gauntlet-edition?utm=dragonrubydispatch.com) is complete..." [(read more #GAME in No. 87)](https://dragonrubydispatch.com/2021/06/23/Issue-87.html#game--all-things-gaming)
  5. "For us, it’s still a bit of a head-scratcher that there is such fascination with the low-res, monochromatic, 1980s style games but heck, what do we know? Not much, apparently. Take, for example, [Facemaker](https://twitter.com/hollygramazio/status/1399186622571106304) which even we have to admit is kind of cute..." [(read more from #GAME in No. 89)](https://dragonrubydispatch.com/2021/07/21/Issue-89.html#game--all-things-gaming)
Do you have a DragonRuby-related product or service you would like to get in front of well over 1,200 raving DragonRuby-istas? If so, please get in touch...we would love to help you get the word out in a sponsored spot like this!  Sponsored
  1. "What’s Cassidy Williams doing when she’s not busy directing developer experience for Netlify? Making funny little videos: this one riffs on the apocryphal stat that [two-out-of-three-developers](https://twitter.com/cassidoo/status/1379536155599835137) don’t know what the hell they’re doing..." [(read more from #HAHA in No. 90)](https://dragonrubydispatch.com/2021/08/04/Issue-90.html#haha--and-they-all-laughed)
  2. "We’re always intrigued to see a new DragonRuby game appear on the scene, as was the case recently with the cleverly-named [Hexagone](https://czolzen.itch.io/hexagone). While the instructions are a little terse..." [(read more #GAME in No. 91)](https://dragonrubydispatch.com/2021/08/18/Issue-91.html#game--all-things-gaming)
  3. "What makes this [seriously hysterical](https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/405783/why-does-man-print-gimme-gimme-gimme-at-0030/405874#405874) is the absolute earnestness of the conversation’s participants until somebody has to explain the humour..." [(read more from #HAHA in No. 92)](https://dragonrubydispatch.com/2021/09/01/Issue-92.html#haha--and-they-all-laughed)
  4. "It pinwheeled into a smoking hole in the ground from which we emerged—code monkeys risen from the ashes. Seriously, the clear-eyed insight in this one, [ten word tweet from Freya Holmér](https://twitter.com/FreyaHolmer/status/1436696408506212353) is startling, to say the least..." [(read more from #TALK in No. 93)](https://dragonrubydispatch.com/2021/09/15/Issue-93.html#talk--talk-of-the-tech)
  5. "Which brings us to Freya Holmér’s video series which should really be called Math for Game Devs. Not only does Freya make it ridiculously easy to understand, [her use of animated graphics](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7M-Wz4zK8oikt6ATcoTwBA) makes the math exquisitely beautiful..." [(read more from #GAME in No. 97)](https://dragonrubydispatch.com/2021/11/10/Issue-97.html#game--all-things-gaming)
  6. "Particularly when you relate it to the amount of work involved, which is drastically reduced as a consequence of using [dr_raycaster from Sojastar](https://github.com/sojastar/dr_raycaster). And certainly it’s a really good way of getting your feet wet in the world of 3D animation..." [(read more from #SPOT in No. 98)](https://dragonrubydispatch.com/2021/11/24/Issue-98.html#spot--spotlight-on)

That’s a Wrap!

The world’s best DragonRuby newsletter can be delivered to you—”at least it will be if you subscribe! Follow the WNDX School on Facebook, and don’t forget to follow WNDXLori on Twitter and Instagram.

If you enjoyed this issue of the DragonRuby Dispatch, please forward to a friend and ask them to subscribe, too…we really appreciate it!

“A review of studies by physicians found that excessive exercise is bad for your heart. Another study says a daily serving of chocolate is actually good for your heart. That’s got to make next year New Year’s resolutions easier to keep. I’m going to exercise less. Eat a little more chocolate.” — Jay Leno

Issue 99
Issue 101