Lori M Olson 
OPED — Lori’s Unvarnished Opinion
Highly respected Agile practitioner Ron Jeffries recently wrote a new piece entitled Should? No. Wish</em>. I read his article a few weeks ago, and it really hit home for me. As I continue to move a little farther away from ‘doing’ and dig deeper into ‘teaching/mentoring’, I have similar pondering.
Over my development career of 35 years, I have seen many different technologies come and go. I have seen many different techniques be introduced, used, abused and discarded. I have learned, and I am still learning. I teach, but I still learn when teaching others.
I have figured out what works for me, what works for my clients and what works for my students. Is any of this perfect? Far from it. Is any of this the ‘one true way’ for people to develop mobile apps/games? Ha! Absolutely not. But there are some universal truths in what I teach.
So should my students be doing exactly what I teach in 6 Pack Apps for example? I think their lives as app creators would be much improved if they did. But, like Ron, I don’t think they should. I just wish they would.
FITS — Featured in the School
This is a bit of a long video, courtesy of the DerbyBeardo. But fascinating. I wonder if the CHORDMACHINE could be re-created as an app? This is your reminder that ideas for apps can come from anywhere, but the WNDX School is where you learn to create and launch successful apps. Ask me how.
TALK — Talk of the Tech
The two main DragonRuby/DRGTK chat spaces are never short of time and money saving tips, tricks and traps:
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An Inexpensive Entrée to Nintendo Switch — On Discord, Amir recently reported that the Retroid Pocket 3 should be all you need to at least get the work started releasing your game to the Switch.
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Important Reminder Regarding Ruby Versions — On Slack, Bruce Montegani asked what version of Ruby can be used with RubyMotion. The answer is (and is not) V1.9, but there’s a bit more to the story than that.
SPOT — Spotlight On…
Did you know there is a ‘fun size’ version of the RubyConf called RubyConf Mini? Us neither. It’s coming up on November 15-17 in Providence, Rhode Island. What alerted us was a recent addition to the program: Cameron Gose’s workshop From Start to Published, Create a Game with Ruby! which is further described as “ever wanted to create your own game with DragonRuby? This workshop will show you how!”
Now, we don’t want to discourage anybody from going to lovely Rhode Island, but in the event you’re not going to be able to get there, there is just a chance you’ll still be able to partake in Cam’s course. What do we mean, exactly? Well, for that, you’ll just have to keep reading DRD!
GAME — All Things Gaming
Have you found yourself wondering if there was a better pattern for handling input actions using args.inputs directly? There is according to Kevin Fischer-Okarin.
APP — All Things App
</a>If you spent a lot of time at home during you-know-what, you may have gotten used to the household kitty making mischief as you were trying to get work done. Well if you’re back in the office now, you may be dealing with separation anxiety. Yours, that is—the cat is just glad to have you out of the house. But help is near at hand, you can add an animated kitty cat (or puppy or whatever) to the Dynamic Island on the iPhone 14 Pro.
TWIL — This Week I Learned…
Did you think ASCII art was ancient—y’know from, like, the 1970s or something. Well, according to Giles Booth, it turns out it’s a lot older than that.
HAHA — And They All Laughed
Want your JIRA tickets to actually get read instead of getting shoved into the ‘I really ought to take a look at that’ pile? While you may not be able to live with yourself if you do, try taking a page out of the clickbait 🎣 playbook. (See what we did there?)
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“What do dogs do on their day off? Can’t lie around—that’s their job.” — George Carlin