Lori M Olson 
FITS — Featured in the School 🎓
Well, this is a bittersweet moment. After 150 issues — and 5+ years — the DragonRuby Dispatch is coming to an end. As I mentioned last time, the production costs are no longer sustainable and I have been unable to acquire sponsorship for the newsletter to cover these costs.
I’d like to take this opportunity to thank our intrepid newsletter editor, Terence C. Gannon, who saved the newsletter early on by stepping in to become the editor. I could never have produced this newsletter on my own over the course of its run, and I am so grateful to have had Terry’s amazing help.
Other cost cutting measures will continue throughout the next year. The WNDX School will be migrating to a different platform, where it isn’t necessary to pay a yearly subscription fee. So the DragonRuby Game Toolkit tutorial, Getting Started with RubyMotion and other courses will remain available. If you have enrolled in any of the WNDX School courses, you will receive updates about this move as it happens.
One of the nagging things I’d like to finish up, is to bring the newsletter archives - dragonrubydispatch.com — up to date. I’ve paid that domain out for the next 5 years, so you’ll be able to reference those in the near term at least.
This does not have to mean goodbye — at least not completely. The Tales from the Dragon newsletter with my stories and opinions about software development and mobile applications will carry on with my solo writing/editing efforts. Since I’ve been informed by quite a few of you that you look forward to our HAHA joke feature in each issue, I promise I’ll be adding those to the Tales as well.
If you opted out of Tales from the Dragon, but you’d like to give it another try, just mash this button and I’ll see you in your inbox next week and every other week thereafter.
APP — All Things App📱
We have both railed against and marvelled at where AI 🤖 is being applied and like the creepy Bryant said in Bladerunner (the good one): “talk about beauty and the beast — she’s both”. This obscure cinematic reference notwithstanding something crossed our desk recently which was mind-blowing — specifically Uizard — which is an app prototype creation tool/service. Much like MarvelApp that we used and loved, except Uizard can generate your entire prototype from just a textual description of 300 characters or less. We tried it out and it was pretty wild. Definitely take a look.
TALK — Talk of the Tech 🗣️
While it has been pretty quiet on the Slack front recently, we have one last item from the Discord which will be of interest. It’s a pretty little demo you should really check out. In particular we like the varying perspective from near-to-far which gives us the feeling were almost looking at something 3D. Well done!
GAME — All Things Gaming 🕹️
There really can never be too many tutorials. In fact, the real problem is sorting through all of those which are available and picking the right one. To help with that there is nothing like a personal recommedation such as this for the tutorials of Pedro Medeiros.
SPOT — Spotlight On 🔦
It’s the 21st century equivalent of building a treehouse with your kids: working on a video game with them, which is what science fiction writer Vidar Hokstad (of Galaxy Bound fame) did recently. These were the stories we always loved to hear about so here’s one last kick at that can.
TWIL — This Week [We] Learned 🤓
From the excellent Code, Content, and Career blog with Brian P. Hogan we learned about [set VISUAL](https://trello.com/1/cards/659a3ac72285bb263173bbcc/attachments/659a3ac89a2a9c5868cd2163/download/image.png). Well worth your time to take a look.
HAHA — And They All Laughed (or Cried) 🎭
FIN — The Finish Line 🏁
One last thing before we sign off: are you on Bluesky? If so, consider liking and pinning the BluRuby 💎 Custom Feed. This is where the former DRD editors will be attempting to emulate at least some of what DragonRuby Dispatch delivered over the course of its run. It has editorial ‘humans-in-the-loop’ with the objective of maintaining a high signal-to-noise ratio. While the content on BluRuby is fairly limited — for the time being — we hope to build a team of Trusted Contributors. Lori has promised to post — as will we — and we hope you’ll consider doing so, too. With your help, we’ll keep the BluRuby feed brimming with Ruby, RubyMotion and DRGTK stories.
It’s been a slice folks. We’ve enjoyed every second of bringing you the DragonRuby Dispatch all this time and we’re going to miss it terribly.
To Lori, our heartfelt thanks for letting us ‘run with it!’ and steadfastly supporting our efforts. We hope that we will all cross paths again at some point down the road at a happier moment in all of our lives.
Follow the WNDX School on Facebook. Also, don’t forget to follow WNDXLori on Mastodon and Instagram.
“There is no real ending. It’s just the place where you stop the story.” — Frank Herbert