The creator of Ruby on Rails, David Heinemeier Hansson, or DHH as he is known in the Rails community, has started a new screencast series on his insights working on Basecamp with RoR. In his videos, he talks about his approaches using callbacks and globals for his projects. Be sure to subscribe to his channel to follow his updates.
YouTube :
Episode 1
Episode 2
Episode 3
Released back in May 2017, Farpoint, developed by Impulse Gear was one of the first VR first person shooter game on the PS VR to fully utilise the PS VR Aim Controller. While the initial reviews were mixed but one thing was clear, those who used the VR Aim Controller was totally blown by the experience. Read More
We often spend a lot of time planning for the perfect deployment process and rolling back strategies, but sometimes we forget that despite the best plans that we have, we still need to address urgent post deployment fixes when rolling back is not an option. Hotfixes may not always be due to critical bug fixes, they can also arise from last minute client commitments or regulatory requirements. I have observed several instances where we had to push back on these changes to the next release cycle resulting in unhappy clients simply because we do not have a process in place to handle hotfixes. You may ask then, why don’t we keep a Release Branch or Hotfix Branch in our development practice? The answer is not always that simple and obvious depending on your Agile practices and build process.
This morning iPrice released their white paper on the state of eCommerce in Southeast Asia based on the data that they’ve collected from their partners around the region. The statistics provided by these reports gives us some pretty interesting insights into consumer behaviour in the past year. Among some of the interesting facts presented by the iPrice team was that despite Vietnam having the highest conversion rate among Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and Philippines their payment method of choice was actually Cash on Delivery. This goes to show that sometimes eCommerce platforms are most successful when you cater to the needs of the consumer and the solution can be just as low tech.
I have been picking up React recently and came across a number of useful resources for new comers to the ReactJS/Redux world. In no particular order, here are some of the tutorials and guides which I find useful to get started. Most of screencasts here are free and self contained but there are also advanced tutorials which requires a paid subscription. Do go through each of the official documentation first to get a good idea of the concept and inspiration behind each of these great Javascript technologies. Looking forward to start my own series of React/Redux tutorial posts soon !
React
ReactJS Official
Ken Wheeler’s Learning React.js: Getting Started and Concepts
Redux
Redux.js Official
Redux Screencast
Getting Started with Redux by Dan Abramov Co Author of Redux
React Screencast
Start Learning React by Joe Maddalone
React in 7minutes by John Lindquist
Lodash Docs and Useful Cheatsheets
Lodash Official Docs
Lodash Cheat Sheet
The first rule about Git best practices that we always hear about is making lots and lots of commits frequently. While this is mostly true, we should also keep in mind that Git commits are also a form of code documentation and we should try our best to communicate the intent of our changes. So basically remember to commit frequent to save your work, but once you’re ready, spend a minute or two to share your brilliant code with the rest of your team by writing good commit messages.
Announced earlier this year, the Nintendo Labo has to be one of the quirkier and innovative accessory to be launched for the Nintendo Switch or for any console in recent times. Slated for release in April 2018, Nintendo Labo offers an initial 2 kits which contains a game cartridge, pre-made cardboard cut outs along with other construction tools to assemble a toy dubbed the ‘ToyCon’ that works alongside the JoyCon and Nintendo Switch display that provides an interactive building and learning experience for children. Read More
Doki Doki Literature Club! (DDLC) is a visual novel developed by Team Salvato for the PC platform and was later released on the Steam platform which had since shot to popularity with overwhelmingly positive reviews. To be honest, I’ve never been a fan of visual novels and only played one for a little more than five minutes just out of curiosity. Having said that, I’ve heard a lot of buzz on DDLC for the past couple weeks on how it is not what it seems and decided to give it try since it was free on Steam. How can DDLC with it’s seemingly light hearted theme and visual style could belie a disturbing twist.
Following up on my previous post, I’ll share my experience on my daily use with the Surface Pro.
I’ve been using the Surface almost daily for note taking, web browsing and watching videos during my trips. Battery life is actually quite solid with over 50% capacity left after 5 hours of usage. There’s been reported cases where users are able to stretch up to 14 hours of use in certain power saving conditions but it’s safe to say that it should be enough to last a day’s use.
I’ve always been a gadget enthusiast and a couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to get my hands on Microsoft’s latest Surface Pro and decided do a review and unboxing feature for it. In the first part of this post, I will focus on the hardware build and features while the follow up will detail my usage experience and overall conclusion. My Surface variant comes with an Intel i5-7300U processor with 128Gb of SSD storage and 4Gb of RAM.
All Surface Pro comes standard with Windows 10 Pro. The 2017 model comes with a single USB 3.1 port, mini DisplayPort, MicroSD card reader, headphone jack, dock connector and its proprietary dock/power port. Design wise, the Surface Pro is sleek and I personally dig the grey color scheme of their hardware line up with the accompanying black TypePad keyboard attachment which looks very professional and classy. The new Surface has a slightly rounder edge compared to its predecessor but it still looks sharp in a good way thanks to the angled kick stand and sharp cut outs for the ports. It weighs a little over 700g and while it’s not as light as most tablets of it’s size go these days, the Surface Pro is still a serious contender in the ultrabook market given it’s versatility and processing power. The overall build quality is sturdy and the hinge may look flimsy and thin but rest assured it will withstand some heavy duty use over time.