I was greatly encouraged at church this past Sunday morning. We recited the Nicene Creed together, which has instructed the church on the mystery of the Incarnation for 1,700 years. We sang familiar hymns, similarly laden with rich doctrine, and we were delivered an encouraging sermon from Mark 10:17-31 on the story of the rich young ruler. Multiple points of the service were particularly moving, but before I reflect on those, I offer a more general reflection on the nature of the Bible itself.
I'm a lifelong video game enthusiast. My brother and I cut our teeth on Atari 2600, Commodore 64/128, and NES games, eventually learning to develop our own in BASIC, QBasic, C (long live MUDs!), and FreeBASIC (a modernized, open source QuickBASIC derivative).
For all that I enjoyed games, including many plays through Super Mario 3 or youth group battles in Starcraft and Descent, I never got too sucked into any one game. I own hundreds, but I've actually completed very few. (And despite playing dozens of roguelikes, Brogue is the only one I've beaten.) Instead, I always tended to prefer the experience of making them - learning to reproduce certain mechanics, trying new concepts, riffing on themes, and working within constraints.
In short, the best "game" to me was the experience of making a game, and sharing my works in progress with friends was as fun to me as actually completing a game.
All that leads to the point of this post: I recently decided to learn how to make games in Roblox, the global gaming phenomenon that I've heard about over the years but somehow never even looked at until last week. A friend from the QB / FB forums had recently published one there and I wanted to check it out, and then of course, having experienced his, I then had to try my hand at making my own.
The dominant theme of DrupalCon Pittsburgh was innovation. It featured heavily in our Drupal Association Board retreat as we considered how the non-profit might better support and contribute to continuous innovation in Drupal. Project lead Dries Buytaert discussed the topic at length in his keynote presentation, which ended with the audience selection of proposals that would receive “Pitch-Burgh” innovation grants.
Generally speaking, I prefer my children play the "real deal" when it comes to games like Minecraft. Cloning and remixing is fine as far as it goes, but most clones end up as cheap attempts to copy an original for free for the sake of generating ad revenue. The price of the game is lower than the price of the privacy you're forfeiting and the control you have over the experience for your kids.
Simply put: I don't want my children's free time monetized by these companies, nor do I want them exposed to the content of certain advertisements.
You have a little more than two days to submit a proposal for DrupalCon Pittsburgh's innovation grant contest dubbed "Pitch-burgh." The Drupal Association has raised $75,000+ to allocate to the most compelling proposals received by May 25th. There is no lower limit on proposal size. A $1,000 "quick fix" is just as valid as a $20,000 proposal. Additionally, entrants can be individuals or companies. The only criteria is that pitches contribute to Drupal's continued innovation, whether through code, design, documentation, or even contribution process improvements.
For the first time in over a decade, Centarro will not have a booth at DrupalCon North America. In this post I explain why and share how to find Drupal Commerce content at the event or to plan personal connections in Pittsburgh instead.
I am the chosen lamb, no other can compare
To the beauty of my face or the brightness of my hair.
My bones are firm and strong, my every part well-formed.
With purity and spotlessness by God I've been adorned.
My master's tender voice has declared I am the best!
His gentle hand and loving staff have led me from the rest,
Away from fence and field to sleep beside him through the night
And help the kids complete their chores by early morning light.
My master, how he loves me, and I love him dearly, too.
Chapter 4 of Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls is fantastic.
The main character, Robert Jordan, returns from scouting a bridge he is to demolish only to discover Pablo, his erstwhile local support, is set against him doing the deed. There is no profit to him in it, only swift retribution.
Drupal Commerce contributor Ryan Hovland of ProCycle reached out today in the Drupal Slack #commerce channel to let me know the asset-packagist Composer repository is defunct. This repository allowed projects like Commerce Kickstart to download JavaScript libraries managed by npm to a Drupal codebase via Composer.
The trees are waking,
Their leaves taking
Leave from the holes
Where they hid within
The branches branching
From their mighty boles.
The seeds they ceded
Last year to the
Fertile ground below
Are gone, replaced by
Tender shoots,
Preparing now to grow.