Live Online Swift Training

This event has now passed, but we'll be doing it again in the future! Stay tuned. In the mean time, if you want to learn Swift, we recommend out brand new book, Learning Swift!

We're super excited to announce that, next week, we'll be running live online Swift programming training through O'Reilly Media. You can learn more and sign up over on the O'Reilly Media site.

The gist of it is: you'll join us live online for a day of Swift programming, where we'll teach you the language, how to use it for iOS (or OS X) programming, and where to learn more. Everyone will get a video of the training afterwards, as well as an ebook copy of our brand new Learning Swift book.

We're seriously looking forward to this! Please don't hesitate to contact us if you have any questions.

YOW! Connected 2015

We've been at YOW! Connected in Melbourne this week. It's been pretty awesome, and we've met lots of cool people doing awesome things with mobile and IoT. We gave two presentations!

The first was the latest update to our How Do I Game Design? session, covering just enough game design theory to make you dangerous. You can watch a video of this session from OSCON 2015:

The second was called Watch This Face, and covered the philosophical design differences between Android Wear and Apple's watchOS. You can grab the slides from Speaker Deck:

And, because apparently we can't get by without giving a plug for our books, don't forget to check out our new books; you can get them for 50% off with code WKIOS9.

The Mün and back – a Kerbal tale

“When I realised what the engineers had done, my head LITERALLY exploded…,” said Jon to the other Kerbonauts, waiting for their turn on the Kerbtrifuge, an odd part of training that persisted even though it was universally agreed that G forces had no effect on Kerbal physiology.

Paris would normally have a great rejoinder to his, but he had just entered the training capsule. The rest of the crew were eager not to think about that, and were swapping horror stories to keep their mind off things.

“That’s nothing,” said Tim. “There was one time when they confused apogee and perigee, and rather than a nice circular orbit I found myself heading out past the orbit of Jool. It took me SIX YEARS to get back home.”

Tim had been with the programme for less than a year, but that didn’t stop him embellishing stories like the rest of the crew.

“Al, how about you?” asked Paul, who was next in line for “endurance training,” and was clearly fidgeting with nervousness, “what’s your scariest moment?”

Al looked up from the console which he was soldering. “Mine? It was when they decided that even though more boosters had been added, it still wasn’t enough. I was in a ship made of nothing but boosters.”

From the room next door, the sound of the Kerbtrifuge spinning up could be heard. Everyone held their breath, Paris’s cry could be heard through the thin metal walls…
“WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

Join Paris, Jon, Tim, Paul, and Alasdair as they regale you with tales of their adventures in the Kerbal Space Program, the increasingly popular and disturbingly realistic space programme simulator game enjoyed by geeks around the world. Learn how and why you should go to space, and what you can learn from it! Science will be involved.

OSCON 2015

We've spent the last week at O'Reilly Media's fantastic OSCON conference, in Portland, Oregon. We presented a whole bunch of talks, ranging from Swift programming to Kerbal Space Program. Friends of ours, and other interesting people, also presented great stuff. Our talks were:

And great talks by our friends, and other interesting people, included:

We also did a book signing (or two), which was as strange-but-awesome experience as ever. We're looking forward to OSCON in Amsterdam! Our photos from OSCON 2015 in Portland are on Flickr.

Frank

We're deeply saddened that our dear friend, collaborator, and frequent board gamer, Frank Sainsbury, has passed away.

Frank was definitely Secret Lab super-fan Number 1, and board games day will certainly never be the same without him.

Frank's regular presence in our office, when he'd almost certainly broken something he was coding, which usually turned out not to be broken at all, and frequent collaborations at hackathons and generally within the Hobart technology community, will be missed.

Our condolences to Frank's family and friends. We'll miss you, Frank! 

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