tl;dr Embed ALL THE THINGS and a shiny REST API. Some serious embed muscle at work here:
Enjoy!
Arriving Swiftly
Today, something cool happened, but it’s probably going to be remembered by very few due to the current freak-out surrounding recent events in a neighboring county to Los Angeles and how they’re adding to the very polarizing debate over whether or not firearms should have more sharply defined regulation. I’m not going to weigh in here about that.
No, instead, I wanted to focus on something I spotted today that helped give me a nudge.
It’s the news, released by Apple, that the Swift programming language is released as, and will be continuing development as open-source.
This language, which is a system-programming language, is used mainly to write application software for the operating systems of Apple, such as iOS and MacOS X. It can, of course, be used to write software for other platforms, as of today, with Linux (Ubuntu) as another place where Swift code can be compiled.
No, it’s not Earth-shattering news, but it is of interest to me because software development is interesting to me. Even though I’ve not completed a formal education plan related to it, I did spend some time in computer science programs, and did pick up a few languages, with the related languages of C, C++, and even some Java in there. I simply have not been practicing programming over the years. The rust is thick.
I never completely lost the itch to code, though, and this news feels like a gentle reminder that it might not be too late to at least put some effort into picking up another language, just in case it becomes useful to have in the techy tool belt.
So, I’m getting more interested now. Due to that spark, I downloaded the latest version of the official Swift book, and am going to fill in idle time with chunks of it. I’m hoping that it will be time well spent and that I’ll pick it up quickly. Swift code definitely appears, at first glance, to not be terribly hard to read.
There were a few unrelated game-related announcements as well, and even a game awards show, but the above is really what captured my attention enough that I felt like writing something about it. I sure hope some awesome stuff comes about as a result of this.
Warcraft music is available on iTunes
Warcraft music available on iTunes – WOW Insider
Most of the albums available were included in past Collector’s Editions of Blizzard games, such as the original soundtracks of World of Warcraft and The Burning Crusade, and even the Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos soundtrack.
Here’s a link to the iTunes Store page. This is pretty neat, I think. I was not looking forward to extracting the music from the game files and filing in the information manually for each track. Also, this little morsel is there:
Looks like I’m late to the party. The other tracks seem to have been there for a while. They’re all iTunes Plus tracks.
via Wow Insider
Sittin on Chrome Google will be
Google enters the browser war: Cries of “I told you so” are heard worldwide….
BRK’s Podcast Gets an “A”
BigRedKitty Podcast Episode One : It was a very good first episode! I already subscribe to the feed, but I’ll try and add it in iTunes for a convenient way to get the future episodes (of which I hope for many.) He’s far too modest (I knew it! He’s got some serious skills.) I’ve dabbled in Garageband myself, and while it’s a great app, it’s not super easy to use. His video-editing skills seem to have translated to the audio side of things pretty well.
Even though lots of things in beta are “borked” at this point, I still hope I get a beta key soon. I’d like to try out other hunter specs without the pain of respec costs (a semi-hardcore raider’s gotta conserve gold as much as possible…) and I’d like to take a Deathknight for a spin as well.
I hope episode 2 comes soon. Rawr!