Work

On the GraphQL front, I didn't make quite as much progress as I'd have liked, but I have an approach now for how to include it into our Component-Based Rails app to get started.

Power Home Remodeling has a brand-spanking new Code Academy with six students gunning for positions as Apprentice Developers in our department when they graduate. I get to help out with assessments and project reviews from time to time. This week I reviewed a test project for two of our students.

I find it hard to keep my mind on feedback appropriate for their current level of knowledge. With so much practice reviewing code from peers, it's hard to focus on staying in the context of basic knowledge the students have at their current stage in the course.

The most fun this week was a presentation I put together for those same students in the next week or so in regards to background jobs. Just a basic introduction to what they are and why you'd use them. We use Resque which, in addition to being our library for processing background jobs, has altered my fingers from being able to type the word rescue.

Movies

I was on movie overload since last week having caught up on a number of films both at the theater and at home.

• Skyscraper was okay.
• Alpha. I saw a preview of this and liked it a lot.
• Evil Dead (2013 remake). I'm a fan of the series but it took a while to get around to seeing the remake. Not as great as any of the originals, but still made me squirm in my seat.
• Rampage (Yes, I was on a Dwayne Johnson kick) was fun.
• The Endless dragged a bit at first and grew on me. Lovecraftian.
• Pacific Rim: Uprising was mostly big robot/monster battles. Not much else to it, but was a good time.

XIA: Legends of a Drift System

I'm still playing the game I was involved in last week. In this updated picture you can see I've progressed a bit but I'm in a tight spot.

The solo game I'm playing has an objective of destroying all three types of NPC (non-player character) ships to gain the Fame Points I need to win the game.

The three types of NPCs? A merchant vessel, who doesn't attack me, but is a nuisance who buys up trade goods before I can get to them. A scoundrel ship (the outlaw), who's after me right now to destroy and rob me. And an enforcer ship (the law) who is after me because I racked up bounty having already destroyed the merchant and scoundrel once already.

I just have to destroy the enforcer at this point to win the game. The problem is that I have damage to repair from my last battle (why I'm headed toward that neutral planet at the top left of the photo) and I also want to avoid a confrontation with multiple ships.