Recent content on Jordan Roher

 
 
 
 
 
 
 Fall 2028 Apple special event 
 (Steve Jobs voice) 
 … oh, and one more thing. We know that iPhone is the best way to take pictures. Apple ships the world’s best phone camera. By a mile. 
 With iPhone 16 we added camera control, to make it even easier and faster to get that shot. But there’s still some friction: you’ve gotta dig the phone out…
On TechPolicy.Press , Dave Karpf writes: 
 
 Consider that language about “putting power in people’s hands.” What do we know thus far about the ways that people, empowered by AI, like to use the technology? Deepfake porn and harassment are unsettlingly popular activities. In the absence of guardrails, awful people seem very eager to use these technologies to pursue awful ends. 
 
…
I played a lot of Dungeons and Dragons in high school. Some in college. Then I moved to Seattle and have only recently found a new group to play with. One of my Florida friends enjoys the stories that my new group get up to, so I’ve been sending him videos where I read my notes and recount our adventures. 
 We generally play every other week, so the first couple minutes are spent…
I got about 75% of the way through Void Stranger before I had to use a guide. 
 I heard of this game from Reddit and forums, one of the mind expanding experiences akin to something like Homestuck or 17776 . I knew of sokoban puzzles from my time playing Nethack, but I was new to the sub-genre of black and white puzzle adventure games. I had Minit , which I enjoyed, and Master Key , which…
Early days 
 I started self hosting so I could grind coffee for my wife without getting out of bed. Two years later I’m running an eighteen-role Ansible playbook, hosting nearly as many services, and building multiple custom Docker images to meet my specific needs. 
 Also, I don’t drink coffee. 
 In my house you’ll find a four bay Synology NAS and a tiny Lenovo…
About 
 Amazon has several pages on this topic, but they don’t cover everything. 
 
 Tutorial: Configuring a static website on Amazon S3 
 Tutorial: Configuring a static website using a custom domain registered with Route 53 
 
 Goal 
 Have a static site with: 
 
 A custom domain name 
 Content stored in S3 
 Served using a CloudFront CDN 
…
There are two beautiful new controllers that I must have. Don’t let me buy them. 
 PlayStation 
 One is the the Astro Bot controller for PlayStation 5. My kids love Astro’s Playroom . They’ve basically mastered the game, minus a tricky ice section and the final T-Rex boss that gives even me trouble. The sequel comes out pretty soon, which we’re definitely picking…
With this website complete, and The Villain complete, and some good work done on Vanguard Outrider 2 , I used my free time last weekend to record a bunch of gameplay for my YouTube channel. 
 Sea of Stars 
 I’m still going on Sea of Stars despite its anemic personality and unsatisfying level design. Not as unsatisfying as Bravely Default , let’s be really clear. There is…
LEGO© Minifigures Dungeons & Dragons® (71047) toy mystery boxes 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Oh my gosh I want all of them 
 
 
 
 I got back into LEGO this year with the new space sets. There was a line of space minifigures but they didn’t do anything for me. 
 I’m also playing 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons with some other dads. These minifigures…

 
 
 
 
 
 
 Metroidvania games, it’s not working out. It’s not you, it’s me. 
 I’m tired of the wordless exploration. I don’t like being constrained to a single screen as homage to early video game design constraints. I’m bored of jumping on the same platforms with little dudes that crawl around it.
The Verge wonders why Apple won’t let the iPad run macOS . They come to the expected answer: Apple wants to retain the 30% cut they take from apps on the App Store. 
 Don’t despair that macOS will never come to the Mac. Be worried when iPadOS comes to Mac. 

 
 
 

 An iPad with Magic Keyboard is laptop-shaped. Why can’t you run Xcode on it and develop…
About 
 CorpDirect was a registered agent in Tallahassee, Florida. They acted as an intermediary between law firms and the state, helping to register companies, file annual reports, and conduct searches on liens. I was their webmaster for three years and developed the Intranet their staff used to manage registered entities. 
 Full stack and more 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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About 
 Microsoft’s Hadoop on Azure team was a branch of the SQL Server team looking to encourage adoption of Microsoft Azure. They built a method to host Hadoop clusters on Microsoft Azure and needed a web management interface. 
 Metro canvas in a hurry 
 This was a ASP.NET MVC 3 site geared toward highly technical users. The one-month deadline and beta server technology made…
About 
 Metia is an advertising and marketing company based in Kirkland, Washington. Most of what I worked on was internal Sharepoint sites for Microsoft. 
 Game Design Proposals 
 We had the opportunity to pitch ideas for developing a mobile game. There wasn’t a lot of time between projects, so the concepts had to be minimalistic. This was just to show off what our developers…
About 
 Ardent Eagle Solutions is an information technology service provider for the United States government. 
 Website 
 I helped Ardent Eagle Solutions deploy a new website design, business cards, and accompanying PowerPoint template. It was important to the founders to honor our nation’s soldiers, as Ardent Eagle is mostly a military contractor. Working with senior staff, I…
About 
 Halo Waypoint is the official site for the Halo universe, Microsoft’s best-selling game franchise. As well as a marketing site, it displays player statistics from all Halo games, facilitates player-to-player messaging, forums, and allows for clan creation. 
 Halo 4 
 I was brought on in August of 2012 to redesign the YAF.NET forum to match the new site design in…
About 
 PlayFab is a backend-as-a-service startup for games. They provide an easy API for player authentication, inventory, leaderboards, push notifications, and server hosting. When your game is featured on the App Store, you’ll be able to handle the crush of users if you’re using PlayFab. 
 Game Manager 
 I was hired in May 2015 to maintain and upgrade their Game Manager…
About 
 Vanguard Outrider is a demo game for PlayFab that was created at the 2019 Microsoft Hackathon. It serves multiple purposes: 
 
 Populate a PlayFab title with data so new users can see one method of using the system 
 Let users experiment with a functional game 
 Provide sample source code and best practices for catalogs, stores, player data, Cloud Script, and more 
…
About 
 Winter Starfall is the latest demo game for PlayFab , created to highlight the latest APIs and services. It has classic RPG gameplay and art created by Microsoft Copilot Designer. New features include: 
 
 Economy v2 system for increased flexibility and performance 
 Azure Functions instead of Cloud Script allow for programming in C# 
 Social logins and a real account…
About 
 PlayFab was acquired in 2018 by Microsoft and became Azure PlayFab. It is a backend-as-a-service for games. It has been improved with new economy features, multiplayer parties, experiments, rewarded ads, and more. As the service has grown, its polish and reliability have increased. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Modernization 
 At Microsoft, I undertook a…