Katie
Google Cardboard, Drupal & Docker, and Ethereum
The two pairs of the Knox V2 Google Cardboard we’d ordered had arrived in the office in time for Webscope Labs, so we thought it would be fun to have a play and see what we could do in terms of Virtual Reality. We created a VR tour of our office, it was pretty disconcerting to remove the headset after seeing one part of the office and adjust to being in the area you’re actually in! We then downloaded a VR rollercoaster app which some of us enjoyed more than others - the sensitive among us ended up with headaches, blurred vision and felt nauseous for a while after. Though I guess that’s a sign that the VR was working well!
We then split into groups, one of which spent more time evaluating the Drupal 8 support of modules we frequently used in Drupal 7. We primarily focussed on evaluating alternatives to the Webform module since that hasn’t yet been ported to Drupal 8 and we need a solution for an upcoming project. We decided to go with Contact Storage which provides storage for Drupal’s Contact messages, which are entities in Drupal 8. Using this in combination with the core Contact module provides functionality equivalent to the base functionality of the Webform module.
We also made a start on using Drupal 8 with Docker. We’ve used Docker for a couple of projects before and liked how lightweight and fast it was, but ran into some issues which led to the decision to stick to our existing Vagrant setup for the time being. It recently became more appealing to us, since we can now use the same Docker containers and workflows that we use for development for Continuous Integration as well. We’re also working on some projects that require additional php extensions and other custom server configuration and using Docker means we can make changes to our base image, build a new image from that, and require the new image in the Docker Compose file which is committed along with the project code.
The other group had an exciting idea around creating a digital voting system that stores the votes on the Ethereum blockchain.
“Ethereum is a decentralized platform that runs smart contracts: applications that run exactly as programmed without any possibility of downtime, censorship, fraud or third party interference.”
This system provides a novel method of proof, that would allow a voter to confirm how they voted, without being able to prove this to a third party. This removes the need to provide the ability for a centralised authority to audit the votes. Votes can be tallied as they’re added to the blockchain, and would be created in a way that means that votes are trusted and anonymized, meaning votes can’t be sold and people can’t be pressured to vote in a certain way.