Posted by Gerald on June 12, 2008
Welcome back to the Vancouver.rb Q&A series. Today let’s welcome Victorian and soon Vancouverite Adam Palmblad - the cofounder and dev lead of startup TeamPages.com.
Our photos and uploads are handled with Rick Olson’s attachment_fu. Emails were initially problematic, but between ar_sendmail and some improvements I’ve made to it (maybe open-sourced one day), that problem is solved.
We run Mongrel and Nginx, and I’m happy with that setup, despite knowing some people who are quite happy with LiteSpeed.
On a big development branch we’ve just switched to Rails 2.1 and I’m pretty happy with that – named_scope has been good fun to work with.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Rails, Ruby, Vancouver, adampalmblad, ar_sendmail, attachement_fu, interview, teampages | Comments Off
Posted by Gerald on June 4, 2008
Let’s follow the example of the Seattle Ruby Brigade (Seattle.rb) and let’s start a weekly Vancouver Open Ruby Hack Night every Monday (unless we have a monthly meeting).
Interested? Let us know on the Vancouver.rb mailing list/forum and join us for the 1st Open Ruby Hack Night at Waves Coffee at the Hastings and Richards corner (offering free wireless) in downtown Vancouver one block from the Harbour Centre.
When: Monday, June 9th, 2008 - 7pm - Whenever (9ish)
Where: Waves Coffee, 492 West Hastings St.
Comments? Suggestions? Send them along to the Vancouver.rb forum/mailing list. Thanks!
Posted in Events, Meetup, Rails, Ruby, Vancouver | Comments Off
Posted by Gerald on May 8, 2008
Join us for the Vancouver Ruby/Rails meetup on Monday, Jun/2nd at 7pm at the Network Hub. Vancouverite Joe Bowser will talk about “Inside DogOnRails - A Wifidog Auth Server - and the FreeTheNet.ca Project”.
Summary: Learn more about DogOnRails from the project lead. What’s DogOnRails? DogOnRails is an open source Ruby on Rails implementation of the WifiDog 1.0 protocol designed to be used with a customized version of the ROBIN software. DogOnRails acts as the dashboard for FreeTheNet.ca - a Vancouver Open Network Initiative Cooperative (VONIC) project connecting Canada one block at a time using Open-Mesh enabled wireless routers.
About Joe Bowser:
Joe Bowser is one of the co-founders of the Vancouver Open Network Initiatives Cooperative (VONIC), and FreeTheNet.ca, a Community Wireless Mesh Network in Vancouver, BC. Joe’s current day job is working at Nitobi Software, where he works with Javascript, Ruby on Rails, and other open source technologies. Joe has also taken very active roles in other not-for-profits, such as volunteering at Free Geek Vancouver, and Spartacus Books, and is committed to Open Access to information and the Free Software movement.
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Volunteer as a speaker for upcoming meetups. Add your talk to the wiki. Thanks!
Looking for Ruby/Rails talent? Interested in pitching your startup? We can help!
Here is how it works: Pay everyone a beer/drink at the Ruby Pub Nite (usually 10-20) and in return step on a chair and get your 3-5 minutes of fame to tell us all about your startup, job openings, etc. Win-Win for everybody! Cheers!
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More info and sign-up at the Vancouver Ruby/Rails June meetup event page.
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Questions? Comments? Send them along to the Vancouver.rb Mailing List/Forum. Thanks!
Posted in Meetup, Rails, Ruby, Vancouver, dogonrails, freethenet, joebowser, vonic, wifidog | Comments Off
Posted by Gerald on May 1, 2008
Join us for the Vancouver Ruby/Rails meetup on Monday, May/5th at 7pm at the Network Hub. Vancouverite Brock Whitten who published an “Open Break-Up Letter to Rails” will talk about “Off the Rails - Why You Should Use Merb for Your Next Project”
Summary: I feel that ‘web services’ is the future of the web and Merb is more suited for this due to its speed and flexibility (it’s perfect for building an API). This talk is a quick primer on Merb: what its benefits are and why these benefits are important for a developer that is thinking about the web of tomorrow.
Demonstrates building a basic RESTful API from scratch using Merb. This took about 10 min. Once we were done, we had an ‘Articles’ resource that had the 7 golden(REST) methods. All the methods for accessing the resource understood HTTP, XML, JSON and YAML. What this does for us is gives us many ways to access our resource.
About Brock Whitten:
I write applications using Ruby frameworks such as Ruby on Rails and Merb. I am intimate with RESTful principals and am known as an AJAX junkie. I think in terms of ‘resources’ and ‘web services’. I believe whole heartedly in open-source software and have a passion for furthering my local community.
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Volunteer as a speaker for upcoming meetups. Add your talk to the wiki. Thanks!
Looking for Ruby/Rails talent? Interested in pitching your startup? We can help!
Here is how it works: Pay everyone a beer/drink at the Ruby Pub Nite (usually 10-20) and in return step on a chair and get your 3-5 minutes of fame to tell us all about your startup, job openings, etc. Win-Win for everybody! Cheers!
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More info and sign-up at the Vancouver Ruby/Rails May meetup event page.
Posted in Meetup, Ruby, Vancouver, merb, merbman | Comments Off
Posted by Gerald on April 8, 2008
The Planet Vancouver.rb (planet.vanrb.com) publishes Ruby/Rails stories from in and around Vancouver for easy reading or subscription in a single “river of news”. Latest stories include:
- JRuby 1.1 Goodness - Important, Why? - by Tim Bray
- Typo by Geoffrey Meredith
- Ruby and other Gems by Avi Bryant
- Presentation Tip: Haml Rocks! by Eric Promislow
- Be Less Stupid and Ugly - Using git with vlad by Joe Bowser
Interested in getting your blog included? Send a blurb about your blog highlighting some Ruby/Rails stories to the Vancouver.rb Forum/Mailing List. Thanks!
Posted in JRuby, Vancouver, avibryant, ericpromislow, geoffreymeredith, joebowser, planetvanrb, timbray | Comments Off
Posted by Gerald on March 25, 2008
Welcome back to episode two of the Q&A with Vancouverite Brock Whitten.
Q: What’s Git? What has been your experience using Git for PmpknPi? Any pros or cons versus subversion? Any comments on (free) Git hosting services?
Brock Whitten: Well you don’t have to go far to see the excitement around Git. I am hosting PmpknPi in two Git repositories (GitHub and Gitorious) and one Subversion repository at Google Code. Git has made this super easy. Subversion can do most of what Git can do. The big difference for me is that with Git I actually use the tools. I find myself creating, merging and using branches all the time where as with subversion I tread lightly around those tools. Git is also setup in away that allows for people to fork and contribute to your project with ease. As for free Git hosting, Gitorious is fantastic. It seems to be constantly improving in both features and speed. Only downfall is you can currently only do open repositories. For private ones you will have to go to GitHub which is the ‘golden standard’ of Git hosting. It is currently beta-by-invite but I have some invites kicking around so I’m open to anyone emailing me for one if they feel they will use it.
Q: Any commentary on jQuery? How is it better or worse than the “classic” standard Rails JavaScript library Prototype? How does jQuery fit into the Rails or Merb universe?
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Ajax, Vancouver, brockwhitten, git, github, gitorious, interview, jquery, merb, merbman, openweb, openwebvancouver, openwebvancouver2008, pmpknpi, rails2, railsisaghetto, sintaxi | Comments Off
Posted by Gerald on March 10, 2008
Welcome back to the Vancouver.rb Q&A series. Today let’s welcome Vancouverite Brock Whitten.
Rails is awesome. I try my very best not to say things like Merb is “better” than Rails but it is. Let’s keep in mind that part of the reason it’s great is because it is a lot like Rails and Merb was able to learn from the mistakes Rails learned the hard way. The most obvious advantage that Merb has is for writing APIs. If you were to build an API with Rails you are loading this entire (kitchen sink) framework for something very simple. Think alone of all those view helpers you won’t be using yet they are being loaded for every instance of Mongrel. This is like driving a motor home to the cornerstone to buy milk. Merb on the other hand is broken into chunks (merb-core, merb-more, plugins) so you only load what you need. This makes Merb multiple times faster than Rails.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Rails, Vancouver, brockwhitten, git, interview, merb, merbman, openwebvancouver, pmpknpi, rails2, rest, sintaxi | 2 Comments »
Posted by Gerald on February 29, 2008
In a new monthly series I will spotlight Ruby projects from Vancouver.rb members starting off with a little Ruby gem - Slide Show (S9) - by yours truly 
What’s Slide Show (S9)?
Slide Show (S9) is a free web alternative to PowerPoint and KeyNote in Ruby that lets you create slide shows and author slides in plain text using a wiki-style markup language that’s easy-to-write and easy-to-read.
New in v0.2 are “loss-free” vector grahpics gradient themes. See some samples online using the “classic” sixteen web colors plus nine gradient styles such as “Diagonal”, “Radial Off Center”, “Top Bottom” and more. Try the “Radial Repeat” theme for some free psychodelia. (Note: Built-in SVG browser support required - e.g. use Firefox or Opera). Or try the Microformats slide show live on your very own desktop.
Find out more at the Slide Show (S9) project site. Questions? Comments? Send them along to the Free Web Slide Show Alternatives (S5, S9 And Friends) Forum/Mailing List. Thanks!
Interested in getting your Ruby project spotlighted in the new Vancouver.rb series? Send a blurb to the Vancouver.rb Forum/Mailing List and tell us about your Ruby project to get it all started.
Posted in Ruby, Vancouver, fullerscreen, geraldbauer, operashow, s5, s9, slideshow, spotlight | Comments Off
Posted by Gerald on February 29, 2008
Arash Sanieyan (Peerglobe) posts on the Vancouver.rb Forum/Mailing List:
Come and Drop by for a casual and friendly get-together. We are arranging another AIR/Flex/Rails workshop event on Wednesday March 19th. We’ve invited a few people to discuss their insights working with these technologies. Peter Armstrong will join us and talk about his new book “Flexible Rails”. Flexible Rails is the term Peter uses to describe the integration of Adobe Flex with Ruby on Rails as the back-end. Flex supports building powerful graphic user interfaces while Rails simplifies database integration.
Atul Nagpal, an AIR presenter in the last event, will be joining us again to talk about his fascination with Adobe AIR and Flex. He will be showing some of his application that he’s developed using AIR. Finally Rastin Mehr and I will be doing a comparison between Ruby on Rails and the new MVC Architecture in the Joomla! 1.5 Content Management System.
This is a small get together not a classroom. You don’t have to be a Ruby, AIR or Joomla expert to enjoy this event. Our goals is to get together and learn something new in a friendly environment.
If you have made an application and would like to demonstrate to others, let us know we will post it on the blog and we can discuss it at the event.
We will be providing coffee and doughnuts and going to the Steamworks for a round of beer afterwards. Read more…
Posted in Air, Flash, Flex, FlexibleRails, Joomla, arashsanieyan, atulnagpal, peterarmstrong, rastinmehr | Comments Off
Posted by Gerald on February 20, 2008
Peter Armstrong - the Ruby/Rails meetup organizer - posted the agenda for the upcoming March Ruby/Rails meetup. Peter writes:
Title: Resource Oriented Architecture (ROA) with Rails by Alex Bunardzic (Raymond James)
Summary: World wide web is an ever growing collection of resources published by the humanity at large. These resources get to be produced and consumed by utilizing the underlying Resource Oriented Architecture (ROA). ROA differs from the garden variety of legacy computing infrastructures by not elaborating on extensible protocols.
The presentation will focus on explaining the working of ROA, as well as on exposing the benefits of adopting this architecture. Following that, we will discuss some perceived drawbacks inherent in ROA, and will conclude the presentation by describing how can Ruby on Rails framework help us build web sites using the principles of ROA.
More info and sign-up at the Vancouver Ruby/Rails March meetup event page.
PS: Zed Shaw in the infamous “Rails Is A Ghetto” rant has a section on Alex titled “Revenge Of The Zen Prick”.
Posted in Rails, Ruby, Vancouver, alexbunardzic, rails2, railsisaghetto, rest, roa | Comments Off
