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Notes from NH Ruby group, 20-Aug-2009, “Where’d you learn that?”

By Ted Roche on August 21, 2009 in Apple Macintosh OS X, Home Page, LAMP, Linux, OpenSource, Ruby, Technology, Web Development

Eight folks enjoyed an excellent dinner at The Rosa Restaurant. We had a private room upstairs where we could woot and yell over each other and tell geek jokes without inhibitions, not that that has ever stopped us before.

Nick Plante mentioned Rails Rumble coming up this weekend. Watch for some incredible apps coming from the Rumble. Can’t wait to see the winners.

Adam Bair brought along two books, Kent Beck’s “Smalltalk Best Practice Patterns” (ISBN 978-0134769042) and Martin Fowler’s “Refactoring” (978-0201485677). Adam credit both books as being very helpful for his practice in the past several years where he has had to refactor a lot of code in rescuing lower-quality Rails projects.

Adam also mentioned an inspirational presentation by Marcel Molina, Jr. at Ruby Hoedown 2007 called “Beautiful Code” (http://rubyhoedown2007.confreaks.com/session09.html) – Adam recommends the higher quality videos as they include video/slides side by side – and also browsing much of the confreaks.com site for some great videos.

Russ talked about Peepcode videos (http://peepcode.com), which he really appreciates. In particular, he mentioned the most recent, Advanced Command Line, helped him debug an unusual problem he was having with one remote client whose shell behaved incorrectly. He’s used inspiration from that video to reconfigure the way he uses his shell. Russ also mentioned Ryan Bates “RailsCasts” (http://railscasts.com/) as very useful, and in particular, thought that the three part series on forms (link updated; thanks, Russ!) changed the way he developed Ruby apps.

I talked a little bit about “The Well Grounded Rubyist” (ISBN 979-1933988658) by David Black, which has helped me fill in some of the background of how and why Ruby behaves the way it does. I also passed around Jason Clinton’s “Ruby Phrasebook” which is a handy book of recipes on how an experienced Rubyist is likely to solve common problems like parsing config files or processing XML.

Nick mentioned that he’s using the unix screen command to do screen-sharing for remote pair-programming and you could see the lightbulbs go off over people’s heads (“That’s my payoff for tonight!” one attendee exclaimed.) He’s also working with EC2 instances and is fired up over how simple and powerful they are. Nick promised a followup, perhaps a demo at a future NHRuby meeting, and Casey mentioned that there’s someone local who’s been doing demos on the Amazon Web Services offerings – we hope to come up with some contact info and see if we can schedule a presentation.

The group also talked about how, as a group, we might contribute to one particular open source project. A couple of ideas were batted around. I look forward to hearing more about this idea.

The night’s theme was “How do you know that?” and I asked about how people are keeping up on all the news about what’s happening. We didn’t really come up with a list of links or blogs or news sites, so if you think of any now (or have your bookmarks handy for sharing), I’d appreciate you passing them on and I’ll include them in the meeting notes.

Thanks all, for a fun dinner amongst friends and some inspiring ideas!

Pro Git

By Ted Roche on August 11, 2009 in Home Page, LAMP, OpenSource, Ruby, Technology

Congratulations to author Scott Chacon and publisher Apress for the newly-released book, “Pro Git,” a book about the professional use of Git, the version control system. Git is the engine beneath the popular GitHub.com site where much of the Ruby on Rails community does their development. Git is also the core of the version control system for the Linux kernel. Kudos to both author and publisher, for releasing the book under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-Share Alike 3.0 license. This is a valuable service to the community so that search engines will find authoritative information on Git, and also serves as great advertising for the book. Apress will be providing a review copy for the GNHLUG members to review; keep an eye out for a review soon! And if you’re using Git as part of your professional work, consider purchasing the book to thank Scott for his efforts and APress for their wisdom in releasing the book on the web.

Notes from MonadLUG, 9-July-2009, Charlie Farinella and OpenBSD

By Ted Roche on July 14, 2009 in LAMP, Linux, OpenSource, Technology

Seven people made it to the July meeting of the Monadnock Linux User Group, MonadLUG, held as usual on the second Thursday of the month at the SAU #1 offices in Peterborough. (Note that there will be no August meeting.) MonadLUG is one of the many chapters of the Greater New Hampshire Linux User Group; keep an eye on that web site (and the mailing lists linked off that page) for announcements and upcoming meetings.

Charlie talked about his job and the many uses they have for some legacy machines (older PowerPC Macs, Pentium-150 boxes) that could be useful as single-task machines running mail server, router, firewall or other similar tasks. CentOS or other modern distros are too complex and demand too many resources, especially for older machines or VMs within a machine. OpenBSD has low resource requirements, a strong reputation for security and ‘correctness,’ ease of use and configuration. He showed a couple of virtual machines (VMs) running inside of VirtualBox on his ArchLinux ThinkPad. Charlie walked us through a basic installation, using an .iso of OpenBSD that appears as a CD to a new VM. He talked about network configuration, package management, ports, pf configuration, runlevels, service configuration and more. There were slides; I’ll post a URL if Charlie’s willing to send them along. OpenBSD looks like an ideal, minimal OS for a dedicated-function machine.

Finishing a little early, Charlie talked about his company’s move to Zimbra and the kinds of collaboration they plan to do with it. Audience participation about other competing packages like eGroupware and LifeRay was quite interesting. A replacement for Exchange and/or Sharepoint is needed in a lot of companies, and this seems to be a popular FAQ.

Note there is no August meeting, as MonadLUG takes a summer break.

September 10th will have the MondaLUG host a presentation by Patrick Galbraith. Pat blew us away with his first presentation on MySQL. This is a not-to-be-missed meeting for anyone using MySQL.

Thanks to Charlie for the great presentation and to Ken and the SAU for the fine facilities.

Fedora display switching rocks!

By Ted Roche on July 9, 2009 in LAMP, Linux, Technology

Just a note of praise to the Fedora distribution and the recent updates to Linux, X.org et al for getting display switching to work, at least on my laptop.
For years, it’s been a running joke that the first 10 minutes of every LUG presentation is spent watching the speaker (and too many helpful volunteers) struggling to get their laptop to properly display on the projector. (I’ve noted the equivalent at Rails meetings is everyone digging around in the bottom of their bag for the properly-matching MacBook-to-VGA adaptor.)
At the most recent CentraLUG meeting, I just plugged my running Thinkpad T61 laptop (running Fedora 10) into our ancient projector and had it immediately recognized! xrandr listed the VGA adaptor as 1024×768 and 800×600 (the higher format is interpolated — did I mention the projector was ancient?). The GNOME desktop menu options of System | Preferences | Hardware | Screen Resolution detected the display, also, and let me lower the screen resolution and mirror the two displays or align them side-by-side or top-to-bottom.
While I know other OSes have been doing this forever, this is a great milestone for Linux.

Notes from CentraLUG, 6-July-2009, Philip Sbrogna and WINE

By Ted Roche on July 7, 2009 in LAMP, Linux, Microsoft, OpenSource, Technology

Eight people made it to the July meeting of the Central New Hampshire Linux User Group, held at its July location of the Hopkinton Town Library.

Philip Sbrogna spoke and demonstrated Wine, the Microsoft Windows ™ API emulator for Linux. Phil showed us how the install and configuration occurs, using a first-person shooter installed from CD. We talked about the structure of the files installed (in the home directory, under .wine), how to reset the Windows configuration (delete everything under .wine and run wine again to rebuild the default structure), where the registry files are stored (in the directory above the drive_c directory), add-on tools that can help get specific applications running (Winetools, Wine-doors, Winetricks). Members had lots of questions, on- and off-topic, and discussion was vigorous and educational.

Tentative August meeting: a cookout, somewhere off I-93 exit 23. Stay tuned for details.

Thanks to Philip for making the trip and making a great presentation (despite projector difficulties) and to the Hopkinton Town Library for the facilities.

Notes from New Hampshire Ruby User Group, 25 June 2009: Pat Allen, Thinking Sphinx and Casey Rosenthal SASSiJS

By Ted Roche on June 27, 2009 in CSS, Home Page, JavaScript, LAMP, Linux, MySQL, OpenSource, Ruby, Technology, Web Development

Twelve people attended the June meeting of the New Hampshire Ruby / Rails User Group , held on the 4th Thursday of the month ( we usually meet on the 3rd Thursday) at RMC Research in Portsmouth (Thanks to RMC and to John for hosting the meeting!)

Nick Plante was our master of ceremonies. As is the custom, we made a round of introductions to find out the most of the folks were “from away.”

Pat Allen put on the first presentation, on Thinking Sphinx. Thinking Sphinx is a Ruby library (not just for Rails) that allows Ruby applications to work with the Sphinx full-text search engine. Pat presented a slightly shortened version of the presentation he gave at RailsConf, and the presentation was clear, engaging and interesting. Participants had lots of questions to ask on search technology, word stemming, project status, what it’s like to be a Freelancing God, what being the lead on a popular Open Source project is like, what’s a kilometer, and more, and Pat’s answers were insightful. Check out (pun intended) the source on github, the support on Google Groups and Pat’s guide to using Thinking Sphinx on Peepcode.

Pat also took a moment out to plug his upcoming Rails Camp, a not-going-to-make-a-profit weekend get-together in BarCamp/Unconference format for 30-ish people at Bryant Pond, Maine. It sounds like a great event and a nice location and a price that can’t be beat: $120 for 3-nights, 3-days food, lodging and conference. Get details and consider signing up at http://railscamps.com/#ne_july_2009

Casey Rosenthal asked us, “What are style sheets for?” a number of times during his presentation, for good reason. Casey talked about SASS, Syntactically Awesome Style Sheets, a part of HAML and his reimplementation of SASS in Javascript, SASSiJS, sounds like “sausages” leading to all kinds of predictable jokes. But the topic was thoughtful, intriguing, interesting, and controversial. SASSiJS actually allows a .sass file to be downloaded as part of the HTML file, with similar syntax to a stylesheet link, and a JavaScript file that interprets the .sass file into CSS and applies it to the HTML document. Discussion was far-ranging and insightful: “What’s this good for?” “Would designers use this to make their CSS DRY?” View the source on GitHub at http://github.com/clr/sassijs/tree/master.

Thanks to Pat and Casey for their great presentations, to Nick for organizing, and to John and RMC for the facilities.

CentraLUG, 6 July 2009: Philip Sbrogna, WINE

By Ted Roche on June 23, 2009 in Home Page, LAMP, Linux, Microsoft, OpenSource, Technology

WINE may or may not stand for “WINE Is Not an Emulator;” you might consider coming to the meeting to find out.

The July meeting of the Central New Hampshire Linux User Group, CentraLUG, will happen on the usual first Monday of the month, starting at 7 PM at the Hopkinton Public Library’s Community Room. Gather for Q&A and informal chat at 6:30.

Philip Sbrogna, an activist with the Monadnock Linux User Group, MonadLUG, will be presenting WINE. Philip got his start in the field of computers programming games for early microcomputers in ’79 after which he spent some time on mini’s at DEC. After an intermission on submarines he returned to the world of corporate computing where his daily fare at a small southern NH company provides him some opportunity to do the DB & Web dev thing. Personal interests include optimizing algorithms & innovative datastructures; particularly NXDs. He’s been a Linux enthusiast since switching from Coherent to Slackware in ’94.

Learn more about running Windows programs under Linux natively (Ubuntu Jaunty for presentation). Talk will include architectural overview & practical demonstration of what works and what doesn’t. Bring your favorite Window program along to see how it fares.

Note this meeting is at the Hopkinton Public Library 61 Houston Drive, Hopkinton/Contoocook, NH. Google map here. (Also, if you are coming from the southwest on route 202/9, the route 127 road over the Hopkinton Dam is once again open after a long repair closure.)

LUG Happenings, June 2009

By Ted Roche on June 8, 2009 in JavaScript, LAMP, Linux, OpenSource, Ruby, Technology, Web Development

There’s a couple more LUG meetings this month.

The Monadnock Linux User Group, MonadLUG, will be back at their usual location this Thursday, June 11th, and will feature Ed Lawson talking about Scribus, the desktop publishing software. I’ve used Scribus to create newsletters, posters and banners, and recommend it. Ed puts on a good presentation, too! You’ll find directions to the meeting here.

The NH Ruby / Rails group meets on the fourth Thursday of the month, June 25th, and will have two awesome presentations: Pat Allan will talk about Sphinx, and Casey Rosenthal will speak on SASSIJS. Details here. It promises to be a great meeting!

Notes from PySIG, 28-May-2009

By Ted Roche on May 29, 2009 in Apple Macintosh OS X, LAMP, Linux, Microsoft, MySQL, OpenSource, PostgreSQL, Python, Technology, Web Development

It was a dark and stormy night. Nonetheless, six members made it to the May meeting of the Python Special Interest Group, held as usual on the fourth Thursday of the month at the Amoskeag Business Incubator in Manchester.

We had an Open Mike Night format, a round-table discussion where everyone shared what they were working on.

I plugged upcoming meetings, available as always at http://gnhlug.org — MonadLUG in particular, is to be praised for posting 4 months worth of meetings in advance.

Mark has a client who’s weaning off a proprietary OS and looking for a replacement document management system / word processing system, and is considering LyX, which is a front end to LaTeX and has numerous utility scripts written in Python. Mark asked for suggestions for additional resources and the two Bills were able to come up with some ideas.

Arc talked about some wireless technologies he’s researching (neat stuff!). Arc also reported the Gaming SIG is coming along nicely: 5 people at the first meeting, 10 at the second. Details at gnhlug.org . Hoping to schedule a FPS (First Person Shooter) night soon. Coming up next Friday June 5th, the SIG will take a look at the awesome audio utility, Audacity, as it relates to gaming, and then engage in the Battle for Wesnoth. Gaming SIG meets at the Brady Sullivan building in the DynInc offices on the fifth floor – see http://wiki.gnhlug.org/twiki2/bin/view/Www/GamingSIG.

Shawn O’Shea completed a course in Network Design and Planning at UMass Lowell (and got an ‘A’, congrats!) and showed us his lab work, written in Python! He very bravely showed us his code and we talked about some of his algorithms and looked at a couple of the modules he used, including optparse, netaddr and cmd.

Bill Freeman reported he’d been working in Plone and Python 2.4 and missed some of the features available in later versions. He created some code to address the worst of the deficiencies, and hopes to be able to release it freely soon. Stay tuned.

Thanks to Bill for organizing the meeting, to the Amoskeag Business Incubator for the fine facilities, to Arc for bailing us out with an extension cord, to Janet for the awesome (!) cookies, and to all for attending and participating!

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