NH Ruby Users Group

Announcing the Portsmouth Web Dev Meetup

2012-01-31T00:00:00-05:00

So as mentioned at our last meeting, NH.rb has been rolled into the new more general-purpose Portsmouth Web Dev group (I clearly lost the name war here) which is being co-organized by myself, Josh Cyr of Alphaloft, and Jeff Leombruno of Pixelmedia. Meetups will be monthly on every second Wednesday, and the first one will be held Wednesday 2/15 6:00PM at Alphaloft (directions) in downtown Portsmouth, NH.

For the first event, my good friend Mark Bates will be venturing up from Boston to give an introductory talk on CoffeeScript. Here’s his talk abstract, in case you know not whence I speak:

CoffeeScript is taking the world, by storm. This little language has provided an almost Ruby/Python like abstraction onto of JavaScript. CoffeeScript is trying to make writing front end code as much fun as writing backend code can be.

In this talk we start with the basic concepts of CoffeeScript and move on to the more powerful and fun features of the language. We’ll learn how CoffeeScript helps us prevent common JavaScript bugs such as bad scope and improper use of ==. We’ll also learn about the fun new constructs it provides like classes, inheritance, and bound functions.

Never before has writing front end applications been so easy, and so much fun! Your applications will come alive as you start writing more powerful code, quicker and more stable/secure. Come see what all the cools kids are talking about.

Mark is a frequent conference speaker and is finishing up a book on the subject for Addison-Wesley. He’s an awesome guy, with a lot of great experience.

Future meetup topics will of course feature Ruby and Rails related topics, among other things. The whole ideas is to pull our little NH tech community closer together and help us stay on top of new developments. I hope you’ll join us! Register for the group and/or RSVP for the event at : http://www.meetup.com/Web-Dev-Meetup/

Thanks for being awesome!

November 2011 Meetup: So You Want to be a Rails Developer?

2011-11-16T00:00:00-05:00

Join us at 7:00pm on Monday, 21 November 2011 at the NH-ICC for the regular NHRuby meetup. This month, Brian Cardarella finishes our series of learning Rails with a talk titled, “So You Want to be a Rails Developer?”

Ruby and Rails is built on many open source technologies and has so much domain knowledge that it can be overwhelming for anybody wanting to start doing Rails development. Brian will show you HOW to learn Rails. Learn the Rails stack, learn the terms that Rails developers throw around and learn where to go and what resources exist to help you become the Rails developer you want to be.

About Brian Cardarella

From Brian’s blog:

I’ve been developing Ruby on Rails applications for over 5 years.

I live in Boston and have worked for Rakuten USA, Zendesk, and The Democratic National Committee Software Development Lab.

Currently I’m freelancing, if you’d like to hire me please get in contact!

In my spare time I enjoy sailing, spending most of my summers in New England racing. I own a Laser (sail 177367) and have been known to frostbite it.

He’s also the organizer for Boston.rb, the author of client_side_validations, and all around nice guy!

Directions to NH-ICC

You can find detailed directions on the NH-ICC site or use Google Maps

October 2011 Meetup: Hackfest

2011-10-17T00:00:00-04:00

Join us at 7:00pm on Monday, 17 October 2011 at the NH-ICC for the regular NHRuby meetup. This month … Hackfest! Bring your code, questions, and experience to share with your fellow Ruby developers.

Directions to NH-ICC

You can find detailed directions on the NH-ICC site or use Google Maps

September 2011 Wrapup: Backbone.js

2011-09-20T00:00:00-04:00

Thank-you to Jason Morrison for a most excellent presentation of Backbone.js including a tour of real code in a Backbone.js heavy application. Jason’s slides from last night’s presentation can be viewed online at http://jayunit.net/backbone-js-on-rails-talk/ [github repo]

Also appreciated is the gracious accomodation by Alpha Loft of our last minute, unplanned venue change. If you are looking for coworking space near downtown Portsmouth, check them out.

September 2011 Meetup: Backbone.js

2011-09-18T00:00:00-04:00

Join us at 7:00pm on Monday, 19 September 2011 at the NH-ICC for the regular NHRuby meetup. This month, Jason Morrison of Boston web development and design firm, thoughtbot, introduces us to Backbone.js – client side MVC. Jason will also cover integration of Backbone.js with Rails.

About Jason Morrison

Jason loves to build web and mobile products. He started programming when he exhausted his family’s collection of Commodore 64 games at the age of six, and has believed in building software to satisfy real needs ever since. Find him on Twitter at @jayunit or at http://jayunit.net.

Directions to NH-ICC

You can find detailed directions on the NH-ICC site or use Google Maps

August 2011 Meetup: Rails 3 in Practice

2011-08-15T00:00:00-04:00

Join us at 7:00pm on Monday, 15 August 2011 at the NH-ICC as Brian Turnbull, an infrequent Rails user, takes us through the creation of a small (only three models) real world Rails project. This talk is targeted at the new or occasional Rails user.

This talk is a “do-over” for last month’s cancelled meeting. Hope to see you there!

About Brian Turnbull

Brian is the co-organizer of NHRuby, two time Rails Rumble organizer, and Staff Engineer at ARRIS. You can find him on Twitter at @brianturnbull.

Directions to NH-ICC

You can find detailed directions on the NH-ICC site or use Google Maps

July 2011 Meetup: Rails 3 in Practice

2011-07-17T00:00:00-04:00

[UPDATE: Meetup cancelled for this month - Brian is unable to make it due to family emergency.]

Join us at 7:00pm on Monday, 18 July 2011 at the NH-ICC as Brian Turnbull, an infrequent Rails user, takes us through the creation of a small (only three models) real world Rails project. This talk is targeted at the new or occasional Rails user.

About Brian Turnbull

Brian is the co-organizer of NHRuby, two time Rails Rumble organizer, and Staff Engineer at ARRIS. You can find him on Twitter at @brianturnbull.

Directions to NH-ICC

You can find detailed directions on the NH-ICC site or use Google Maps

June 2011 Meetup: Rails 3.1 For Newbs (Not n00bs)

2011-06-18T00:00:00-04:00

Join us at 7:00pm on Monday, 20 June 2011 at the NH-ICC as James Daniels takes the stage to present Rails 3.1 from the outside in for those new to the framework.

Geared toward web developers of other frameworks who want to get started with Rails: we’ll walk through creation of a glorified hello world application using the upcoming version 3.1; which features the controversial “asset pipeline”. Expect plenty of discussion and perhaps some challenge to the hot topic as of late, “is Rails a hard framework to get started in?”

If you’ve been hesitating to take that initial step into your first Rails application, or are interested in the changes coming in 3.1, don’t miss James’ presentation!

About James Daniels

@danielsju6 tweets his Twitter bio says it all!

Entrepreneur & Rails Developer; Founder of @marginleft, @accelgolf, lead on AppBlade, and a TechStars Boston Alum.

Directions to NH-ICC

You can find detailed directions on the NH-ICC site or use Google Maps

May 2011 Meetup: ClientSideValidations and Capybara

2011-05-14T00:00:00-04:00

Join us at 7:00pm on Tuesday, 31 May 2011 (day after Memorial Day) at the NH-ICC for the regular monthly meeting of NHRuby!

As promised waaaay back in March, Brian Cardarella returns with his refactored ClientSideValidations gem originally developed for the Democratic National Committee and Nick Plante will be talking about using Capybara for integration testing.

Hope to see you there!

Directions to NH-ICC

You can find detailed directions on the NH-ICC site or use Google Maps

March 2011 Meetup: Canceled

2011-03-21T00:00:00-04:00

The NHRuby meetup scheduled for tonight at 7pm is canceled. Join us next month on April 18th for two great presentations. Brian Cardarella returns with his refactored ClientSideValidations gem originally developed for the Democratic National Committee and Nick Plante will be talking about using Capybara for integration testing.

March 2011 Meetup: Open Discussion

2011-03-20T00:00:00-04:00

Join us at 7:00pm on Monday, 21 March 2011 at the NH-ICC for the regular monthly meeting of NHRuby!

This month, we’re planning an open discussion of all things Ruby. Translation: No speakers this month – but we’ve got two great presentations on deck for April! So bring your code questions, dilemmas, successes, quandaries, triumphs, and storied to share and inspire.

Hope to see you there!

Directions to NH-ICC

You can find detailed directions on the NH-ICC site or use Google Maps

February 2011 Meetup: Ruby Debugger

2011-02-21T00:00:00-05:00

Join us at 7:00pm on Monday, 21 February 2011 at the NH-ICC for the regular monthly meeting of NHRuby!

This month, Brian Turnbull will open the meeting sharing his experience using the Ruby Debugger by walking the group through a real bug hunt undertaken this past week debugging OmniAuth powered LDAP authentication in a small Sinatra app. The focus will be on using the Ruby Debugger to step through, inspect, and find, and ultimately fix the bug in question.

We’ll then open up the meeting for discussion on any Ruby topic so bring your questions and share your experience.

Hope to see you there!

Directions to NH-ICC

You can find detailed directions on the NH-ICC site or use Google Maps

January 2011 Meetup: OmniAuth

2011-01-10T00:00:00-05:00

Join us at 7:00pm on Monday, 17 January 2011 at the NH-ICC as your humble organizer, Brian Turnbull, takes the stage presenting an Introduction to OmniAuth.

OmniAuth, created by Michael Bleigh of Intridea, is a Rack-based authentication system for multi-provider external authentication. In this talk, we’ll cover where OmniAuth fits in the “web” stack, how to use it, what it does, and what it does not. Then we’ll take a dive into creating an authentication strategy for integrating OmniAuth with a custom authentication provider.

About Brian Turnbull

Brian Turnbull is an embedded systems developer working for ARRIS on next generation product development. These days, he uses Ruby to create development tools and automated build services whenever possible for his employer. Brian lives in Seacoast New Hampshire with his family and can be reached at http://brianturnbull.com.

Directions to NH-ICC

You can find detailed directions on the NH-ICC site or use Google Maps

December 2010 Meetup: Holiday Road Trip to MERuby

2010-12-19T00:00:00-05:00

This month we’re combining meetings with Maine Ruby for a special road-trip holiday edition of NHRuby!

Join us on Monday, December 20th as we head north to the lovely home of Adam and Renae Bair in Portland, ME for a combined Maine Ruby/NHRuby evening of code, good cheer … and pizza and beer supplied by Intridea.

Maine Ruby + NHRuby Meeting
Monday, December 20th at 7pm
118 Tucker Avenue, Portland, ME

Carpools from Portsmouth

If you are looking for ride or have space to offer in your car, jump on our discussion list, http://groups.google.com/group/nhruby-discuss.

November 2010 Meetup: (Geo)Spatial Programming

2010-11-01T00:00:00-04:00

Join us at 7pm on Monday, November 15th at the NH-ICC building for the regular monthly meetup of NHRuby. This month, we have New Hampshire’s newest resident rubyist, Peter Jackson, presenting “Introduction to (Geo)Spatial Programming”.

Location-based applications are everywhere, yet most modern Rubyists haven’t ventured far beyond superimposing a few locations on a Google Map. In this talk, the Rubyist will learn about the many spatial programming possibilities within the Ruby landscape, including non-location-based applications, geographic applications using custom imagery, answering difficult questions using spatial queries, Moving Beyond the Dot-On-The-Map, and how to get started with Geospatial Programming today.

About Peter Jackson

Peter Jackson is Managing Director at Intridea. He has been building and delivering web and mobile-based solutions since 1995. His technical passions include geospatial programming, the VoteFu Rails plug-in, anything to do with jQuery, and the fanatical removal of cruft. Find him on twitter at @peteonrails or read his blog: http://blog.peteonrails.com

Directions to NH-ICC

You can find detailed directions on the NH-ICC site or use Google Maps

October 2010 Meetup: Open Forum

2010-10-11T00:00:00-04:00

Join us at the NH-ICC facility on Monday, 18 October 2010 at 7pm or the next meeting of the New Hampshire Ruby Users Group. This month, we’re hosting an open forum and hacking session. Bring your questions and we’ll work them as a group. If you have a short-form presentation then step on up to the projector.

The NH-ICC (directions) is located on the campus of the Pease International Tradeport at 75 Rochester Avenue, Portsmouth, NH.

September 2010 Meetup: Cancelled

2010-09-20T00:00:00-04:00

Life, work, and preparing for the 2010 Rails Rumble has pushed out the September NHRuby meetup. We’ll be back next month on the 3rd Monday with an informal Hackfest — so bring your questions and we’ll code our way through ’em!

August 2010 Meetup

2010-08-11T00:00:00-04:00

* Note Changed Location! *

Join us on Monday, August 16th at 7:00pm for the next meeting of the New Hampshire Ruby Users Group. This month we have Brian Cardarella talking about his client_side_validations gem:

The client_side_validations gem is an extract from a Democratic
National Committee project. It quickly and easily allows you to mimc
the validations in a given model on the client-side.

In addition, Brian Turnbull will be presenting his experience interfacing C with Ruby:

Ruby is great. But sometimes you need the speed, control, or ubiquity of plain old C. In this talk, we’ll examine interfacing Ruby with an existing C API and also writing new Ruby modules and classes in C.

New Location

Mark Galvin of the NHICC is opening his doors to host this month’s meeting. The NHICC is located on the campus of the Pease International Tradeport at 75 Rochester Avenue, Portsmouth, NH [Directions].

View Larger Map

July 2010 Meetup Recap

2010-07-22T00:00:00-04:00

Thank you to Nick Plante of Mogotest for a great talk on using Redis and Resque for asynchronous processing and caching. Slides from Nick’s talk are up on Scribd and also embedded right here.

A Quick Introduction to Redis (NH.rb)

Join us next month on Monday, August 16th for two presentations. Brian Cardarella, recently returned to Boston from Washington DC, will talk about the client_side_validations gem he wrote while working for the Democratic National Committee. In addition, Brian Turnbull will share his experience interfacing Ruby with C.

July 2010 Meetup: Redis & Resque

2010-07-08T00:00:00-04:00

Join us at RMC Research (1000 Market Street, Portsmouth, NH) Monday, 19 July 2010 at 7pm for the July edition of NHRuby. We meet and share projects and questions surrounding Ruby, Rails, and related technologies — all are welcome.

This month, we are thrilled to welcome Nick Plante back to the podium to talk about Redis and Resque! Nick is using both Redis and Resque in production to power portions of the backend of his UI test and verify service, Mogotest.

Redis is a fast key-value store, like Memcache but with more awesome. It features a (semi-)non-volatile data store and access to more sophisticated data structures like lists, sets, and ordered sets, all of which can be manipulated with a variety of powerful atomic operations. I’ll talk about how we’re using Redis in production at Mogotest, what it’s good for, what it’s not good for. I’ll also describe how we’re using Resque, a simple job queue system built on top of Redis, to handle a variety of asynchronous background tasks.

So join us Monday for an evening of code, conversation, and the company of your fellow Rubyists.

June 2010 Meetup Recap

2010-06-23T00:00:00-04:00

A big thanks to Nick Quaranto (rapper name: Q-Toronto) for joining us to share his experiences designing, building, and evolving Gemcutter (GitHub repo) as well as fostering community support for a better gem hosting service. Nick fielded questions, shared lessons learned, filled whiteboards, and ran a great open-ended presentation.

And a big thank-you to Ted Roche and Associates for picking up the pizza tab at this month’s meeting. NomNomNom!

June 2010 Meetup: Gemcutter

2010-06-17T00:00:00-04:00

Join us at RMC Research (1000 Market Street, Portsmouth, NH) this
coming Monday, 21 June 2010 at 7pm for the June edition of NHRuby. We meet and share projects and questions surrounding Ruby, Rails, and related technologies — all are welcome.

This month, we are pleased to welcome Nick Quaranto back to New Hampshire! Nick was recognized this year with a Ruby Hero for his most excellent project, Gemcutter. This month, Nick is going to reprise for us his highly rated RailsConf talk, Lapidary: The Art of Gemcutting.

Gemcutter is now the central RubyGem host for the community, with over 10,000 gems and over 10 million gem downloads and counting. Learn why Gemcutter won the great RubyGem hosting battle of 2009 and about the challenges the site faces in 2010 and beyond. Discover how instant code deployment with Gemcutter is changing the way not only Rubyists develop and release software, but other open source communities as well.

So join us Monday for an evening of code, conversation, and the company of your fellow Rubyists.

May 2010 Meetup: Rails 3

2010-05-13T00:00:00-04:00

Join us at RMC Research (1000 Market Street, Portsmouth, NH) this coming Monday, 17 May 2010 at 7pm for the May edition of NHRuby. We meet and share projects and questions surrounding Ruby, Rails, and related technologies — all are welcome.

This month, James Daniels will discuss Rails 3, reproducing the popular Rails screencast Creating a Weblog in 15 Minutes live to highlight changes and refinements coming in Rails 3. Check out the screencast [QuickTime] (it only takes 15 minutes!) and then join us Monday to see what’s new in Rails 3.

April 2010 Meetup Recap

2010-04-21T00:00:00-04:00

We had great turnout this month for Sam Beam’s presentation, No SQL, No Problem. Covering the history SQL, the NoSQL movement, and then diving deep into MongoDB and Ruby, Sam gave a great talk and moderated some lively discussion.

No SQL, No problem – using MongoDB in Ruby

View more presentations from sbeam.

Our next meeting is scheduled for Monday, 17 May 2010 — with tentative topics of Rails 3 and Unobtrusive JavaScript.

April 2010 Meetup: MongoDB

2010-04-14T00:00:00-04:00

Join us at RMC Research (1000 Market Street, Portsmouth, NH) this
coming Monday, 19 April 2010 at 7pm for the April edition of NHRuby.
This month, Sam Beam of OnsetCorps will
present:

Introducing Non-Relational Databases (NoSQL): MongoDB

An overview of the “NoSQL” movement, looking at the real-world
advantages and disadvantages v/s traditional RDBMSs. Then, take a
closer look at MongoDB, performing basic setup, inserts and queries
from the command line. Then group-collaborate on building a Sinatra-
based web application using MongoDB as the datastore, getting a feel
for how the flexibility of a Non-R DBMS can shorten the development
cycle.

March 2010 Meetup Recap

2010-03-17T00:00:00-04:00

Thank you to all that braved the floods and came out on a rainy Monday night for NHRuby. This month, our host at RMC, Tim Golden, lead a hands-on presentation covering setting up Ruby in a Windows environment.

Ruby on Windows – HOW TO install and set up

View more presentations from Tim Golden.

For the second half of the meeting, we fired up the Creating a Weblog in 15 Minutes with Rails 2 screencast and followed along on newly minted Ruby on Windows setups. Taking numerous breaks to discuss and learn the Rails techniques presented, we had Rails powered blogs coded in about 60 minutes!

Our next meeting is scheduled for Monday, 19 April 2010 with topics to be announced.

March 2010 Meetup

2010-03-10T00:00:00-05:00

Join us at RMC Research (1000 Market Street, Portsmouth, NH) this coming
Monday, 15 March 2010 at 7pm for the March edition of NHRuby. This month
our host with the most, Tim Golden (Technology Director at RMC Research), is
leading a hands-on session on setting up Ruby on Windows.

Windows has long been an “also ran” in the Ruby community… but no more!
With a proper setup, Windows is a robust and stable platform for Ruby
development and Tim will guide us through a live install of Ruby, Rubygems,
and some popular gems. In addition, Windows IDEs (integrated development
environments) will be covered. Wrapping up, we’ll put our new Ruby
environment to the test developing a simple Rails application.

Tim will be providing CDs of all packages needed to get up and running, so
bring your Windows boxes and get setup with Ruby!

Railscamp New England

2010-02-16T00:00:00-05:00

Ted plugged the upcoming Railscamp NE event earlier tonight. So I thought I’d post some more information in case anyone is interested. I would strongly recommend attending if you’re able to. This was probably the single best tech event I attended last year. For serious.

Where: West Greenwich, RI (W. Alton Jones Campus)
When: March 12 – 15, 2010
Cost: $150
railscamps.com | sign up

Arrive Friday evening, leaving Monday morning (or anywhere in-between). The $150 price includes lunch and dinner for Saturday and Sunday. Those will allergies or special dietary needs can be accommodated.

Housing is provided on campus, there are small lodges with single beds. Spouses and significant others are encouraged to attend. We have some limited capacity for private rooms this time, so first come first serve on the private rooms. (couples only)

You must bring your own pillows and sheets
You must bring your own toiletries
You must bring your own towels

Intranet Wifi will be available throughout the camp, with no access to the outside internet. We hope to encourage people to seek out other developers and start a dialogue to get things done. No formal format as a regular conference, if you have material you wish to present you can do so, gather people and present and get feedback.

We should probably have an image of Gemcutter running locally, hopefully an image of Rdoc.info and Bannajour as well as the
local Twitter client.

All skill levels are welcome and encouraged to attend. If you’re just learning it is a great opportunity to learn from others and make
friends with many other great Ruby developers. If you’ve been hacking away for years it is a great chance to participate in what will
basically be a 3 day hackfest.

Aside from just hacking there will be plenty of fun going on. Last year we had pretty epic RockBand-a-thons going on. On either Saturday or Sunday (we’ll probably pick the day with the best weather) there will be a 5k run on the campus property. (either a road race or on any of the many paths in the woods) Drinking, bon fires, s’mores, Werewolf, Urban Terror LAN-parties and more.

Local Events Calendar

2010-02-16T00:00:00-05:00

Living in the greater seacoast NH area and looking for other geeky events to attend? We are legion! Leslie Poston has put together a calendar of local NH tweetups, meetups, seminars and events you might be interested in. Check it out and see what else NH has to offer (ical link).

February 2010 Meeting Recap

2010-02-16T00:00:00-05:00

Thank you to all that came out for the first (by snow delay) meeting of NHRuby in 2010. We had good turnout for the meeting and a great time post-meeting closing the Portsmouth Brewing Company.

The the first half of the evening was a presentation by Brian Turnbull on Object Oriented Design in Ruby.

OOP Intro in Ruby for NHRuby Feb 2010

View more presentations from bturnbull.

For the second half of the meeting, we split into groups based on experience and prior exposure to Ruby. One group took on the programming exercise based on the presentation to create a class representation of a sliding tile puzzle. The second group rose to the challenge of writing a solver for sliding tile puzzles. And finally, Brian Turnbull lead a group through the Ruby idioms and conventions in the sliding tile puzzle implementation used by the challenger coders.

Thank you again for a great NHRuby meeting. Our next meeting is scheduled for Monday, 15 March 2010 with topics to be announced.

February 2010 Meetup

2010-02-06T00:00:00-05:00

Join us at RMC Research (1000 Market Street, Portsmouth, NH) on Monday, 15 February 2010 at 7pm, for the postponed from January inaugural meeting of the 2010 NHRuby season. This year at NHRuby, we’re going to try something a little different. Mixed in with our usual presentations, we’ll be covering the fundamentals of Ruby beginning with Object Oriented Programming (OOP).

New Hampshire local, Brian Turnbull, will be leading a hands-on class covering the fundamentals of OOP (Encapsulation, Inheritance, and Dynamic Binding) with special emphasis on OOP in Ruby. We’ll cover the why and how of writing object oriented code in Ruby and touch on designing larger systems using OOP principles. In addition, if the stock Array type is not cutting it for you, we’ll cover creating your own types and learn what makes a complete class in Ruby. But wait! There’s more! It’s not all talk — we’ll finish the meeting with an application of what you learned though a programming exercise designed to flex those new OOP filled brain cells.

So if you have some programming background, but have been wondering what all this hubbub about objects is, join us. Or you want translate your OOP knowledge to Ruby, this is the meetup for you. If you are already fluent in OOP, you’re welcome and encouraged to help guide the session and assist other members… plus there will be an extra credit challenge in the form of a Ruby game during the programming exercise!

January 2010 Meetup Canceled

2010-01-18T00:00:00-05:00

We’re canceling tonight’s meeting.

The snow is letting up, however the roads are a mess and our host, RMC
Research, has closed their offices for the day. The next NHRuby
meeting will be Monday, 15 February 2010 — same topic, Object
Oriented Programming.

January 2010 Meetup

2010-01-11T00:00:00-05:00

MEETUP CANCELED — Due to snowy weather and slippery roads.

Happy New Year!

Join us at RMC Research on Monday, 18 January 2010 at 7pm, for the inaugural meeting of the 2010 NHRuby season. This year at NHRuby, we’re going to try something a little different. Mixed in with our usual presentations, we’ll be covering the fundamentals of Ruby beginning with Object Oriented Programming (OOP).

November 2009 Meeting Recap

2009-11-19T00:00:00-05:00

Thank you to all that came out for our last meeting of 2009. If you couldn’t make it, check out the slide decks from Brian Turnbull’s presentation (embedded below) on the Ruby Version Manager and Nick Plante’s presentation on Amazon EC2 and Rubber. Finally, Ted Roche has an excellent writeup (as usual) of the November meeting.

RVM – NHRuby Nov 2009

View more documents from bturnbull.

With that, we draw a close to a great 2009 for NHRuby. Our next meeting is scheduled for Monday, 18 January 2010. See you in the new year!

November Meetup: EC2 and RVM

2009-11-08T00:00:00-05:00

NHRuby is meeting for the last time this year on Monday the 16th at 7pm at RMC Research, 1000 Market Street, Building 2, Portsmouth, NH. Monday?! You say? Yes — due to scheduling conflicts, the regular meeting day for NHRuby is now to the third Monday of the month. Also, since next month’s meeting fell so close to the Christmas holiday, we decided to skip the December meetup and resume in January. So join us for the last meeting of 2009 for two presentations by NHRuby regulars, Nick Plante and Brian Turnbull.

Nick will present EC2, Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud. EC2 is a web service which allows customers to rent virtual server instances by the hour. The real power of EC2 is that it allows you to auto-scale your web applications on demand. Expecting heavy load today? Fire up another web app server or two, with no wait time for procurement, while taking advantage of Amazon’s robust infrastructure.

Making EC2 even more attractive are tools like Matt Conway’s Rubber, a set of extensions to Capistrano that allows you to script procurement and provisioning of server instances as well as deployment of your application itself. Need to set up a staging server? Use Rubber to deploy a disk image, install the necessary stack and utilities, and deploy the appropriate version of your application — in moments — all automatically. In this talk, Nick will quickly discuss the basics you need to know and then dive right into a realtime demo.

Brian will introduce RVM, the Ruby Version Manager. RVM is a command line tool which allows us to easily install, manage, and work with multiple Ruby environments and sets of gems. Topics to be covered include:

- Installation of RVM on Linux or OS X. - Day to day use of RVM to switch between Ruby interpreters - Managing sets of gems using Named Gem Sets

If you’ve ever been burned by differences between development and production, you should check out RVM — see how easy it is to take control of your Ruby environment.

So join us on Monday, 16 November at RMC Research for the last meeting of the year. Hope to see you there!

Software Process and Cucumber Recap

2009-10-30T00:00:00-04:00

Thanks again to Dan Pickett for coming out last week and sharing his talk about software process and outside-in development with us. And thanks to everyone else who came out, too. If you missed out, make sure to check out the slide deck embedded below:

Solving Problems with Software

View more presentations from enlightsolutions.

And of course spend some time playing around with Cucumber, too. It’s good stuff.

As mentioned at the meetup, future NH.rb events will be switching to the third Monday of the month, due to schedule changes with RMC. We’ll be announcing the agenda for the November 16th meetup shortly, and will be skipping December since it falls so close to the holidays. ttys!

October Meetup: Software Process and Cucumber

2009-10-15T00:00:00-04:00

As mentioned on the email list, our October meeting will be held on the 22nd this month due to some scheduling conflicts. Join us at RMC Research at 7PM to hear our friend Dan Pickett of Enlight Solutions present his talk “From Wetware to Code – How’s Your Process?”

“We spend so much time focusing on conventional programming. Everyone focuses on standards, code clarity, testing, and what gems to use. Let’s chat about what’s done before your fingers hit the keys. Let’s talk about brainstorming, requirements, stakeholders, mock-ups, and writing solid user stories and acceptance tests with Cucumber. Every project has a story – how will your next one end?”

I can certainly say that Cucumber has changed the way that I approach software development, personally. This is sure to be a good talk, and something you don’t have to be a hardcore Ruby fanatic to get a lot out of either — the techniques and tools Dan will be talking about are useful to anyone doing software development on the web. Cucumber, for example, works great for Java, .NET, Flex or web applications written in any language. So tell your friends and coworkers, and we hope to see you on Thursday!

September Meetup: Ruby Games

2009-09-09T00:00:00-04:00

So Casey has been telling me how much fun our Portland-based comrades have been having with the RubyGames concept, so we’re gonna try that out this month in Portsmouth.

Wait. What? Games? Yup.

Ruby Games will test your programming and reasoning skills by presenting you with puzzle challenges to solve in code. I’ve already worked up one puzzle problem for the group (a word jumble problem), and Casey will be coming up with a second one. We’ll have people pair up to work on these, so don’t worry at all if you don’t have a lick of Ruby programming experience. In fact, I’d say that Ruby skills aren’t nearly as important as basic reasoning skills and inventiveness are.

Sounds good, right? But it gets better! By participating, you’ll learn (whether you like it or not) about:

Basic Ruby syntax — an engaging but simple introduction to language basics and an opportunity to do hands-on learning with your peers.
Test-Driven Development — you’ll be writing a solution, or an implementation, to a pre-defined spec we will supply. witness the power!
Pair programming — we’ll be pairing people up, because two heads are better than one (right?)
Algorithm runtime efficiency — once you’ve solved the problem, we’ll take a look at how fast your solutions run and compare approaches.

You’ll have fun. And you’ll learn something. It comes with a money-back guarantee. And free pizza, too. Mark your calendars for next Thursday September 17th at 7PM and join us at RMC Research in Portsmouth. I think it just might be the best NH.rb of the year.

August Meetup: The Rosa Restaurant

2009-08-13T00:00:00-04:00

We take a break from formal presentations this month to enjoy all the seacoast can offer. Please join us at The Rosa Restaurant (directions) starting at 7 PM on Thursday, August 20th for dinner, drinks and a Show ’N Tell.

Admission to the meeting is simple: a 2-minute to 10-minute standup presentation. (Okay, you can sit if you want.) The theme is Learning Ruby and Rails and Computing. Bring along a book or magazine and tell us why it makes you a great guru (or novice) Ruby programmer. Tell us about how you’re learning or keeping up. Talk about a web site you use. The best place to keep up on Rails news. An RSS aggregator you use to keep track of a lot of sites. A site that offers good podcasts. What’s your favorite reference site or book? The best tutorials? Talk about an add-on you’ve tried that’s sweet.

Eat, drink, be merry, teach something, learn something.

We’ve reserved a function room that should easily hold 15, so there’s no need to RSVP.

Hope to see you there!

Railscamp and Summer Break!

2009-06-28T00:00:00-04:00

Hey everybody! Just a quick note to let you know that we’ll be taking a break from the normal schedule in July, to give everyone a month off. Enjoy your summers and we’ll see you in August. In the meantime, if you’ve got a topic you’d like to talk about at the August meetup, definitely drop me a line.

I also wanted to remind everyone about Railscamp New England, which is happening relatively close by in the Bethel, Maine area, from July 17th – 20th. This is the very first North American Railscamp, and it’s being organized by our friends Pat Allan and Brian Cardarella (of Boston.rb). It’s going to be freeform and fun for both experienced Rubyists and beginners alike, is a great way to network with other kick-ass developers, and is an absolute bargain at only $120 for the entire weekend, including all food and lodging.

A couple of NH.rb folks have already signed up, but there are still some spots available. I hope we’ll see some of you there!

Sphinx and Sass Recap

2009-06-27T00:00:00-04:00

Thanks to everyone who came out to the meeting last Thursday. In particular, a big thanks to John for hosting us in Tim’s absence and to Pat for bussing it up from his temporary home in Boston to present for us.

We had two presentations this month. First, Pat presented a modified version of his Railsconf talk on Sphinx and Thinking Sphinx, which generated some healthy discussion and great post-meetup feedback.

Solving the Riddle of Search: Using Sphinx with Rails

View more presentations from freelancing_god.

Casey was the second speaker of evening. He asked the group some philosophical questions about the nature of stylesheets, introduced folks to Sass, and then debuted his Sassijs library, which allows Sass to be rendered directly from JavaScript in the browser. He showed off a cool demo of this, and discussed how it might be useful to get designers working directly with Sass, thus removing obstacles to creating clean easily refactorable stylesheets. Casey’s slide deck is available on GitHub.

After the meeting we all headed to the Brewery for late dinner and drinks. See you next time!

June Meetup: Sphinxy and Sassy

2009-06-08T00:00:00-04:00

We’re straying from the normal schedule again this month, but it’ll be worth it, I promise. We’ve got two great speakers lined up and lots to talk about. The meetup will be at the usual place on the fourth Thursday — June 25th @ 7PM.

The reason for the change? It’s two-fold; first, to accommodate special guest speaker Pat Allan, who is coming to us all the way from Australia (okay, he’s in Boston for the entire month, but that sure sounded good, right?) and also to avoid conflicting with the second Portsmouth tweetup event, which is being held on the 18th.

Pat will be presenting his popular Thinking Sphinx project, a Sphinx full-text search engine plugin for Rails. He’ll show us how to use them to add full-text database searching to your Rails applications.

Our other special guest for the evening is also traveling quite a distance to be with us — all the way from the frozen white tundra of Portland Maine. Yes, that’s right, our good friend Casey Rosenthal will finally be unveiling the awesome power of… SASSIJS (Syntactically Awesome Style Sheets + In + JavaScript)…

SASS was created to programatically build and organize CSS. Building on Ted Roche’s CSS presentation, Casey Rosenthal will review SASS syntax, and then open up the SASSIJS javascript library which renders *.sass templates client-side.

Leaving us a note in the blog comments or on the meetup group is strongly encouraged so we can plan to have refreshments enough for everyone. Hope to see you there!

Monit & Lightening Talks Recap

2009-05-22T00:00:00-04:00

May’s NH.rb meeting featured a great introduction / refresher on Monit courtesy of Brian Turnbull. Thanks Brian!

Monit – NHRuby May 2009

View more Microsoft Word documents from bturnbull.

Our second speaker unfortunately canceled at the last moment due to an emergency, but we filled the time with lightning talks by Tim Golden, Nick Quaranto, and myself. Tim talked about his experiences getting a Ruby development environment set up on Windows. Nick Q demoed his WIP Gemcutter project for us (a Rubyforge killer!) and talked a bit about how they were using Metric Fu at ThoughtBot. I talked about RDoc, YARD, and demonstrated the RDoc.info / docs.github.com projects that I’d been working on.

Afterwards, a bunch of us headed over to the Portsmouth Brewery for drinks. Thanks everybody for coming out and we hope to see you all next month!

May Meeting: Optimization & Monitoring

2009-05-13T00:00:00-04:00

Sorry about the delayed meeting announcement; I just returned from Railsconf and some southwest region exploration and had limited Internet access for awhile. But fear not! NH.rb is scheduled for the third Thursday of this month (May 21 7PM) at RMC as usual this month. The topics this month will be performance optimization (specifically for MySQL and Rails) and service monitoring.

First, David Berube will deliver his “High Performance Ruby on Rails and MySQL” talk, originally presented at MySQL Conference 2009 in April:

Database access in Ruby on Rails can be extremely slow, but it doesn’t have to be: this talk will discuss ways you can get massive performance speedups by increasing your query efficiency and by minimizing ActiveRecord object creation. This can keep your application scalable and responsible even under large datasets and modest hardware.

Brian Turnbull will then take us on a tour of Monit, and show us how to use it to manage production services. Monit is, of course, not just useful for Ruby tools but for all UN*X daemons and services, so make sure to spread the word to others you know who might be interested:

Monit is a flexible, open source utility for monitoring, reporting, and acting on processes, files, and servers to keep your deployed application healthy, secure, and running. This month, Brian Turnbull will share his real world experience installing, configuring, and running monit in production UN*X environments.

Thanks, we hope to see you all there!

State Machines & Git Recap

2009-05-01T00:00:00-04:00

We had 14 people at the NH.rb meetup last night. Thanks to all of you for coming out, and for the lively post-presentation discussions over at the Portsmouth Brewery.

The first speaker of the night was Russ Jones, who presented on the state machine pattern. Russ specifically covered the pluginaweek/state_machine Rails plugin in his talk, but the concepts were applicable across the board:

State Machines

After Russ wrapped up, Nick Quaranto testified on the awesomeness of the Git distributed version control system, and showed us some practical development workflows using it:

Git Started With Git

View more presentations from Nick Quaranto.

Both presentations were great. Ted Roche has also written up his own summary and reactions, if you want to read more. Our host, Tim (of RMC Research) was kind enough to broadcast the meeting via WebEx, where a few additional peeps joined us, and I’m told it was recorded too. Check the comments on this article, where Tim will hopefully post a link to the recorded session.

Meeting times and topics for the May event will be announced shortly (it’ll be on the regular date, 5/21). Hit me up if you’ve got something you’d like to present about.

April Meeting: State Machines & Git

2009-04-03T00:00:00-04:00

Holy crap! It’s April already. And that means that it’s time for me to announce the next NH.rb!

Please note that we’re deviating from the regular meeting time this month due to scheduling conflicts; therefore we’ll be doing the meetup on the fifth Thursday of the month (that is, April 30th) rather than the usual third Thursday.

Our first talk will be presented by our good pal Russ “CodeOfficer” Jones. Russ will be dishing on finite state machines; specifically he’ll be talking about when, where, and why you should use them in your model code, and the libraries you can use to get up and running with minimal effort:

State Machines are a useful design pattern in any language, and in Ruby they are super easy to implement. State_Machine and Acts_As_State_Machine (AASM) both help ease the pain of implementation and provide some amazing features.

In this presentation, I’ll cover some basic aspects of the pattern and talk a bit about both plugins. I’ll also demonstrate where state machines were useful in my own applications, and some of the cool things you can do with them.

Next, visiting Git scholar Nick Quaranto, the guy behind badass tips site Git Ready, will treat us to an overview to the Git version control system and review workflow strategies for effective use in your Ruby projects (or otherwise):

Learn the basics of using the Git distributed version control system, from the ground up to how you can integrate it into your own projects. We’ll go through the concepts behind the system, how some of the internals work, and an overview of commonly used commands. Finally, you’ll learn how you can use Git to collaborate with others, be it a team building a Rails project or publishing a RubyGem to the open source world.

So yeah, this is going to be a pretty good one. You’d be a fool to miss it. Srsly. Plus, Engine Yard will be providing pizza for us. Please leave a comment if you plan to attend; it helps us ballpark the amount of food to order. [directions to RMC]

Sinatra & CSS Fundamentals Recap

2009-03-20T00:00:00-04:00

Thanks to everyone for coming out last night for the March meetup. It was great to see the usual suspects. And a few new faces, too!

As usual we had two topics to discuss. First, Ted Roche presented a review of CSS fundamentals, including an overview of the box model and element positioning — certainly something handy for those of us at all skill levels. You can find Ted’s slides at his website.

Afterwards, I took the stand to present the second topic of the night, speeding through a quick introduction to the Sinatra Ruby framework. We followed that up by live coding a simple user group prize chooser (source at GitHub).

A Quick Introduction to Sinatra (NH Ruby) A Quick Introduction to Sinatra (NH Ruby) zapnap

O’Reilly provided us with two books as meeting giveaways, which were rewarded using the livecoded Sinatra app :-). Thanks also to Tom Lee Jr and Andrew of Exeter-based DualStreet / Great Northern Products (a provider of Rails-based industrial e-commerce solutions) for providing refreshments. And of course to our host, Tim Golden and RMC Research, for providing the space and Webex goodness.

See you next month!

March Meeting: Sinatra and CSS Fundamentals

2009-03-03T00:00:00-05:00

Hello hello, and happy March. We’ve got two talks lined up for Thursday the 19th at RMC Research in Portsmouth (7:00PM, directions). First up, GNHLUG commander-in-chief Ted Roche will talk about CSS fundamentals:

We sometimes take for granted that the templates from our graphics designers just work and that the magick of the add-on JavaScript libraries just make whizzy graphic effects. That is, until something goes wrong, or a new browser renders funky pages, and you need to dig in and troubleshoot. That’s when you need to have a good handle on the fundamentals of CSS, and a good set of tools. In this session, Ted will review the basics of CSS, how the elements are combined, what ‘cascade’ refers to, and how to use CSS to specify layout using the CSS box model. He’ll finish up with some suggestions on tools to use and references for further study.

Cascading Style Sheets are a way to separate the content and structure of a web page from the stylistic elements. This allows:

the style to be changed without changing the content

better accessibility for folks with visual impairments

better processing by search engines

ease of maintenance by letting designers and content producers to work in parallel

Afterwards, Nick Plante (that’s me!) will deliver a practical introduction to Sinatra, the Ruby web microframework:

Sinatra provides a domain specific language (DSL) for creating RESTful Ruby-based web applications. If you’re used to Rails’ heavyweight approach to MVC, and think that it’s overkill for a certain class of minimalist web properties, you might be right. This is the sort of thing that Sinatra truly excels at, being lightweight and truly tiny. It’s also ORM agnostic and easy to manipulate, allowing developers to choose the tools that best suit them and their application. Standalone web service APIs, widgets, and micro-applications are all examples of things for which Sinatra might be a great fit.

In this presentation, I’ll give you a basic overview of the syntax you need to create useful Sinatra web apps, and will demonstrate how it can be used to create a Twitter-based keyword aggregator like Tweetdreams quickly and easily. We’ll also live-code a contest prize chooser that we’ll use at the end of the meeting to distribute some free swag provided by our friends at O’Reilly.

Hopefully we’ve got your interest peaked. Turnouts have been great lately, and this meeting in particular should have something for everyone — make sure to spread the word to others who might benefit from attending. Also, did I mention that there will be free stuff? And refreshments. Yup.

If you can’t join us in person, you can also participate from the comfort of your own home by using Webex. The meeting number is 687 881 114 and the password is ‘nhrb’.

Ruby Gems, Jeweler, and a Rails 2.3 Preview

2009-02-20T00:00:00-05:00

Last night’s meeting was a lot of fun for me. I hope it was for the rest of you too (and everyone else who joined us online via WebEx!) It’s always nice to see all the familiar faces, and some new ones too this time around.

First, guest speaker Josh Nichols presented his work on Jeweler and an overview of publishing Ruby Gems:

Rubygems And You

View more presentations from Josh Nichols. (tags: ruby rubygems)

After a short break, Brian Turnbull reviewed the new features available in Rails 2.3 (currently a release candidate, general availability soon), including a detailed look at Rails Metal and Rack.

Rails 2.3 and Rack – NHRuby Feb 2009

View more presentations from bturnbull. (tags: rails rack)

If you enjoyed the presentations, I invite you to recommend Josh and Brian on WorkingWithRails. Thanks to everyone for coming out and hope you had a safe drive home! Who knew we were going to have a snowstorm, right?

WebEx Meetup Info

2009-02-13T00:00:00-05:00

Thanks to the generosity of our host RMC Research and coordinator Tim Golden, you’ll be able to join us at the next meetup even if you’re nowhere near Portsmouth. This time around we’ll be trying out WebEx.

Below is information about joining the online meeting broadcast. Please test your system ahead of time. I believe anyone with Flash Player 6+ or QuickTime should be able to use it, but please post here if you’ve heard otherwise to let others know.

Meeting Information:

Date: Thursday, February 19, 2009
Time: 6:45 pm, Eastern Standard Time (GMT -05:00, New York)
Direct Link: Click here
Meeting Number: 680 951 416
Meeting Password: nhrb
Call-in toll-free number Call-in toll-free number (US/Canada): 866-469-3239

Of course if you are in the southern NH area we’d still really like it if you could make a personal appearance ;-).

February Meeting: Ruby Gems and Rails 2.3

2009-02-12T00:00:00-05:00

We’ve got two talks lined up for the February NH.rb gathering, which will be held on Thursday the 19th at 7PM at RMC Research in Portsmouth.

First, Josh Nichols, Boston.rb coordinator and Scotch advocate, will be presenting on Ruby Gems:

RubyGems are the packaging system used by Ruby to distribute libraries. What people forget is that it’s pretty easy to make and distribute your own gems. This talk will cover the basics of creating and managing a RubyGem using Rake and GitHub. Jeweler, a tool for automating these tasks, will also be covered.

Next up, hometown hero Brian Turnbull will give a presentation detailing the new features in Rails 2.3 (currently available as a release candidate) followed by an in-depth discussion of Rails Metal:

Built on the new Rack middleware in Rails 2.3, Metal forgoes the niceties of routing and ActionController in exchange for raw speed. Brian will demonstrate how to incorporate Rails Metal into a Rails 2.3 application, compare performance with the regular Rails stack, and discuss when to use and not use Rails Metal.

Refreshments will be provided (thanks to our friends at Engine Yard), and we also have some more great giveaways this month, courtesy of O’Reilly.

ReviewRamp, Cucumber, and DynamicRecord

2009-01-16T00:00:00-05:00

The first NH.rb of the new year was a good one. Jonathan Linowes descended from his mountain retreat to deliver a trio of topics. Fourteen people attended in total, and a number of us headed over to the Portsmouth Brewery for drinks afterwards. Thanks to Jon for making the trek and to everyone else for the great conversation.

ReviewRamp Presentation

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: reviewramp ruby)

Cucumber: How I Slice It

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: cucumber rails)

DynamicRecord Presentation

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: dynamicrecord activerecord)

Live

2009-01-15T00:00:00-05:00

NH Ruby meets every third Thursday of the month from 7-9PM EST. Tune in to watch our live broadcasts!

Broadcasting Live...

2009-01-15T00:00:00-05:00

Tim has set us up with Mogulus in order to live stream tonight’s presentation. If you can’t join us in person but still want to hear Jon’s talk, you can tune in to the Mogulus feed or click on the live section at the top of the page. If this works out well we’ll continue using it for future meetups. Hopefully it doesn’t start to impact attendance! :)

January Meeting: Cucumber & DynamicRecord

2008-12-26T00:00:00-05:00

I’m pleased to announce the NHRuby January meeting, which will take place on Thursday, January 15th at RMC Research in Portsmouth (directions). Jonathan Linowes of Parkerhill Technology Group will be coming down from the mountains of Lyman, NH to speak to us about a tantalizing trinity of interesting topics:

A demo of his pet project, ReviewRamp, presently in Beta. ReviewRamp is a SAAS (software as a service) application for collecting and reviewing on-line submissions such as business plans, conference paper proposals, and grant applications. Users create projects in ReviewRamp which have their own custom submission forms, review scoresheets, and summary reports. Implemented in Ruby on Rails.

A review of how Jon is using Cucumber plain text stories for development and integration testing. Jon started using rSpec Story Runner over a year ago and recently migrated to the newer Cucumber implementation. Real examples from the ReviewRamp project.

A presentation of DynamicRecord, a database engine Jon is developing for ReviewRamp. DynamicRecord extends the Ruby on Rails’ ActiveRecord (AR) object-relational mapping (ORM) module, enabling creation of dynamic attributes that look and behave like standard AR ones without the need to add tables or columns to the database.

Please note that the meeting date is actually the third Thursday of the month as opposed to the usual third Tuesday. We’re switching up the dates this year to prevent conflicts with certain regularly-scheduled Boston.rb events.

I’m really looking forward to Jon’s talk; it should be a good one. I’m sure there will also be some interesting conversation about the recently announced Merb / Rails merger. Hope to see everyone there!

Thanks Scott!

2008-12-24T00:00:00-05:00

So as most of you already know, NHRuby founder Scott Garman will be stepping down as group co-chair in January and moving out to Portland, Oregon. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank Scott for his service to the group over the past two years. NHRuby simply wouldn’t exist without his involvement. Let’s all wish Scott the best of luck in Oregon!

New Website

2008-12-23T00:00:00-05:00

NHRuby has a new official web presence. And you’re looking at it. Keep checking back for more announcements very soon or, better yet, subscribe to our feed. The old MediaWiki site will remain around for a little while, but we’ll eventually be migrating away from it, so update your bookmarks accordingly.

We’ll be adding a member blog roll and project links to the site sidebar soon. If you have anything you’d like to add there, or have other suggestions, please leave a comment. Make sure to include a link to your blog so we can add you to the member roster. Thanks!