MEETUP - June 1st, 2011 - Capybara with Amir Barylko

WHAT: Capybara with Amir Barylko
WHERE: Room B-10, Computing Sciences Centre, University of Alberta ([map](http://www.campusmap.ualberta.ca/index.cfm?campus=1&sector=2&feature=25))
WHEN: June 1st, 2011 at 7:00 PM

Amir Barylko ([@abarylko](http://twitter.com/abarylko)) is joining us to guide a one hour deep dive into [Capybara](https://github.com/jnicklas/capybara). Here’s how Amir describes his talk:

> Capybara is a ruby gem that works as a complement of cucumber and aims to simplify writing acceptance tests for any web application. Out of the box it provides a DSL that makes writing steps for common functionality like following links, clicking buttons, etc.
>
> It provides different drivers that can be configured and even chose per feature or scenario basis to indicate how we want to run that case. It has built-in support rack-test, Culerity, Celerity and Selenium.

Please note that this meeting is taking place on Wednesday June 1st. Our regular meetups will return June 21st.

YEGRB 1.2 Rails 3

News

• RailsConf 2011 started today (live stream)
• YEGRB calendaraboutnothing
• New website!

Releases

• Rails 3.1 beta 1
• Foreman and Procfile
• jQuery 1.6.1

Jobs

There are some new jobs up on the job listings.

• xFire seeks Ruby on Rails developer (details on the mailing list)

Next Meetup

We’ve got two meetups happening next month. On Wed June 1st, Amir Barylko is doing a one hour deep-dive in to Capybara. We’ll then return with our last meetup before the summer break on Tuesday July 15th. We’ll return to regulalrly scheduled meetups in September.

Speakers

“Ruby Recap: RVM” by @benzittlau

• YEG.rb Ruby Refresh – RVM on Prezi

“Guarding Against Tedium” by @fnichol

• the Guard gem
• livereload plugin

Changes in Rails 3.1 by @MarkBennett

• used the Shining gem for my slides

MEETUP May 17th, 2011

WHAT: YEGBR 1.2 Rails 3.1 and Guard
WHEN: May 17th, 2011 at 18:30
WHERE: Room B-10, Computing Science Centre, University of Alberta [(map)](http://www.campusmap.ualberta.ca/index.cfm?campus=1&sector=2&feature=25)

This month @MarkBennett will be talking about the upcoming changes in Rail 3.1, and how to migrate your applications while @fnichol is going to tell us how to “Guarding Against Tedium” with the Guard gem. @benzittlau is also doing a recap of RVM and Bunder.

We’ll try to keep it short so that there will be time to go for beers after the talks are over.

NOTES - YEGRB 1.1 DevOps

News

• Rails 3.0.7 released – performance enhancements to fix regressions introduced in 3.0.6
• Rails 3.1 default changes – SASS, jQuery, and CoffeeScript are new defaults in Rails 3.1
• RailsInstaller 1.1 – Now with better support for GitHub. Because even Windows needs some lovin’.
• IsItRubinious? – You knew it was coming at some point. Find out if your favourite gems run on Rubinius.
• Pow – Zero-config Rack server for Mac OS X
• MacRuby – Now with more Ruby in the Apple AppStore

Announcements

Thanks for our meetup partners SilverSky Solutions, Burmis Studio, and The University of Alberta Department of Computer Science.

Our next meetup is taking place on May 17th, 2011 at the Computer Science Centre on the University of Alberta campus.

Ruby Refresh with @MarkBennett

In this months recap we talked about Rack, and it’s role in the Ruby ecosystem.

Iterative Chef by @fnichol

Fletcher Nichol gave an in-depth talk on bootstrapping a solo box with Chef. He started by using standard shell scripts to configure his box, and slowly iterated his examples to leverage more Chef best practices. He’s kindly posted his complete notes on GitHub.

Puppet by @darkhelmetlive

Daniel Huckstep finished the night with a discussion of using Puppet for automated server management. The repo he used for deployment is private so despite the fact that he used it as an example, he can’t open it up. If you’re interested in learning more about Puppet he suggests visiting Puppet Labs and FabFile. The puppet docs are also pretty solid.

MEETUP - April 19th - DevOps

WHAT: DevOps and Ruby
WHEN: Tuesday April 19th @ 6:30 PM
WHERE: Room B2, Computer Science Centre, University of Alberta

At our 13th meetup, we’re going to be talking about DevOps. According to Wikipedia,

“DevOps is an emerging set of principles, methods and practices for communication, collaboration and integration between software development (application/software engineering) and IT operations (systems administration/infrastructure) professionals.” ([link](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DevOps))

We’ve got two speakers lined up to talk about their experience using two popular infrastructure automation tools. First up is Fletcher Nichol ([fnichol](http://twitter.com/fnichol)) who will be giving an in-depth look at using [Chef recipes](http://www.rubyinside.com/chef-tasty-server-configuraiton-2162.html) to provision your servers. Up next is Daniel Huckstep ([darkhelmetlive](http://twitter.com/darkhelmetlive)) who’ll be teaching up how to “Manage your servers LIKE A BOSS with [fabric](https://github.com/bitprophet/fabric) and [puppet](https://github.com/puppetlabs/puppet)”!

YEGRB is also starting a new series of talks where we’ll cover a basic Ruby or Rails skill. Called the Ruby Recap we’re taking [suggestions on Convore for the first topic](https://convore.com/yegrb/5-minute-ruby-newbie-questions/).

We’re also excited to announce that for the first time this meetup is taking place at the University of Alberta in the Computer Science Building. There are limited power outlets, so please bring a full charge for your mobile devices. We’ll be providing some pizza, so get there early if you want a slice.

BuildNight Notes

Thank-you for taking the time to come out to Edmonton’s very first BuildNight. There was a great turnout and hopefully you enjoyed yourselves!

YEGRB really appreciated being given the opportunity to run the first event, and we’re excited to see what builds people come up with next. We’re often asked questions about how to get started with Rails and events like last night are a great way to do that. If you’re interested in carrying on with Ruby and Rails consider coming out to our next meetup. They’re always on the third Tuesday of every month. Details and location will be announced a few weeks ahead via the [@yegrb twitter account](https://twitter.com/yegrb), through [our mailing list](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/yegrb), and on our blog at [http://yegrb.com](http://yegrb.com).

The [source code from last nights talk is available on GitHub](https://github.com/yegrb/buildnight) for you to explore. Our instructions for [installing Ruby](https://github.com/yegrb/yeg-wiki/wiki/Installing-Ruby) and [getting started with Ruby](https://github.com/yegrb/yeg-wiki/wiki/Introduction-to-Ruby) and [Rails](https://github.com/yegrb/yeg-wiki/wiki/Introduction-to-Rails) are also always available on [our wiki](https://github.com/yegrb/yeg-wiki/wiki), were they are continually updated by our members. For more advanced developers we’ve also got a list of our favourite gems, books, blogs and other references on [our Ruby resources page](https://github.com/yegrb/yeg-wiki/wiki/Ruby-resources).

We’re always looking to improve, so if you have time please [spare a few minutes to answer a quick survey](https://spreadsheets.google.com/a/yegrb.com/viewform?formkey=dERKSkRFY25ZUW5pNTRhR3FfSDZUa1E6MQ) about last nights event. It’s a simple way to contribute and will really help us understand what you’re looking for from future BuildNights and from your Ruby meetup in general.

Once again a big thank-you to Cam Linke from [StartupEdmonton](http://www.startupedmonton.com) for getting these BuildNights rolling, the [Department of Computer Science](https://www.cs.ualberta.ca/) for supplying the venue, and to [Yardstick Software](http://www.yardsticksoftware.com/) for supplying everyone’s dinnerr.

YEGRB 1.0 BuildNight

WHAT: YEGRB 1.0 BuildNight
WHEN: Tuesday March 15th @ 18:30
WHERE: University of Alberta, Computer Science Building ([map](http://www.campusmap.ualberta.ca/index.cfm?campus=1&sector=2&feature=25))

We’re excited to announce that in partnership with [Startup Edmonton](http://www.startupedmonton.com/), YEGRB is hosting the first every [BuildNight](http://buildnightedmonton.eventbrite.com/) at the University of Alberta Computer Science Building on Tuesday March 15th. Over the course of two hours you’ll eat pizza and watch as we use [Ruby on Rails](http://rubyonrails.org/) to build a web application from scratch! Afterwards we’ll make the source code available through our [GitHub account](https://github.com/yegrb).

Anyone interesting in coming needs to [get a ticket](http://buildnightedmonton.eventbrite.com/). They’re free, but are limited to 25 spots.

You’re encouraged to bring your own computer to follow along with us as we go. No past Ruby or Rails experience is neccesary, though some basic programming understanding will help you keep up as we won’t be able to take questions during the build. To get setup we encourage you to visit out wiki for detailed [Ruby installation instructions](https://github.com/yegrb/yeg-wiki/wiki/Installing-Ruby), and for a quick [introduction to Ruby and Rails](https://github.com/yegrb/yeg-wiki/wiki/Ruby-resources). There will also be a swarm of experienced local Ruby developers on hand throughout the night to help install Ruby and Rails, and to answer questions. You can also get help anytime from [our mailing list](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/yegrb) and on [Twitter](http://twitter.com/yegrb).

We’re looking for a few more experience Rails developers to be on hand during the event. If you’d like to help out please send an email to [mark@yegrb.com](mailto:mark@yegrb.com).

A big thanks goes out to the [University of Alberta Computer Science Department](https://www.cs.ualberta.ca/) for supplying the space, and to [Yardstick Software](http://www.yardsticksoftware.com/) for kindly donating the pizza.

Get your ticket!(http://buildnightedmonton.eventbrite.com/)

NOTES - YEGRB 10 Work Smarter

This last meetup was different from normal, as we led a series of small group discussions about the tools and tricks people used to make developing with Ruby more enjoyable.

Editors
-——-

Most of the groups spent a lot of time discussing their favourite editors with [vim](http://www.vim.org/) and [TextMate](http://macromates.com/) taking the lead. Other popular editors included [gedit](http://projects.gnome.org/gedit/) on Ubuntu Linux and [Notepad++](http://notepad-plus-plus.org/) for Windows. [MacVim](http://code.google.com/p/macvim/) and [emacs](http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/) where also mentioned.

Vim was singled out as a popular editor amongst our members. Most people were using a combination of different vim plugins including [vim-rails](https://github.com/tpope/vim-rails), [pathogen](https://github.com/tpope/vim-pathogen), [NERDTree](https://github.com/scrooloose/nerdtree), [vim-surround](https://github.com/tpope/vim-surround), [jslint](https://github.com/hallettj/jslint.vim) and [ctags.vim](http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=610). Some of the members also publish the contents of their ~/.vim folders on GitHub for you to fork and make your own ([Fletcher](https://github.com/fnichol/dotvim) and [Mark](https://github.com/MarkBennett/MarkBennett-vim)). Peepcode also offers a pair ([part i](http://peepcode.com/products/smash-into-vim-i) and [part ii](http://peepcode.com/products/smash-into-vim-ii)) of excellent screencasts which are well worth the $12 if you’re looking to learn vim quickly. The screencasts also come with an excellent sample ~/.vim folder which is used throughout.

In TextMate many people also mentioned the Command-T keyboard shortcut for searching files and code. [Peepopen](http://peepcode.com/products/peepopen) was also recommended as a navigation plugin for TextMate that also works well with MacVim and other Mac editors.

Deployment
-————

The topic of deployment was also raised with [Capistrano](https://github.com/capistrano/capistrano) remaining the hands-down favourite. [Vlad the deployer](http://rubyhitsquad.com/Vlad_the_Deployer.html) and [git-deploy](https://github.com/mislav/git-deploy) also got honourable mentions.

Documentation
-—————-

For daily reference members recommended [rdoc.info](http://rdoc.info/) and [railsapi.com](http://railsapi.com/). The official [Rails Guides](http://guides.rubyonrails.org/) were available for more detailed Rails tutorials. For screencasts members turned to [Railscasts](http://railscasts.com/), [Peepcode](http://peepcode.com/screencasts/), [PragProg](http://www.pragprog.com/screencasts) and [The Ruby of Rails Tutorial by Michael Hartl](http://ruby.railstutorial.org/). [Rails for Zombies](http://railsforzombies.org/) was also mentioned as fun way to learn Ruby on Rails.

Testing
-——

Most members use either [rspec](http://rspec.info/) or [minitest](http://rdoc.info/stdlib/minitest/1.9.2/frames) for their tests, along with various complementary tools like [factory-girl](https://github.com/thoughtbot/factory_girl), [machinist](https://github.com/notahat/machinist), and [mochra](https://github.com/floehopper/mocha). The [autotest gem](http://rubygems.org/gems/autotest) from [ZenTest](http://www.zenspider.com/ZSS/Products/ZenTest/) was also mentioned as an important tool for automatically running tests. [Watchr](https://github.com/mynyml/watchr) is another tool which can be used to run your tests automatically, though no one at the meetup is using it.

Other tips
-————

Some members use a terminal emulation client called [screen](http://www.gnu.org/software/screen/) to maintain a persistent console on their servers. You can detach from screen terminal sessions, leaving them running while you disconnect from the server. This is great for managing long running server processes. Screen sessions also persist if your accidently disconnected, making them an essential tool for managing flaky internet connections. Scott is an avid screen user and has shared his [.screenrc](https://gist.github.com/830499).

Mark was the sole [tmux](http://tmux.sourceforge.net/) user, preferring it to screen as it allows multiple users to share a session. It also lets you split a window vertically and horizontally which can’t be done in screen. He uses tmux for remote pair programming, and for running autotest in a split below his editor.

Fletcher is a fanatic about versioning and sharing his configuration, Mac users should look at his [post with details of all this GitHub repositories](https://groups.google.com/d/msg/yegrb/-kX_0LJxI4o/TnDdhJqnEooJ) on the mailing list.

Speaking of the [mailing list](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/yegrb), if you don’t already you should [sign up](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/yegrb) to stay in touch with the meetup between events. It’s also a great way to get help when you’re stuck on a tough problem. Just be sure to include a link to your code if you’re look for help on something specific!

Next Meetup
-————-

Our next meetup is on March 15th, the third tuesday in March. We’re not ready to announce details yet, but trust us when we say we’re planning something special.

YEGRB 0.10 Work Smarter

WHAT: YEGRB 0.10 Work Smarter
WHEN: Tuesday February 15th @ 18:30
WHERE: Original Joes Varsity, 8404 109 Street ([map](http://goo.gl/maps/YJNv))

The only code that counts is the code you ship.

At this meetup we’re going to be talking about the tools, tricks, and techniques that you use to write and ship your code. It’s going to run a little differently than our normal meetups. Rather than doing a series of presentations we’ll be breaking into groups to talk about your development workflow. Participants are encouraged to bring their laptops and demonstrate their favorite coding techniques. After some discussion members will be invited to take the stage and share their favorite workflows with the group.

As with last meetup, we’re getting together at Original Joe’s Varsity close to the U of A campus ([8404 109 Street](http://goo.gl/maps/YJNv)). Come early to get a good seat, the meetup will get started at 6:30.

We’re also looking for someone to sponsor part of the tab. Email mark@yegrb.com or reply to @yegrb on Twitter if you’re interested.

YEGRB 0.9 Notes

Last night was YEGRB’s first meetup of the new year, and also our first meetup at Original Joe’s Varsity. Being able to order food and beer during the night was a plus, and we had a great set of talks.

News

• jRuby 1.6.0 RC1, introduces Ruby 1.9.2 syntax
• Rubinius 1.2 released, groundwork for Windows and Ruby 1.9.2 plus bug fixes
• RailsInstaller, finally an updated Ruby and Rails installer for Windows
• RedDirtRubyConf, is looking for speakers
• MountainWest RubyConf 2011, is happening March 17-18th @darkhelmetlive is organising a roadtrip

Jobs

Smibs.tv is looking for a Ruby developer to perform various work on their site. Contact Peter Urban for details and let him know you heard about the job at YEGrb.

Speakers

The theme for this month’s meetup was “New Year, New Languages” and our speakers took that to heart.

First up was @MarkBennett talking about creating objects and inheriting properties with JavaScript’s prototypicial inheritence.

Next was @fnichol who came through with an interesting look at Groovy, or as he called A Java Head’s Gateway Drug to Ruby.

@darkhelmetlive followed up with a great dive into the language every Rubyist loves to hate, Python. After reading his notes on GitHub you might not be so quick to knock Python at the next meetup.

@scottbrooksca finished off the evening by blowing everyone’s minds with a discussion of Erlang. With it’s message passing and fail first philosphy it was a stretch, but he had everyone on his side by the time he was done!

Next meetup

The next meetup is going to be happening on Feb 15th. We’re talking about development workflows. What’s your editor of choice? Console or db tools? Do you autotest or use rake to run tests? We want to know all your favourite productivity tricks!

To prepare we’re asking all members to post a picture or video of your development setup and send a link to us @yegrb on Twitter. We’ll share these at the meetup and have a guided discussion over drinks.

Thanks for everyone for a great meetup last night!

YEGRB 0.9 - New Year, New Languages

WHAT: YEGRB 0.9 – New Year, New Languages
WHEN: Tuesday Jan 18th @ 18:30
WHERE: Original Joe’s Varsity ([map](http://goo.gl/maps/Rqdv))

Our first meetup of 2011 is happening this coming Tuesday at Original Joe’s Varsity. As announced at the last meetup we’re talking new languages for the new year. There will be a short set of lightning talks, then lots of time for socializing afterwards. And since we’re at a pub already, there’s no need to migrate anywhere once the talks are done. Even better there’s a bar tab!

The languages we’ll be presenting include:

• Erlang (@scottbrooksca)
• Python (@darkhelmetlive)
• Groovy (@fnichol)
• JavaScript (@MarkBennett)

If you’d like to talk reply to yegrb on Twitter or send us an email to markyegrb.com.

We’re also looking for a projector. If you’ve got one we can use please email mark@yegrb.com.

YEGRB 0.8 Notes

House Keeping
=====

RailsRumble Survey
-————————-

Over the last month we ran a survey to see how useful YEGRB’s support was during the RailsRumble. The results are out, and the executive summary is that teams found YEGRB provided good useful about the rumble, and publicity for their apps. Teams didn’t find YEGRB very useful for matchmaking or venue finding which is something we’ll try to improve on next year. The teams were also very happy with their performance, and YEGRB as a whole. [Full results are online for your own analysis](https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AixYdwrjR-5idENvODZQcmpmaWtVX1FKTHNPZnNtVVE&hl=en).

Thanks to everyone who took the time to share their thoughts and comments!

News
====

- [RubyConf 2010](http://www.rubyconf.org) happened this weekend. Yukihiro Matsumoto (Matz), Dave Thomas, and David Heinemeir Hansson. They’ve got a [Google group](http://groups.google.com/group/rubyconf-2010) but videos aren’t up yet.
- Other stuff?

Jobs, Jobs, Jobs
=====

There are lots of ruby and javascript jobs this month!

- [Clio](http://www.goclio.com/) seeks [Software Developer, Ruby on Rails](http://jobs.37signals.com/jobs/7583)
- [Appboy](http://appboy.com/) seeks [Lead Developer](http://www.startuphire.com/search/details.php?job=106718)
- [Seek Your Own Proof](http://www.seekyourownproof.com/) seeks [jQuery/JavaScript guru](http://www.seekyourownproof.com/public/contact-us.aspx)
- [Burmis Studio](http://burmis.ca) seeks [Ruby Developer](http://www.burmis.ca/#contact)

Please contact jobs@yegrb.com if you’d like to get your job listed at our next meetup!

Talks
=

• [Rails 3 in 10 minutes](http://vimeo.com/groups/69998/videos/16885241) by [@MarkBennett](http://twitter.com/MarkBennett)

Next Meetup
===

We’re going to skip the next meetup in December, but we’re hoping to organise a Christmas hackup instead. Details over the next few weeks.

Stay In Touch
======

- YEGRB [Google Group](http://groups.google.com/group/yegrb)
- YEGRB on IRC at [#yegrb on irc.freenode.net](http://webchat.freenode.net/?randomnick=1&channels=yegrb&uio=d4)
- YEGRB on [Twitter](http://twitter.com/yegrb)

UPDATED! YEGRB 0.8 Rails 3 - 16-Nov at 19:00

UPDATE: Please note this is now at 19:00. We’re also still looking for speakers!

THE DETAILS:
===

WHEN: 16-Nov-2010 at 19:00
WHERE: [Room 607, Stanley Milner Library, 7 Sir Winston Churchill Square](http://goo.gl/XOrd)

This month, we’re getting back to our roots to talk about the recent release of Rails 3.

We’re looking for speakers to discuss anything and everything related to Rails 3. Ideas for talks include:

• Installing Rails 3 and creating your first app
• Upgrading a Rails 2.3 app to Rails 3
• Integrating your existing gems with Rails 3
• Rails 3 routing
• AREL and the new ActiveRecord
• Testing Rails 3 apps with rspec
• Integrating Rails 3 with other rack applications

If you haven’t done a lightning talk at YEGRB before, now is your change to give it a try! They’re only 10-minutes and it’s a great experience. Sign up to talk using the RSVP form below.

Daniel (@darkhelmetlive) has also kindly volunteered to MC this month’s meetup. Please don’t give him too much of a hard time as this is his first time running the show. I won’t be there in person, but I will deliver a screen cast on Rails 3 remotely.

IMPORTANT:
====

Please note that we’re having this meetup at the [Stanley Milner Public Library](http://goo.gl/XOrd). There’s parking in the library parkade, and you can access the library building from Churchill LRT station, or from the bus terminal at the front entrance. The meetup is on level 6, room #7. We’ll post signs at the door on the night of the event. It’s a new venue for us, and we’d appreciate any feedback you may have.

RSVP:
===

[Use this form to RSVP](http://goo.gl/t6yj)

Contact [mark@yegrb.com](mailto:mark@yegrb.com) if you have any questions. See you there!

-Mark Bennett
YEGRB member

YEGRB 0.7 Notes

House Keeping
=====

Looking for a new venue
-——————————

- cheap is great, free is better
- needs wifi, projector
- food and drink

News
====

- [RSpec 2.0(.1)](http://github.com/rspec/rspec) – Behaviour Driven Development for Ruby
- [Passenger 3](http://blog.phusion.nl/2010/10/18/phusion-passenger-3-0-0-final-released/) – Smaller, faster, better and now with more RVM
- [OmniAuth](http://github.com/intridea/omniauth) – OmniAuth is a flexible authentication system utilizing Rack middleware

RailsRumble
===

Congratulations to all the teams that participated in the RailsRumble! There were four teams competing and they all completing some great looking and funtional apps. We’ve posted [profiles of each app](http://yegrb.com/2010/10/18/These-are-your-rumble-apps/) on the blog.

Public voting starts next week, but you can [register your RailsRumble account now](http://railsrumble.com/login) to participate in the judging.

rumble teams now have a few minutes to demo their apps

And now for today’s surprise, Cam Linke has agreed to give each app a few minutes to demo at the next DemoCamp. If you’re interested in doing so please let me know.

Jobs, Jobs, Jobs
=====

There are lots of ruby and javascript jobs this month!

- [Clio](http://www.goclio.com/) seeks [Software Developer, Ruby on Rails](http://jobs.37signals.com/jobs/7583)
- [Appboy](http://appboy.com/) seeks [Lead Developer](http://www.startuphire.com/search/details.php?job=106718)
- [Seek Your Own Proof](http://www.seekyourownproof.com/) seeks [jQuery/JavaScript guru](http://www.seekyourownproof.com/public/contact-us.aspx)
- [Burmis Studio](http://burmis.ca) seeks [Ruby Developer](http://www.burmis.ca/#contact)

Please contact jobs@yegrb.com if you’d like to get your job listed at our next meetup!

Talks
=

• NodeJS by [@SkepticSean](http://twitter.com/SkepticSean)
• [CoffeeScript](http://get-jittery-with-coffeescript.heroku.com/) by [@darkhelmetlive](http://twitter.com/darkhelmetlive)
• [Javascript](http://github.com/MarkBennett/IntroToJsTdd) TDD by [@MarkBennett](http://twitter.com/MarkBennett)

Next Meetup
===

Our next meetup is going to be on Tuesday Nov 16th.

We’ll be switching venues so please watch Twitter and yegrb.com for details!

YEGJS - 19-Oct-2010 at Axis Cafe

This month we’re taking a break from Ruby to talk about… JavaScript!

Javascript is a topic of interest to many Rubyists, and we decided that there’s enough going on to warrant it’s own meetup.

We’ve already got speakers talking about Node.js and TDD in Javascript, but there are lots of other things to cover. If you’d like to do a talk then contact yegrb on Twitter or email markyegrb.com.

We’re also still looking for a sponsor for this months meetup. Sponsoring a meetup is as cheap as $100 and ensures we can keep these meetups going at the current venue. Contact mark@yegrb.com if you’re interested.

[RSVP to attend or do a lightning talk](https://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=dEpKWl9jVDFsUHNHa1lJaWRqLXlBVmc6MA). See you there!

YEGRB 0.6 Notes

House Keeping

Apps4Edmonton

• The first Apps4Edmonton contest was a great success with 36 apps entered
• 5 applications identified as build using Ruby
• Congratulations to all the apps, especially Alertzy! (@BenZittlau, @RyanOnRails, and @gabain) and TXT.2.ETS (@SeanHealy and @JoelJackson) for their winning entries!

News

• Rails 3 has been officially released
  • We’ll have a full introduction at a meetup soon
  • Lot’s of good documention on the official blog
• RVM goes 1.0
  • Daniel will go over RVM and what it is later
• Ruby 1.9.2 released
• Beta of Passenger 3
• Devise 1.1.x

Google Group

• Our mandate is to connect ruby users in Edmonton
• We’ve created a google group to do this between meetups
• Membership is moderated but posts aren’t
• Visit the group at http://groups.google.com/group/yegrb
• It was suggested that we use an IRC bot instead, will explore this

RailsRumble

• RailsRumble is a 48-hour hackathon on Oct 16th-18
• Lot’s of great prizes and sponsors
• Three teams have registered from the meetup
• Both teams still looking for one more member
• Thanks to the designers who came out!
• Will contact ENTS about providing a space teams can use over the weekend

Next Meetup

• Check out the apps built during the RailsRumble
• All about javascript
• Show off your nodejs, canvas, and HTML5 skills
• Submit your talks soon as this is going to be a popular meetup!

Speakers

Using CSS frameworks by @benzittlau

• http://www.alertzy.com/
• http://cacoo.com/
• http://960.gs/
• http://www.blueprintcss.org/
• http://devkick.com/lab/tripoli/
• http://devkick.com/lab/tripoli/sample.php?
• http://bluetrip.org/
• http://elasticss.com/

Adding OpenID to your app by @cbrulak

Coming soon…

RVM: Ruby goes to 11! by @darkhelmetlive

Daniel revealed the secrets of using RVM to isolate your ruby virtual machines. He also showed some examples of typical workflow, including how use gemsets to isolate the gems installed on different projects. Check out his slides for a recap.

Vlad: The Deployer by @nathany

Nathan stepped in at the last minute and put together a great introduction to deploying your apps with Vlad. Hit him up on Twitter if there’s anything you missed.

Are you ready to rumble? by @MarkBennett

Mark finished off the night with a check list for teams preparing for the RailsRumble. View the slides again or read the details on the blog post which inspired this talk.

YEGRB 0.6 - 21-Sept-2010 6:30pm at Axis Cafe

With the arrival of September the Ruby Meetup are back and ready to rumble! RailsRumble that is!

This month’s meetup is about preparing YEGRB members to participate in the RailsRumble in October. The rumble is a yearly competition that pits developers from around the world together in a contest to develop and deploy an application in 48-hours. The competition can be fierce but the experience can be just what you need to get an edge in your Rails development.

This month’s speakers include:

• @mdeering – Advanced Capistrano deployments
• @benzittlau – Using CSS frameworks
• @cbrulak – Adding OpenID to your app
• @markbennett – RailsRumble checklist

Register for this month’s meeetup now

We’ve also got a list of Rumble teams in Edmonton looking for teammates. Team mates with graphic and web design skills are in high demand.

YEGRB 0.5 - REMINDER - Tuesday July 20th at Axis Cafe on Jasper

Don’t forget to come out to the next YEGRB meetup tomorrow night. We’re talking about enterprise messaging with RabbitMQ, deplying your applications to Rackspace (with prizes!) and Resque job queue.

There’s also a tab thanks to Yardstick Software, our sponsor for the evening.

See you there!

YEGRB 0.5 - Tuesday July 20th at Axis Cafe on Jasper

The next YEGRB meetup is only a week away, and I’m excited to announce more details. But first if you haven’t already, please RSVP.

The topics this month include:

• An introduction to AMQP/RabbitMQ, by Scott Brooks
• Deployment Part 2: EngineYard, by Daniel Huckstep
• CanCan(’t), by Mark Bennett
• Deploying your rails app with Moonshine, by Luke Hutscal

Scott will be going in-depth during his talk and will be running a little longer than normal, but we still hope to get things wrapped in under an hour so there’s lots of time for drinks afterwards.

This meetup has also been kindly sponsored by Yardstick Software. As with last meetup, they’ll be providing a tab on a first come first serve basis. Like last time the meetup will be at Axis Cafe on Jasper Ave. Doors open at 18:15 and the meetup will start at 18:30.

UPDATE: Added Luke to the speaker list. He’ll be talking about Deploying your Rails app with Moonshine.

Notes from YEGRB 0.4 with Aman Gupta

Thanks to everyone that came out for YEGRB 0.4 with Aman Gupta. Aman gave a detailed talk on understanding the performance of your Ruby applications, with lots of examples to show how to do this in different situations. He kindly let us record this talk, and you can watch what was recorded on our ustream.tv page. Unfortunately, the second half of his talk after his router ‘core dumped’ was not recorded but you can still get the slides of this presentation and others from his Scribd account. He also shares code on GitHub, and answers questions sent to @tmm1 on Twitter.

We also tried out Axis Cafe as a new venue. A big thanks goes out to Yardstick Software for sponsoring the space (and the bar tab!). Burmis Studio also donated a gift for the presenter.

Can’t wait to see everyone at the next meetup!

June 15th Meetup to be held at Axis Cafe

Our next meetup is coming up fast and is only a few days away. RSVP now if you haven’t already! You can also submit questions for Aman online.

Following up on our last post we would like to announce that we’re moving venues for this special meetup and will meeting at Axis Cafe on Jasper Avenue, rather than our normal location. Yardstick Software has kindly sponsored us, and will be providing picking up the tab for the first few attendees. There will be a $6 drink special after that!

Axis Cafe is located at 10349 Jasper Avenue. Doors open at 6:00 with the meetup starting promptly at 6:30. See you there!

YEGRB July 15th Meetup - EventMachine and Ruby Tuning with Aman Gupta

It’s hard to believe we’re already on to our fourth YEGRB meetup, and this is going to be the best one yet! Aman Gupta (github, twitter) will be joining us via the web to present “Debugging Ruby: understanding and troubleshooting the VM and your application”. Aman is a serial entrepreneur, ruby hacker and a recent winner of a Ruby Heroes award. He currently maintains the EventMachine project and various other gems that help build high-performance distributed and asynchronous systems in ruby, including em-mysql, em-spec, jsSocket and amqp.

Most recently, Aman has been hacking on performance improvements to MRI, and tools for the VM such as perftools.rb, a sampling profiler for ruby code based on google-perftools, and gdb.rb, a MRI specific version of gdb.

We’ve setup a Google Moderator channel to collect questions for Aman in advance of his talk. Submit your questions early and vote on the ones you’re most interested in so that we make maximum use of his time. You can also record a YouTube video of yourself asking your question.

The meetup will be taking place on June 15th @ 18:30 MST. Please RSVP in advance. We’re making some special arrangements for this months venue and will announce the location details later on this week.

Thanks to Daniel (@darkhelmetlive) for setting this talk up!

Notes from YEGRB 0.3

Thanks to everyone who came out to our meetup last week. It wasn’t our biggest meetup, but it was a good one!

On the housekeeping side we did a quick wrap-up of the first hackup. It went well, and though lots of new projects were started it will be a few weeks before we’ve got anything to show for. Keep your eye on the YEGRB Github account where some of the hackup projects call home! Planning for the next hackup has started and we should be ready to make an announcement in the next few weeks.

We’ve also moved our meetup to the third Tuesday of every month, where it should be staying. Mark the third Tuesday of your calendar or subscribe to our calendar feed.

• Ribinius 1.0 (http://rubini.us/)
• jruby 1.5.0 (http://jruby.org/)
• MacRuby (http://www.macruby.org/)
• Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (http://ubuntu.com)

Presenters

• A walkthrough of Heroku by Daniel Huckstep
• An introduction to authlogic by Chris Brulak
• A new RESTful imaging API by Graham Batty

Links

• Advanced Javascript ebook

See you for the next meetup on June 15th!!!

The next meetup is two days away

Our next meetup is happening this Tuesday 18th May at 18:30. As before, Nexopia will be hosting us at their offices downtown. Remember to enter through the entrance on the north side of 102nd Ave between 103rd and 104th Street (map). The doors lock at 6:30 but contact information for who to call will be posted. Highlights of this meeting include:

• An introduction to authlogic by Chris Brulak
• A walkthrough of Heroku by Daniel Huckstep
• A new RESTful imaging API by Graham Batty
• A special hitlist item by Michael Deering

As well, we will go over Ruby events from the past month including a recap of our first hackup! And don’t forget about drinks afterwards at Pub 1905.

If you haven’t already please consider registering today. We’re looking forward to seeing everyone on Tuesday!

UPDATED - YEGRB 0.3 IS NOW MAY 18TH, 2010 AT 18:30

We’ve just found out the next DemoCamp is going to be happening on May 4th. As most of our members (myself included) are attending DemoCamp we’ve decided to move the next RubyMeetup to May 18th. As well, to prevent this problem in the future we’ve agreed to schedule all our RubyMeetups going forward on the third Tuesday of every month. We’ve already added these future dates to our calendar, so talk your loved ones and clear your schedules in advance!

Register to speak or attend the May 18th meetup now!

MEETUP - May 18th, 2010 at 18:30

This meetup has been moved from it’s original date to May 18th to avoid a conflict with the next DemoCamp!

YEGRB 0.3 is happening on May 18th, 2010 at 18:30. As with previous meetups Nexopia has kindly donated their boardroom for our purposes. Their offices are located at #408, 10320 – 102 Ave NW, Edmonton, Alberta (map). For attendees arriving after 18:30 the doors may be locked in which case instructions will be posted on the door.

Slots for lightning talks are still available. If you’d like to talk please let us know in the RSVP form below.

Follow yegrb on Twitter for the latest updates. You can also subscribe to our Google Calendar to have meetups added to your calendar in real-time.

Notes from YEGRB 0.2

Thanks again to everyone that came out to YEGRB 0.2. We had an even bigger turnout than last time with lots of new faces, as well as people coming back from the last meeting.

We heard the feedback from last time and kept things moving along at quick pace. Thanks to our great speakers we were able to achieve this goal and wrapped on schedule with time left to go to Pub 1905 for a few drinks.

The talks themselves where great and started off with Chris Brulak (cbrulak) presenting on Elxn41.ca. Chris’ application provides a platform for participants to debate and follow the political issues of the day. This discussion is meant to be interactive, and emphasise a dialog between members. Chris contrasted the conversation that happens on Elxn41.ca with a service such as Twitter where participants shout into a crowded space. In developing Elxn41.ca Chris used a number of popular gems including authlogic and acts_as_versioned. He tried the Twitter authentication component in authlogic but decided to use the twitter-auth gem for authentication in it’s place. If you’d like to try this application just visit http://elxn41.ca and login with the beta password ‘democracyrocks’. Chris is actively looking for developers to help build out the Elxn41.ca feature set. If you’d like to help out contact him at elxn41@elxn41.ca.

The next speaker was Sean Ouimet (@skepticsean) presenting on Sinatra and Rack. Sean walked everyone through the basics of Sinatra, including how to create a web application and declared your routes and the code which handles them. He then moved into some more advanced Sinatra scenarios. In particular his demonstrtation of how to embed multiple Sinatra apps in a single Rack application was intriqing as it can be used to deploy Rails and Sinatra in the same application. We’ve included Sean’s slides below if you’d like to see his code again.

Our last lightning talk was by Mark Bennett (@MarkBennett). He presented a new gem he’d written called Adman which makes it easy to share your Sinatra or Rails application using Bonjour (aka Zeroconf). With Adman anyone can find and resolve your applications IP automatically without using a DNS server or publishing your IP in advance. This is especially useful at hackups, conferences, or RailsCamps where access to the Internet is limited. If you’d like to try Adman for yourself just run, “gem install adman”. Check out Adman on GitHub and read the wiki for more details. Adman is under active development, and Mark want’s to make using Bonjour in your app a one liner.

With the lighting talks wrapped up on time some of the attendees with iPad’s kindly demonstrated them for the rest of the group. Reg Cheramy (@rcheramy) from Edistorm demonstrated some of his favourite features and apps already running on the iPad as well as some development work he’s done with the iPad. He wasn’t the only one with an iPad as Cam Linke and another attendee also brought their iPads out. Thanks guys, the iPad looks like it’s going to be another winner for Apple. Can’t wait to order mine at the end of the month.

Thanks again to all the attendees who made it out to this months meetup. Our primary mission is to connect local Ruby enthusiasts, so seeing how well attended the meetups have been is really encouraging. I know there are still lots of you out there who haven’t made it out to an event yet, but we’re looking forward to seeing you at YEGRB 0.3. Also watch for us to explore new ways of connecting the Ruby community in the coming months.

MEETUP - April 6th

As we’ve already announced the next YEGRB Meetup is happening on Tuesday April 6th, 2010 at 6:30 PM.

The meetup will be happening in the Nexopia offices at #408, 10320 – 102 Ave. This is the same location as last time. You want to enter from the enterance on 102 AVE. If the doors have already locked we’ll leave a note with instructions for getting in.

View Larger Map

We’ve got an exciting list of topics lined up for Tuesday, including:

• “Building www.elxn41.ca” with @cbrulak
• “Sinatra or CouchDB” with @skepticsean
• “Announcing your app with Bonjour” with @markbennett

We’re also hoping to have a few other surprises but you’ll just have to come out to see what we’re planning.

You can still sign up to attend or to talk.

Next Meetup April 6th

The next Edmonton Ruby Meetup is happening on Tuesday April 6th, 2010.

Sign up to attend or to talk. We’ll post a list of the speakers next week.