Posted by matt.overstreet, Fri Feb 05 09:49:00 UTC 2010
We’re going to reschedule next weeks meeting, we’ll update you all soon.
From Mel:
In light of our recent bouts of actual, real winter weather and the fact that our speaker will be coming from NC, I felt it best to postpone his presentation until further notice. I’m working with Clinton to see when he’s next available and will post details when I have them. Thanks for your understanding. Be safe, stay warm.
Posted by melriffe, Fri Jan 08 22:33:00 UTC 2010
Sorry for the late notice. However, the meeting is now from 6:30 until 8:30.
Date: Tuesday, 12 January
Time: 6:30 – 8:30 PM
Place: Tuckahoe Public Library
Jim Van Fleet plans on comparing and contrasting three different groups, and talking about what kind of problems match the different kinds of technologies. Unlike MySQL and Postgres, for example, which although they have different feature sets, basically do the same thing at the end of the day, the technologies that are being lumped together under the NoSQL flag in many cases have nothing to do with each other:
These include Mongo and Couch. Ilya Grigorik includes Tokyo Cabinet in this category, and I’ll mention why I don’t (with an aside about Tokyo’s other benefits).
There are like a zillion of these. Redis is quite popular, memcached was the first. Talking about benefits and genesis is pretty straightforward, but I’ll mention the points of contrast in the ones that I know about.
Amazon’s Dynamo and Google’s BigTable are an inspiration to many implementers of NoSQL technologies. Even those implementers that aren’t directly working on related technologies know about them.
Dynamo is a lot like a distributed hash table with very particular rules and some backend wizardry.
BigTable is an entirely new way of modeling data and “doing an application”.
Cassandra, in particular, is a technology that uses elements of both, and is a major frontier. I can talk a little bit about what the benefits and costs are for investigating Cassandra today.
After catching the Ruby religion from Dave Thomas at a No Fluff Just Stuff in Reston in 2004, Jim Van Fleet has been working with Rails ever since. During his time as a Community Developer at TradeKing, he’s been involved in the dirty business of maintaining a quickly growing web application in Ruby that received a Webby nomination in 2008. He received his Doctorate of Sideburns from Hard Knocks University in 1994.
CVREG Book Club will be kicking off this month. Pragmatic Programmer’s Security on Rails will be our first book.
Clinton Nixon of Viget Labs will be presenting next month: “The Joy of Ruby” His presentation does an excellent job of answering the question: Why use Ruby?
Posted by matt.overstreet, Mon Dec 28 10:28:00 UTC 2009
The Holidays are almost over and the CVReg book club is getting ready to kick off!
Leave a comment here, or contact @omnifroodle if you are planning on joining. Space will be limited for this first book.
Posted by matt.overstreet, Wed Dec 09 15:05:00 UTC 2009
The CVReg book club kicks off in January with Security on Rails by by Ben Poweski and David Raphael.
We will be meeting weekly somewhere in Richmond (suggestions?), and cover 1-2 chapters per meeting.
Make sure to comment here or send a tweet to #cvbeg or @omnifroodle to let us know you’ll be there.
Posted by melriffe, Wed Dec 09 09:55:00 UTC 2009
So you’ve heard about the group (or told someone) but you miss the announcements or you want to know where to go for more information, especially when you’re having trouble with some Ruby code. Hopefully we have enough different channels from which to select. Each channel is different and offers its own pros & cons.
Of course there is the website. It generally gets updated to announce upcoming meetings. It’s also used to announce regional events and to post our schedule. Basically it’s where to go to find information about our meetings.
In the future (we’ll all have jetpacks) we will start including news/announcements related to our Sponsors.
The site does have an Atom Feed for you News Reader Junkies. Here’s the link: http://cvreg.org/feed/atom.xml
CVREG uses a Google Group to manage it’s mailing list. The link to the group is in the right-nav, but here it is too: http://groups.google.com/group/cvruby
I try to mirror the content from the website since, I imagine, not everyone follows the site’s Atom Feed. Occasionally we’ll see other posts.
I definitely encourage everyone to post questions (or solutions) to the mailing list. It doesn’t even have to be about Ruby (should have mentioned that earlier).
We share a channel on freenode.net: #rubycodejam. Now you may wonder at its name. And stop me if you’ve heard this before: Our sister-group in Charlottesville is called the Ruby Code Jam and one of its members created the IRC Channel. I contacted him for details and he felt it best that we share the channel.
Most days it’s low activity but there are some really smart people in the channel every day. I’ve been pimping it out and hoping to grow it (like CVREG) into a more regional mostly Ruby-centric IRC channel.
I most definitely encourage you to join the channel and just hang-out with us. And be sure to tell everyone you know about it.
We have a Twitter account: http://twitter.com/cvreg It’s a cyborg. The bot portion is configured to repost the website’s Atom Feed. The bot portion is also configured to follow my (as in Mel Riffe’s) MeetUp feed (I’m following a few of the Regional Ruby Users Groups). I also occasionally tweet on that account.
Yes, we have a Facebook Group too: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?v=wall&gid=7031350324“
It’s currently not used in any capacity. Suggestions welcomed.
There you have it, the channels CVREG uses to communicate to its members and the public at large. Are there any other channels we should consider?
However, if there is one take away I’d like you to consider, it’s this: Find a way to keep up with the announcements because we have some pretty cool stuff planned for next year.
Ciao, Mel
Posted by melriffe, Sun Dec 06 19:35:00 UTC 2009
As 2009 comes to a close, we have one of our own stepping up the plate to talk to us about URI’s and their lifecycle.
Moving an existing site from the old and busted to the new hotness involves a million little details. Removing that old table layout, scrubbing the data, selling or sneaking in a new feature or two, etc., etc., all the way down to the zoot. But when all is said and done, where did mysupersite.net/lolfrogz?color=blu&cuteness=-4 go?
URI lifetime matters.
We’ll talk about a few solutions, from .htaccess, to application controllers in RoR, to Rack. And finish with Rack::Route301, an very young Rack based solution that Matt will be releasing as an open source project.
Tuckahoe Public Library, 1901 Starling Drive in Richmond.
Look here for directions: http://www.henricolibrary.org/Libs/tu.html
Posted by melriffe, Tue Nov 03 12:33:00 UTC 2009
We all know that Agile helps projects and companies plan and execute work better. And, as Agilists, we have seen how this results in happier relationships at work.
So, why not at home too?
In partnership with the Central Virginia Ruby Enthusiasts Group (CVREG) (www.cvreg.org) Agile Richmond is happy to present a session with Joe and Peace Meade on “Scrum for Kids”. Come find out how you can successfully apply the principals of scrum with your family to get more done, more reliably, and with happier results.
Location: Tuckahoe Public Library, 1901 Starling Drive in Richmond. Look here for directions: http://www.henricolibrary.org/Libs/tu.html
Posted by melriffe, Wed Sep 30 15:34:00 UTC 2009
Be sure to spread the word and invite all you know. This meeting is not to be missed.
In conjunction with the RJUG, Andy Hunt [1], of Pragmatic Programmer fame, will be in Richmond to talk about: Pragmatic Thinking and Learning: Refactor your Wetware [2].
This session is not exclusively about programming but about how we learn and how best to learn. Therefore, I would encourage you to invite everyone you know.
Please register at the link below so we can have an accurate head count for food and seating.
http://www.richmondjug.com/event/pragmatic-thinking-and-learning-andy-hunt-pragmatic-programmer
If you’re able to I would encourage you to volunteer your time for this event; RJUG is looking for some help with the logistics of this meeting.
[1] Website
[2] Book
[5] RJUG
[6] CVREG on Twitter
Posted by melriffe, Fri Sep 04 17:48:00 UTC 2009
Date: Tuesday, 8 September
Time: 6:00 – 8:00 PM
Place: INM United
This meeting is being held in a new location. Parking is a little awkward so visit this image to find out where to park. You’ll want to park behind the INM building in order to get free validation. INM will provide it.
The “midori” generative framework, php flavor. The framework goals are a clean api, generate redundant code, and focus on data centric problems (validation, abstraction, business objects, etc), some form of an application plugin/module system, and of course the hardest part, good documentation. The php flavor includes Boxing Types for values in php so that you can easily chain methods and maintain formatting of dates, etc.
http://github.com/michaelherndon/midori-php/tree/master
Youssef Chaker is a software developer at OpenSource Connections, where he’s been helping the OSC team take over the world one web app at a time. Youssef graduated from UVa with a Bachelors in Science in Computer Engineering in 2008 and had his first but brief introduction to Ruby writing an interpreter for a language called COOL (classroom object oriented language, developed in Berkeley). He’s also been using Ruby on Rails since joining OSC and has fallen back in love with programming since. He is also the author of the ZeepIt plugin, an easy way to integrate the Zeep Mobile API into a Rails application.
Michael Herndon is a senior developer at OpenSource Connections, specializing in bleeding edge technology, standards, development tools and software on both the web and desktop platforms. Not much else is known about him, the rest of his bio is evidently sealed in a vault, protected by killer Buddhist monks. If you don’t wish to go up against killer Buddhist monks, you could try his website: www.amptools.net
