So join us tonight for some pairing.

Topic: Pairing on Game of Life

Amos will lead a couple pairing sessions where everyone will team up with a partner for 45 minutes to implement the game of life, then switch partners.

We also have Kent prepared to discuss his latest spike rjordan/chatter.

I will leave it up to the group tonight on whether they want to do both or hold the presentation till next month. Same with the day 2 of RubyMidwest topics.

We also welcome any others that want to discuss what they have been
working on or learning. Impromptu walk through or discussion are
great!

New location:

The Able Few offices (above Foam)
2603 Cherokee St
St. Louis, MO 63118
(Cherokee St + Jefferson)
(Google map)

http://theablefew.com/contact

Notes about the new location:

There is a lot behind the building that you are welcome to as well as
plenty of street parking. Our door is on the side of the building
(Cherokee side) with a Blue and White AF on the door. We are on the
2nd floor. If anyone has trouble, please do not hesitate to call
Michael Bishop at: 314–537-6723.

Agenda

6:30 — 7 Social
7–8 or 9 Presentations and talks
8–12 stay and hack or drink or dance...

Have a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Kent Jordan will discuss his latest ruby spike rjordan/chatter.

Tom Muessig will discuss Thor and writing rails generators

Date / Time class review

Ruby Midwest recap by Ruby Midwest attendees

We also welcome any others that want to discuss what they have been working on or learning. Impromptu walk through or discussion are great!

New location:

The Able Few offices (above Foam)
2603 Cherokee St
St. Louis, MO 63118
(Cherokee St + Jefferson)
(Google map)
http://theablefew.com/contact

Notes about the new location:

There is a lot behind the building that you are welcome to as well as plenty of street parking. Our door is on the side of the building (Cherokee side) with a Blue and White AF on the door. We are on the 2nd floor. If anyone has trouble, please do not hesitate to call Michael Bishop at: 314–537-6723.

Agenda

6:30 — 7 Social
7–8 or 9 Presentations and talks
8–12 stay and hack or drink or dance...

Angelo will demonstrate building of a simple app from scratch in Rails 3.1 and showing how to deploy to Heroku.

We also welcome any others that want to discuss what they have been working on or learning. Impromptu walk through or discussion are great!

New location:

The Able Few offices (above Foam)
2603 Cherokee St
St. Louis, MO 63118
(Cherokee St + Jefferson)
(Google map)
http://theablefew.com/contact

Notes about the new location:

There is a lot behind the building that you are welcome to as well as plenty of street parking. Our door is on the side of the building (Cherokee side) with a Blue and White AF on the door. We are on the 2nd floor. If anyone has trouble, please do not hesitate to call Michael Bishop at: 314–537-6723.

Agenda

6:30 — 7 Social
7–8 or 9 Presentations and talks
8–12 stay and hack or drink or dance...

New location:

The Able Few offices (above Foam)
2603 Cherokee St
St. Louis, MO 63118
(Cherokee St + Jefferson)
(Google map)
http://theablefew.com/contact

Notes about the new location:

There is a lot behind the building that you are welcome to as well as plenty of street parking. Our door is on the side of the building (Cherokee side) with a Blue and White AF on the door. We are on the 2nd floor. If anyone has trouble, please do not hesitate to call Michael Bishop at: 314–537-6723.

Agenda

6:30 — 7 Social
7–8 or 9 Presentations and talks
8–12 stay and hack or drink or dance...

Our August 8th meeting will be at Timberlake Manor, as usual, starting at 6:30 PM.

If you have any other projects you would like to discuss or share, please bring them to the meeting.

Nathan Neff can also give us an update about how Ruby teaching is going at Byteworks.

Topics/speakers:

1. Writing Better Rails Apps — Craig Buchek
2. Updates on Jeff’s multiruby project (alt to RVM) — Jeff Barczewski
3. Byteworks update (Nathan Neff)

Meetings are inter­ac­tive and user dri­ven. Topic length and details are dri­ven by inter­est and ques­tions of the group.

If you want to share your expe­ri­ence or present another topic let us know or come to the meet­ing. We’re always open to new top­ics of interest.

After the meet­ing, sev­eral of us usu­ally head to a local restau­rant for food and post-meeting socializing.

Our July meeting will be at Timberlake Manor, as usual, starting at 6:30 PM.

Kent Jordan will be discussing knockout.js which implements MVVM for javascript client-side templating. From their website:

Knockout is a JavaScript library that helps you to create rich, responsive display and editor user interfaces with a clean underlying data model. Any time you have sections of UI that update dynamically (e.g., changing depending on the user’s actions or when an external data source changes), KO can help you implement it more simply and maintainably.

Jeff Barczewski will give an update on the rvm-like multi-ruby he has been working on which could be an alternate choice to RVM on *nix systems.

If you have any other projects you would like to discuss or share, please bring them to the meeting.

Nathan Neff can also give us an update about how Ruby teaching is going at Byteworks.

Topics/speakers:

1. Knockout.js — Kent Jordan
2. Updates on Jeff’s multiruby project (alt to RVM) — Jeff Barczewski
3. Byteworks update (Nathan Neff)

Meetings are inter­ac­tive and user dri­ven. Topic length and details are dri­ven by inter­est and ques­tions of the group.

If you want to share your expe­ri­ence or present another topic let us know or come to the meet­ing. We’re always open to new top­ics of interest.

After the meet­ing, sev­eral of us usu­ally head to a local restau­rant for food and post-meeting socializing.

Our June meeting will be at Timberlake Manor, as usual, starting at 6:30 PM.

Jeff Barczewski will discuss his progress on a simpler rvm-like multi-ruby setup which he has been experimenting with. A discussion of how it works, the goals, the implementation and how it differs from rvm and pik. One of the goals is better gemset management. Jeff wants to get input and ideas for the project.

We’ll also discuss the new features in Rails 3.1 like the asset pipeline and coffeescript and what it means to us.

If you have any other projects you would like to discuss or share, please bring them to the meeting.

Nathan Neff can also give us an update about how Ruby teaching is going at Byteworks.

Topics/speakers:

1. Simpler multi-ruby — Jeff Barczewski
2. Rails 3.1 discussion — Group
3. Rails Conf Select Topic Review — Group
4. Byteworks update (Nathan Neff)

Meetings are inter­ac­tive and user dri­ven. Topic length and details are dri­ven by inter­est and ques­tions of the group.

If you want to share your expe­ri­ence or present another topic let us know or come to the meet­ing. We’re always open to new top­ics of interest.

After the meet­ing, sev­eral of us usu­ally head to a local restau­rant for food and post-meeting socializing.

Our May meeting will be at Timberlake Manor, as usual, starting at 6:30 PM.

Another list of great topics for this month’s meeting!

Facebook Integration — Craig and Richard will show us how to easily integrate our sites with Facebook.

Gordon was unable to make it last month, so we’re planning to include his discussion of Pik, the multi-ruby for Windows. Join us a learn all the tricks and techniques for being productive and testing across multiple rubies. Learn how Forwardable makes it easy to delegate methods with full control. We have not yet heard a confirmation from him yet, but we’ll keep this on the agenda.

Jeff Barczewski would like to discuss a simplified rvm-like setup might make it easier to maintain multi-ruby setups across versions and for switching back and forth. This will be a discussion of ideas and thoughts about the process.

Finally some great Ruby code idioms to discuss which every great Ruby programmer should know. Configuration through extend self, and how Method dispatch works. Amos King or another Ruby member will walk through.

Nathan Neff can also give us an update about how Ruby teaching is going at Byteworks.

Topics/speakers:

1. Facebook Integration — Craig Buchek & Richard Jordan
2. Forwardable and Pik — Gordon Theisfeld (not yet confirmed)
3. Idea for simplified rvm-like multi-ruby — Jeff Barczewski
4. Configuration through extend self — Amos King or other
5. Method dispatch — Amos King or other
6. Byteworks update (Nathan Neff)

Meetings are inter­ac­tive and user dri­ven. Topic length and details are dri­ven by inter­est and ques­tions of the group.

If you want to share your expe­ri­ence or present another topic let us know or come to the meet­ing. We’re always open to new top­ics of interest.

After the meet­ing, sev­eral of us usu­ally head to a local restau­rant for food and post-meeting socializing.

We have an exciting meeting lined up! Gordon Theisfeld and Mario Aquino will be presenting on Forwardable, RVM, and Pik. Learn how to effectively use multiple rubies to their full potential. Switch easily from one to another.

RVM gives us this capability on Unix/Linux platforms and Pik (Gordon’s project) gives you similar power on Windows. Join us a learn all the tricks and techniques for being productive and testing across multiple rubies. Learn how Forwardable makes it easy to delegate methods with full control.

Topics/speakers:

1. Forwardable (Gordon Theisfeld)
2. RVM (Mario Aquino)
3. Pik (Gordon Theisfeld)
4. Byteworks update (Nathan Neff)

Meetings are inter­ac­tive and user dri­ven. Topic length and details are dri­ven by inter­est and ques­tions of the group.

If you want to share your expe­ri­ence or present another topic let us know or come to the meet­ing. We’re always open to new top­ics of interest.

After the meet­ing, sev­eral of us usu­ally head to a local restau­rant for food and post-meeting socializing.

Location:
1350 Timberlake Manor Pkwy
Chesterfield, MO 63017
Third floor — training room (right off the elevator)

Featured Topics/Speakers for our March Meeting:

1. Gateway Ruby Conference discussion (Amos)
2. Monthly Ruby Core Library Review — Each month we’ll discuss another library from Ruby’s core libraries. This month is Pathname. Bring your favorite libraries to discuss withe the group each month. (Jeff Barczewski — Pathname)
3. Forwardable (Gordon Theisfeld @gordonthiesfeld)
4. Cucumber (Craig)
5. ByteWorks Project review — Nathan Neff will update us on his time tracking project with ByteWorks.

One of the greatest features of a Ruby user group is to be able to bounce ideas off each other and to share code and approaches to problems. In-person collaboration with some of the best software craftsmen in the St. Louis area....priceless!

Meetings are interactive and user driven, topic length and details are driven by interest and questions of the group.

If you want to share your experience or present another topic let us know or come to the meeting. We’re always open to new topics of interest.

After the meeting, several of us usually head to a local restaurant for food and post-meeting socializing.

So if you’ve got a significant other, please enjoy spending some time with them. If you don’t have a significant other, consider spending some time contributing to an Open Source project that you like. ;)

The idea is to write up a blog post with the details for each upcoming meeting. Then members can post comments before or after the meeting, discussing what they want to see at the meeting, or posting follow-up info that was discussed during the meeting.

We’ll also create a couple static pages, including some info about our group, info about our meeting location, and a page with ideas for topics we could use for upcoming meetings.

Currently, Craig, Jeff, and Kent are maintaining the site. We’ll adjust that as necessary, if others would like to help out.

So, a few questions:

1. Would the comments overlap with discussions on our Google Group too much?
2. Should we post a blog entry with upcoming meeting details, even if we haven’t settled on the presentation topics? I.e. allow discussion in the comments, and update the blog entry per the suggestions in the comments?
3. What’s the best way to allow comments? Currently, comments are allowed from anyone, but the first comment by a given person has to be approved before it shows up. The other easy alternative is to require signups for commenters, but I’d rather not require people to have to remember another login and password.
4. Can anyone help create a decent looking WordPress theme, or adapt an existing one? I’ve uploaded a banner file from the temporary Google Sites page.
5. What else do we want the blog to do for us?