Ottawa Ruby

Hi everyone,

Thanks for coming to the November meetup.

Below you'll find the links to the slides and speakers.

We're looking for speakers for the January, February, March and April meetups. If you have something you'd like to talk about, please reach out by email or fill in the Ottawa Ruby Talk Proposal form.

1. What happened?

1.1 [Beginner/Intermediate Talk] Mike And James talk: What We Learned Building a Shopify App

Links:

Slides: here

Their Shopify App: rewindit.io

1.2 [Advanced Talk] Craig Lehmann and Robert Young gave a talk titled "It's Dangerous To GC Alone, Take This!"

No slides just yet, sorry. Their slides (and possibly a video) will be made available after their Ruby Kagai talk this month. Stay tuned to this blog for updates.

We don't have any links to connect with Craig or Robert, but feel free to get in touch if you'd like to be put in contact with them.

1.3 [Beginner/Intermediate Talk] Zhifu Ge gave us a talk titled "How to be weird - The Idiomatic Ruby Ways"

Links:

Slides: here

We don't have any links to connect with Zhifu, but feel free to get in touch if you'd like to be put in contact with him.

1.4 We ran of out time and had to postpone Nick Nickolov's talk titled "Boolean With Three Possible Values" :(

Nick has graciously offered to give his talk in a future month. His talk tentatively scheduled for the January meetup.

Our humblest apologies again to Nick, and thank you for agreeing to give your talk in a future month!

2. What's Up for January?

So far, we have lined up for the January 2016 meetup:

2.1 [Tentative][Beginner Talk] Lightning Talk: Nick Nikolov will be giving a talk titled "Booleans... with three possible values?"

Description: When using RoR with MySQL the boolean fields may end up having a third, unexpected value. This presentation will explain why and how this might happen and what to do if you wish to correct it.

2.2 [Tentative][Intermediate Talk] Adam Waselnuk Will Show How To Create A Rails Style View Helper With Shifting Arguments via some Ruby Language Features

Adam will be walking through a couple Ruby language features that enable you to easily create a Rails style view helper with shifting arguments.

The talk will also touch on why such a fluid method signature is a good way to go in a Rails app.

3. Call for 1-2 more Beginner/Intermediate/Advanced Talks

We're looking for one to two more Beginner, Intermediate or Advanced talks for January.

We're also looking for talks for February, March and April as well.

Feel free to email back if you'd like to give a talk, or fill in this Talk Proposal Form.

4. Plan on coming? RSVP

You can RSVP for the meetup here:

5. Thanks all!

Hope to see you at the next Ruby meetup, or at Web Project Night!

Thanks for coming out to the October meetup.

Below you'll find the links to the slides and speakers, and also a preview of the scheduled talks for this month.

1. What happened?

1.1 Elaine Cooper's gave a Lightning Talk titled "5 Quick Switches … Improve Your Life One Easy Change At a Time."

Her slides are forthcoming. Check back here for an update later.

Links:

Connect with Elaine on Facebook: here

You can get her recipes by subscribing to her newsletter.

Here's a pic she shared from the evening. :)

1.2 Craig Lehmann and Robert Young gave a Lightning Talk on the Ruby VM titled "Ruby Under The Hood"

Links:

Slides: here

We don't have any links to connect with Craig or Robert, but feel free to get in touch if you'd like to be put in contact with them.

1.3 Zhifu Ge gave us a talk titled "TDD For Coding Practices" and did a live TDD session, working through a practice problem from Codility

Links:

Slides: here

We don't have any links to connect with Zhifu, but feel free to get in touch if you'd like to be put in contact with him.

1.4 Also, in case you missed it back in June… Ahmed Omran's talk on Working with Legacy Rails Apps

Ahmed Omran @this_ahmed gave a talk at the June meetup on Working With Legacy Rails Apps. You should check out the slides below.

Links:

Slides: here

Connect with Ahmed: @this_ahmed

Ahmed's Blog: aomran.com

Sorry for not getting this sent out sooner.

2. What's Up for November?

So far, we have two talks lined up for this month's meetup:

2.1 Lightning Talk: Nick Nikolov will be giving a talk titled "Booleans... with three possible values?"

Description: When using RoR with MySQL the boolean fields may end up having a third, unexpected value. This presentation will explain why and how this might happen and what to do if you wish to correct it.

2.2 Zhifu Ge will be giving us a talk about… something. ;)

3. Call for an Intermediate/Advanced Talk

We're looking for an Intermediate or Advanced talk for November.

Feel free to email back if you'd like to give a talk, or fill in this Talk Proposal Form.

4. Plan on coming? RSVP

You can RSVP for the meetup here:

--> http://www.meetup.com/OttawaRuby/events/224523705/

5. Thanks all!

Hope to see you at the next Ruby meetup, or at Web Project Night!

Thanks everyone for coming out to last week's Ruby Tuesday, and yesterday's Web Project Night!

And an extra big thank you also to our great speakers: Vincent Stark, and Eric Mulligan.

We're currently looking for speakers for the May 26th meetup. Please let us know here if you'd be interested in giving a talk in May, or in a future month.

The links for the slides are below.

1. Vincent Stark on Meteor: Using Full-Stack Reactivity To Create Modern Apps

Links:

Connect with Vincent on Twitter: @vince_stark

Vincent's Blog: vstark.net

Presentation Slides: here

Sketch App (built in Meteor): here

Meteor website: here

2. Eric Mulligan on The Skinny on Slim

Links:

Connect with Eric on Twitter: @EricPMulligan

Talk Slides: here

Slim Links: Website | Github

3. What's up next?

May 26th - Ruby Tuesday

We currently don't have any talks scheduled this month yet, but you can keep track of updates and RSVP on the meetup page.

Up for giving a talk sometime?

We're looking for speakers for next month, as well as for June-July (and onward). If you have something you'd like to talk about, please do let us know via this short form.

June 2nd - Web Project Night

Web Project Night is coming up early next month, and is a great time to work on your side project.

It's open to anyone working on the web (Web Developers, Web Designers, etc.), so feel free to invite your friends!

And of course, it's totally beginner friendly -- no judgements here, and we're happy to help if you have questions!

No side-project?

If you don't have a side-project at the moment, consider starting one. Working on these projects can be a great way to learn new things, and gives you a place let your creativity and imagination run wild.

Don't have an idea for a project? No worries. Here's one technique to help you come up with an idea:

Pick a technology you'd like to learn (Ruby, Python, Javascript, Ember, Angular, Meteor, etc.).

Make a list of your favourite apps (mobile or web-based).

Think about how you would change/improve each of them, or what you would do differently.

Pick the app from your list that you feel most passionate about.

(Optional but recommended: Plan your project out a bit. Consider at least making some sketches or mockups. This can help drastically with keeping things clean, and will guide to to create what you envisioned for your app.)

Build it! :)

So, if you're favourite app is Gmail, try building a version in whatever_technology_you_like.

Yes, you could end up with a clone with this technique, but if your goal is learning, you'll likely learn a lot along the way.

Otherwise, try brainstorming over the next few days when you have some free cycles and see what you come up with.

Everyone's encouraged to attend! :)

You can learn more and RSVP here.

Thanks again!

Thanks again for coming out! We hope to see you at the next Ruby Tuesday and Web Project Night!

Thanks,

Hi all,

Just a head's up that Ruby Tuesday is next week, on April 28th at 6:30pm.

1. What's on the Docket?

We have three great talks scheduled this month:

Main Talk: Vincent Stark (Blog) will be giving us a talk titled "Meteor: Using Full-Stack Reactivity To Create Modern Apps."

Eric Mulligan (Twitter) will be giving us a Lightning Talk on the Slim Templating Engine, an alternative to ERB and HAML, titled "The Skinny on Slim."

Xander Miller (Blog | Twitter) will be giving a Lightning Talk on Form Collection Helpers on Many to Many relations

Sounds like fun!

Planing on attending? Please RVSP here to let us know.

2. Have a topic you'd like to share with the group?

We're always looking for speakers for future months. If you have a topic that you think would be of interest to the group, please let the organizers know about it here.

We hope to see ya'll there!

Thanks everyone for coming out to last month's Ruby Tuesday.

And a super big thank you to our great speakers: Georgiy Shibaev, Anton Sakovich, and Thu Trang Pham!

The links are below.

1. Georgiy Shibaev on the Neo4J Graph Database

Links:

Georgiy's Github: github.com/RangerMauve

Presentation source code, contains a ruby example that should get you started: here

Live presentation link: here

Neo4j website: here

Playing with Neo4j in your browser: here

Neo4j docs: here

Neography gem: here

2. Anton Sakovich on Monkey Patching and the AxlsxStyler Gem

Links:

Connect with Anton on Twitter: @AntonSakovich

Anton's Github: github.com/sakovias

Slides: here

AxlsxStyler Gem: here

3. Thu Trang Pham on Improving ActiveRecord Performance

Links:

Thu's Github: github.com/TrangPham

Slides: here

What's up next?

March 24th - Ruby Tuesday

This month, Adam Saunders be giving us a talk on using Open Source Licenses, and how to make sure that you, as a developer, remain in compliance with those licenses.

Following that, Ethan Aubuchon will be giving a talk on using UUIDs with a using the active_uuid gem) with a Distributed Database.

See the details and RSVP here.

Up for giving a talk?

We're looking for speakers for next month, as well as for March-July (and onward). If you have something you'd like to talk about, please do let us know via this short form.

<Date to be announced> - Web Project Night

Web Project Night is coming up in early April. The date is still to be determined, based on venue availability.

Web Project Night is a great time to work on your side project. It's open to anyone working on the web (Web Developers, Web Designers, etc.), so please feel free to invite your friends!

Of course, it's totally beginner friendly. No judgements here, and we're happy to help if you have questions!

You can learn more and RSVP here.

Thanks again!

Thanks again for coming out! We hope to see you at the next Ruby Tuesday and Web Project Night!

Thanks,

Thanks everyone for coming out to last week's Ruby Tuesday.

And a big thank you to Xander Miller for his great talk!

The links are below.

Xander Miller on Controller Specs

The Talk

Xander Miller (Twitter | Blog) gave us an excellent talk on Testing Your Controllers with RSpec. He went through the RESTful controller actions (index, show, new, create, edit, update, destroy), and showed some tricks for handling each.

Links:

Slides: here

Connect with Xander on Twitter: @pareidoliax

Xander's Blog: xandermiller.ca

Michael Prendergast on What's New in Rails 4.2

There aren't any slides for this one, but here are some links:

Rails 4.2 Release Notes

Active Job Basics

Aaron Patterson's post on Adequate Record

Immigrant Gem

Web Console Gem

What's up next?

February 4th (that's a Wednesday this time) - Web Project Night

Web Project Night is this Wednesday (NOT the normal Tuesday) on February 4th, at 6:30pm.

It's open to anyone working on the web (Web Developers, We Designers, etc.), so please feel free to invite your friends!

Of course, it's totally beginner friendly. No judgements here, and we're happy to help if you have questions!

You can learn more and RSVP here.

February 24th - Ruby Tuesday

Next month, Georgiy Shibaev (Github) will be giving us a talk on using Graph Databases with Ruby. This will either be a Lightning Talk, or possibly a Full-Length Talk… not sure yet.

See the details and RSVP here.

Up for giving a talk?

We're looking for speakers for next month, as well as for March-July (and onward). If you have something you'd like to talk about, please do let us know via this short form.

Thanks again!

Thanks again for coming out! We hope to see you at the next Ruby Tuesday and Web Project Night!

Thanks,

Thanks to all who came out to Ruby Tuesday last week!

And a SUPER big thank you to our speakers, Willem van Bergen and Xander Miller, for their excellent talks!

The links to the presentations / repos are below.

Willem van Bergen on Overcoming a Potential MySQL Data Loss Problem

The Talk

Willem talked about some data loss problems that can occur with MySQL when it's not running in strict mode, how it could affect a Rails app, and what they did at Shopify to overcome these problems.

Links

Connect with Willem: (Twitter | Homepage)

Slides: here

Xander Miller on Rails Associations Part 2

Abstract

Learning Rails Associations building Timber: the dating app for lumberjacks and lumberjanes...

Episode 2: Two Many To Many

This time we are building Timber with the has_and_belongs_to_many and has_many_through associations, and comparing and contrasting the two strategies.

Links

Connect with Xander: (Twitter | Blog)

Slides: here

Github Repo: here

What's up next?

Note: No Ruby Tuesday in December

Since the next Ruby Tuesday would be on December 23rd, the day before Christmas Eve, which essentially guarantees that people wouldn't show up, we're going to skip this month. ;)

January 27th - Ruby Tuesday

We currently have one Lightning Talk scheduled for next month's Ruby Tuesday, and we're looking for a Full-Length talk, and another Lightning Talk.

Cory Darby will be giving us a Lightning Talk on his experiences contributing to Open Source over the past few months.

See the details and RSVP here.

Up for giving a talk?

If you have something you'd like to talk about, please do let us know via this short form.

January 6th - Web Project Night

The next Web Project Night is on January 6th, at 6:30pm.

Start the new year off by making some progress on your project! :)

It's open to anyone working on the web (Web Developers, We Designers, etc.), so please feel free to invite your friends!

Of course, it's totally beginner friendly. No judgements here, and we're happy to help if you have questions!

You can learn more and RSVP here.

Thanks again, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Thanks again for coming out! We hope to see you at the next Ruby Tuesday and Web Project Night!

Until then, we hope you all have a very Merry Christmas, and an exceptionally Happy New Year!

Thanks,

Hey everyone,

1. Meetup Tomorrow

Just a quick reminder that tomorrow is Ruby Tuesday. We'll be meeting at 6:30pm in the Engineering Students Lounge at Ottawa University.

You can learn more and RSVP here

2. Up for giving a talk on Tuesday / later?

We're still looking for another talk to fill in the evening. If you have something you'd like to talk about, please feel free to hit reply or let us know through this Ottawa Ruby Talk Proposal Form.

3. Thanks! :)

Thanks all, we hope to see you there!

Thanks to all who came out to Ruby Tuesday on October 28th, it was a good time!

And a big BIG thank you to our speakers: Jean Claude Batista, Uri Gorelik, and Xander Miller for their excellent talks!

The links to the presentations / repos are below.

Jean Claude Batista on using Ruby on Raspberry Pi

Abstract

Connecting things to the Internet with a Raspberry Pi and Ruby

In this talk, I'll walk you through building a simple Internet Appliance with the Raspberry Pi using Ruby, Sinatra and the PiPiper gem. The focus will be on using the Raspberry Pi GPIO ports and would be beginner friendly.

Links

Connect with Jean-Claude: (Twitter | Homepage)

Slides: here

Source Code: here

Uri Gorelik on the Suds Meetup

The Talk

No abstract for this one, but to sum it up, Uri gave us a talk on HealthWave's Suds gem, which is a handy gem that can be used to import, clean, and store data of various types.

Links

Connect with Uri: (Twitter | Homepage)

Suds Readme and Source: here

Xander Miller on Rails Associations

Abstract

Learning Rails Associations building Timber: the dating app for lumberjacks and lumberjanes...

Episode 1: There is always a belongs_to

In our first iteration of Timber we build the app using the has_many and has_one association with a particular focus on how the belongs_to association relates to the database layer and our migration files.

Links

Connect with Xander: (Twitter | Blog)

Slides: here

Github Repo: here

What's up next?

November 25th - Ruby Tuesday

We currently have two Lightning Talks scheduled for this month's Ruby Tuesday, and we're looking for a Full-Length talk. On the docket so far:

Xander Miller (Twitter | Blog) will going over some more ActiveRecord associations in the second part of his series on building Timber: A dating site for Lumberjacks and Lumberjanes.

Willem van Burgen (Twitter | Homepage) will be talking about data loss problems with MySQL not running in strict mode, how it affects Rails app, and what they did at Shopify to overcome these problems.

See the details and RSVP here.

Of course, we'd love to hear more local people give talks. If you have something you'd like to talk about, please do let us know via this short form.

December 2nd - Web Project Night

The next Web Project Night is on December 2nd, at 6:30pm.

It's open to anyone working on the web, so feel free to invite your friends!

Of course, it's totally beginner friendly.

You can learn more and RSVP here.

Thanks again!

Thanks again for coming out! We hope to see you at the next Ruby Tuesday and Web Project Night!

Thanks,

Hi everyone,

Ruby Tuesday is coming up, next Tuesday in fact (October 28th, 2014).

What's happening, and RSVP

The main talk will be by Jean-Claude Batista, and we've also got a Lightning Talk by Xander Miller.

You can see the agenda, the details on the talks, and RSVP here.

Still room for one more... :)

We're still looking for one more Lighting Talk this month. If you're up for it, please fill in this form to let us know.

We hope to see you all there!

Thanks, The Ottawa Ruby Team

Hey everyone,

Just a head's up that Web Project Night is tomorrow (Tuesday, October 7th) at 6:30pm.

Please note that we won't have sponsored food/drinks for the next few months. We'll be having these meetups at a restaurant though, so you'll be able to order some food, as we figure people will be hungry around that time. ;)

(As an aside, we encourage you to order at least a little something-something, to help support the business that's accommodating us with the free space and wifi. This will help us be welcome back for future months. ;)

You can learn more about Web Project Night, and RSVP here.

We hope to see you all there!

What happened this month?

This month, we had:

Pizza, sponsored by Shopify

Susan St. Maurice's talk on CANARIE's DAIR

David Underwood's talk on Capistrano

Xander Miller's talk on Dynamic Links

We didn't record any talks this month as we were at a new venue (1125@Carleton -- big thanks again to Quayce for setting that up). We figured it would be best to just focus on the talks this time. Sorry for any inconvenience.

Details and links below.

1. Pizza and Chit-Chat

We started off the evening with some pizza and mingling.

As always, the pizza was generously sponsored by Shopify. Take a look at Shopify's careers page if you're open to a new opportunity, they're hiring!

The space was kindly sponsored by 1125@Carleton. It was a nice room.

2. Susan St. Maurice on CANARIE's DAIR Program

Susan St. Maurice, from CANARIE, gave us a talk on their Digital Accelerator for Innovation and Research (DAIR) Cloud Program.

Talk Description

I would like to present the DAIR Cloud program which provides 'One year of Free cloud service' for prototypes, development and Entrepreneurs. CANARIE is a non-for-profit Canadian organization that provides an ultra high speed network for R&D and SMEs. CANARIE has several programs including DAIR to assist with Canadian R&D, innovation and to support Entrepreneurs. Developers can try out new solutions and use the DAIR cloud in a few minutes.

Links

Slides: here

More info on DAIR here

3. David Underwood on Capistrano

David Underwood (Twitter | Blog) gave us a talk on deploying apps with Capistrano.

Abstract

Deploying Rails Apps (with Capistrano)

Deploying your code can be a daunting and repetitive task. In this talk I'll go over the various tasks involved, and then explain how to automate them using Capistrano.

Links

Slides: here

4. Xander Miller on Dynamic Links in Rails

Xander Miller (Twitter | Blog) showed us how to dynamically highlight the link for the currently active page in our page's navigation.

Abstract

Building Dynamic Site Navigation into your Rails Layout

Beginner level Rails tutorial: Building site navigation on a static website that shows you your current location is straight forward. But how do you do make your navigation change when it is part of a layout that is shared by all pages? This tutorial provides a quick, flexible solution, with tests!

Links

Slides: here

What's up next?

October 7th - Web Project Night

The next Web Project Night is on October 7th, at 6:30pm.

It's open to anyone working on the web, so feel free to invite your friends!

Of course, it's totally beginner friendly.

You can learn more and RSVP here.

October 28th - Ruby Tuesday

So far, we have one Lightning Talk schedulded: Xander Miller will be doing the first part of his series on building Timber: A dating site for Lumberjacks and Lumberjanes. He'll be using this series to teach the various relationships found in Rails.

We're currently looking for a full-length talk, and another Lightning Talk.

See the details and RSVP here.

Of course, we'd love to hear more local people give talks. If you have something you'd like to talk about, please do let us know via this short form.

Thanks again!

Thanks again for coming out everyone. We hope to see you at the next Web Project Night, and Ruby Tuesday meetup.

Thanks,

Hey everyone,

[Note: See important location update below.]

Just a head's up that Ruby Tuesday is tomorrow at 6:30pm. You can see the agenda and RSVP here.

1. Ruby Tuesday will be hosted at 1125@Carleton

Tomorrow's meetup will be held at 1125@Carleton, the same space as Startup Weekend. Big thanks to Quayce for getting us setup in there!

2. Uh huh... and where's that now?

1125@Carleton is located on the 5th floor of the the Human Computer Interaction (HCI) Building, in room 5110, at Carleton University (1125 Colonel By Drive).

You can see the HCI Building's location here.

3. Okay, but what about the parking?

The nearest parking lot the the HCI Building is Parking Lot 1. It's a flat rate of $7 for the evening (source). You can see the location of Parking Lot 1 to the HCI Building here (scroll to the bottom).

Sorry that it's not downtown, but the space should be able to accommodate us. We hope you all can still make it out!

The next Ruby Tuesday meetup is coming up next week, on Tuesday, September 23rd, 2014.

You can see the agenda and RSVP here:

We haven't set a location yet, but will let you know when it's been settled. On that note, if anyone knows of an office downtown (preferably near the old Shopify offices) that would be willing to host 40-50 Rubyists for a few hours, please get in touch.

We hope to see you all there!

Thanks to everyone who came out to the August 26th meetup. Thanks also, very much, to our speakers!

What happened?

1. Ahmed Omran's Talk: Designing RESTful Web APIs

Ahmed Omran (Twitter | Blog) gave us a fantastic talk on Designing RESTful Web APIs.

Here's the abstract:

Designing RESTful Web APIs

This talk will focus on designing and building APIs that communicate over HTTP. We'll discuss questions like: what are web APIs, why build APIs, and what does a good API look like today. I'll use an example implemented in Ruby on Rails and share some resources.

Links

Slides, video and code are on Ahmed's website here

You can see the original recording from Ruby Tuesday here

2. Anton Sakovich's Talk: Testing Rails 4 Applications

Anton Sakovich (Twitter | Github) then gave us a Lighting Talk called Testing Rails Applications: An Introduction.

Here's the description:

Testing Rails 4 Applications: An Introduction

The purpose of this talk is to show by example how to get started with testing Rails applications. We give an overview of Rails 4 default testing infrastructure for model and controller tests. We also discuss some handy gems and give hints on speeding up test runs.

Links

Slides - here

Video - here

Xander's Talk Postponed

We were running pretty late (sorry again), so Xander Miller graciously offered to do his talk in September. We humbly accepted his offer.

What's up next?

September 23rd - Ruby Tuesday

We currently have one tentative Lightning Talk scheduled (Xander Miller's talk on Building Dynamic Site Navigation), but no main topic for this month's meetup.

So, if you have an idea for a talk, please let us know via this short form. We currently have space for one full-length talk (20-40 minutes), and one Lightning Talk (7-15 minutes).

We'd love to hear more local people give talks, so please don't be shy!

October 7th - Web Project Night

We already had September's Web Project Night on September 2nd, just one week after Ruby Tuesday. We had it at the Smoque Shack, right across the street from the old Shopify office.

The next Web Project Night is on October 7th, at 6:30pm.

It's open to anyone working on the web, so feel free to invite your friends!

Of course, it's totally beginner friendly.

You can learn more and RSVP here.

Thanks again!

Thanks again for coming out everyone. We hope to see you at the next Web Project Night, and Ruby Tuesday meetup.

Thanks,

Hey everyone,

Hope y'all had a great long weekend!

Just a head's up that Web Project Night is tonight at 6:30pm.

1. Important: New Location (two mins from the Lounge)

Please note that the venue has changed: we will be at the Smoque Shack tonight -- NOT the Shopify Lounge.

(It's at 129 York Street, right across the street from the old Shopify offices. It's about a two minute walk from the Lounge. We'll be upstairs.)

2. On The Food

Shopify has kindly offered to purchase some appetizers for the group; but you should also consider ordering something too if you'll be hungry -- they've got some tasty stuff.

(My personal recommendation would be the Jerk Chicken, if you like your food spicy. ;)

3. Come On Out :)

They've got wifi and all of that; so come on out, order a beer and some corn bread to munch on while you get stuff done!

More details and RSVP here

Please feel free to holler back with any questions. We hope to see you all there!

Just a quick head's up that tomorrow (August 26th, 2014) is Ruby Tuesday.

You can see the agenda here. We hope you can make it!

Thanks,