Railscamp

Movies

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 00:59:39 Z

Who has what to watch?

The Dark Knight, terminator 1, rambo 4 (HD omg), indiana jones 4, death race – @glenmaddern
Helvetica – @lachlanhardy
post-election south park – @ryan_allen
Iron Man? – @agenteo
Tinkerbell, Spirited Away, surf movies, merbcamp movies – @dylanfm
Primer, District 13, The Transporter, Bike movies @johnbarton

Arrested Development – @ben_h

Corpse Bride, Live Free or Die Hard, Outside Sales, Outsourced, Two Girls and a Guy @rob_nielsen

25th Hour, Andrew Denton: God On My Side, Bomb Harvest, Children of Men, Hotel Rwanda, In The Shadow Of The Moon, Little Fish, Punch Drunk Love, Smoking Aces, The Darjeeling Limited, The Family Stone, The Three Amigos, Dave Gorman’s Googlewhack Adventure, Gotye Live on ABC 2 - @pat

OS_Survey

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 13:14:16 Z

OS X

bjeanes
drnic
chendo
glen
pat
dylan
ben_h
johnb
alan harper (@aussiegeek)
nigel
Radar
robertpostill
jason crane ([@]snapper[wolf])
vishal
rob_caporetto
nigel_rausch
rob_nielsen
paul_okeeffe (@kef)

Linux

Andrew G
robertpostill
MichaelN
Anuj
adzdavies

Windows

Anathematic
Ali

Apps

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 12:53:22 Z

’Sup gitjour?
http://hydrodynamic-and-fancy.local:4000 – gitjour list 2.0

The Weather in London
http://theweatherinlondon.com – Article Title detection (detect Wikipedia articles mentioned in a block of text) http://git.railscamp.net/projects/theweatherinlondon

iShare
http://carbon.local:3112/entries – Share stuff other than hate

Sharing and learning at Railscamp

Guitarzero
http://guitarzero.railscamp.net/scores/3

It’s back and utterly unchanged from the last two Railscamps ;)

rBoard
http://frozenplague.local

Yet Another Forum System Written In Rails (YAFSWIR)

Presentation Topics

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 11:06:34 Z

Topics on Offer

Camping 101 – 9001 (Ask Brenton, I am hitting you with this awesomeness whether you want it or not!)
~~Introduction to Werewolf (Pat, perhaps with assistance from Myles?)~~
~~Heckle (Andrew G)~~

Topics Requested

Merb 101
~~Cucumber 101~~
~~background processing (e.g.: batch images) 101~~
Self Discipline Workshop (looking at Pete ;))
Hack (Ryan Allen)
Superheroes (Ryan Allen)
iPhone Dev (Dr Nic, bjeanes, et al)
The FUTA —is it trackballs? (fuck yeah it is – jb)
~~Machinist (Pete Yandell)~~

Topics for Saturday (Starting from 9am)

~~Jason Crane on ‘Coffee Cupping and Rails’ 0900 SHARP!~~
~~Nigel… DOD3… Document Oriented Database in Rails (concept)~~
BZFLAG MOTHER FUCKERS!
~~Pat: Sphinx and Ruby~~
~~Ian: resources_controller~~
~~Brenton: Background processing 101 (Brenton says: I ACCEPT. See me on Sat for time and place).~~
~~Dr Nic: Cucumber rubbed in Rubies~~
~~Merb Workshop: Build a <your app here> application with merb~~
~~Watch the sunset, can someone check what time sunset is this time!~~
~~ben_h: hammock – restful apps using ambition. (I need some time to sort out my hax and do up a little example – mabe later this arvo / evening)~~
The Half-Making of Hack, a Micro Framework and Some Discourse on Software Testing and How This Relates To The Half-Making of Hack. Presented by Ryan Allen at 7PM (or somewhere around that time when which the vibe is right, baby!).

Topics for Sunday

~~Freelancing Tips, Tricks, Hacks and Advice (Pat’s happy to run, but participation from others would make the session much more valuable)~~
~~James: Ruby 1.9 and text encoding – With great power comes exceptions~~
~~Keeping code clean in the face of performance tuning (jb – but i’m aiming it to be more of a open chat)~~
~~rBoard, YAFSWIR (Radar)~~
~~Ian on pickle (cucumber+ factory_girl)~~
~~Machinist (Pete)~~
something about teh erlang (Lachie)
The Half-Making of Hack, a Micro Framework and Some Discourse on Software Testing and How This Relates To The Half-Making of Hack. Presented by Ryan Allen at 3PM (or somewhere around that time when which the vibe is right, baby!).
~~Ian on testing your rails plugins with garlic~~
~~Ruby continuations (nick)~~
~~Nick on Postgre SQL?~~

Topics for Tuesday

Clifford: Active Facts? (please leave 1/2 a day. Silence from non-participators please)

Gemjour Hacking

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 03:07:12 Z

More Gemjour Kool Aid

Gemjour has been updated and now has a kool search feature.

So, what are you waiting for? Grab the updated gem from me:

sudo gemjour install josh gemjour

Or if you don’t already have an earlier version of gemjour:

sudo gem install gemjour -r --source http://sphere.local.:8808

Usage Examples

Who has the rails gem?


gemjour search rails
Gathering for up to 5 seconds...
Searching 8 hosts...
=== josh (sphere.local.:8808)
    rails (2.1.2, 2.1.1, 2.1.0)
    rspec-rails (1.1.11, 1.1.9)
=== pat (freelancing-god.local.:8808)
    odbc-rails (1.4)
    rails (2.2.0, 2.1.1, 2.1.0, 2.0.4, 2.0.2, 1.2.6)
=== nick (nick.local.:8808)
    rails (2.1.2, 2.0.2)
=== lachlanhardy (LachstockMBP.local.:8808)
    rails (2.1.2, 2.1.0, 2.0.2)
=== ryan-allen (Ryans-MacBook-Air.local.:8808)
    rails (2.1.1)
=== aussiegeek (Nibbler.local.:8808)
    rails (2.1.2, 2.1.1, 2.1.0)
=== bjeanes (Bos-MacBook-Pro.local.:8808)
    gemsonrails (0.7.2)
    rails (2.2.0, 2.1.1, 2.1.0, 2.0.4, 2.0.2)
=== ben (zaphod.local.:8808)
    rails (2.2.0, 2.1.2, 2.1.1, 2.1.0, 2.0.2, 1.2.5)

Install the rails gem from josh.

sudo gemjour install josh rails

Who’s serving gems?


gemjour list
Gathering for up to 5 seconds...
=== josh (sphere.local.:8808)
=== aussiegeek (Nibbler.local.:8808)
=== nick (nick.local.:8808)
=== ryan-allen (Ryans-MacBook-Air.local.:8808)
=== pat (freelancing-god.local.:8808)
=== bjeanes (Bos-MacBook-Pro.local.:8808)
=== ben (zaphod.local.:8808)

Which gems is josh serving?


gemjour show josh
=== josh (sphere.local.:8808)
    abstract (1.0.0)
    ...
    ZenTest (3.11.0)

Home Page

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 02:13:55 Z

Rails Camp 08

Presentation Topics

Welcome to RC4. twitter.com for messaging. Mac users having problems – download the version of twitteriffic from there, login is your usual twitter name with a blank password. Questions, grab Lincoln Stoll on Bonjour.

Make sure you got Gitjour: InstallingGitjour

http://git.railscamp.net is live ! (Is the git: protocol working? <!—git clone git://git.railscamp.net/supgitjour/mainline.git supInitialized empty Git repository in /home/agrimm/ruby/sandbox/sup/.git/
git.railscamp.net[0: 172.16.2.3]: errno=Connection refused
fatal: unable to connect a socket (Connection refused)—>)

IRC Server is live!

We can haz movie?

(Looking for the ‘real world’ home page? click here)

Whos Coming
Equipment
Car Pooling
Git
Server Info
Venue Requirements
—
History
Trail Blazers

If you want your own space to run an application on the server, grab Lincoln Stoll on Bonjour/lstoll on IRC, or in person. Slices allocates: List Of Slices

Ruby Gems should work as per normal (ie, Linc has done some funkyness so gems are mirrored here)

People after ubuntu stuff should see Ubuntu Hardy Mirror (now with intrepid magic)

You should really be drinking the Jour Kool Aid

Projects:
Gemjour Hacking
Gitjour Hacking
Git Man – manage which local git repos you share
Prawn (PDF generation that doesn’t suck)

Put your apps here:
Apps

Gitjour Hacking

Sat, 15 Nov 2008 13:45:02 Z

*jour bugs and fixes

List of shit we don’t like and want to fix. We’re starting with gitjour but can (and should) probably apply this to all [star]jour sexiness.

Add stuff you don’t like. Then add when you fix it.

Gitjour serving multiple directories on the one port
git clones first alpha sorted branch of repo (how fucked is that?)

multiple sub-directories fail fixed by toolmantim
add search for particular name fixed by benschwarz
sort lists fixed by hassox
—local to enable listing own (obviously stop listing own first!) fixed by ryanbigg
ask for the user to be more specific when more than one repository is found matching a given name for clone fixed by ryanbigg
remote adds first instance – doesn’t allow choice of specific repo (when there are multiple with same name) fixed by hassox

Add message notifying that remote add worked removed command proxying to let git do its own heavy lifting

Use an Avahi-based drop in replacement for DNSSD, going out to all you Linux-lovers :) – Rob and Mick P

add capacity to serve multiple folders/repos from one instance fixed by Mike Bailey’s Git Man?
no persistent config fixed by Mike Bailey’s Git Man?

Installing Gitjour

Sat, 15 Nov 2008 01:52:36 Z

Firstly you need gemjour from the local gitorious:


cd /tmp
git clone git://git.railscamp.net/gemjour/mainline.git gemjour
cd gemjour
rake gem
sudo gem install pkg/gemjour-1.0.0.gem

Uninstall any previous versions of the gitjour gem.
Then install our sexy new gitjour v8.1.0:


sudo gemjour install lachlanhardy gitjour

gnoll110

Sat, 15 Nov 2008 00:56:56 Z

Noel Kelly
aka gnoll110

gnoll110 at yahoo dot com dot au

Prawn

Fri, 14 Nov 2008 13:48:43 Z

James Healy planning to hack on various features and bugfixes.

Say hi if you have suggestions, bug reports or would like to get involved!

Repositories are on github – just ask if you’d like to clone it from my laptop.

Whos Coming

Fri, 14 Nov 2008 07:31:19 Z

Who’s Coming?

Add your details below and tell us what you want to build or discuss. Oh… and don’t forget to register to make sure theres a bed and some food for you.

—

Name: Ben Askins

URL: http://teamaskins.net

Interested in discussing: Social aspects of developing software a.k.a. loving your client.

Interested in hearing about: Your life!

Interested in building: Lego

—

Name: Lachie Cox

URL: http://smartbomb.com.au

Interested in discussing: lightly engineered bespoke intranet apps, Merb

Interested in hearing about: everything wonderful

Interested in building: bridges, walls, silos, Ruby Cocoa? and Merb apps
—

Name: Matt Allen

URL: http://allen.com.au

Interested in discussing: search interfaces, web services, merb

Interested in hearing about: real-life deployments

Interested in building: anything, +1 Lego

—

Name: John Barton

URL: http://whoisjohnbarton.com

Interested in discussing: anything

Interested in hearing about: merb, rubinius, graphing

Interested in building: +1 Lego, rubinius patches

—

Name: Phil Oye

URL: http://philoye.com http://moment.com.au

Interested in discussing: DUKE!

Interested in hearing about: anything

Interested in building: anything

—

Name: Pete Yandell

URL: http://notahat.com

Interested in discussing: Who might be a villager and who might be a werewolf

Interested in hearing about: Development methodologies and practices, anything cool

Interested in building: Haptic interfaces, robots, Ruby Cocoa?, anything cool

—

Name: Keith Pitty

URL: http://keithpitty.com

Interested in discussing: Anything related to Ruby

Interested in hearing about: Anything related to Ruby

Interested in building: Anything with Ruby

—

Name: Jason Crane

URL: http://codespike.com

Interested in discussing: Anything related to Ruby

Interested in hearing about: Anything related to Ruby

Interested in building: Anything with Ruby

—

Name: Gareth Townsend

URL: http://www.garethtownsend.info

Interested in discussing: Human Computer Interactions. User Interface Design.

Interested in hearing about: Anything

Interested in building: A rails app that uses Ruby Cocoa? to pull data from the cocoa Calendar Store? and Address Book Store?, fitted with a sproutcore front and and an iPhone web application front end built in Dashcode.

—

Name: Trevor Nowak

URL: No fixed address :(

Interested in discussing: Will join any random banter.

Interested in hearing: The noise of the masses typing and good arguments

Interested in building: Janga Towers

—

Name: Ryan Bigg

URL: http://www.frozenplague.net

Interested in discussing: All things

Interested in hearing: Insightful discussion

Interested in building: Death-Ray

—

Name: maybe Chris Broadfoot (just found out its bang in the middle of uni exams!)

URL: not yet

Interested in discussing: stuff

Interested in hearing: things about rails that I don’t know

Interested in building: RDF

—

Name: Daniel Neighman

URL: http://hassox.blogspot.com

Interested in discussing: Cool Stuff, Work flows

Interested in hearing: Cool Stuff

Interested in building: Catapults, MEMS, oh… and Ruby apps

—

Alleged Name: Ryan Allen

URL: http://tumble.yeahnah.org AND/OR http://yeahnah.org

Interested in discussing: The merits of the various methods of automated testing, and Allen VS Allen – which is better? ;) Motorbikes! Oh wait, no… Merb, awesome. Parsing, with state machines. Maybe Ragel. C. C? Oh, I don’t know, drunken slur? Yeah, that.

Interested in hearing about: What’s next after Ruby (teh language) and Rails (teh framework)?

Interested in building: A Death Star replica.

—

Name: Lachlan Hardy

URL: http://lachstock.com.au

Interested in discussing: Open ID? and OAuth implementations

Interested in hearing about: What’s hot by June ;) Merb!

Interested in building: Piccr 2.0. A functional Jousting Sticks. More random drunken ideas

—

Name: Greg Fairbrother

URL: http://www.intrepica.com.au

—

Name: alan jones

URL: http://doingwords.com

Interested in discussing: making new products more loveable

Interested in hearing about: ebrytang!

Interested in building: awareness and rapport

—

Name: Martin Stannard

URL: huh?

Interested in discussing: anything

Interested in hearing: clinking bottles

Interested in building: not Duke

—

Name: Tim Riley

URL: http://openmonkey.com

Interested in discussing: testing, messaging systems

Interested in hearing about: merb, other alternative ruby web frameworks, deployment techniques

Interested in building: micro-applications, mashups

—

Name: George Bray

URL: http://vvrdev.anu.edu.au

Interested in discussing: merb, backgroundrb, iPhone development, video systems

Interested in hearing about: How you did that

Interested in building: Lecture, tv and media systems

—

Name: Dr Nic Williams

URL: http://drnicwilliams.com

Interested in discussing: javascript unit testing, git, ruby

Interested in hearing about: oauth

Interested in building: micro-weaponary for the age of micro-terrorism

—

Name: Rob Caporetto

URL: Somewhere amongst the tubes

Interested in discussing: rich client applications, strange uses of ruby

Interested in hearing about: merb, RESTful application design

Interested in building: something more than a classic CRUD-esque application

—

Name: Brad Wilson

URL: http://lucky-dip.net

Interested in discussing: js integration tests, git vs mercurial vs ?

Interested in hearing about: anything

Interested in building: Maybe something in ruby cocoa

—

Name: Robert Postill

URL: http://www.grinning-cat.com

Interested in discussing: deployment, security, lamby the Judas Sheep

Interested in hearing about: war stories from your ruby/rails life, your funniest anecdote

Interested in building: Tools with which to rule the world!

—

Name: Joel Courtney

URL: http://euphemize.net | http://jc-photo.net

Interested in discussing: The lot!

Interested in hearing about: how to’s, Image manipulation techniques, deployment techniques, everything really

Interested in building: CMS w/- Image Management, Social Sites, Open ID? (and other open frameworks)

—

Name: Lisa Herrod

URL: http://www.scenariogirl.com

Interested in discussing: The merits of nested tables for layout, with Martin Stannard and Nick Pello. Also interested in running some real user testing on projects as they roll out!

Interested in hearing about: Anything Rails that I can understand or barely grasp.

Interested in building: empires :)

—

Name: Michael Mac Donald?

URL: http://www.starclass.com.au

Interested in discussing: Deployment, email tracking, background processing, user interfaces, spiffy ajax coolness, unobtrusive javascript, xhtml validation, testing, designing models, just about anything.

Interested in hearing about: Tips, tricks, good coding practices, anything to help me better understand ruby and rails.

Interested in building: Something

—

Name: Anthony Richardson

URL: http://www.anthonyrichardson.com (minimalistic I know)

Interested in discussing: Domain Specific Languages, Ext JS?, meta-programming and anything Ruby.

Interested in hearing about: Anything Rails.

Interested in building: Something

—

Name: Lincoln Stoll

URL: http://lstoll.net

Interested in discussing: Ruby. Rails. Merb. JRuby. Mercurial. Rubinius. Cloud computing. Erlang. Python. Infrastructure.

Interested in hearing about: Anything cool, interesting, tricky, real world, basically what everyone else is up to, and how people are getting things done.

Interested in building: hghub.com . something fun. something cool. Mini rubinius sprint anyone?

—

Name: Lindsay Evans

URL: http://linz.id.au/

Interested in discussing: ruby, bluetooth, cool stuff

Interested in hearing about: anything & everything

Interested in building: ruby-bluetooth, uri-template implementation, vague-date, hacking me some enki

—

Name: Glenn Davy

URL: http://glenn.davy.net.au/

Interested in discussing: How people balance family and geekery, paying bills and learning new stuff, GTD and hacking. What people are up to, where coming from and going, technically and personally.

Interested in hearing about: Stuff i don’t know about yet, so er – fields wide open. Very interested in merb, comparing contrasting diff ORM’s, deployment strategies, Ruby out side of http/rails context. GIS. Building DSL’s, getting beyond using ruby as php with different syntax

Interested in building: I’m with lincoln on the whole mini rbx sprint thing. will very happily get involved in whatever is going on. furthering enki.

—

Name: Brodaigh Lynch

URL: What’s that?

Interested in hearing about: Confirmation of what i already knew and a whole bunch of stuff i didn’t.

Interested in seeing: what the hell a group like this can achieve over a four day period and we even have a usability expert (like the cherry on top).

Interested in discussing: anything

Interested in building: something good or perhaps a chicken egg tracker with a social aspect and competing chickens :)

—

Name: Mike Bailey

URL: http://mike.bailey.net.au/

Interested in: restful APIs, git, deployment.

—

Name: Ivan Vanderbyl

URL: http://thecoolwebguy.com

Interested in discussing: Anything to do with Ruby, esp. Deployment, Merb?, Ruby enterprise, mod_rails also anything iPhone related

Interested in seeing: more Beer.new

Interested in hearing about: What everyone else is doing with ruby

Interested in building: Something with ruby, and hacking the Rails Url Encoded Pair Parser? to properly handle nested arrays from complex forms with multiple model mappings, and failing the interest in that, developing a social networking app like none other, or installing iPhone OS 2 and building something.

—

Name: Geoff Evason

URL: http://geoff.evason.name

Interested in discussing: ruby meta programming, rspec, git, plugins

Interested in seeing: how I do at guitar hero

Interested in hearing about: rest, resources, testing

Interested in building: a competitive analysis tool, plugins

—

Name: Brian Menzies
Interested in getting up the learning curve on Rails. Such a noobi that I don’t even know what I don’t know. Have been messing around with an app and hope to re-write it over the weekend. Looking forward to contributing in some non-technical way, maybe washing dishes, maybe teach a class on negotiation skills if there was any interest.

—

Name: Clifford Heath

URL: http://dataconstellation.com

Interested in discussing: better models, process models, meta programming, new kinds of network applications

Interested in seeing: how to write graphical browser apps using a Rails backend – Flash?

Interested in hearing about: how to use git better

Interested in building: anything with other people

—

Name: Dylan Fogarty-Mac Donald?

URL: http://dylanfm.com

Interested in hearing about: Lots of stuff—nonsense and all. I’d like to hear things that teach me things too.

Interested in seeing: Lots of happy faces.

Interested in discussing: Stuff! Geek and non-geek. Sober and not-so-sober talk.

Interested in building: An idea that has been hibernating in my mind for long enough. Also, I’d like to contribute what I can towards something others are involved in.

—

Name: Joe Dollard

URL: nope

Interested in discussing: rails performance/scaling, deployment, testing, finishing guitar hero on expert.

Interested in seeing: rails geeks

Interested in hearing about: ‘real world’ rails and mysql experiences

Interested in building: micro-applications, and just about anything in ruby or rails.

—

Name: Marc Jackson (Munix)

URL: www.prognosis.com

Interrested in discussing: Good ideas in building Rails apps.

Interrested in seeing: Some wildlife

Interrested in hearing about: Cool Rails stuff.

Inderested in building: some sort of Scheduling app. and something that allows entering details of a network, and grouping stuff together and applying a schedule to it.

—

Name: Hugh Evans

URL: hughevans.net

—

Name: Zoltan Olah

URL: too slack

Interrested in discussing: Scaling frameworks, clouds & mysql clustering experiences.

Interrested in seeing: ruby, macs, iphones, ruby, beer, macs, rails, beer, iphones, ruby, rails…

Interrested in hearing about: Best practices for writing maintanable whilst rich javascript UIs.

Inderested in building: no idea, tempting to say ‘something cool’

—

Name: Noel Kelly

URL: http://thegnollinthemachine.blogspot.com/

—

Name: Tim Koopmans

URL: http://90kts.com

Interested in discussing: testing, automation, performance

Interested in hearing about: unit testing, functional testing

Interested in building: dsl for watir, general carnage within bzflag …

—

Name: Shoaib Burq

URL: http://geospatial.nomad-labs.com

Interested in discussing: merb, cocoa, chooks, iphone, jruby, oAuth, openID

Interested in hearing about: virtual machines, scaling

Interested in building: something that interfaces with my camera and rails … humm face or recognition system would be cool!

Name: Alex Moore

URL: http://prohost.com.au

Interested in discussing: UI Design, Javascript, Ext JS?, Testing, Application Frameworks
Interested in building: A generic application framework incorporating various plugins, authentication etc

Jour Kool Aid

Fri, 14 Nov 2008 06:54:05 Z

Thanks Dr Nic! Sorry the formatting sucks.. might clean it up later.

What is jour and why they are killer apps for Rails Camp08?
Posted by Dr Nic on June 18, 2008

Uploaded with plasq’s Skitch!
Rails Conf? 2008 was a few weeks ago, and I didn’t go. I made babies instead. But if you ignore the whoohaa of Mag Lev? and DHH’s Surplus talk, there was one piece of genuine, new awesomeness that came out of Rails Conf?. This awesomeness, plus Twitter created at least 6 new projects in the last month. These apps are going to make Rails Camp? awesome.

That is if Rails Conf? never happened this piece of delicious coding happiness never would have occurred. It was built at Rails Conf?, by Rails Conf? attendees. It was built to solve a problem that only happens at conferences. Crappy internet.

The answer is gitj… no wait, I have more introductory story. [skip it]

Instead of going to Rails Conf? this year I “get” to go to Rails Camp?, which is like a conference for Rails developers, but without the conference part. What’s left without the conference? Hacking, Guitar Hero3, rejectconf-esque talks, and alcohol. Its’ the Lord’s way of saying “you’re in the right profession.”

Rails Camp? has two minor drawbacks, since it is held out in the country. One, there is no internet connection. Two, there is no internet connection. Now I know that is only one draw back but I thought it was such a big one it was worth mentioning twice [oh I miss Red Dwarf].

So, 6 months ago we solved one internet-related problem: we turned to Git and git-svn clone to take all our svn repositories with us camping. 6 months on, git has taken over the Ruby OSS world, thanks mostly to Git Hub? which made remote hosting of git repos easy peasy. But, Github won’t be with us at Rails Camp?. So we’re back to where we were 6 mths ago – being gumbies at hosting remote git repos.

So the question to be solved: how do you host a git repository, or indeed, lots of git repositories from your development machine; and conversely, how do you find someone else’s git repositories on their machine and clone it?

And whilst we’re at it… how do you easily share the Ruby Gems? you have installed on your machine with other people, and how do you easily find gems on other people’s machines that you don’t currently have, if you don’t have access to rubyforge.org or github.com to get them?

And furthermore… if you’re running a fun little web app off your dev machine, how can you easily advertise it and other people find it and use it? “Hey, what’s your machine’s name?” “drnic-mac” “Thanks. ..pause… Um, what port’s the app on?” “4050”…

Same problem. Local devs, running local services, but how to share with everyone in the room?

Bonjour
The core solution is a technology created by the boffins at Apple that is now completely open-source (afaik): Bonjour. From wikipedia:

Bonjour, formerly Rendezvous, is Apple Inc.’s trade name for its implementation of Zeroconf, a service discovery protocol. Bonjour locates devices such as printers, as well as other computers, and the services that those devices offer on a local network using multicast Domain Name System service records.

In the Ruby world there are two Ruby Gems? to integrate Bonjour into your app: dnssd and net-mdns. The former is only for Mac OS X, and the latter is a Ruby-only implementation that can be used anywhere. Bingo.

gitjour
So, Chad Fowler, Evan Phoenix, Rich Kilmer and a cast of others started a humble project to solve the first problem: sharing git repositories across a local network, called gitjour.

This project became a happy hack place for many many people.

Uploaded with plasq’s Skitch!
NOTE: I’ve included all the installation instructions that should work. If they don’t then try building the gems from src.

On OS X:

sudo gem install dnssd sudo gem install gitjour

or from source

sudo gem install dnssd git clone git://github.com/chad/gitjour.git cd gitjour rake install_gem On Linux/Windows:

sudo gem install net-mdns sudo gem install_gem nogoth-gitjour --source=http://gems.github.com

or from source

sudo gem install net-mdns git clone git://github.com/nogoth/gitjour.git cd gitjour rake install The gitjour project uses dnssd gem, with mac os x dependencies, and GitHub user ‘nogoth’ has ported the project to use the net-mdns gem for Linux/Windows.

Now, open up two terminal windows so you can emulate both sides of “serving” and “finding” a git repository.

Window 1:

cd a/git/project gitjour serve Window 2:

gitjour list gitjour clone project In Window 1, you can also serve an entire folder of repositories. Lots of them all at one time. Go into your project’s parent folder and run gitjour serve and you’ll see it Registered dr_nic_magic_models on port 9418. Starting service. a lot. In Window 2, you just gitjour clone xxx the project you want.

See, genius. No mucking around with Apache or setting up local “remote” repositories in your public folder so people can pull from it. Just run gitjour serve from your parent folder and you are instantly hosting ALL of your git repositories. Top Tip: move any private work into another folder first wink

So, that’s the git-sharing problem fixed.

pastejour
After Rails Conf?, twitter was alive with the coolness of gitjour, and very quickly John Barnette created pastejour to publish and find single pastie’s of code, given that without the internet you don’t have pastie websites.

To install on OS X:

sudo gem install dnssd sudo gem install jbarnette-pastejour --source=http://gems.github.com

or install from src:

sudo gem install dnssd git clone git://github.com/jbarnette/pastejour.git cd pastejour rake install On Linux/Windows:

sudo gem install net-mdns sudo gem install nogoth-pastejour --source=http://gems.github.com

or install from src:

sudo gem install net-mdns git clone git://github.com/nogoth/pastejour.git cd pastejour rake install Pastejour publishes a single block of text until one person retrieves it. Essentially, you yell at the person that there is a paste for them and they get it.

Window 3:

pastejour <<< "Hello Window 2" Window 4:

$ pastejour -f Searching for servers (3 seconds) Found pastejour at 'drnic' $ pastejour drnic (drnic from drnic-mac.local.:42424) Hello Window 2 gemjour After John’s announcement on Twitter, I asked “do we have a gemjour yet for sharing gems?”

Later that day, Evan Phoenix replies with “@drnic Enjoy! http://github.com/evanphx/gemjour/tree/master”

Uploaded with plasq’s Skitch!
This gem serves up all your gems to anyone who wants to install them from you. Don’t have merb but want to try it? Grab it from someone else.

To install on OS X:

sudo gem install dnssd sudo gem install evanphx-gemjour --source=http://gems.github.com

or install from src:

sudo gem install dnssd git clone git://github.com/evanphx/gemjour.git cd gemjour rake install On Linux/Windows:

sudo gem install net-mdns sudo gem install nogoth-gemjour --source=http://gems.github.com

or install from src:

sudo gem install net-mdns git clone git://github.com/nogoth/gemjour.git cd gemjour rake install Window 5:

gemjour serve Window 6:

gemjour list gemjour list someuser gemjour diff someuser -- shows diff btw you and them sudo gemjour install someuser newgem -- install newgem from someuser sudo gemjour install_diff someuser -- installs all gems from someuser you don't have Go around the room and steal everyone gems in a few minutes.

appjour
Room full of people hacking up cool things? Publish and find them easily with appjour, written by Lachie Cox

To install on OS X:

sudo gem install dnssd sudo gem install lachie-appjour --source=http://gems.github.com

or install from src:

sudo gem install dnssd git clone git://github.com/lachie/appjour.git cd appjour rake install To use it, after you’ve started a web app that you want to publish, open another window to run appjour:

Window 7:

cd some/web/app script/serve -p 4000 # or whatever for your framework appjour leet_app 4000 Window 8: found web app called 'leet_app'

$ appjour Searching for servers (3 seconds)

$ appjour leet_app ... app loaded into browser Mongrel publishing bonjour events Courtenay hacked in a few lines to mongrel_rails so that each mongrel publishes itself to Bonjour.

The magic of this is that mongrels, or the applications behind them, could use Bonjour to self-discover each other within a mongrel cluster, and then talk to each other.

One man’s solution is another man’s problem
As new people join the circus, new gems, git repositories, web apps and pasties are added and the new problem is: how to keep in touch with the newness?

First solution: publish them to Growl with dejour by Aaron Patterson, tagged “Discover awesome services near you.”

On Mac OS X:

sudo gem install dnssd sudo gem install aaronp-dejour --source=http://gems.github.com

or install from src:

sudo gem install dnssd git clone git://github.com/aaronp/dejour.git cd dejour rake install There is no fork of dejour for Linux/Windows yet.

Window 9:

$ dejour All your current services should appear as Growl notifications (from Windows 1, 3, 5 and 7 above).

But Growl notifications fly-by pretty quickly. How to keep track?

Finally, jour to the rescue (starjour)
I really felt that this problem was best solved with a GUI. Mostly cause I was keen to try out Ruby Cocoa?. I don’t think I did productive work for a week, whilst I read books, tutorials and anything I could find on Ruby Cocoa?, Cocoa, Xcode + Interface Builder, Objective-C and after trying and failing a few times starjour was created. By Lachie Cox (who also wrote appjour).

Uploaded with plasq’s Skitch!
F@#$@#.

Really, I just couldn’t get my head around Cocoa Bindings at the time, but my experience of using Ruby Cocoa? was very positive, once I’d learnt the underlying framework and the thinking-patterns of a Cocoa developer. Best book to read to learn Cocoa/Ruby Cocoa?? The book is by Aaron Hillegass – Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X (3rd ed). After struggling with other people’s books and tutorials this one was wonderful. The “Collection View”? message in the image above was me telling Lachie that I’d figured out and used Collection Views? to replace his Table View?. Now i just need to bind the bonjour message type (gitjour/gemjour etc) to an image. And more.

But, nonetheless, starjour (read: jour as all these apps were collectively named on Twitter) did one job: it sat there showing which services were currently available.

Unlike all the others, this one used the native Cocoa framework for Bonjour, fwiw, and is doomed as an OS X-only app.

On Mac OS X, we don’t really have a place to download and run it, so grab it from src:

git clone git://github.com/lachie/starjour.git cd starjour rake run This requires Xcode and RubyCocoa (available on OS X Leopard or via rubycocoa.com on sourceforge)

Wow! What just happened last month?
Chronologically: gitjour, pastejour, gemjour, dejour, starjour and appjour. And I think there are others. Its incredible.

Firstly, it is going to be an awesome Rails Camp? – these tools are killer apps for an internet-less hackfest like Rails Camp?, or massive internet-starved conferences like Rails Conf?.

Secondly, it has been very exciting to watch the creation of these projects over the last few weeks, with the jour meme bubbling through twitter and irc. Another happy month for our open source communities.

Railscamp Bonus:
Gitjour Hacking

Help! My lungs are stupid!

the line

sudo gem install_gem nogoth-gitjour—source=http://gems.github.com

didn’t work for me this morning, giving “Unknown command install_gem”. I’m not sure whether install_gem works on Linux.

sudo gem install nogoth-gemjour—source=http://gems.github.com
also didn’t work for me, saying
ERROR: could not find gem nogoth-gemjour locally or in a repository
(I decided to install it via source)

Also,
pastejour <<< “Hello Window 2”
gave
/usr/bin/pastejour:19:in `load’: no such file to load—pastejour (Load Error?) from /usr/bin/pastejour:19
This may be my own stupid fault though

Ubuntu Hardy Mirror

Fri, 14 Nov 2008 05:26:49 Z

The ‘main’ set of packages are at http://ubuntu.railscamp.net/ubuntu/main , no sources – only x64 and x86 binaries.
Partner packages are at http://ubuntu.railscamp.net/ubuntu/partner
Security updates http://ubuntu.railscamp.net/ubuntu/security

Sample sources.list:


deb http://ubuntu.railscamp.net/ubuntu/main hardy main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://ubuntu.railscamp.net/ubuntu/main hardy-updates main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://ubuntu.railscamp.net/ubuntu/partner hardy  partner
deb http://ubuntu.railscamp.net/ubuntu/security hardy-security main restricted universe multiverse

Totally untested, let me (Linc) know if there are any issues.

List Of Slices

Fri, 14 Nov 2008 05:25:29 Z

This is now applications hosted on the server..

Base Slice Info

Venue Requirements

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 01:19:03 Z

A quick rundown of what we’ve looked for in venues before:

35-50 beds (although more isn’t exactly a problem)
generally, beds in dorms
camping area for overflow in numbers
an hour or two from the city
bonus points for train station nearby (so some locals can act as short-distance taxis)
alcohol allowed (some venues – particularly religious ones – don’t allow alcohol)
early hours noise allowed
self-catering allowed
power for
- a laptop per attendee (35-50)
- a well endowed server
- 1-2 projectors
- 1-2 game consoles
- 1-2 sets of amplified speakers

Bonus points

Sleeping area separated from meeting area (for noise reasons)
Multiple meeting areas
Comfortable chill-out areas. Places to hack (or not) in comfort

Genres of site worth checking out

Scout camps (along with associated Guides camps etc)
School group camps (especially during School term)

Genres of site probably not suitable

Those run by religious groups
- usually no alcohol allowed as mentioned above
- perhaps just a bit too complicated all things considered
caravan parks
- too expensive
- generally no dorms
- generally no meeting area