ZenLinux Blog

[As posted on the NHRuby.org mailing lists]:

There are some changes afoot for the NH Ruby and Rails User Group I wanted to let you know about. I am officially handing over the reigns of the group to the leadership of Nick Plante.

While I technically founded NHRuby.org back in January of ’07, Nick has been involved from the start, and we’ve considered each other co-chairs (and co-horts in crime) since the group got off the ground. I know Nick is going to do an excellent job helping the group continue to grow and succeed as a resource and gathering hub for Rubyists in the area.

This change is due to the fact that I will be moving to the West Coast in January. This group is one of the many things I will miss dearly about New Hampshire. Fortunately I can and will remain in touch with the group remotely.

To date, I’ve been hosting the electronic resources for the group (domain name, wiki, and mailing lists). I’m now in the process of migrating these services to ones Nick will administer.

The most disruptive change will be that this mailing list will be shut down on Monday, December 29. You will need to manually subscribe to the following Google Groups, which will replace the announcements and discussion lists, respectively:

http://groups.google.com/group/nhruby-announce

http://groups.google.com/group/nhruby-discuss

Shortly after that, the nhruby.org domain will be transferred to Nick and he will take over hosting the web site (and adding a new blog, which is planned to eventually replace the wiki).

It’s been an honor and privilege to be involved in one of the first Ruby/Rails user groups in New Hampshire.

Thanks to everyone who came out for the NH Ruby and Rails User Group meeting last night. I think the three-topic format worked really well, and offered something for everyone.

As promised, I have added a page to our wiki with a command-by-command reference for setting up your Linode VPS quickly for the Rails Rumble programming competition. I hope it’s useful for people looking to spend more time during the Rumble working on your app rather than configuring your deployment server.

If you’ve ever considered becoming a merbivore, tonight’s NHRuby.org meeting will help get you started. Merb, of course, is the upcoming Ruby-based web framework that in many ways is an iteration on Rails itself – more modular, faster, and extremely flexible. Jeremy Durham will be talking about the pros and cons of Merb, and discuss a project of his where he migrated a web application from Rails to Merb. Meeting location and details are on the NHRuby wiki.

I’m really looking forward to this month’s NHRuby meeting, which will include an overview of Google’s new App Engine environment. Brian DeLacey will be giving this presentation, and will start things off with an intro to Python for Ruby developers. Brian also tells me that he’ll have some free books to offer as door prizes, courtesy of O’Reilly’s user group program. Don’t miss out.

Just a reminder that tonight is the NH Ruby and Rails User Group meeting in Portsmouth, NH. Details here. I’ll be giving a demo of NetBeans 6.1 and cool things you can do with it, and Nick will be talking about Rack. Update: I’m sorry I was unable to make it to the meeting this evening. I managed to injure my back during the day and was in rough shape all afternoon and evening.

The RailsConf 2008 presentation schedule has been posted. I’m really looking forward to it as my first RailsConf.

Also, the April NH Ruby and Rails User Group meeting will consist of a live hacking/help session, so bring any code you’ve having issues with or would like a code review on and we’ll work on it during the meeting. Directions and details on the wiki.

Do you need your monthly dose of hanging out with Ruby and Rails developers and learning cool stuff? Well lucky for you, the next NHRuby.org meeting is in just a couple of days. Nick and I will be giving “lightning talks” on a number of topics. One of mine will be on writing an AIM bot to send you instant messages from your web application. Meeting details and directions can be found on the wiki.

Be sure to swing by RMC Research in Portsmouth next Tuesday for the first NHRuby.org meeting of 2008. Nick Plante and I will be presenting on a couple of Rails-related topics. Nick will show you how to add OpenID goodness to your Rails app of choice, and I’ll be discussing the ins and outs of ActionMailer, which handles sending and receiving e-mail in Rails.

More details and directions to the meeting can be found, as usual, on the NHRuby wiki. We could really use some new guest speakers for upcoming meetings, so if you’re interested please drop me a line – scottruby at zenlinux dot com.