July 2006 Minutes (Ruby on Rails)

Kluggers,

Tonight's meeting commenced with the usual extended search for a custodian bearing keys. Then we moved on to the stated topic of the evening, Ruby on Rails, presented by Jose de Leon. What did we learn?

-Jose is a transplant from Ottawa (yes, Canada), so he has no excuse for complaining about the weather this coming winter.

-Ruby is sort of an object oriented version of Perl. Knowing Perl, LISP, etc, will help you get a better handle on Ruby.

-In case you didn't learn well enough from your college physics professors, there is no such thing as a free lunch. To really make the most out of Rails, you should understand Ruby.

-Ottawa has the Ottawa Group of Ruby Enthusiasts (OGRE).

-While I'm sure all the Polish in the area will be surprised, Pols are also known as Lola. POLS = principle of least surprise is also known as the law of least astonishment=LOLA. This is one of the best programming practices that Rails helps you follow.

-There is a Ruby website that is full of mixed drink recipes (URL not available currently, pester Jose).

-Delete is more fun when known as Destroy.

-Disappointingly, this month we did not get to play with fire.

-And of course for more info, you can always see Jose's slides. http://www.pcig.info/uploads/Reviews/RoR.pdf

Since last month:

-The Gimp Challenge was spawned after all the interest in Robert Nix's presentation on GIMP. Unfortunately, there were no submissions, you lazy bums  ;)

-The frisbee golf evening was a success. Look for more in the future.

Upcoming schedule:

-Another frisbee golf evening, date, time, location TBD. Submit opinions if you have some.

-August meeting - sort of planned to be a game night with PCIG. However, that's not coming together very well. Maybe it would go over better if someone found that Ruby website of drinks, and we did some quality control testing of the website. Any last minute decisions about this meeting will have to be made by somebody more arbitrary and capricious than me, or at least by somebody who will be in the state at the time.

-September meeting - Wink

-October meeting - field trip to Mister House presentation

-November meeting - swap meet & social with PCIG. Start gathering items you wish to sell/gift/trade.

-December meeting - this is traditionally a gaming month, if I'm understanding correctly. However, due to the resounding lack of success we're having with organizing the August gaming, we may want to have another plan in place by December. Let me know if you're volunteering either for game organization or for a presentation.

Potential item topics and/or things for you to volunteer to help with:

-Klug photo album - Do we want one? Who would be willing to put it together? Could we put it on a wiki page that's only accessible to a restricted list, such as those already signed up to the mailing list? Are we photogenic enough to be willing to have our mugs posted?

-Virtual meetings - Tim, do you want to fill in more details here as to what you had in mind? A presentation might then be utilized as the basis for creating our own webcast of the meetings, which might help those who can't make a particular meeting, but don't actually have to be out of the house (home with the kids, etc).

Other items of interest:

-Joe brought in some books to donate, free for the taking. Any that weren't claimed by the end of the evening were going to be donated to someplace such as the RCTC library.

-There's a website, free.thelinuxstore.ca , that might be of interest. "There are many places around the world that are still on dialup or have restrictive download limits which makes downloading Linux time consuming or expensive." Here you can order Linux install CDs for free.

See you at the next KLUG lunch, or frisbee golf, whichever ends up coming first.

Tina