update

It’s been awhile since I have posted. What have I been doing? Well, been very busy with: writing a book on Merb mostly. If you haven’t checked out this framework, you should.

What’s so cool about Merb? It’s Javascript framework agnostic (you can use Prototype, JQuery or anything you’d like). It’s template language agnostic (you can use Haml/Sass, erb using erubis, Markaby). It’s ORM agnostic (you can use Datamapper, Sequel or Activerecord).

I have been playing around with it and it is awesome. I really love working with it. I was able to easily add any combination of the above items. If you are coming from a Ruby on Rails world, working Merb is very easy.

I’ve also been created a new website called Merbcast.com. Merbcast will be a site devoted to Merb. It will have screencasts, podcasts, news and tutorials. I have the basic structure up right now. Once Merb version 0.9 is released, I plan on reworking the site. Merb version 0.9 will allow you to use any server that you choose. The hosting provider I am using has cgi and fcgi and I am going to go with one of those to work with Merb.

I have been working with a lot of technologies lately and have to finish up my Merb book. I plan on doing some work with Merb and rSpec. I’ll post my results and tutorials here to share with you all….

Cleveland Ruby Users Group – Presentation Companion notes

Here are my companion notes to my presentation at the Cleveland Ruby Users Group.

Good books for learning Ruby:
The Ruby Way by Hal Fulton
Programming Ruby: The Pragmatic Programmers’ Guide, Second Edition
Beginning Ruby: From Novice to Professional (Beginning from Novice to Professional) by Peter Cooper
Ruby for Rails by David Black – good if you have experience with Ruby on Rails and would like to learn Ruby

Good web sites for learning Ruby:
6 free videos learning Ruby
Ruby Quiz
RubyLearning.com
online IRB
My del.icio.us bookmarks. Look under Ruby and Ruby on Rails.
Ruby IDEs
ConFreaks – free Ruby related Conference videos.

Thanks.
Mike Riley

As promised. The designs.

As I promised a while back. Here are some of the designs I considered for my site.

Here is one attempt at a design. This version was going for the old worn out aged photo look.

This version was close to the final version. This was actually what I was going to use right before I got to my final design.

This was just an attempt. I often just try things to see if anything catches my eye and see if it can grow from there.

This was my first attempt and I actually still really like it. Fake tape holding up a scrap piece of paper. Nice effect. Others use this and I felt it wasn’t unique enough.

I think this one is nice. Just wasn’t sure about the sub pages. I really like sites that have some differentiation from the home page to the other sub pages. You see this with newspapers in how they are designed.

Was going for the grunge, worn paper look here. Wasn’t really happy with the results

Was going for a grunge, typographic look with this design. Wasn’t thrilled with how it turned out.

I did a lot of designs for this latest version of my site. I liked some, indifferent towards some and didn’t like others. I just took time, experimented and tried things. You never know where the design is going to take you. You just have to get working. I find my design process is helped by looking at other designs. Whether it’s print or web. Once I look at enough stuff I get into the mindset and feel much more creative. Hope this has been informative for you. My current state is finishing off the current version of the site and then going to refactor the code and re-implement a new architecture for the site. I have learned a lot about Capistrano, Ruby on Rails and deployment. I am going to take this new found knowledge and apply it to the next version of the site.

thanks for taking the time to read this.

Moving along…

The Thanksgiving break didn’t allow for much Ruby on Rails development, but I did get a chance to work on a admin section so I can have a content management system.  I also went through the Peepcode Screencast rSpec part I.   If you haven’t taken a look at the Peepcode screencasts, I highly recommend it.  I am going to post a little later my work on getting my cms system set up.

Another day….

I got my database working on my site.  It wasn’t easy and took me a bit to get it right.  This should be my last hiccup before getting really cranking on some development.  I am able to deploy my site using capistrano.  Here is my development environment:

First off, I use Windows as my operating system.  I have Ubuntu Linux installed on my laptop, but I am not used to Linux and still having some time getting a development environment set up there.

Development IDE: Netbeans 6.0 beta 2.
Repository:  My hosting provider has a subversion repository so I commit my changes directly from Netbeans to my Subversion repository.  It is very nice.
Deployment:  After a group of changes that have been verified, I then run Capistrano to deploy my application.  I am very happy with this setup.

I have used other development IDE’s such as RadRails and Aptana IDE, but I am not able to get them to work like i’d like.

Today I set up my server’s MySQL db and configured my rails application to work with MySQL.  After some trouble (using the correct username and password is important I guess), I am to interact with the database.

Still planning on sharing my design ideas for my site.  Coming soon….

Mike Riley

The latest

Well, it’s been a while and I plan to get back into the swing of posting. I have been busy working on my Ruby on Rails site. It will always be a work in progress. As I work on it I plan on posting code here of things that I use on the site. I’d like to share my code in the event I may help others or others may have something to add to what I am doing.

Coming next will be why I have had the big delay in between posts. Most notably is due to design issues with my site. I have done quite a few versions, but was never really happy with what I had come up with. I’ll post screenshots of what I did so you all can see the designs.

The other reason is I was at RubyConf in Charlotte, NC. I saw and met quite a few people. I met up with Joe O’Brien, Michael Buffington, Marcel Molina, Chad Fowler, David Black, Geoffrey Grossenbach, Alex Payne, Evan Light, Obie Fernandez, Scott Barron and others. It was a great time. I miss it already. I learned quite a bit.

Finally, I started up a Cleveland/Northeast Ohio Ruby Users Group. We had our first meeting and the next meeting I am planning on giving a talk about Ruby. This will be followed by a talk by Joe Fiorini on Ruby on Rails. Should be a good time.

I’ll finish up with some code that I used on my site:

I like it when sites use a design that has an index page that differs from the rest of the site. To do this with Rails is easy. All you have to do is to use 2 different layouts for your 2 different designs. I first created a site controller for all the pages on my site. Then inside the site controller I added the following code:

layout :choose_layout

private
def choose_layout
if [ 'index' ].include? action_name
‘index’
else
’subPage’
end
end

This is pretty much saying that if we are going to access the index action, then display the index layout otherwise use the subPage layout. Very easy.

Take care
Mike Riley

Ruby Stuff.

Bought Chad Fowler’s Rails Recipes book while in Philadelphia for Ruby East.  It is a very good book.  I like the In place editor recipe.  It’s the first one in the book.  The book has a lot more helpful recipes.

I need to get a good Ruby book.   I think the one I am going to get is the Ruby Way by Hal Fulton.  I met him at Ruby East.  He is a great guy.

I am currently working on an AJAX application.  I got it to work for the most part, just have to have it update the page.  Currently have to do a refresh to get it to work……

Ruby East – Fall 2007

Arrived home from Ruby East today.  It was a very good time.  I learned a ton of stuff.  Also got to meet some great people.  David Black, Obie Fernandez, Mike Mangino, Jeremy McAnally, Gregory Brown, Hal Fulton, Ezra Zygmuntowicz, Michael Milner, Giles Bowkett and Desi McAdam to name a few.  It was a fun time.  Even played a couple of games of Werewolf.   RubyConf should be a great time.  Looking forward to it.

The talks at Ruby East were very good.   I went to Hal Fulton’s keynote on the Future of Ruby.  Then watched Jeremy McAnally, Ezra Zygmuntowicz, Desi McAdam, Giles Bowkett and finally Obie Fernandez.   I missed out on great talks by Obie Fernandez (filled in for Amy Hoy), Mike Mangino and David Black. 

After the talk most everyone headed to the Sheraton Great Valley for Ales and Rails.  It was a great time to chat with everyone and talk about programming or whatever else came to mind.   I stayed until about 10pm and then left for my hotel.

I learned a lot of things.  Have to really buckle down and get into Ruby more so then Rails.  Rails is great, but I think Ruby is what I need to learn in order to be a great Rails developer.  It should be a fun process and I look forward to learning more about Ruby.  There are a ton of other things out there that I would like to get a chance to work with like Mongrel, Nginx, Swiftiply, xen, vlad.   I’ll post some more interesting things as I code/read or find little nuggets of information.