The Official OpenRain Blog » Technologies

Rubyology #83: Ruby IDE/Editor Deathmatch

preston.lee — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 23:19:10 +0000

Roundtable discussion on Ruby IDEs and text editors.

Runtime: 38:39 minutes.

Participants: Marc Chung, Preston Lee, Saul Mora, Benjamin Smith.

Episode Sponsor: http://openrain.com

Stream via the web from http://rubyology.com or subscribe via iTunes.

Direct download size: ~34MB M4A, ~74MB MP3

http://rubyology.s3.amazonaws.com/rubyology-83-high.m4a

http://rubyology.s3.amazonaws.com/rubyology-83-high.mp3

Roundtable discussion on Ruby IDEs and text editors. Four OpenRain developers debate the pros and cons of different IDE and editor tools for day-to-day Ruby application development.

Stream Rubyology via the web or subscribe via iTunes.

Runtime: 38:39 minutes, in stereo.
Participants: Marc Chung, Preston Lee, Saul Mora, Benjamin Smith.
Episode Sponsors: http://openrain.com, http://openrainapp.com
Direct Download: ~34MB M4A, ~74MB MP3

Geek ‘n’ Eat XV: Deja Vu Edition

preston.lee — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 23:20:53 +0000

What: Geek ‘n’ Eat XV: Deja Vu Edition
When: Friday, June 26th, Noon-1pm.
Where: Chino Bandito, Chandler
Who: All hungry geeks!

[Restaurant Website] [Google Street View Map] [Aerial View] [Google Group] [GnE Website]

As a part-time Asian living in Arizona, Chino’s holds a special place in my heart for successfully blending Americanized Eastern favorites with Mexican classics. (Jerk chicken quesadillas, egg fu yung burritos.. crazy delicious stuff.) Come get your geek on with some awesome unique eats! I’m sure we’ll find some give-a-ways, too.

Note that this is at the CHANDLER location, which happens to have the worst restaurant real estate ever. It’s on the Southeast corner of Chandler and Dobson *behind* the strip mall. (See aerial pic.)

Mark your calendar now. (I’ll wait.) No reservation required, but notes appreciated on the Geek ‘n’ Eat Google Group!

Chino Bandido Takee-Outee was founded in November 1990 by Frank and Eve Collins, husband and wife. The blend of Mexican and Asian cooking styles and flavors came about from Eve’s Chinese background and both Frank and Eve being native Arizonans. The original store was only 1000 square feet, seated 16, and was modeled after those “hole-in-the-wall” restaurants that Frank and Eve love. As soon as they realized that people wanted to stay in to eat, as opposed to taking it out, they expanded the restaurant year by year, until the restaurant grew to over 5,000 square feet, seating about 150.

In June 2005, we finally opened the Chandler location. It is tucked into the corner of San Marcos Square (behind the Walgreen’s) on the southeast corner of Dobson and Chandler Blvd. With 6,000 square feet and an outside patio, we have tried to create a spacious, comfortable dining area. Most of the parking is on the east side of the building, so be sure to drive around back for the closest entrance!

In the fall of 2005, New Times awarded Chino’s Best of Phoenix for “Local Eatery We Wish Were a Chain.” On January 29, 2007, AOL users voted Chino’s in First Place for Best of Phoenix “Cheap Eats” category.

Chino’s is also one of few restaurants that gives you a tutorial in how to place an order. Mark your calendar now. (I’ll wait.)

Product Video Demo: Online Business Platform

preston.lee — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 01:18:33 +0000

OpenRain silently launched the Online Business Platform at the beginning of 2009 to give small businesses a sophisticated web presence on a tight budget. The Online Business Platform takes custom web design, easy-to-use content management (CMS) capabilities and social media integration, and wraps the whole package in a fully managed, fixed-cost web presence complete with monthly consulting services and automatic software upgrades.

It’s the most valuable parts of web for your business: technology, online marketing, and business guidance boiled down to an easy to use website and predictable development process. Anyone with a web browser and small marketing budget can now build and maintain a 100% unique, professionally guided web presence that will be the center of both your online and offline marketing campaigns for years to come. This video highlights just some of the current features of OpenRain’s Online Business Platform technology.

See http://openrainapp.com for details on the Online Business Platform and to request a free custom quote!

Web 2.0 Design Cheat Sheet

preston.lee — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 00:07:43 +0000

Use this handy visual guide when designing new websites and you’re sure to impress the client! (Open in a new window for the full-size 1000×800 version.)

Rubyology #74 Online

preston.lee — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 21:53:59 +0000

Rubyology Roundtable #2 is now available for free download via iTunes and web streaming via the Rubyology website. For show notes and follow-up discussions see the Rubyology Google Group.

Mention In Advanced Rails Recipes

preston.lee — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 00:29:19 +0000

Props to OpenRain’r Marc Chung for having the action_mailer_tls Rails plugin featured in Advanced Rails Recipes: Snack Recipe 47, Send E-mail via Gmail.

Note that the official plugin is now on github. We would have continued to maintain the URL that went to print, but no one told us we’d be in the book!

Hosting Rubyology #73

preston.lee — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 20:04:01 +0000

The OpenRain Ruby development team is hosting Rubyology episode #73, which should be available via iTunes within the next day. Primary discussion topics include..

Unobtrusive JavaScript with Prototype and jQuery .
Recurring problems with common CSS layouts.

After the show is released we’ll post a link to an AAC version with shownotes for those who want every last drop of Rubyology goodness! Also, you may now contribute to the Rubyology podcast by participating in supplementary discussion, sharing relevant links, giving show feedback and suggesting Ruby-related topics for future episodes by joining the new Rubyology Google Group.

RubyConf 2008 Videos Online

preston.lee — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 23:24:54 +0000

Major thanks to the RubyConf organizers for raising the cash necessary for Confreaks to come out and record the sessions. The rest of the sessions can be viewed online for free here.

Peer Aware Desktop Application Development, by Preston Lee

Hacking With ruby2ruby, by Marc Chung

RubyConf 2008 Slides

preston.lee — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 18:54:14 +0000

Tremendous thanks to attendees, feedback/patch providers and great conversations throughout the conference. Here are the slides from both OpenRain sessions…

Peer-Aware Desktop Application Development, by Preston Lee. [PDF] [Keynote]

Hacking With ruby2ruby, by Marc Chung. [PDF]

Thanks again and we hope to see you at a conference soon!

Test-Driven Rails Development Lunch Session Tomorrow

preston.lee — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 20:48:58 +0000

Elite OpenRain ninja Remi Taylor will be presenting his approach to test-driven Rails development tomorrow afternoon at 1:30pm at OpenRain HQ. That’s Wednesday, October 8th for approximately 1 hour. All are welcome. No reservations required. Forecast: 99 degrees with a 90% chance of awesome.

You can grab the latest presentation file here. Remi’s synopsis…

Test-driven development has changed the way that many programmers design, write, test, refactor, and maintain their code. Myself included.

In this presentation, I’ll be introducing the concept of test-driven development and walking through the process of test-driving a typical Rails application.

This presentation is intended for Rails developers who:

are new to testing
have been testing, but not test-driving
have been test-driving, but not with RSpec
have been test-driving with RSpec and hope to learn a few new tricks :)

Along with writing specifications for Models, Views, & Controllers, I hope to cover:

writing user stories (acceptance tests)
creating custom RSpec matchers
continious integration using Autotest / CruiseControl.rb
testing JavaScript & AJAX