Last night I attended the Georgia Tech Computing Alumni Mixer at the new Klaus Advanced Computing Building.  It was a great event, and I’ll definitely be attending more.  I’ll also be dragging along all you GT folk who are reading this.

The new Klaus building is fantastic.  I gotta admit that the landscaping outside is still, quite horrific, but I didn’t actually notice until Jodi, who is the student liaison on the GT Planning and Design Committee, and architect extraodinaire pointed it out to me.  Nevertheless, the inside is just plain rad.  There are several nooks in between classrooms and offices with big plasma TVs with hookups freely available — making it perfect for impromptu Wii gaming presentations and generally just being able to say, “check this out” and fire up your laptop’s display on the screen.

I spoke with several people about possibly hosting the Atlanta Ruby User Group meetings at Georgia Tech, though it appears we have some space planned out at the ATDC, which should be great.

I’ll definitely be promoting and attending more of these events.  I am feeling very successful these days in life and in business, and much of it I owe to a great, challenging, and rewarding experience at good ole Georgia Tech.

I’m back from the Annual RubyConf, held this year in Denver Colorado.  I had a blast.  It was nice to put a lot of faces to names (e-mails).

The talks were wide-ranging from “The History of Ruby” to “YARV Compliation” and all over the place in their scope and topics, from hard-core techno-babble to pontification on how open-source principles might apply to a free-spirited consulting company.

One of the speakers couldn’t make it, so RubyCentral opted to use the 45 minutes to do 9 five-minute “Lightning Talks.”  Derek and I signed up and presented the newest incarnation of Heartbeat, which demoed the live setup of an application for push-button deployment over the web using Capistrano.  We got a lot of great feedback, and some of the other lightning talks were amazing.

Overall, the conference had a great sense of comradarie around this thing we know and love called Ruby.  I can’t help but think that’s what it must have felt like during the first few Java conferences.  I can’t speculate on the exact nature of where Ruby’s going, but with “official” support to the Ruby Community and presentations from respective members of the Sun, Microsoft, and Apple camps, things are looking good.

I’m giving a talk tonight at the Atlanta Ruby User Group meeting on [Rails] Deployment with Capistrano.

I have some slides, but will be demoing it on a simple app (that does nothing).  Despite my antics, Capistrano is a Big Boy Tool, and to its credit, is simple and effective.

Here are the slides, so if you’re coming tonight, no peeking!

Capistrano - Atlanta Ruby User Group Presentation.pdf

A presentation by Highgroove Studios at the Atlanta Ruby Users Group on April 4, 2006.

This Presentation was a group discussion on common detractors to the adoption of Ruby and Rails in the corporate world. We discucssed how to “convince” management to adopt Ruby and the Rails framework in an objective way.

The discussion was great — many Rubyists responded positively to detractors like “it’s too young,” “it doesn’t scale,” “J2EE / PHP / ASP is good enough,” “it’s all hype,” and “we’re a windows shop….”

For more information on the next meeting and more resources, visit the Atlanta Ruby Users Group.

Download: Getting Past: It Doesn’t Scale (PowerPoint Presentation)

Next Meeting—Tuesday, April 4, 2006

Date/Time
Tuesday, Apr. 4 @ 6:30 PM

Agenda

Location.

Cox Communications
Pavilion D
5775 Peachtree-Dunwoody Rd NE Atlanta, GA 30342

Campus Directions.

Pavilion D is the bldg nearest Lake Hearn. If you enter from Peachtree-Dunwoody it’s the last bldg on the left.

The doors lock at around 6:30PM so call Mark @ 404-456-7775 if you’re late and can’t get in the building. There’s also an intercom by the door for security if you don’t have signal.

Food.

Pizza and Drinks

(optional $5-10 donation is appreciated)

Map.

http://rubyurl.com/1EC

See http://www.atlrug.org/ for more details! See ya there!

Here’s the presentation I gave to the GT LUG. I was going to be clever and record it, make an audioblog entry and then get crrrrrazy and do something with a podcast/videocast and then I realized that my life would be complete if I did that, so I didn’t.

The presentation went well, we had a good turnout at the GT LUG. I think MythTV is a great example of an open-source project with a nice clear mission and a well-run group of contributors. It’s got a good mix of coolness and hype, and the time is right for a breakout product from either Apple or WinXP in the mythical-convergance set-top-box PC-market, so until that happens, or if you don’t want to be bound by Apple or MS’s crazy DRM shenanigans, then perhaps MythTV is for you.

Without further ado, here’s the presentation:

MythTV Presentation - LUG GT.pdf

MythTV Presentation - LUG GT.ppt

Enjoy!

From the Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts (ALE) mailing list:

The Atlanta Python Users Group is meeting at 7:30pm on March 9 at the
Decatur Public Library. Jeremy Jones will be speaking on how to use
Python and Django to develop web applications.

Django is a high-level Python Web framework that encourages rapid
development and clean, pragmatic design. (Many comparisons between
Ruby on Rails and Django have been made.)

Jeremy recently wrote an article for O’Reilly on Django:
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/9075

The conference room is downstairs in the Decatur Public Library. I
will open the room at 7pm. The meeting will start promptly at 7:30pm
and the library will kick us out at 8:45. I hope you can join us.

Address:
Decatur Public Library
215 Sycamore Street
Decatur , GA 30030
404-370-3070

Here is the meetup page for our group:
http://python.meetup.com/46/

Reprinted from the Atlanta PHP Announce Mailing List:

Atlanta PHP December Meeting
Thursday, December 1, 2005, 7pm
New Horizons, Tucker, GA

The December meeting sees the return of James Logsdon as a speaker. He will be speaking on object-oriented programming in PHP, and seasoned programmer and “newbie” alike should benefit from this discussion. Following the presentation, we’ll have more book give-aways that will be handled in a much improved manner entirely unlike last time.

The meeting will take place at the usual location at New Horizons Learning Center in Tucker, GA, and those who wish to grab pizza and drinks afterwards are encouraged to make their way to the Mellow Mushroom following the meeting.

* OOP in PHP
It’s taken almost 10 years for PHP to even start catching up in the world of Objects, and with the release of PHP5 the language has made a great leap. From the basics of OOP in PHP4 to neat tricks with the new Magic Methods and everything in between, James Logsdon will explore Object-Oriented Programming in PHP.

Come expecting great networking opportunities and chances to learn what other PHP developers are doing in the Atlanta area!

For details and directions, go here: http://www.atlphp.org/node/103

P.S. Future topic ideas and volunteers for presentations are welcome; please discuss on org@lists.atlphp.org