Too Cool for Internet Explorer

Saturday, September 29, 2007

Information on Presentations

This week little progress with Ruby learning at work and lots of research about modern presentation techniques at home.

I select some usefull sites about it.

The big point now are the movies scripting models, used on modern presentations.

The Syd Field 4 Acts, and the Christopher Vogler Hero's Journey aproaches are top on the list.

If You are dealing with presentations, take a look !

Saturday, September 22, 2007

Back to presentations

Ten years from now (1987-1997), I was involved with presentations...

Creating and presenting them.

I do presentations all around the Country (most at the northeast area).

That time I was working for IBM, and most of that presentations are about SQL/DS, DB2, REXX, OS/2 (this was an amazing OS)

Now I have to do a Ruby language presentation. So I googled over "modern presentations techniques" and...

What a shock ! They are using storyboarding techniques now. Just like the movies !

Most I've learned about presentations at that time are past tense now.

That way I have to split my time between two urgent tasks:
1 - Keep my Ruby learning process going.
2 - Create a modern Ruby language presentation.

From now on I will try to do more of task one at work, and more of task two at home.

Lets Go !

Sunday, September 16, 2007

Now start using it !

OK that is time to begin to use Ruby on more serious applications...

This weekend I finished the "Challenge", complete the remaining stepts on the "Project" and advance to the "Ruby / Tk" item on my rubylearning.com study group.

So, I think could start some serious mini applications at work.

There is a lot of day by day actvities there, and I think they could become Ruby desktop applications.

I will search a bit more about Ruby GUIs and start the process !

3 hours later, my search is done ! there are some options:
1 - Tcl/Tk - Is the default option, tons of docs...
2 - FXRuby - Good graphics !
3 - wxRuby - A havier good graphics one !

And I will try this too:
1 - Shoes
2 - FLTK

Monday, September 10, 2007

Today I have launched a seed ! (or a gem ?)

Today I went to Rio's SENAC (National Service of Commercial Learning), and propose some Ruby language presentations.

SENAC is a Brazilian open learning center carried by the CNC (National Commercial Confederation) founded in 1946, with offices all over the country.

My intention is to turn on, more and more Ruby programmers here.

In the near future, it might for example be possible to turn those presentations in regular courses.

Time will tell.

Sunday, September 9, 2007

Ruby Rails IDE choice upgrade ?!

Thanks to "tn" (anonimous)

I take a try on NetBeans Ruby IDE (Hudson). It really looks faster and lighter, but I made some memory tests with all the other IDEs yesterday and compared with NetBeans 6.0, this one uses near 100K more memory ?!?!

It loads faster and the overall behavior appears to be faster too.

Any way, I will postpone more detailed evaluation to when I go deep into Rails...

For now with Ruby, SciTE is doing the job.

Saturday, September 8, 2007

First steps on Rails

Today I start to make some tests about Ruby/Rails IDEs.

I have some decisive points to choose one.

The most important is: I want some thing that do all (or most of) the configuration for me. I'm a developer, and I like to develop, not dealing with configurations...

I tryed four Rails IDEs today:
- Eclipse (alredy instaled for Java app.)
- Aptana RedRails
- RoRed
- NetBeans (replaced 5.5 by 6.0 with Ruby support)

I think that for each one I will have to create a Rails projet to run a simple program. So...

The firt try was with Eclipse, I installed the Ruby/Rails plugin, but could't achieve a good configuration (Ha, Ha: tell me what I don't already know), and now when I try to Run the Ruby project It Says "Hey your JDK is not there ! But it is ! In fact I have two ! I try both, but I think it don't like my previous configuration. I hope that with Java it still work... (In fact no. Goodbye Java at home)

The second try was with Aptana RedRails. First draw back: it is all like Eclipse to me... I think on first look it will let me open a single ".rb" file ant test it. But was only the first impression. I could't make it work at all. In fact when I try to open an ".rb" file, it starts the SciTE editor ?!?!?!

The third one was the RoRED. Well, I think I miss something here. It only let me to open existing Rails project. Yeah, I have none, so I do nothing with RoRED.

And last but not least, NetBeans 6.0 with Ruby/Rails support.
There are a few negative points: 175 Mb to dowload, some questions during the automatic configuration are not so clear, the debugger and other update screens don't have a percent progress bar, so you never know if it will take a minute 10, 30 or an hour... And most important alert. When you update the debugger to "the newer and faster one" there is a gem's verbose field that you have to interact with, but it is not so clear ! Then I only notice that after 5 minutes of waiting and nothing happens.

Besides that, after the first two or tree reloads and some automatic updates and configurations, every thing works nice !

So Folks by now, that is my choice NetBeans 6.0 check it out !

First two weeks on Ruby

Well,

That is not easy...

Start to lern a new programming language on my age ?

Yeah, that is a chalenge.

I'm tyred today but mission accomplished.

All exercises done (including the chalenge one).

I will rest a little by now. And wait for the new lesson on monday

That is all.

Saturday, September 1, 2007

Start my Ruby trainning

Last weekend I start training Ruby at:

Ruby Study Notes - Best Ruby Tutorial for Learning Ruby

This weekend I finished the basics and have made an overview on the "Advanced Ruby" topics.

Reading now:

SATISH TALIM's Ruby eBook.

To fifty with Ruby !

Now it is time to work hard !

Near fifty years old, back to start.

Learning Ruby since 2007 Aug 22.