AMRUG Mission Review, Bit of CSS | 6/4/2006 Meeting

Posted by Ken

OVERVIEW

AMRUG Minutes Sunday 6/4/2006 3pm Java House
Attendees were Vince, Brian, Ken.

SUMMARY

This AMRUG meeting, was shorter, smaller, and yet still edifying. Ken reviewed his mission statement for AMRUG. Vince and Brian offer suggestions on using blogs to help educate AMRUG as well as gave updates on their projects. Brian brought in a typography book to show. Ken showed off a few learning tools.

DETAILS

  • Ken used Google calendar this time to call AMRUG together. And though all members responded, it did not work as efficiently as planned. Ken believes that the anonymity factor of an automated calendar may be encouraging member attrition. Sending private email seems to ensure attendance.
  • Ken reviewed the AMRUG two-fold mission. Ken hoped that AMRUG was working towards urban barn-raising of IT projects--that is, producing a small Ruby project for AMRUGers as a group, that one person would find daunting. And, boosting our Ruby powers by sharing resources.
  • At the end of the meeting, Ken showed off a flashcard program called Supermemo that he uses on his PDA. This program is very popular with medical interns who are trying to memorize lots of terms. Ken sketched out the use of Mindmaps (usually attributed to Tony Buzan) to get a handle on Ruby and Rails. Brian and Vince politely listened, but thought the tools would be of little use to them.
  • Ken suggested that AMRUG develop one page documentation on Rails and Ruby documents to share with the group. Vince and Brian thought Blogs could fill this role. Blogging could allow members to vet the 'one-pagers' before releasing the document, to ensure accuracy. Brian seconded this idea. The notion would be to Blog, then Vet, then Feed (RSS) the one-pager. Ken encouraged members to explore the Blog functions available at the AMRUG webpage.
  • Brian is looking for some sort of chat engine. Ken suggested running a Jabber server, which is a snap to set up. Vince provided some Jabber details from his experiences. There was some question whether there was a Jabber plugin for Rails. [See Jabber Library for Ruby mentioned below.]
  • Brian brought in a typography book, explaining that he is always looking to improve his design skills: White, Alex W. The Elements of Graphic Design. Allworth Press. 2002.
  • In response to CSS tools, Ken suggested looking into TopStyle, by Bradsoft. Brian is using the Tidy plugin for Firefox to evaluate his CSS code.
  • Vince talked a bit about the status of Railfood, which helps people find locomotive and railroad parts using Ruby on Rails.
  • Brian indicated that his Rails Website for his father is almost done. The site is geared towards art galleries, and the showing of art in those art galleries. He is on his third iteration, and finds the user stories becoming complicated as galleries are asking for more functions.

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