Austin On Rails

Next Monday night (3/10/2008), we are having an AOR SXSW Happy Hour (sponsored by FiveRuns). The event is from 6-9PM in the Recreation Room at Buffalo Billiards (upstairs). There will be games galore (including Wii), beer, appetizers, and Rails geeks from all over the world. The first 100 attendees shall receive a very choice "Rails at SXSW" T-shirt. So, do come early!

You do not have to be a SXSW Interactive attendee (but if you are, just bring your badge) to enter the party. However, if you don't have a badge, please send an email to "sxsw [at] fiveruns.com" to reserve your party spot. If you're feeling particularly social and geeky, you can add your name to upcoming.org (currently over 70 Attending so far!)

Secondly, the meeting night poll concluded on March 1 and the results were strongly in favor of holding our meetings on the 4th Tuesday of the month (full poll results in the sidebar). We aren't having a regular meeting in March due to the happy hour, but we will begin our fancy new schedule in April, on April 22nd. So, please mark your calendars. I have updated the Google Calendar accordingly.

Looking forward to seeing you next Monday!

Please come out and mingle with all the Ruby and Rails enthusiasts visiting town for the SXSW Interactive Festival. We are taking over The Lodge at Buffalo Billiards at 6th and Brazos. This years party is going to be bigger than last year and all the food and drink is on the house, courtesy of FiveRuns. Please let us know if you are coming by registering at upcoming.org so we'll have an idea of the headcount.

SPECIAL NOTE: If you do not have a badge, you must also email me at [scales] [at] [pobox.com] to RSVP for entrance to the party.

Party On

Come on over to Dave & Busters and help us celebrate a year of ridin' the Rails. Our group is just one year old and we are now looking ahead to 2007. Before we ring in the new year, let's take a moment to hang out and enjoy ourselves. We'll have a full fajita buffet, some game cards, 2 billiards tables, and a shuffleboard table all to ourselves. A cash bar will also be available.

Details

WHERE: Dave & Busters (Mopac and 183)

WHEN: Tuesday, December 12th, 7-11PM

Offering A Helping Hand

I had a vision the other night. In this vision, Austin On Rails not only fed themselves fajitas, but they also fed the hungry in Austin. It is with this in mind, that I ask you to please bring a food donation as admission to the party. I will deliver our donation to CAFB.

Donation Ideas

These are the most commonly requested items at the Capital Area Food Bank:

• canned meats like tuna, stew and chili (pop-tops preferred)
• canned green beans, canned corn and other canned vegetables
• pasta & pasta sauce
• pinto beans
• rice
• healthy cereal
• peanut butter
• baby food & baby formula

These are just suggestions. Please bring what you can.

Our Sponsor

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank Steven Smith and the whole FiveRuns team for their generous offering of support. Without it, this celebration could not have happened!

Where: Frog Design at 8th and Congress Ave

When: November 14, 2006 @ 7PM

Rails and Ajax: a Brief Overview from Real-World Projects

The presentation this month will be on using Prototype and Scriptaculous to take a Rails application that normally would have been handled with a lot of form posts, and convert it to Ajax using drag and drop and other Ajax options to make it perform better for users. It is an issue tracking system loosely based on Scrum. David will show how they built the application, and waded through the scattered Rails/Ajax documentation to come up with the Ajax pieces we have implemented.

In addition, David will show the work they've done with the Google Maps API and Ajax, where there was not Prototype/Scriptaculous support, and the existing gems only provided minimal functionality. He'll show how they hacked the Google Maps API rather than just use RJS and simplified commands. This will be a nice contrast on "rolling your own" Ajax handling versus using built-ins and why they ultimately decided to develop their own.

David Bluestein II is the President and Lead Developer of ii, inc., a web development firm focussed on Web application and database development. He has been doing Web programming for over 12 years, mainly in Perl. He began early this year to develop in Ruby/Rails, and his company has launched three Rails based sites, and has two more due to launch in November. ii, inc., also uses Rails extensively to rapid prototype client sites that will be developed in other languages such as ASP.

Austin On Rails is very pleased to report some fantastic news. Through a very generous donation by Steven Smith at FiveRuns (who spoke at our October meeting if you recall), we will be having an Austin On Rails First Anniversary and Holiday Party celebrating a wonderful year of Riding the Rails™. More details will be available soon, but please mark your calendars for the evening of Tuesday, December 12th