Want to bring up an instant multi-role staging server fully loaded with Apache, Passenger, MySQL, and your Rails app? All gem’d up, migrated, and ready to use? Sure you do. First, sign up for an EC2 account, generate your keypair, and then…
gem install rubber
cd my-rails-project
script/generate vulcanize complete_passenger_mysql
edit config/rubber/rubber.yml
cap rubber:create_staging
It uses a Ubuntu AMI and provisions an EC2 small instance by default. If you added your account credentials and the apt packages and gems you needed to rubber.yml (and provided that there weren’t any unexpected problems), you should now have a fully functional staging server for your web app that you can visit at http://appname.your-domain.com.
Since it’s EC2 you only pay for what you use. What’s more is you can horizontally scale this out with relative ease — breaking out the individual roles to separate instances as needed — and/or add your own custom roles as needed (see the other templates available for examples).
I gave a hands-on introductory talk about Sinatra at last weeks NH.rb meetup. In case anyone is interested, I’m also embedding the slides below. Looks like scribd butchered them a little bit, but you can always download the original set in PPT format or whatever too (follow the link).
As you might expect, my presentation includes a number of borderline awful puns. Probably not as bad as the puns in a typical Git presentation, but still. You have been warned.
A full meetup report is available as well. You can find the full source for the sample door prize chooser app that we live-coded during the presentation via GitHub.
There are some changes in store for NHRuby in 2009. Group founder Scott Garman is headed out to the west coast and is therefore stepping down as coordinator, and I’ll be stepping in to fill the void. Over the past 2 years Scott has done a great job getting things started and lining up interesting content. I hope we can keep the momentum going in his absence!
Meetings will continue to be held at RMC Research in Portsmouth (directions), but the dates will shift slightly; from this point forward we’ll be meeting on the third Thursday of the month. We’ve also set up new mailing lists and a new website to document group activities and associated shenanigans. I’ll be migrating more archival material over from the wiki shortly.
The 2009 event calendar kicks off to a great start with a talk by Jon Linowes on January 15th. He’ll be speaking about ReviewRamp, his Rails-based startup, Cucumber integration testing, and his own DynamicRecord framework. If you’re in the southern Maine, New Hampshire, or northern Massachusetts area I really encourage you to come out and hang with us. We’re a small, friendly group, and new people of all skill levels are always welcome.
Never been to your local user group? You’re really missing out. Attending them is a great way to learn firsthand about new ideas and technologies from passionate people who actually give a shit. It’s also a great way to network and find other folks to bounce ideas off of or work on projects with you. The Internet is a great place to meet people too, of course, but there’s just something special about meeting someone in person, being able to pop your hand up in the middle of a talk to get clarification, or grabbing a beer or two after an inspiring discussion. Also, it’s easier to tell if they’re trying to manipulate you into sending them money. If you haven’t yet attended your local user group(s), make it part of your new years resolution to change that.
And if your area doesn’t have a user group? Then start one. You might be surprised at who shows up.
I've firmed up a few speaking gigs for the next couple months. And I wanted to share.
First of all, tomorrow night, September 16th, I'll be presenting a "casual intro" to every-day Git usage at NH.rb. Brian Turnbull and Scott Garman will also be presenting, on HTTP and Rails deployment stacks, respectively.
If you live in the ME/NH/Northern MA area and are interested in Ruby, I really encourage you to come to these meetings. They're a great way to meet other local developers and learn about new cutting edge topics. If you can't make this one, the next one is scheduled for October 21st (they're always on the third Tuesday of the month). I'm scheduled to speak at that one, too. Topic is currently TBD but I'm sure we'll come up with something fun.
Meeting other Rubyists and learning about hot new tech isn't enough of a reward in and of itself? Well, there's free swag too. This month we'll be giving away a few copies of my new book, Practical Rails Plugins along with some other Apress goodies (thanks Apress!).
NH.rb is also giving way a free core conference pass to the upcoming Voices That Matter: Professional Ruby Conference (Boston, November 17-20). Pretty great, right? Sounds like this is going to be a great conference and they have a bunch of top notch speakers lined up. I'll be there too (how was that for a segue?), speaking about Rails Plugin development strategies on the first day of the event. Hope to see you there!
This Tuesday (July 15th), NH Ruby morphs into NH Merb for the night! Guest speaker Jeremy Durham is coming up from Boston to give a talk about his journey converting an existing Rails app to Merb. Should be good stuff, especially for those of you who are curious about Merb and how it might be of benefit to you as a Rails alternative.
If you're in the seacoast area, make sure to stop by. As always, more details and directions on the wiki.
I’ve got my itinerary planned out for Railsconf. I’ll also be hitting up a couple other west coast cities before landing in Portland. First stop is SF to visit my friend Ankit on Friday. Then trekking up to Eugene on the Amtrak Coast Starlite (I love me my trains) late night Sunday to hang and brainstorm with our designer/big-thinker Ty for a few days. Then it’s off to Portland on Thursday.
If you’re in any one of those cities and want to grab a beer (or a smoothie), hit me up on Twitter. Hopefully I’ll see some of you at Railsconf.
Also, I’ll be giving a talk at NHRuby tonight (5/20) on Rack. If you’re in the area, stop by.
Yep, that's right. Hackfest tomorrow night in Portsmouth. Bring any code you're having issues with. Failing that, I've got a couple project tickets (DataMapper, Radiant) that we can dig into. We'll spend 30 minutes or so on a quickie mod_rails demo while we're there too.
In other local news, John Herman has been swell enough to put together an NH Media Makers group. The first get-together is May 11th at Crackskulls in Newmarket. Rock out.
If you're in the ME/NH/MA area on Tuesday, make sure to stop by the NH Ruby SIG; Brian Turnbull will be presenting an in-depth talk comparing the philosophies of Rails and Django. I've never done any Python work at all myself, so I'm really looking forward to this dissection.
(NOTE: we usually meet on the third Tuesday of the month, but our host had some scheduling problems this time around; we'll be returning to the normal schedule in April)
The Seacoast NH Ruby SIG (NHRuby) will hold it’s first meeting of 2008 tomorrow, Tuesday January 15th in Portsmouth. I’ll be talking about OpenID and Scott Garman will be doing an overview of some funky stuff he’s doing with ActionMailer. Check out the Wiki for directions and other goodies, as usual. Hope to see you there!
I also want to send a quick congratulatory note to Scott, who launched his Rails-based startup CampaignLever a few weeks ago. CampaignLever is a tool to help grassroots organizations build effective letter writing campaigns. Nice work man!
As Scott notes over on his blog, this month’s NH Ruby meeting will be off by a week and a day this time around, due to holiday stuff. Instead of the third Tuesday of the month, it’ll be the second Monday. Yessir, that’s this coming Monday.
My good friend Dave Berube will be the main speaker, and he’ll be discussing reporting techniques with Ruby and Rails. Dave is putting the finishing touches on a new book on the subject, so he knows of that which he speaks. It’s sure to be a good conversation and if you’re in the area, you should definitely check us out.
If you're in the greater NH/Maine/Mass seacoast area, don't forget to check out tomorrow's NHRuby group. Sir Brian DeLacey will be visiting us from Boston and talking about Shoes, the Ruby desktop UI toolkit from the ever-enigmatic _why.
If there's time left to spare, I'll probably spend some time blathering on about how you should participate in the upcoming Rails Rumble. Believe me, after seeing some of the prizes, you're going to want to get in on the action. I was dead f**king serious about that championship belt. You'll see.
Usually the NHRuby meets are scheduled for the third Tuesday of the month, but we had to change it up this time due to some schedule conflicts.
I'll be speaking about integrating a Flash widget with Rails-based RESTful web services and also giving a brief overview of how to contribute to Rails and other open source projects (I guess you could say Josh Susser's talk at Railsconf inspired me). Scott will be doing an overview of the tabnav plugin and... something else, too.
More information and directions can be found at the NHRuby Wiki. Also, many thanks to our new host/sponsor for the meetings, RMC Research.
Join us tonight at the Portsmouth Public Library for a bunch of lightening talks on Ruby-related subjects. I'll be speaking on REST, Rake, and RMagick (if I can manage to put together a preso and demo app in time). Scott will be presenting a demo of his Rails-based ProgressPuppy task manager. And there will be other stuff, too.
Note that we're still doing the meeting, despite aftereffects of the nasty coastal flooding. Hardcore, eh? As always, more information (including directions) can be found at the NHRuby Wiki.
If you're a Ruby developer (or just an interested outsider) living in southern Maine/NH or the northern Mass area, don't forget to attend the next meeting of the NH Ruby/Rails User Group. Discussion topic this week is RJS and Ajax. Come hang out with us in Portsmouth tomorrow and make sure to stick around afterwards for drinks, discussion, and merriment.
Oh yeah, and Scott has some free stuff to give away at the gathering too. You like free stuff, don't you?
You're reading the web journal of Nick Plante. Nick is a freelance web app / software mercenary and startup enthusiast. He writes about Ruby, emerging technologies for the web, weird art, and other stuff that doesn't suck.
