Entries Tagged 'Uncategorized' ↓

At Railsconf this year a bunch of us folks from Envy Labs put together talks to give at the conference.  What this means is that we have some killer content for the next few months to attempt to revive the Ruby Users Group.

This month.. Thursday, May 10th at 7 PM Olivier Lacan will be presenting  RVM & Essential Rails Development Tools. Working with Rails often means switching between several Ruby versions back and forth which is made almost seamless by RVM. It also involves several simple command line tools like Pry, Guard, and Pow and that will make your development life so much easier.

Envy Labs will provide free drinks and beer.  Yup. FREE BEER!  Come hang out in our space, learn some, and talk Ruby.  =)

Oh, and please take a moment to RSVP over on http://www.meetup.com/Orlando-Ruby/.  Yup, we’re moving over to Meetup.. so this page may end up Redirecting over there any moment now.

Also, if you’re not subscribed to the Orlando Tech Events newsletter, you may want to go do that now, there are a ton of great events around town this month.

Well.. One official meeting and another Code School Beta.

Thursday, March 8th, 7 to 9 PM

Join us at Panino’s Pizza in Downtown Orlando on Thursday, Feb 9th from 7pm to 9pm for our first meeting of the new year! We may hack together or try a Coding Dojo, like the Orlando Dojo group: we pick a problem (usually from Project Euler), pick a language (Ruby, duh), and discuss an implementation, then get to work!

Tuesday, March 13th, 6:30 to 10 PM

It’s time again to Beta Test the next course at Code School, The Anatomy of Backbone.js.  Backbone.js gives client-side structure to web applications by providing models with key-value binding and custom events, collections with a rich API of enumerable functions, views with declarative event handling, and connects it all to your existing API over a RESTful JSON interface.  This beta will take place the night of Tuesday, March 13th, starting at 6:30 PM at Envy Labs.  There will be free food and beer provided and you’ll need to RSVP over on Eventbrite.

If you’re looking for more Orlando Tech Events, be sure to subscribe to the Orlando Tech Events newsletter I help put together.

It’s time again to Beta Test the next course at Code School, Rails Testing For Zombies is the 3rd course in our zombie series.  This will take place the night of Wednesday, February 15th, starting at 6:30 PM at Envy Labs.  There will be free food and beer provided for those who show up.  For more information and to RSVP, head over to Eventbrite.

We are ready to Beta test our next course at Code School, CSS Cross Country. Cross-Country is an intermediate course for those who are already familiar with the basics of CSS and want to learn more about best practices. We’re stepping back to give users a comprehensive understanding of major CSS fundamentals and techniques at a professional-use level.   Topics covered include:

• Level 1 – Adding Style, Selectors, Cascade Order, Floating
• Level 2 – Clearing Floats, Inheritance, and Specificity
• Level 3 – The Box Model, Positioning, Z-Index
• Level 4 – Staying DRY, Display Types, Centering
• Level 5 – Protecting Your Layout
• Level 6 – Image Use & Cropping
• Level 7 – Image Replacement & Sprites
• Level 8 – Pseudo Classes & Elements

The Beta will be 6:30 PM to 10 PM on Thursday, January 19th at Envy Labs and dinner will be provided.  You’ll need to RSVP over on EventBrite

We are ready to Beta test our next course at Code School, A Sip of CoffeeScript. As you may know CoffeeScript ships with Rails 3.1 by default, so if you haven’t learned it yet, here is your chance.  Topics covered include:

• Level 1 – Variables, functions, and the command line.
• Level 2 – Converting jQuery into CoffeeScript
• Level 3 – Conditionals, operators, and comparisons.
• Level 4 – Arrays, objects, iteration, and list comprehension.
• Level 5 – More advanced jQuery into CoffeeScript
• Level 6 – Object orientation, inheritance, fat arrow, and encapsulation.

The Beta will be 6:30 PM to 10 PM on Thursday, December 8th at Envy Labs and dinner will be provided.  You’ll need to RSVP over on EventBrite

jQuery is the default JavaScript framework in Rails 3.1, and on Thursday, November 10th, 7 PM at the Envy Labs office we’ll be Beta Testing Code School‘s new jQuery Air 2 Course. This course covers move advanced jQuery topics such as Binding, Unbinding, Live/Delegate, AJAX calls, Effects, Effect Speed/Easing, Queues, Delays, creating Utility Methods / Plugins, Custom Events, and finally jQuery Templates. Not a small list.

If you wish to attend you’ll need to RSVP on Eventbrite, see you next week!  Oh, and we’ll bring free dinner =)

The next ORUG meeting we’re going to be doing a walk through Rails for Zombies 2: Resurrected, our next Code School course which should be coming out in the next few weeks. If you haven’t done much Rails in a while (or you’re still new), this is a perfect opportunity to catch up and continue your learning. This will take place down at Envy Labs, September 7th from 7 PM to 10 PM. We’ll also have free food at 6:30 PM if you want to come by for dinner. You’ll want to register at http://rfz2.eventbrite.com/ and the description is below:

Done with Rails for Zombies but can’t stop the craving for a second corpse? This sequel picks up where Rails for Zombies #1 leaves off, but this time the game engine has been new and improved, keeping track of points and offering you hints to help you along (like our other courses).

Gregg Pollack is resurrected in this paid course to advance your Rails knowledge with 5 new videos and a bunch of new code challenges. We’ll jump into the command line, migrations, more ActiveRecord, forms, using AJAX, and even a taste of the Rails 3.1 asset pipeline with SCSS and CoffeeScript.

If you’re an experienced Rails developer and you just want to come and hang out, you’re welcome to stop by, have a free beer/whiskey, and play some ping pong. It’ll be a grand old time.

This last month at Envy Labs we’ve been putting together the next Code School course, and with your assistance we’re going to beta test it at the next Ruby Users Group on Thursday, May 12th. The meet-up will take place at the Envy Labs new office in the Plaza (directions here: http://bit.ly/envylabs) from 7 PM to 10 PM.

jQuery Air is taught by Jeff Casimir, so this time we WILL be watching videos rather then having a live instructor. jQuery Air: First Flight covers the basics of jQuery, so it is a beginner topic, although the challenges make it fun to play through at any skill level. We have limited space for this meeting, mainly because of space AND we don’t want to be overwhelmed with people so I’ve created an eventbrite list. Please register if you’d like to attend.

http://jqueryair.eventbrite.com/

You’ll need to bring a laptop to the event if you want to play AND headphones to watch through the videos. If you don’t manage to get a seat but you’re really interested in playing the course, leave your email over here and we’ll let you know the moment it comes out. Thanks!

We’re all geared up for Magic Ruby this weekend, hopefully see some of you there.

However, if you’re new to Ruby, or you have friends who need to taste the cool aid, Jeff Casimir will be doing a free Ruby class next Wednesday, February 9th from 6 PM to 9 PM at Voxeo’s office downtown. The class is absolutely free, so register today to reserve your spot.

Be sure you’re subscribed to the Orlando Ruby Users Group Announcement list. We may be running some additional short notice events this month, so you’ll want to make sure you’re subscribed so you’re notified.

First up, thanks to Andrew Smith, we’re running a a free Intro to Web Development with Rails course (Rails for Zombies) next month hosted by Full Sail University.  The date is Thursday, January 20, 2011 from 6 PM to 9 PM.  To register please head over to eventbrite.  If this is going to be review for you, but you want to come hang out, feel free to come on by and act as a teachers assistant.  I’m sure our students will run into issues as they go through the course, so it’ll be nice to have a few people to help instruct.

Next up don’t forget about Magic Ruby on February 4th and 5th, a FREE two day Ruby conference down at Disney’s Contemporary Resort.  This conference already has a bunch of great talks listed, including keynotes from Chad Fowler and Dave Thomas.  See the Magic Ruby website to view the talks and register.

Have a great holiday season.  =)