January 2010 Meeting
The first meeting of LRUG in 2010 will be on Wednesday the 13th of January, from 6:30pm to 8:00pm. Our hosts Skills Matter will be providing the space, at their new offices on Goswell Road; The Skills Matter eXchange. It's a bright new space and we shouldn't have any problems with fitting people in, but you should still register your attendance early to let Skills Matter know you are coming.
Agenda
Symbol vs. String
Julian couldn't make it because of inclement weather.
Julian Burgess fresh from his special guest hosting of the December meeting is going to step once more into the spotlight, but this time he's going to give us a talk:
When I first started down the road of learning Ruby I had no idea what a symbol was. Gradually I've learnt to the point that I believe I can identify cases where using a symbol will be a good idea (saving memory and speed) and cases where it would be a bad idea (eating up all your memory).
The talk would be pretty short, I might say something which is completely wrong so will rely on the crowd to correct me. The goal being at the end for everyone in the room to understand and love the symbol.
Note: Description borrowed from his Ruby Manor proposal. You can check the thread to see what other things people asked for that he might cover.</strike>
Dragonfly
Mark Evans gave us an overview of a new file attachment gem he'd written called Dragonfly. The interesting thing about this gem is that rather than specifying the thumbnail sizes at the model level, you specify them at the point at which you want to use them in the view and leave it up to caching to deal with performance.
Thanks to Mark for stepping in at the last minute!
A video of Mark's talk is available on the Skills Matter site.
An update on Redcar
Daniel Lucraft is going to talk to us about Redcar, the Ruby IDE he's been writing. Daniel first talked to us about it in March last year and he wants to give us an update on how it's been going since then. He recently released 0.3 and is looking for interested rubyists to play start hacking on it.
A video of Daniel's talk is available on the Skills Matter site.
"Analogue Blog"
We'll start the meeting with 10-15 minutes of free time for anyone to speak. You don't need to ask for permission or let us know in advance that you have something to say here, just turn up, stand up and say it! It's a forum for announcements, or pleas for help, or a soapbox for starting discussions. Just remember not to run on for too long as there's probably other people that want to say something too.
Pub
We aim to finish up the meeting by 8pm, after which we mosey on down to … well … we're not sure. Skills Matter's new office isn't close to our old preferred pub, so we're going to have to find a new one. We've organised a special LRUG Nights to do just that. Watch this space to find out what pub we choose (or come along on the 6th to help us choose!). Regardless of what pub we choose, if for any reason you can't make the talks it's fine to come along just for the pub part of the meeting.
Registration
Registration isn't mandatory as Skills Matter's new office has plenty of space. However, registration lets Skills Matter arrange the room properly and if you don't register you might have to sit on the floor. It's also polite to let people know if you're coming. So, please do register.
There's also an upcoming event for those of us that love online calendaring, but this is not a place to indicate attendance in a meaningful way for Skills Matter.
Posted by Murray Steele on Dec 17, 2009