Hi Zoran,

Thanks for the offer. I do think, though, that wherever we meet needs
to have a broadband connection for us all to hook up to, and I know
that personally I get cranky if the room's cold. I'm hoping that as our
group grows we'll find somebody whose employer can set us up, but then
I also do look over at the XP-NYC people and notice they're having
space problems, as well ... Hm. Maybe somebody needs to start a
non-profit.

F.


On Mar 30, 2004, at 12:11 PM, Zoran Lazarevic wrote:

> I am sorry I missed your last meeting. I wish I knew
> about the group earlier.
>
> There is some meeting space at my church (W26St &
> Bway), but the heating is not the best, so we can hope
> for a warm day. If we get only a 66% increase, then we
> can meet at someone's apartment.
>
> Regards,
>
> -Laza
>     http://lazax.com/blog/
>     +1.212.569.4011

Hello everyone.

I was surprised to find out there was a ruby group in NYC.

I have been writing php for a while now and even though its great for
web stuff its not really a great general purpose stuff. I been meaning
to learn Python for a while now but every time I tried something about
the language just didnt not interest me. I certainly dont want to
learn Perl because of its insane syntax.  I heard about ruby long time
ago but never looked into it, then I went on the ruby website and read
some of the Pragmatic Programmer's Guide and it got me excited about
the language. I cant believe how succinct ruby programs are.  Finally
a general purpose scripting language that I can like.

I hope to meeting you guys at the next meeting :)

I am sorry I missed your last meeting. I wish I knew
about the group earlier.

There is some meeting space at my church (W26St &
Bway), but the heating is not the best, so we can hope
for a warm day. If we get only a 66% increase, then we
can meet at someone's apartment.

Regards,

-Laza
     http://lazax.com/blog/
     +1.212.569.4011

--- Francis Hwang <sera@...> wrote:
> Meeting 2 had 5 people show up: Myself, Matt Lipper,
> Jay Handfield,
> Patrick May, and Rob McKinnon. That's a 66% increase
> from last month!
> Wow!
>
> I did a very casual talk about the state of
> Lafcadio, my
> object-relational mapping layer. I thought I'd be
> able to get my laptop
> to talk to the New Museum's projector, but that
> didn't happen, so
> instead we sort of huddled around my laptop as I
> talked, and there was
> a lot of interruption and digression into all sorts
> of other topics,
> which is about how I liked it since I spent about 5
> minutes preparing
> for it. It was less of a presentation and more of a
> steered discussion.
> Everyone thought that the format was a pretty good
> one.
>
> Other things we talked about were ... what did we
> talk about, guys? I
> remember that web testing came up and the state of
> Ruby editors and
> some other stuff. Patrick pointed out at some point
> that 4 out of 5 of
> us were open-source project maintainers--a pretty
> good ratio. (Unless,
> Jay, you're maintainer of something we hadn't heard
> about, which would
> give us 5 out of 5.)
>
> NEXT MEETING
> I am still hoping that somebody else will find a
> space for us to meet
> besides the New Museum, so we can do a different
> night of the week
> besides Thursday. Unless that happens in the next
> week or so, our next
> meeting will be on the last Thursday of April, April
> 29, same bat-time,
> same bat-channel. Matt Lipper was saying he could
> talk about Runt,
> which is his Ruby implementation of certain temporal
> patterns by object
> modeling guru Martin Fowler. ( More at
> http://runt.rubyforge.org/ )
>
> Unless Thu Apr 29 is much worse for you than some
> other Thu in Apr, at
> which point you can tell me and I'll change it.
> 'Cause, hey, that's the
> sorta guy I am.
>
> F.
>


__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Finance Tax Center - File online. File on time.
http://taxes.yahoo.com/filing.html

Meeting 2 had 5 people show up: Myself, Matt Lipper, Jay Handfield,
Patrick May, and Rob McKinnon. That's a 66% increase from last month!
Wow!

I did a very casual talk about the state of Lafcadio, my
object-relational mapping layer. I thought I'd be able to get my laptop
to talk to the New Museum's projector, but that didn't happen, so
instead we sort of huddled around my laptop as I talked, and there was
a lot of interruption and digression into all sorts of other topics,
which is about how I liked it since I spent about 5 minutes preparing
for it. It was less of a presentation and more of a steered discussion.
Everyone thought that the format was a pretty good one.

Other things we talked about were ... what did we talk about, guys? I
remember that web testing came up and the state of Ruby editors and
some other stuff. Patrick pointed out at some point that 4 out of 5 of
us were open-source project maintainers--a pretty good ratio. (Unless,
Jay, you're maintainer of something we hadn't heard about, which would
give us 5 out of 5.)

NEXT MEETING
I am still hoping that somebody else will find a space for us to meet
besides the New Museum, so we can do a different night of the week
besides Thursday. Unless that happens in the next week or so, our next
meeting will be on the last Thursday of April, April 29, same bat-time,
same bat-channel. Matt Lipper was saying he could talk about Runt,
which is his Ruby implementation of certain temporal patterns by object
modeling guru Martin Fowler. ( More at http://runt.rubyforge.org/ )

Unless Thu Apr 29 is much worse for you than some other Thu in Apr, at
which point you can tell me and I'll change it. 'Cause, hey, that's the
sorta guy I am.

F.

Hi Francis,

Thanks for organsing the meeting last night. Good to see the group
almost double in size. :-)

Unfortunately I wasn't able to get permission to host the meeting at my
offices. The reasons given were:
1) The companies sharing the office space have an expectation that the
meeting rooms should be available for their use at any time;
2) Security of the office space (it's an open floor plan);
3) They've said no to such requests in the past.

It's a shame as it would have been a good meeting space. Hopefully one
of us will find something.

Rob

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Finance Tax Center - File online. File on time.
http://taxes.yahoo.com/filing.html

Sorry to repeat myself, but I just wanted to remind everyone that
meeting 2 is Thursday, Mar 25, from 6 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. That's, like,
tomorrow, dude. Hope to see you there!

Francis
---------
Thursday, March 25
6 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.

AGENDA:
I'm going to give a tiny (15-30 minutes) talk about Lafcadio. Some of
you may have heard my talk on it at RubyConf; this will not exactly be
a retread of that talk. (I'm going to talk about how triggers work in
Lafcadio, for one thing, and I will probably talk more about
test-driven development.)

Then it'll just be a casual chat/pizza/hacking session. Bring your
laptops.

LOGISTICS:
The New Museum of Contemporary Art
583 Broadway
(between Houston and Prince St.)
NOTE: There are two doors on Broadway numbered 583; one is a standard
office building, the other is the Museum. If you're in the lobby of the
office building and there's nobody there, you went in the wrong door.
Subways: N/R to Prince St, F/V to Broadway/Lafayette, or C/E to Spring
St.
Directions: http://tinyurl.com/3h63n

When you get there please tell the security guards you're there to see
me, and I'll come down and get you.

If you need to call me, my cell is 917-776-4300.

Hi Francis,

Thanks for your reply. You are correct. I will be using UCINET - a
social network analysis software tool to do steps 3 & 4. I have been
using that for over a year now and can make the matrix from an excel
file. It is extracting stuff from the html pages that is the main
problem.

Thanks for sending me the links to rubyforge and ruby talk. I'll
start there and revert to you if I have any doubts.

Appreciate your help.
Binod

--- In ruby-nyc@yahoogroups.com, Francis Hwang <sera@f...> wrote:
> Hi Binod,
>
> One of the secrets that expert programmers know is that most
computer
> problems are pretty darned easy, if you only know how to break
them
> down into smaller problems. Something like:
>
> 1. Retrieve an HTML page and parse it to get the data you want.
> 2. Figure out how to output this to a text file or Excel file.
> 3. Create adjacency matrix
> 4. Create social network analysis mapping
>
> Sounds like you want to do 3 & 4 in a language other than Ruby
> (otherwise, there might not be much point in doing step 2).
>
> Focusing on step 1 first, you might first go over to
> http://rubyforge.org/ and search for "HTML". Looks like there are
> already a number of libraries that parse HTML. You could play
around
> with some of those or ask other Ruby users what they're using. For
that
> you could ask this list, or to ask a bigger pool of experts, you
could
> ask everyone on ruby-talk. (You can find it at
> http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/ruby/ruby-talk/index.shtml or
> http://groups.google.com/groups?q=comp.lang.ruby&ie=ISO-8859
> -1&hl=en&btnG=Google+Search ) ruby-talk is a really friendly
list,
> since everybody on it wants Ruby to keep growing so one day we can
all
> get jobs programming in it. ;)
>
> Good luck!
>
> Francis
>
>
> On Mar 21, 2004, at 11:58 AM, Binod Sundararajan wrote:
>
> > Hi All,
> >
> > I came to this group via the NY area ruby users group link.
> >
> > I'm a grad student at Rensselaer in upstate NY and am not an
expert
> > programmer. I'm in my 2nd year of my PhD in Communication and
> > Rhetoric. However, I came across Ruby a couple of weeks ago and
am
> > slowly going through the tutorials to learn the language. I use
Win
> > XP and Cygwin to do ruby. The purpose of learning Ruby is to
learn
> > to write a script to parse the html page of a discussion post or
> > blog post to extract the main thread, the author's name, the date
> > and time stamp, the number of comments in the thread, the names
of
> > the commenters and the times of their comments and if possible
the
> > comments themselves. Once extracted, I would like this info to be
> > inputted to a text file or even an excel file, from which I will
try
> > to create an adjacency matrix, which I can then use to create a
> > social network analysis mapping. This is for part of the
research I
> > am doing.
> >
> > I would appreciate any help, tips, tricks or even code to get me
> > started on this. I read all the posts so far and it appears that
all
> > of you are expert programmers. My experience has been mostly with
> > writing Matlab scripts and some Excel Macros in VB. Programming
has
> > always fascinated me, yet eluded my right brain, but I am
willing to
> > get my hands dirty and learn the trade to get my work done.
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > Binod

Hi Binod,

One of the secrets that expert programmers know is that most computer
problems are pretty darned easy, if you only know how to break them
down into smaller problems. Something like:

1. Retrieve an HTML page and parse it to get the data you want.
2. Figure out how to output this to a text file or Excel file.
3. Create adjacency matrix
4. Create social network analysis mapping

Sounds like you want to do 3 & 4 in a language other than Ruby
(otherwise, there might not be much point in doing step 2).

Focusing on step 1 first, you might first go over to
http://rubyforge.org/ and search for "HTML". Looks like there are
already a number of libraries that parse HTML. You could play around
with some of those or ask other Ruby users what they're using. For that
you could ask this list, or to ask a bigger pool of experts, you could
ask everyone on ruby-talk. (You can find it at
http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/ruby/ruby-talk/index.shtml or
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=comp.lang.ruby&ie=ISO-8859
-1&hl=en&btnG=Google+Search ) ruby-talk is a really friendly list,
since everybody on it wants Ruby to keep growing so one day we can all
get jobs programming in it. ;)

Good luck!

Francis


On Mar 21, 2004, at 11:58 AM, Binod Sundararajan wrote:

> Hi All,
>
> I came to this group via the NY area ruby users group link.
>
> I'm a grad student at Rensselaer in upstate NY and am not an expert
> programmer. I'm in my 2nd year of my PhD in Communication and
> Rhetoric. However, I came across Ruby a couple of weeks ago and am
> slowly going through the tutorials to learn the language. I use Win
> XP and Cygwin to do ruby. The purpose of learning Ruby is to learn
> to write a script to parse the html page of a discussion post or
> blog post to extract the main thread, the author's name, the date
> and time stamp, the number of comments in the thread, the names of
> the commenters and the times of their comments and if possible the
> comments themselves. Once extracted, I would like this info to be
> inputted to a text file or even an excel file, from which I will try
> to create an adjacency matrix, which I can then use to create a
> social network analysis mapping. This is for part of the research I
> am doing.
>
> I would appreciate any help, tips, tricks or even code to get me
> started on this. I read all the posts so far and it appears that all
> of you are expert programmers. My experience has been mostly with
> writing Matlab scripts and some Excel Macros in VB. Programming has
> always fascinated me, yet eluded my right brain, but I am willing to
> get my hands dirty and learn the trade to get my work done.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Binod

Hi All,

I came to this group via the NY area ruby users group link.

I'm a grad student at Rensselaer in upstate NY and am not an expert
programmer. I'm in my 2nd year of my PhD in Communication and
Rhetoric. However, I came across Ruby a couple of weeks ago and am
slowly going through the tutorials to learn the language. I use Win
XP and Cygwin to do ruby. The purpose of learning Ruby is to learn
to write a script to parse the html page of a discussion post or
blog post to extract the main thread, the author's name, the date
and time stamp, the number of comments in the thread, the names of
the commenters and the times of their comments and if possible the
comments themselves. Once extracted, I would like this info to be
inputted to a text file or even an excel file, from which I will try
to create an adjacency matrix, which I can then use to create a
social network analysis mapping. This is for part of the research I
am doing.

I would appreciate any help, tips, tricks or even code to get me
started on this. I read all the posts so far and it appears that all
of you are expert programmers. My experience has been mostly with
writing Matlab scripts and some Excel Macros in VB. Programming has
always fascinated me, yet eluded my right brain, but I am willing to
get my hands dirty and learn the trade to get my work done.

Thanks,

Binod

--- In ruby-nyc@yahoogroups.com, Francis Hwang <sera@f...> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Rhizome.org, the arts non-profit I work at, has enough funding so
I can
> hire a consultant to work with me for a little while ... This
isn't a
> traditional gig, but would be a great opportunity for somebody who
> wants something part-time or just wants to step into the arts a
little
> bit. And just 'cause we're a scrappy little non-profit doesn't
mean I
> don't take our methodology seriously.
>
> Please forward it to anyone you think might be interested.
>
> Thanks,
> Francis
> -----
> Rhizome.org, a non-profit organization focused on new media art,
is
> seeking a Software Consultant. The Consultant will work closely
with
> the Director of Technology on a number of long-term projects,
including
> improving the site's search capabilities and improving the ArtBase
> submissions process.
>
> Rhizome.org is a highly trafficked community website that uses
Ruby,
> MySQL, Apache, PHP, and Perl. Experience with specific
technologies is
> less important than an interest in object-oriented design
patterns,
> agile methodologies, and test-first programming. Yes, it's a
computer
> job, but communication skills are important anyway. Apple and Unix
> programming snobs encouraged to apply.
>
> This is a highly flexible short-term position. We have budgeted
for a
> half-time, six-month term of employment, but this may change
depending
> on the applicants. This position allows for off-site work, but
> candidates need to be in commuting distance of New York for
frequent
> short meetings and pair programming sessions.
>
> Rhizome.org is among the oldest and most well respected
organizations
> in the field of new media art. For more information about the
> organization and our programs, please check out our web site:
> http://rhizome.org.
>
> To apply, please email your detailed cover letter and resume to
Francis
> Hwang at francis@r...
>
> Hours: 20 hours per week, scheduling flexible
> Dates: April 1 - October 1, 2004 (flexible)
> Location: New York
> Salary: Commensurate with experience

Hi,

Rhizome.org, the arts non-profit I work at, has enough funding so I can
hire a consultant to work with me for a little while ... This isn't a
traditional gig, but would be a great opportunity for somebody who
wants something part-time or just wants to step into the arts a little
bit. And just 'cause we're a scrappy little non-profit doesn't mean I
don't take our methodology seriously.

Please forward it to anyone you think might be interested.

Thanks,
Francis
-----
Rhizome.org, a non-profit organization focused on new media art, is
seeking a Software Consultant. The Consultant will work closely with
the Director of Technology on a number of long-term projects, including
improving the site's search capabilities and improving the ArtBase
submissions process.

Rhizome.org is a highly trafficked community website that uses Ruby,
MySQL, Apache, PHP, and Perl. Experience with specific technologies is
less important than an interest in object-oriented design patterns,
agile methodologies, and test-first programming. Yes, it's a computer
job, but communication skills are important anyway. Apple and Unix
programming snobs encouraged to apply.

This is a highly flexible short-term position. We have budgeted for a
half-time, six-month term of employment, but this may change depending
on the applicants. This position allows for off-site work, but
candidates need to be in commuting distance of New York for frequent
short meetings and pair programming sessions.

Rhizome.org is among the oldest and most well respected organizations
in the field of new media art. For more information about the
organization and our programs, please check out our web site:
http://rhizome.org.

To apply, please email your detailed cover letter and resume to Francis
Hwang at francis@....

Hours: 20 hours per week, scheduling flexible
Dates: April 1 - October 1, 2004 (flexible)
Location: New York
Salary: Commensurate with experience

Here comes the 2nd meeting! Whoo-haa!

Thursday, March 25
6 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.

AGENDA:
I'm going to give a tiny (15-30 minutes) talk about Lafcadio. Some of
you may have heard my talk on it at RubyConf; this will not exactly be
a retread of that talk. (I'm going to talk about how triggers work in
Lafcadio, for one thing, and I will probably talk more about
test-driven development.)

Then it'll just be a casual chat/pizza/hacking session. Bring your
laptops.

LOGISTICS:
The New Museum of Contemporary Art
583 Broadway
(between Houston and Prince St.)
NOTE: There are two doors on Broadway numbered 583; one is a standard
office building, the other is the Museum. If you're in the lobby of the
office building and there's nobody there, you went in the wrong door.
Subways: N/R to Prince St, F/V to Broadway/Lafayette, or C/E to Spring
St.
Directions: http://tinyurl.com/3h63n

When you get there please tell the security guards you're there to see
me, and I'll come down and get you.

If you need to call me, my cell is 917-776-4300.

Please let me know if you can come!

Thanks,
Francis

Hello,

I just stumbled across this group. I'm finally trying to get back into
Ruby after going to the Ruby Conf last year and meeting Francis there.

I can make either Thursday.

Thanks,
Jay Handfield

Hey Rob,

My website code is very much in alpha -- it doesn't even fully work for
me yet, so there isn't much point really in releasing it. But it's all
on my laptop, so if you like I could show you some of the highlights
during the next meeting.

Generally I'm happy with how the code (I'm calling it Dauxite) is
going, except that there are times when XSL seems so damned cumbersome
and verbose that I want to just scream ...

F.

On Mar 9, 2004, at 4:20 PM, Robert McKinnon wrote:

> Hi Francis,
>
> Either Thursday is good for me.
>
> You mentioned that you where creating blog content in RSS and had some
> Ruby code + XSL that created the HTML. Is this code available for
> download?
>
> I started running Dave Thomas's Rublog blog framework on Apache httpd.
> In general I like the ease with which new content can be added in
> Rublog, but there is little separation between content and presentation
> - to change the result HTML I need to edit the Ruby code.
>
> - Rob
>
> --- Francis Hwang <sera@...> wrote:
>> Hi friends,
>>
>> I would like to schedule the next meeting for either Thursday, March
>> 18, or Thursday, March 25. It will be in the same location; at the
>> New
>> Museum in SoHo. Please let me know if either of those are better than
>>
>> the other for you, and I'll set the date in a few days.
>>
>> Best,
>> Francis
>
> __________________________________
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> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
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>
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>

Hi Francis,

Either Thursday is good for me.

You mentioned that you where creating blog content in RSS and had some
Ruby code + XSL that created the HTML. Is this code available for
download?

I started running Dave Thomas's Rublog blog framework on Apache httpd.
In general I like the ease with which new content can be added in
Rublog, but there is little separation between content and presentation
- to change the result HTML I need to edit the Ruby code.

- Rob

--- Francis Hwang <sera@...> wrote:
> Hi friends,
>
> I would like to schedule the next meeting for either Thursday, March
> 18, or Thursday, March 25. It will be in the same location; at the
> New
> Museum in SoHo. Please let me know if either of those are better than
>
> the other for you, and I'll set the date in a few days.
>
> Best,
> Francis

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Search - Find what you’re looking for faster
http://search.yahoo.com

Hi friends,

I would like to schedule the next meeting for either Thursday, March
18, or Thursday, March 25. It will be in the same location; at the New
Museum in SoHo. Please let me know if either of those are better than
the other for you, and I'll set the date in a few days.

Best,
Francis

Hi everybody,

Yesterday's meeting was small, but a good start. In attendance was
Roger Sperberg, Robert McKinnon, and myself, and we talked about our
own level of involvement in Ruby and various things we'd like to get
out of the group. The group goals that came up seemed to be 1) to find
a like-minded community of programmers (who happen to be coding in Ruby
these days) and 2) to get started on cool little Ruby projects. (The
two goals are pretty similar, I think.)

Also, for whatever reason, all three of us have been working a lot with
XML recently, so a lot of the conversation spread out into XSLT, SVG,
and other issues. Roger works a lot with XML in a publishing context.
I'm working on the beginnings of a transformation-centric web
publishing system powered by Ruby, then XSLT. Robert explained to me a
really cool idea for publishing maps as SVG then coloring countries by
CSS ...

Regarding the future, if possible I'd love to have each meeting
anchored around an informal, 15-to-30 minute talk. You could talk about
your own project, or one cool feature of Ruby and how to exploit it to
the fullest, or just survey how Ruby does in any particular area (DB,
GUI, web testing, etc.). Even if you don't consider yourself an ace
hacker, you probably have something you could contribute to the
conversation.

Two items for the next meeting:

1. Unless anybody objects I'm going to volunteer to give the first
talk, which will be about Lafcadio, my object-relational mapping layer.
Please let me know if you think that's a good start or we could do
something else. I promise not to be offended.

2. I would love to hold these meetings on another night besides
Thursday, because more than one person has told me that this night is
difficult. But in our current space (the New Museum) it's difficult to
any night besides Thursday. If anybody thinks they can get a hold of
another space in Manhattan, please let me know and I'll be happy to
have us move.

Francis

Hey -

I'm not sure yet whether I'll be able to make it on Thursday, but
figured I'd say a quick 'hello' to everyone...

Matt
info@...

Hi Roger,

Thanks for stopping in, virtually speaking. Thursday nights are not
necessarily permanent in the schedule -- in fact, you're the 2nd person
to tell me that Thursdays are difficult. They're just what we're
starting with since that's when it works at my office, but if we find a
different space we can try to find a night that works for everybody.

Francis



On Feb 16, 2004, at 6:03 PM, Roger Sperberg wrote:

> I'm very glad to hear of a Ruby meeting in NYC.
>
> I am not a programmer, but as someone who works with XML conversions
> have had to become familiar with XSLT and regular expressions. Ruby
> in this case appeals to me as a programmatic way to do text
> conversions.
>
> But since I changed jobs recently, I do lots less of this now.
>
> I live in NJ and work at 8th Ave and 15th -- but usually I get to
> have a "virtual Thursday" and work at home on Thursday. So I am not
> certain as to the short- or long-term likelihood of my attending
> Thursday night meetings. Actually though two small children are the
> bigger barrier.
>
> Roger Sperberg
> Montclair, NJ
>
>
>
> ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor
> ---------------------~-->
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> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
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>
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>

I'm very glad to hear of a Ruby meeting in NYC.

I am not a programmer, but as someone who works with XML conversions
have had to become familiar with XSLT and regular expressions. Ruby
in this case appeals to me as a programmatic way to do text
conversions.

But since I changed jobs recently, I do lots less of this now.

I live in NJ and work at 8th Ave and 15th -- but usually I get to
have a "virtual Thursday" and work at home on Thursday. So I am not
certain as to the short- or long-term likelihood of my attending
Thursday night meetings. Actually though two small children are the
bigger barrier.

Roger Sperberg
Montclair, NJ

I'm planning to come. Francis, thanks for organizing this.

-- Rob

PS: For some pre-meeting reading I recommend the Ruby articles section
on the Artima site which contains some interviews with Yukihiro
Matsumoto:

http://www.artima.com/articles/index.jsp?topic=ruby


--- Francis Hwang <sera@...> wrote:
> Okay, the first meeting's set.
>
> Thursday, February 19
> 6 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.
>
> AGENDA:
> This will be a pretty informal introductory meeting. I figure we'll
> chat about Ruby-related topics and what sorts of things people would
> be
> interested in doing in a group like this. Maybe we'll do some
> hacking,
> too, so bring your laptop if it's not too much trouble.
>
> LOGISTICS:
> The New Museum of Contemporary Art
> 583 Broadway
> (between Houston and Prince St.)
> Subways: N/R to Prince St, F/V to Broadway/Lafayette, or C/E to
> Spring
> St.
> Directions: http://tinyurl.com/3h63n
>
> When you get there please tell the security guards you're there to
> see
> me, and I'll come down and get you.
>
> If you need to call me, my cell is 917-776-4300.
>
> Please let me know if you can come!
>
> Thanks,
> Francis


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Hi --

On Tue, 10 Feb 2004, Francis Hwang wrote:

> Okay, the first meeting's set.
>
> Thursday, February 19
> 6 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.
>
> Please let me know if you can come!

I'm planning to come.


David

--
David A. Black
dblack@...

Okay, the first meeting's set.

Thursday, February 19
6 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.

AGENDA:
This will be a pretty informal introductory meeting. I figure we'll
chat about Ruby-related topics and what sorts of things people would be
interested in doing in a group like this. Maybe we'll do some hacking,
too, so bring your laptop if it's not too much trouble.

LOGISTICS:
The New Museum of Contemporary Art
583 Broadway
(between Houston and Prince St.)
Subways: N/R to Prince St, F/V to Broadway/Lafayette, or C/E to Spring
St.
Directions: http://tinyurl.com/3h63n

When you get there please tell the security guards you're there to see
me, and I'll come down and get you.

If you need to call me, my cell is 917-776-4300.

Please let me know if you can come!

Thanks,
Francis

Hm, I certainly don't want to conflict with an Open Source SIG meeting.
Let's set the date at the Thursday before: Thu, Feb 19. Please let me
know how that works for you.

For now only Thursdays will work, since that's the best time to get
people into my office. (I work at a museum, and walking to the office
involves walking through the exhibition space, so security needs are a
little higher than they would be with a basic office building.) This
may change, if anybody else can provide a space for us to meet.

Francis

On Feb 3, 2004, at 11:37 AM, Robert McKinnon wrote:

> Hi Francis,
>
> I assume that you mean Thursday, Feb 26.
>
> This day clashes with the NYSIA Open Source SIG:
> <http://www.nysia.org/events/2004/eve200402.cfm#26>
>
> May I suggest Wednesday, Feb 25 as an alternative?
>
> Regards,
> Rob
>
> --- Francis Hwang <sera@...> wrote:
>> Hi everybody,
>>
>> I would like to have our first meeting on Thursday, Feb 27. This will
>>
>> be a pretty informal introductory meeting. I figure we'll order pizza
>>
>> and chat about Ruby-related topics. People with laptops should bring
>> them along if they want to do some hacking.
>>
>> Please let me know (through the list or privately) if you think
>> you'll
>> be able to make it for this meeting. I'd like to make sure that I'll
>> have a certain minimum before setting everything up ...
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Francis
>
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>

Hi Francis,

I assume that you mean Thursday, Feb 26.

This day clashes with the NYSIA Open Source SIG:
<http://www.nysia.org/events/2004/eve200402.cfm#26>

May I suggest Wednesday, Feb 25 as an alternative?

Regards,
Rob

--- Francis Hwang <sera@...> wrote:
> Hi everybody,
>
> I would like to have our first meeting on Thursday, Feb 27. This will
>
> be a pretty informal introductory meeting. I figure we'll order pizza
>
> and chat about Ruby-related topics. People with laptops should bring
> them along if they want to do some hacking.
>
> Please let me know (through the list or privately) if you think
> you'll
> be able to make it for this meeting. I'd like to make sure that I'll
> have a certain minimum before setting everything up ...
>
> Thanks,
> Francis

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Hi everybody,

I would like to have our first meeting on Thursday, Feb 27. This will
be a pretty informal introductory meeting. I figure we'll order pizza
and chat about Ruby-related topics. People with laptops should bring
them along if they want to do some hacking.

Please let me know (through the list or privately) if you think you'll
be able to make it for this meeting. I'd like to make sure that I'll
have a certain minimum before setting everything up ...

Thanks,
Francis

Hi all,

January's been a crazy month, but I want to get things started for
February. We're going to meet on a Thursday (sorry, Bill A.). For the
venue I've got this will be easiest, maybe this can change in the
future but it will get us started.

There are four Thursdays in February: Feb 5, 12, 19, and 26. Please let
me know which dates work for you.

Francis

OK, I'll bite too. I work at IFS
(http://www.imsi.com), a company that provides fund
administration services for hedge funds. Before that,
I worked at a small electronic brokerage where I used
Ruby as a sort of general purpose scripting language.
I haven't been able to program in Ruby much lately,
but I hope to use it at work again soon.

Really, I'm just interested in coming into contact
with as many smart programmers who care about what
they do as I can. People who are interested in Ruby
seem to fit that description. Perhaps it's because
Ruby is such a pragmatic, intuitive, and clean
language.

Christian

--- Francis Hwang <sera@...> wrote:
> Two things:
>
> 1. I think I can actually get a space at my office.
> Probably this would
> start in January, but if we met on a Thursday, from
> (say) 6-9, would
> this work for people? My office is in SoHo,
> Manhattan.
>
> 2. I forgot to have people introduce themselves! It
> might be useful for
> everybody on the list to post something short about
> what sort of work
> they do (and/or where they work), how much Ruby they
> use, and maybe
> what they hope to learn from a group like this. I'll
> start:
>
> I work at Rhizome.org, an online arts non-profit.
> I'm the only
> programmer there, so I get to use Ruby a lot, but
> there's an old
> codebase composed of Perl and PHP that unfortunately
> I have to wrestle
> with from time to time. I also just released
> Lafcadio, an
> object-relational mapping layer that currently works
> with MySQL but
> will hopefully one day also work with PostgreSQL and
> others.
>
> There are lots of reasons I want this group to
> happen, but I guess one
> of the biggest ones is that I want to know who else
> is out there in the
> NYC area, interested in Ruby specifically and the
> craft of programming
> more generally. At RubyConf this year I think there
> were only three of
> us from the NYC area ... surely we can do better
> next year, right?
>
> Okay, now it's somebody else's turn.
>
> Francis
>
>





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Francis: great to hear from you. So, I would love to really learn
Ruby and improve
my programming skills. However, Thurs eves are out for me -- yoga
class.

My work: I recently cofounded Praxis101, a consultancy that focuses
on user-
centered information systems development, participatory design,
software
engineering practice innovation, and organizational learning. Prior
to this I worked
for Xerox Corp in research (distributed system architecture),
technology strategy
(document mangement and internet), advanced product development
(digital
libraries and web-based document mgt).

I'm very interested in keeping up with current and emerging methods,
practices,
and tools of software development. In my work I need to be able to
work on the
boundary between users and developers and nothing helps understanding
more
than actually doing. I actually have an idea for a small business
product for which
Ruby might be a good choice.

That's it!

Bill


--- In ruby-nyc@yahoogroups.com, Francis Hwang <sera@f...> wrote:
> Two things:
>
> 1. I think I can actually get a space at my office. Probably this
would
> start in January, but if we met on a Thursday, from (say) 6-9,
would
> this work for people? My office is in SoHo, Manhattan.
>
> 2. I forgot to have people introduce themselves!
> Okay, now it's somebody else's turn.
>
> Francis

Two things:

1. I think I can actually get a space at my office. Probably this would
start in January, but if we met on a Thursday, from (say) 6-9, would
this work for people? My office is in SoHo, Manhattan.

2. I forgot to have people introduce themselves! It might be useful for
everybody on the list to post something short about what sort of work
they do (and/or where they work), how much Ruby they use, and maybe
what they hope to learn from a group like this. I'll start:

I work at Rhizome.org, an online arts non-profit. I'm the only
programmer there, so I get to use Ruby a lot, but there's an old
codebase composed of Perl and PHP that unfortunately I have to wrestle
with from time to time. I also just released Lafcadio, an
object-relational mapping layer that currently works with MySQL but
will hopefully one day also work with PostgreSQL and others.

There are lots of reasons I want this group to happen, but I guess one
of the biggest ones is that I want to know who else is out there in the
NYC area, interested in Ruby specifically and the craft of programming
more generally. At RubyConf this year I think there were only three of
us from the NYC area ... surely we can do better next year, right?

Okay, now it's somebody else's turn.

Francis

Hi all,

Thanks for joining up to this list. I wanted to have some open
discussion as to what a Ruby Users Group might look like here in NYC,
so let me float some ideas and y'all can give me feedback. Nothing is
fixed yet, we're just brainstorming right now ...

Seems to me that the best way to get started is to set a day once a
month. Perhaps we can eventually have enough members that weekly
meetings will make sense, but I think for now monthly might be a good
start. Also, I don't know if I have the time to attend, much less plan,
weekly meetings right now. When we pick a night we should make sure not
to compete with any of the other nights here in the area -- XP NYC,
Geek Night New York, I believe there's a Smalltalk group and there's
probably a Lisp group somewhere else ...

I imagine the meetings as being semi-structured, maybe with people
giving casual talks or even just going round-table and people talking
about recent uses they've made of Ruby. We could also intersperse
hacking sessions into the program.

I think we definitely have enough people that we could get started with
meetings, though somebody needs to volunteer a space. Somewhere with a
decent Internet connection and a good-sized conference room would be
great. If that's hard to get rounded up at first, do you guys think it
would be useful for us to just meet a bar and just chat, without
laptops and ethernet? Because there is a Ruby Meetup group at
http://ruby.meetup.com/ and we could at the least coincide with that
day.

Thoughts?

Francis