August 2011 – Page 2 – BillSaysThis

Twitters for 2011-08-08

Cliche was the defender who gave the ball to Nani? Didn't think so. @7amkickoff @flannelenigma #
@mathowie debt ceiling deal, Guantanamo still open, no Wall St. prosecutions, RIAA felony police. Patriot Act renewal #FYW #
.@whump Geithner is another Goldman Sachs hack but at least he hasn't had multiple bankruptcies @pourmecoffee #

SmallCommunities and J2: My New Rails Projects

I’m happy to tell you that we recently launched J2, a new version of JHTC.org, and that I’ve spun the core code off into an open source project called SmallCommunities. SmallCommunities is available on GitHub and I would love to see some other folks join in and help me move it forward.

The purpose of SmallCommunities is to provide a self-hosted subset of Meetup.com’s capabilities that allows complete customization of the site’s visual design while avoiding the, er, difficult to control quantity of emails sent by the Meetup service. Also, the current code expects events to be monthly, plus occasional extras, and membership to be paid while Meetup of course does not, though I think this could be easily altered.

The next version of JHTC.org will be an instance of SmallCommunities. If you think SmallCommunities might be of use to your group I’d be happy to work with your web team to get you up and running!

The code is written in Ruby on Rails 3.0.x and uses Devise for authentication, Compass, Haml and Sass for views and styling, RailsAdmin for managing most content and jQuery for active interfaces; SmallCommunities has a modest test base, mainly rSpec.

There are three key open features:

A flexible non-event page templating system
Photo uploads for events, members and non-event pages
Multi-level navigation menu support

While SmallCommunities isn’t a CMS it does need to support some static-ish pages such as About, Memberships and so on. I plan to adapt the sample code from Jose Valim’s excellent new Rails book, Crafting Rails Applications, so that these pages can easily reuse existing components without the person maintaining the site content to know Rails (and not require the site admin to do this work).

J2 is hosted on Heroku. I really like their service and was very happy to see them acquired by Salesforce.com last year because of the added resources and stability, and our site’s traffic is low enough to fit on the free service tier. However one drawback is that Heroku doesn’t allow apps to upload files to the server; instead one must use an alternative such as S3 and those are paid services and for now we hope to avoid hosting costs to the extent possible.

Accordingly any images must be included in the application when deployed to the server and uploaded separately to, say, Picasa (Google Images). I expect there’s a suitable free service, at least for the less that 2GB worth of images we might need, just need to do some research and then loop in the appropriate Ruby gem or jQuery plugin.

There are a number of good multi-level menu solutions available, this isn’t a new requirement by any means, but the first couple I’ve tried ran into issue with some of the existing Sass/Compass CSS and I’ve just not had a need to solve it.

Note: PayPal is the only payment mechanism currently supported, to avoid the need for–and substantial hosting costs of–SSL, though I’m open to patches that add, say, ActiveMerchant, and the database schema is mostly prepared for such a change.

Twitters for 2011-08-07

Happy 100th, we all love Lucy! #
@whump If you're not here yet, it's SRO #neenerneener 😉 #
@pauldalglish We call it Telemanjaro /cc @rcade #
Charlie Stross about to start here at Borderlands reading from Rule 34, room is overstuffed #sfinsf #mefi #
Stross: Bernie Madoff ate my original Rule 34 plot #sfinsf $5B just wasn't a big enough theft #
Stross: Merchant Princes series were "economic meta-fiction for emerging economies and the traps therein" #
@al3x You just recapitulated the history of Goldman Sachs in a tweet #banksters #

Twitters for 2011-08-06

ROFL but power on! RT @chriseppstein Generate the factors of a number in pure sass: http://bit.ly/qIrCJj #
@flannelenigma Wait for new MBP with Air form but 8GB RAM #okimafanboy #
@sogrady Asana would be awesome, please #
@Charlie26Adam Show those guys what "the English business" is about and have a great time #ynwa #
@chriseppstein map or nap? #
@sogrady blazar at gmail, thanks! Enjoy the vacation #

Twitters for 2011-08-05

Interesting but not sure king Kenny agrees RT @Zonal_Marking Some thoughts on Luis Suarez at @BTLifesapitch ow.ly/5V0JD #ynwa #
.@tiffany @DelrayDiva Not quite same but could launch malicious script targeting _their link… #justsaying #
Wayne, who gave us the awesome RVM, launches BDSM http://t.co/61iFGx3 with world's best mascot #

Twitters for 2011-08-04

Only Wed morning and already a second train this week has been cancelled, great job #CalTrain #fail #
Replacement train is itself late and reportedly already packed #CalTrain #fail #
Replacement train stuck at Cal Ave, already half hour behind schedule–how can #CalTrain have 2 f'd up NB trains in 1 morning? #
Now replacement train cancelled so we deboard and wait for yet another ride. F U #CalTrain #
@Zonal_Marking look at new signing, new manager impact after first month or two played #
Conductor told us to walk down, under and up to SB platform. New train pulls up to NB platform #CalTrain #idiots #
@steno Only worked because it matches expectations #justsaying #
Idiotic list and of course only CEOs/VCs are men | 15 Worst-Dressed Men of Silicon Valley: GQ http://t.co/idBKrb4 #

Twitters for 2011-08-03

Misundertstanding, what a load of crap | Rep. Lamborn apologizes for ‘tar baby’ remark on Obama policies http://t.co/RwU9YYH #gop #fail #
One down RT @LFC Liverpool confirmed this evening they have reached agreement with Anderlecht for the transfer of Milan Jovanovic. #
RT @whump Google can solve the jobs problem, send unemployed Chromebooks and have them review software-driven decisions to suspend accounts. #
RT @maddow Senate recesses til Sept 6th without re-upping FAA. Taxpayers lose $30 million every day that it's shut down is.gd/9PyDKp #FYW #
@WWLoriHC is it moonlighting as an Angry Birds server? #netdhumor #

Twitters for 2011-08-02

The Growth of the Internet and the Happy Recession http://t.co/Imm6CH1 via @DigitalDD #newneweconomy #
Love @jQuery software, hate software powering jQuery forums / @zoho I'm lookin' at you! #
@zoho Fix the back button and when searching in a forum, give results for only that forum #jQuery #
@zoho Your forum replies from year+ ago promised fast resolution, what's taking so long? #jquery #
@akalsey "first grandchild" #
@Fahrni Prob with native especially on mobile is must get user to install many apps #
@Fahrni problem if you're basing a business on the app #
@Fahrni you're absolutely correct but an install adds an extra, high, hurdle so value has to be that much more #
@flannelenigma Sadly, not on @Comcast Bay Area–we got KCSM (PBS) & WGN #useless #
@flannelenigma Of course that's the one I really want but despite paying extra still no sign of it /cc @comcast @foxsoccer #

Twitters for 2011-08-01

BillSaysThis http://kachingle.com/k/11 kachingled $5.00 to 1 sites http://kachingle.com/kh/11 #socialpayment #
Cowboys and Aliens was okay, would have been better w/o Daniel "1 Note" Craig as lead #movies #
Wonderful display by #arsenal today, losing their own tourney to NY Red Bulls #mls #over #epl #
Update my Resume http://t.co/eEMYp9m and Consulting sites http://t.co/NXBNGBg, like the new looks? #happyatmyjob #notlooking #
@Fahrni Of course you may, but which this? #
We really enjoyed dinner at Big Sky Café last month @Fahrni @alisa_m_ #
@joergeisfeld thanks–consulting site is more to play around while having a (Rails) presence, constructive comments welcome 🙂 #
Paul Hart, James van der Beecks' younger identical twin or what? #epl #mancitystillbitesit #

Month: August 2011