Category: Geek

Don’t forget: TSOT’s first Ruby/Rails project night takes place next Tuesday! Admission is free, but space is limited, so sign up now!

The Quick Version

TSOT Ruby/Rails Night
Tuesday, January 8th, 2008 (and the second Tuesday of every month)
@ TSOT’s office — 151 Bloor Street West (on the south side, just east of Avenue Road)
11th floor
Door open and food at 5:30 p.m.
Presentations start at 6-ish
FREE ADMISSION (but limited space)
To register, please email joey.devilla@tsotinc.com

About TSOT

TSOT is a Toronto-based start-up that develops — look out, here come the buzzwords — social networking applications using Ruby on Rails. Our first applications are FraternityLive and SororityLive, social software built specifically for people in fraternities and sororities. Both apps are currently being tested with a userbase of thousands of university students and alumni, and we expect to release them in early 2008.

About Ruby/Rails Project Nights

We believe that it’s good for Toronto to have a healthy developer ecosystem — it’s good not only for us as a Toronto-based development shop, but also as a group of developers who are passionate about the work we do. We’d like to see Toronto as “Silicon Valley++” — with the vibrant high-tech scene, but with all the amenities that make Toronto a better place to live than the Valley (such as not being a dreary 50-mile stretch of suburbia and having decent places to go at night).

Hence our contribution to the local developer scene: TSOT Ruby/Rails Project Nights, which will take place on the second Tuesday of every month. They’ll feature in-depth presentations by developers working on interesting projects — primarily Ruby and Ruby on Rails — along with drinks and munchies and a chance to socialize with your fellow developers. They’ll be hosted by Yours Truly, TSOT developer and DemoCamp regular Joey “Accordion Guy” deVilla.

The First Night: Next Tuesday, January 8th

This first Ruby/Rails Night will feature presentations by a couple of Ruby/Rails local heroes on their current Ruby/Rails projects:

• Andrew Burke
• The developers from Unspace
• …and a quick presentation by Joey deVilla called “Do the Stupidest Thing That Could Possibly Work”.

The doors will open at 5:30, the first presentation will start at about 6, and we hope to wrap up the evening by 8:30 or 9. We’ll provide food and drinks, and if there’s enough of a demand, we can always go out to a nearby pub afterwards. There’s no cost to attend (but be advised that seating is limited).

If you’ve been thinking about making a Ruby or Rails presentation (perhaps you want to rehearse for RailsConf 2008!), we’d like to have you present it at one of our project nights!

Add TSOT Ruby/Rails Nights to your list of New Year’s resolutions!

How Do I Register?

Registration is free, but space is limited. To register for the upcoming Jan 8th gathering, please email joey.devilla@tsotinc.com

For More Information

For more information about TSOT Project Nights, please contact:

• Joey deVilla, Senior Developer (joey.devilla@tsotinc.com)
• Corina Newby, Public Relations Officer (corina.newby@tsotinc.com)

The event is also listed on Upcoming.org.

[This article was cross-posted to Global Nerdy.]

A snippet from Facebook for Old People

Here’s what I posted to my tech blog, Global Nerdy in the past couple of days…

On Extended Warranties: They’re still for suckers.

Gift Idea: “RailsSpace: Building a Social Networking Site with Ruby on Rails”. Looking for a gift for a programmer who’s looking to get into Ruby on Rails? (And c’mon, you all have a friend like that!) I recommend giving this book.

New York Times Article on The Parallel Processing Problem: We nerds have been talking about it for a little while, and now it’s getting mainstream coverage.

Happy 20th Birthday, Perl! Birthday greetings to the programming language known as “The Duct Tape of the Internet”. It’s still too young to drink in the U.S., but it is old enough to be tried as an adult.

Facebook for Old People: Most of the groups are about knitting and kvetching.

Many RailsConf Proposals Submitted, Included Mine: Looks like Chad and the rest of the RailsConf committee have their work cut out for them. I publish the proposal I submitted.

In case you’d forgotten, I write another blog: Global Nerdy, where I cover articles of interest to programmers, techies, nerds and all you folks who like keeping up with all things geeky. Listed beow are some of the most recent postings:

“Halo 3” Cheat Codes, as Explained by a Neglected Girlfriend: “X, A, B, DOWN, RIGHT, Y: God mode. Total invincibility to all attacks. You can just stand there and the aliens can’t kill you. Heck, you could even put the controller down and they still can’t do anything. You could even walk away from the Xbox and—crazy idea—talk to someone who’s been sitting here for the past hour wondering if that was in fact an actual conversation she had earlier about going to the movies this afternoon and not just an incredibly realistic dream.”

Bug vs. Feature: Just in case the difference wasn’t clear to you.

It’s Complicated: An XKCD comic on everyone’s favourite Facebook relaionship status.

Developer Hardware Nerdvana at TSOT: They give us some pretty nice gear at work.

In PHP, There’s Equality and Then There’s EQUALITY: Not all “equals” operators are created equal.

Area Man Gives Glowing Review for His Windows Vista to XP Upgrade Experience: I’m thinking about upgrading from Vista to XP myself.

Pythagorean Pick-Up: If you were (or are) a high school nerd, you’ll wish school social life worked like this.

1000 Copies of “Rock Band” Taken in Truck Heist: A sure sign we’re living in the 21st century: a couple of guys hijacked a truckload of videogames!

“BioShock” Meets a Shopping Cart: Quite possibly the world’s first Objectivist shopping cart.

[This was cross-posted to Global Nerdy.]

Here Comes Another Bubble, which my fellow TSOT developer Adam showed me, is a song about the current “Web 2.0” bubble set to the tune of Billy Joel’s “laundry list” song about world events that took place during his lifetime, We Didn’t Start the Fire. Here’s the video for the song — I like the infographic that shows that Facebook’s valuation ($15 billion) is really close to that of the Ford Motor Company ($16.8 billion):