Miscellaneous

Reading Excel Files From RubyWe Heart Code posts a tutorial showing how to use the Parseexcel library, a port of a Perl library that lets you parse Excel spreadsheets from your code.How To Debug Your Rails App With ruby-debugPatrick Lenz presents a great article that shows how to debug a Rails application from start to finish.Economical Use of Amazon S3 with Ruby on RailsRobert Dempsey has written a comprehensive article on how to use S3 in an economic, efficient way from Ruby on Rails applications.Ruby on Rails vs ColdFusion CommercialThe ever active RailsEnvy guys have produced their eighth Ruby on Rails vs X commercial.. presenting Ruby on Rails vs ColdFusion.

CplusRuby is a new library by Michael Neumann that makes it really easy (as in, even easier than RubyInline, although CplusRuby is of a smaller scope) to define custom C structures from within Ruby. The major goal of CplusRuby is performance, and the ability to easily define small methods within a class that compile to C and which can call each other directly. An example is always better than an explanation, so check out this code.

Getting Started with Rubinius Interested in what's going on with Rubinius, the new virtual machine and Ruby compiler created by Evan Phoenix? Want to install it and have a play on your own machine? Someone's put together a great blog post called "Getting started with Rubinius" that runs through checking out Rubinius, compiling it, and digging into the code. Premailer.web - Ruby app that brings all CSS styles inlinePremailer.web is a Ruby script (and Web service) by Alex Dunae that can take an HTML file that uses external CSS files and turn it into an HTML file with all its styles declared inline. This is useful if you're putting together an HTML newsletter and you want all of the styles included with no requirement to load external files. Premailer.web uses Hpricot for all of the heavy lifting, and Alex said that a post about Hpricot on Ruby Inside was what inspired him to get started on this tool.Obscure and Ugly Perlisms in RubyAs an ex-Perl programmer myself, I was pretty surprised to learn about a few of these Perlisms that had made their way into Ruby. Now I just have to make sure I'm not tempted to use them.."Video conversion" in Ruby on RailsThis isn't really performing video conversion using Ruby code, but is an interesting demonstration of using BackgrounDRb to queue up video conversion tasks for FFmpeg and how to show the videos back to your users.RubyShellRubyShell (aka rbsh) is a project I've kept an eye on over the last few months. As the name implies, it's a UNIX "shell" (as in, like bash) but with a Ruby twist. It lets you access things like processes and network adapters using Ruby syntax. It's powerful stuff and I think it could become a major contender against bash for Ruby developers with a little more work. Smart stuff!acts_as_conference Rails Conference Call For ProposalsThe acts_as_conference Rails conference, taking place in Orlando, FL in February 2008, has put out a call for proposals. They're looking for eight speakers with an hour's session each. The topic has to include Rails in some way. Deadline for submissions is November 2nd and the schedule will be announced on November 16th.

Ruby on Rails Workshop and Training in New Brunswick, CanadaSpheric are hosting a Ruby on Rails training and workshop session called "Why Ruby On Rails?" in Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada on October 9th - 11th.. next week! The training is with Ruby veteran, Bruce Tate, and costs $2400. The workshop, however, is free and Bruce Tate is involved directly with that too. It's a bit off the beaten path but if you're in eastern Canada (or even Maine!), check it out.The "UK's first" Ruby on Rails Focused VPS HostingFour months ago I posted "BrightBox: Finally a Rails-focused VPS in the UK?" and now BrightBox's project has come to fruition. BrightBox is a UK based VPS host (although they call them "Virtual Dedicated Servers") that focuses entirely on the deployment of Rails applications. With the installation of a single extra gem, your applications can be rolled out on their system within minutes. To see their different plans and quotas, visit their site.Sup: Ruby Powered Console E-mail ClientSup is a new e-mail client developed in Ruby by William Morgan. Its goal is "to become the email client of choice for nerds everywhere." The source is worth looking at merely to see how to develop a solid, console based app using ncurses with Ruby.Rails Rumble: 92 Web Apps Created in 48 HoursJosh Catone has written a great summary of the results of the recent Rails Rumble 48 hour Rails development contest. The overall winner was TastyPlanner, a recipe sharing site.

Tracking Down a Rails App Memory LeakTom Copeland posts about how he tracked down a memory leak in a Rails application. The results are interesting. RubyGems Runs on Ruby 1.9-ishEric Hodel reports that all of the tests for RubyGems now pass on Ruby 1.9 and that a 1.9 compatible beta version will be due shortly.R2Check - Tiny app that checks your pre-Rails 2.0 apps for compatabilityMislav Marohnic has built a pretty cool Ruby script that checks the source code of a Rails app for compatibility with Rails 2.0 and then points out the changes required.Advice for Ruby Beginners - Part 1Satish Talim has posted the first part of mass interview with 13 Ruby gurus with questions surrounding topics important to Ruby newbies. The "gurus" (quoted because I'm in the list) include Jamis Buck, Jamie van Dyke, Ola Bini, and a whole range of people from a stunningly diverse array of countries.RubyForge vs CPANDaniel Berger does a quick comparison of Perl's infamous CPAN library and code repository with Ruby's own RubyForge. I was pretty surprised at the numbers.. it seems RubyForge is not only winning on quality but for the size of the Ruby community versus the Perl community, the quantity is amazing.

Charles Nutter says:

(photo credit: dwortlehock)

Serving PDFs with Rails using Inkscape Satya X has written "Serving PDFs with Rails using Inkscape," an article that goes into amazing detail about how to set up a system where customized PDFs can be created and served from a Rails application (or any Ruby app, with amendments). Ever wanted to set up your own Pragmatic Programmers'-esque PDF stamping system for selling e-books? Now you can do it for free. Ruby on Rails vs DJ AngoThe RailsEnvy guys are at it again with another Rails vs X "commercial." This time it's Ruby on Rails vs Django.. with stellar hip hop beats.Ruby On The iPhone?Giles Bowkett writes with news that "Ruby runs on the iPhone" and presents these two sites as evidence (see ruby-1.8.6.tar.gz on the second). Giles has no iPhone, and nor do I, so we can't test it, but for those of you with such a device, it might be do-able. Please add any reports regarding iPhone Ruby operability as comments here.SOAP4RNever gotten familiar with Ruby's abilities with SOAP? Mark Thomas has put together a really tight beginner's tutorial to the SOAP4R library.Rubinius SprintLast week, the team behind Rubinius - one of many promising attempts at creating a new Ruby implementation - had a major development sprint. Lots of things got done, and Charles Nutter (of JRuby fame) even dropped in to help. Along with the rest of the Ruby community, we want to cheer on Rubinius and look forward to reporting on its beta releases in the near-future (hopefully!).

(image credit: energymech - a cool C-powered bot)

Anvil is a new Ruby framework for developing GUI applications by Lance Carlson. It's a framework around Wx::Ruby (WxWidgets is a popular cross-platform widget toolkit) and offers its own DSL to make developing GUI applications easy. The release blog post has more information, including a great example of the code required to make a basic Anvil app. Interestingly it supports an MVC style of development where the view and control elements of your applications can be separated cleanly.

Welcome to the first "Interesting Ruby Tidbits That Don't Warrant Separate Posts"! This is going to be a somewhat regular feature of all the reasonably interesting things I'm e-mailed about or discover that aren't getting as much attention as they should, but which aren't captivating enough to warrant an entire post on their own. So without further ado..thread-dump librarythread-dump is an interesting library that lets you to get a dump of thread activity when a Ruby process quits by Greg Fodor. In his own words:

I know there's going to be some controversy around this clever piece of code by Jay Phillips. He's developed "Superators", a library that finally makes it easy to create new operators within Ruby that look like line noise. Always wanted a "-~+~-" or "===~-+~++" operator? Now it's within your grasp! As Aleks Clark says: "Job security and spiffy DSL construction in one neat package."

You might recall, a few short months ago, that Dr. Nic built and released a site called MyConfPlan. Its prime objective was to enable RailsConf 2007 visitors to easily plan their schedules, although it had support for other events too. Dr. Nic has now put the site up for sale on eBay, and is donating all of the proceeds to charity as part of his pledge to donate to charity for RailsConf Europe. The auction ends in the next couple of days and is already at $470 Australian dollars (about $42 $386 US Dollars).

Back in August 2006, Satish Talim began a course of free Ruby lessons. Over 100 people signed up and found them useful. The success of the program even led to Satish founding the RubyLearning.com site, a great Ruby resource for newcomers to the language. Satish has just let me know that he's decided to run the course again this year, so if you're a Ruby newbie, head over to Satish's latest blog post where he explains what the lessons are, what you'll get out of it, and how the system works. Lessons start from this coming Monday, 27th August.