Slide Show (S9) 10-Minute Tutorial - What’s Opera Show? What’s S5? What’s S9?

Thanks to Arash Sanieyan (Peerglobe) for organizing the “Flex, Rails, Joomla! Get Together” at the Network Hub. If you missed out on my mini 10-minute tutorial/intro about Slide Show (S9) - a free web alternative to PowerPoint and Keynote in Ruby - I’ve published the slide deck online.

Slides/topics include:

• What’s Slide Show (S9)?
• Wiki-Style Markup Language – Markdown, Textile
• How it works – Just press F11!
• What’s FullerScreen?
• What’s Opera Show? What’s S5?
• Gradient Themes Using “Loss-Free” Vector Graphics in S9
• Turn Your Online Wiki Pages into Slide Shows – Sputnik Case Study

Inspired by the Slide Show (S9) Ruby gem – Yuri Takhteyev has added S9-style slide shows to Sputnik – a wiki in Lua. Lets you author slide shows online in your browser. It’s – surprise, surpise – a wiki and, thus, lets you work together with others on a slide show, track changes and versions, link and get linked, and much much more.

Try out the slide show titled “Slide Show (S9) 10-Minute Tutorial” authored using S9 using the Textile wiki markup (tutorial.textile) in your very own browser. (Note, if you use Internet Explorer please upgrade to Firefox, Opera or Safari with built-in vector graphics machinery and support for CSS media types to avoid a blank page!)

Questions? Comments on S9? Send them along to the Free Web Slide Show Alternatives (S5, S9 And Friends) Forum/Mailing List. Thanks!

Groovy - Java for the 21st Century - Do More With Less (Code) - Talk Slides from Vancouver’s 1st Groovy/Grails Meetup Now Online

Thanks for attending Vancouver’s 1st Groovy/Grails Meetup last Tuesday. If you missed out I’ve published the slide deck for the mini Groovy intro online. Slides/topics include:

• Why Groovy? What’s wrong with Ruby (JRuby), Python (Jython), or Smalltalk (Bistro)?
• Application vs. Systems (Hard-Core) Programming / Groovy vs. Java
• Groovy is Java
• Groovy is Java Continued: Annotations
• Groovy is Java Continued: Enums, Static Imports, Generics
• Groovy Joint Compiler
• Groovy Goodies Missing In Java (Java is Not Groovy)
• Groovy Loops: Higher-Level Loops Using Closures (Code Blocks)
• What is a Closure (Code Block/Anonymous Function)?
• Closures In Action: Groovy Collections vs. Plain Old Java Collections
• Groovy JDK – Groovy Adds New Methods To Core Java Classes
• Groovy Template Strings: Expressions In Strings
• Groovy Markup (XML) Syntax
• Scripting Ant Using Groovy Markup (Gant)
• Groovy Heroes – G2One Inc. – The Groovy/Grails Startup
• Groovy/Grails in Print – Books
• Groovy/Grails Articles & Blogs
• Getting Started – Installing Groovy – 1-2-3 Steps
• And More…

Questions? Comments? Sent them along to the Vancouver Groovy/Grails User Group Forum/Mailing List. Thanks!

Slide Show (S9) v0.2 - Now w/ “Loss-Free” Vector Graphics Gradient Themes

I’ve uploaded version 0.2 of slideshow - a free web alternative to PowerPoint and KeyNote in Ruby that lets you create slide shows and author slides in plain text using a wiki-style markup language that’s easy-to-write and easy-to-read.

What’s new in v0.2?

I’ve added “loss-free” vector grahpics gradient themes. See some samples online using the “classic” sixteen web colors plus nine gradient styles such as “Diagonal”, “Radial Off Center”, “Top Bottom” and more. Try the “Radial Repeat” theme for some free psychodelia. (Note: Built-in SVG browser support required - e.g. use Firefox or Opera).

Or try the Microformats slide show live on your very own desktop.

Find out more at the Slide Show (S9) project site. Questions? Comments? Send them along to the Free Web Slide Show Alternatives (S5, S9 And Friends) Forum/Mailing List. Thanks!

Vancouver’s 1st Groovy/Grails Meetup - Tue. Feb/26th @ 6pm - WorkSpace (400 - 21 Water St) - Join Us

Join us for Vancouver’s 1st Groovy/Grails meetup and connect with developers in and around Vancouver and discuss, share and extend your knowledge on all things Groovy/Grails.

When: Tuesday, February 26th @ 6pm
Where: WorkSpace (400 - 21 Water St.) in Downtown Vancouver (Gastown)

We will have at least two short talks. Vancouverite Ed Povazan (Groovy Eclipse Lead) will talk about Grails. Ed writes: My plan is: go from a big picture to the details by deconstructing a little web app, and then reconstructing parts of it to demonstrate what it is like to create with Grails.

For the opening I’ve signed up for a short intro talk about Groovy. What’s Groovy? Groovy is a free, open-source dynamic language for the Java runtime that compiles straight to Java byte code and lets you mix and match Java and Groovy code and works out-of-the-box with all existing Java libraries. Groovy offers higher-level functions and iterators (=closures/code blocks), built-in syntax for lists, maps, markup, regular expressions, ranges, and much much more.

Please, sign-up (RSVP) on our Yahoo! Upcoming event and/or on our Facebook event.

For further details, please check the Vancouver Groovy/Grails User Group site. Questions or Comments? Send them along to the Vancouver Groovy/Grails Mailing List/Forum. Thanks!

Big thanks to our venue sponsor WorkSpace. What Is WorkSpace?

WorkSpace is a shared work environment in downtown Vancouver. Our Gastown loft has meeting rooms, a lounge & a café surrounding a beautiful open concept work environment. We provide memberships (not leases) to independent professionals and small firms looking for a better place to work. Read more…

The Search is Over - Groovy & Grails Talk @ Vancouver Island Technology Park (Jan/23)

Join us for the Vancouver Island Java Meetup at the Vancouver Island Technology Park in Victoria on Wednesday, January 23rd. I’ve signed up for a talk on Groovy & Grails.

What’s Groovy? Groovy is a free, open-source dynamic language for the Java runtime that compiles straight to Java bytecode and lets you mix and match Java and Groovy code and works out-of-the-box with all existing Java libraries. Groovy offers higher-level functions and iterators (=closures/code blocks), built-in syntax for lists, maps, markup, regular expressions, ranges, and much much more.

What’s Grails? The talk will conclude with a look at Groovy’s web framework called Grails that offers an up to 10x productivity boost over classic Java web stacks using plain old vanilla Java code thanks to convention over configuration, the Don’t-Repeat-Yourself (DRY)-principle, meta programming and much more.

Thanks to Manfred Moser for organizing and hosting the Victoria event. Upcoming talk slides will include:

Let’s Go Camping - Getting Started w/ Ruby’s Model-View-Controller (MVC) Web Microframework

(This is cross-posted from my new all Ruby blog titled “rubybook = Blog.new :title => “Gerald Bauer’s Ruby Notebook”.)

What’s Camping? Camping is a microframework (in less than 4k of code) that lets you develop a web application using the Model-View-Controller (MVC) architecture with all your code stored in a single Ruby script in less then three minutes.

Let’s go camping and create a web application (hello.rb) showing the current time:

Tagging & Tag Clouds Made Easy

The talk notes/slides from the Vancouver Ruby/Rails August Meetup talk titled “Tagging & Tag Clouds Made Easy”. Enjoy.

Five Minute “Facebook!?! I-Don’t-Get-It” VanDev Talk Notes

Facebook Stats

• More than 50+ million active users
• More than 200,000+ new registrations/day since January 2007
• Users spend on average 20 minutes/day on Facebook(Source: comScore)
• #1 photo sharing site on the Web (Source: comScore)
• More than 14 million photos uploaded/day
• More than 6 million active user groups

Source: Facebook Statistics

Canada

More than 7+ million Facebookers (top outside the US followed by 7+ in UK and 5+ in Australia)

Facebook Application Demo Q&As - Mixx, Hockey Pool, Are You Normal? and Many More

What’s the Facebook advantage? How do Facebook applications - tapping into your circle of friends/social network - differ from “classic” web applications/widgets? For some insight I’ve published a series of Q&As covering Facebook applications designed and developed in and around Vancouver that got demo-ed at Vancouver’s first Facebook Developer (& Designer) Garage last month.

Five Minute “Facebook!?! I-Don’t-Get-It” Talk @ VanDev Tomorrow (Nov/8)

Join us for a smaller more informal Vancouver Facebook Developer meetup (50 max!) tomorrow at UBC downtown following up on last month’s Official Vancouver Facebook Developer Garage.

Thanks to the Vancouver’s Software Developers Network for the joint event and co-hosting the All Facebook Developer meetup.

I’ve signed-up for a mini (5-minute max) intro talk about Facebook numbers and statistics. For full details about the event see the VanDev.org event page. See you all there.