Time for round-up #2 of all the bish-bosh on the mailing list. I'm
going to try and give everyone a birds-eye view of how we're doing
building this 'ere schedule, and call out some things that need a bit
more eyeballing from you lot.

It's great to see some of you getting stuck in, but it still feels
like we have a lot of silent partners here, particularly those of you
that already have a ticket. This is the week where you - yes, YOU -
send an email. I *insist*.

Got it?  Right you are then.

Proposals
--------

Tom Lea - Rack::Cache
http://groups.google.com/group/ruby-manor/msg/5d00d57549726efc
Tom wants to tell us about using Rack::Cache, caching fundamentals,
the problems with Rails' own mechanisms and how to win in general. For
a pretty detailed proposal, I'm gobsmacked that he's had no responses.
Anyone? Anyone at all?

James Adam - Gem That
http://groups.google.com/group/ruby-manor/browse_thread/thread/ececd2...
James is offering to talk about lightweight and unobtrusive ways to
turn your project into a gem. Thanks to a bit of argy-bargy from you
lot, he now knows to cover the pitfalls of specific alternative
gem-making solutions (jeweler seems to be top-dog), as well as a bit
of rabbit-rabbit-rabbit-rabbit about his own solution, 'gem this'.
He's also offered to talk about building 'gem' commands, although that
didn't seem to stir anyone's porridge.

Paul Battley - Secrets of the Standard Library
http://groups.google.com/group/ruby-manor/browse_thread/thread/3c22f8...
Paul has offered to cover some of the often-ignored standard library
classes, such as Forwardable, Set, Array#assoc, and pp. This proposal
got some good feedback, but perhaps there's a specific library you'd
like him to cover?

Jason Cale - The Joy of Painting with Ruby
http://groups.google.com/group/ruby-manor/browse_thread/thread/fba521...
Ever wanted to use Ruby to visualise data in pleasing (and perhaps
slightly trippy) ways? Jason is offering to give us an insight into
using Processing from Ruby, with a promise to avoid anything too ravey
and focus on practical examples.

Jason Cale - Building cross-platform mobile applications with Rhodes
http://groups.google.com/group/ruby-manor/browse_thread/thread/2650f4...
Jason also offer to talk about this, but there's been a conspicuous
silence on his thread. Do we take it that the community has other
preferences?

Thomas Koll - 3 things
http://groups.google.com/group/ruby-manor/browse_thread/thread/54339e...
Thomas has offered to talk about three things: teaching newbies,
'hyper' authentication, and multi-domain whitelabelled websites. This
has some positive feedback, but Thomas, you really need to break these
out into individual threads so we can help you refine and clarify what
each of these might mean. Get to it!

James Adam - Rip
http://groups.google.com/group/ruby-manor/browse_thread/thread/85dbf8...
James wants to introduce everyone to 'Rip', which is not a replacement
for Rubygems, but instead a different approach to solving library
dependencies. It looks like we got a bit distracted by mentions of
Bundler, but there is some interest in hearing about this. However, we
need more feedback to take this proposal forward.

David Salgado - Crunching log data with Hive
http://groups.google.com/group/ruby-manor/browse_thread/thread/4fdade...
David can tell us about using Hive to sift through logfiles, and a
sysadmin has expressed and interest, but David confesses that it has
nothing to do with Ruby. If you're interested in this, you need to
speak up.

Matthew O'Riordan - Heroku and other Ruby hosting solutions
http://groups.google.com/group/ruby-manor/browse_thread/thread/359c4d...
Want to know about how "cream rice" Heroku is, and why the
alternatives are sorry and sad? Matthew wants to tell us, but the list
is quiet as a mouse.

Julian Burgess - Symbol vs. String
http://groups.google.com/group/ruby-manor/browse_thread/thread/3e3de3...
Ever wondered what the difference was, or when you should use one
other the other? Julian has done some research and is offering to
share his findings with a short talk. Again, not a sparrow here yet...

Ben Griffiths - Ad Hoc Ruby Scripts (or: Forget Frameworks)
http://groups.google.com/group/ruby-manor/browse_thread/thread/6d6771...
Ben is offering to take us back to a simpler time, when Ruby was
recognised as a powerful glue language for plugging other libraries
together. There's quite a bit of positive feedback for this one, but
we've asked Ben to provide a little more detail if he can.

Almost Proposals
-------------

Matt Wescott - Generator
http://groups.google.com/group/ruby-manor/msg/692d3526f767edd3
Off the back of Paul's suggestion, Matt offered to do a short one on
'Generator', along with a project he's using it in called 'Midibeep'.
I would suggest that Matt breaks his suggestion out into a seperate
thread, so that it can get a bit more attention. Alternatively,
perhaps Paul can cover 'Generator'?

James Darling - Archaeopteryx
http://groups.google.com/group/ruby-manor/msg/569c68579254b369
Harking a call for more non-web-based content, James has offered to
explore Sr. Bowkett's music generator on our behalf. James, if you're
still up for this, pop up a new thread. Everyone else - if you're
interested and James is willing, you know what to do.

Jason Cale - Rack
http://groups.google.com/group/ruby-manor/browse_thread/thread/d4f48d...
Jason Cale has offered to give us another shot of Rack know-how, but I
think he's going to need some feedback to really develop this. What
about Rack would you want to learn?

James Mead - Ruby GUI with RubyCocoa/MacRuby
http://groups.google.com/group/ruby-manor/browse_thread/thread/a75e3d...
There's been a cry for some content around this, and James Mead has
suggested that he *might* be willing to answer that call. James
mentioned some specific topics that his own experience could cover,
but he needs feedback about what you might find interesting; only one
person has responded to his generous offer.

Suggestions
---------

http://groups.google.com/group/ruby-manor/browse_thread/thread/bc92f5...
Some folks would like advice about how to organise their projects -
where to layout files, whether or not to require rubygems and so on.
Can you do this justice?

http://groups.google.com/group/ruby-manor/browse_thread/thread/e72a3d...
What we can learn from Django/Seaside/other web frameworks - quite a
bit of interest (if you sift through the conflated venue/ticket
conversation, but nobody has stepped up and taken responsibility yet.
Are you prepared to take this on? If so, start a new thread and
explore how you might approach it with the community's help.

We've got more stuff on our cart now that Alfie the Rag-n-Bone man,
but don't forget that I expect you lot to help me sift through it for
the gems we can use.

Now, I'm off to put a pony on "Mickey The Blitz" in the 4.15 at Walthamstow.

Get busy.

The Guvner.