Group project discussion

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Mike Prendergast

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Jan 17, 2012, 9:16:22 PM1/17/12
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Hey again,

So, we’ve gotta come up with a group project for us to work on during the meetups. Any thoughts or suggestions?

I'll suggest a few to start us off: 


1. For a Web App
=============
I was thinking it may be kinda cool to make a web app that showcases Open Source gems / projects that need some lovin’. 

Right now, from what I've seen, if you want to just make a semi-random Open Source contribution or two, it can be a bit tough to figure out which gems to contribute to. Having a place to go that shows which gems have outstanding bugs, or important features to be added, may help move some project along faster.

Basically, we could use the GitHub API to look for gems that have open issues, sorted by a few intelligent metrics (how many people are using the gem, how many comments are posted in a particular issue's thread, etc.). The list could be searchable (e.g. via tags), and sortable in other ways. For example, something like: https://www.ruby-toolbox.com/categories/rails_authentication, but instead of gem popularity, gem pain (or something like that, heh.).

I figure that a web app would have a little something for everyone:
  • The beginners can focus on the basics, and move towards the advanced stuff. Hopefully some of the advanced folk will be willing to do some pair programming.
  • The advanced guys could do some crazy (but typically unnecessary) things that would get them to learn a few new things.

Or should we start with something simpler?


2. Contributing to an Open Source project
==============================

  1. Just an idea, but for those of you familiar with LocalTunnel (https://github.com/progrium/localtunnel), one of the issues IMHO is that the subdomain name changes with each use. Also, sometimes LocalTunnel just stops forwarding the traffic to you and you have to get a new subdomain. Because of this, you have to keep updating your code, and the callback address for the API with the new localtunnel address. It would be nice if we could create a way for users to keep the same subdomain.
  2. Try and fix something in Ruby core
  3. Try and fix something in Rails core
  4. Anyone know of any other gems or projects that could use some help?

3. Creating our own Open Source project
==============================

I don't have many ideas on this at the moment. Maybe just to get started, a gem that allows you to automatically print method entries and exits to the logger? (There's already ways to see something similar though.)


Other ideas?
=========

Anyone have any other ideas? Please reply back if you do. Any thoughts, feedback or ideas would be appreciated. If you want to do any of the above suggestions, vote them up.

Thanks,
Mike




Bonnie Cheung

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Jan 17, 2012, 10:03:04 PM1/17/12
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This list is great!  If you ask me, I wouldn't change it in any way. :)









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Joseph Santoyo

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Jan 17, 2012, 10:10:58 PM1/17/12
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Perhaps we could work on some nifty assignments? Here's one a friend linked me to that I thought was interesting: Spreading of fire. Very similar to Conway's Life.

Angélique Villé

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Jan 18, 2012, 11:02:13 AM1/18/12
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Hello,

I find the Web App idea very interesting. I'd like to work on something
like this (beginner+ / intermediate level in my case).
Once it's completed we can use it to find what to work on next :)

Ang�lique


Michael Prendergast

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Jan 18, 2012, 2:08:35 PM1/18/12
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Thanks Bonnie, Joseph and Angélique! :)

Joseph: Thanks for the suggestions. I'm not quite so sure about the Spreading of fire one though, as it seems very specialized and mostly focuses on creating a simulation, rather than improving our Ruby skills.

The Nifty Assignments have some interesting tasks in there. Thoughts anyone?





Angélique







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JT (redronin)

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Jan 18, 2012, 3:23:18 PM1/18/12
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Here's an idea for a group project:

1. Whenbot - a personal open source ifttt.com clone. (check out
http://ifttt.com)

The idea: A simple web service that runs on Heroku that lets you
listen on certain triggers and perform actions to other web services
based on that.

For example: Whenever I post an Instagram photo, create a Tumblr blog post.

It would be personal - in that it's meant for each person who wants to
run it to clone the repo, and host it on their own Heroku instance.
Heroku provides enough free addons and services that you can get it up
and running and functional without paying for anything (or at the
most, a few bucks a month).

Basic premise is that you have:

Triggers - things that you listen on (new instagram post, a tweet, a
new email, a new RSS feed entry, etc.). This can be a scheduled
polling to a certain API endpoint (heroku offers regular schedule
tasks every 10 minutes), or webhook endpoints.

Parsers - things that take the output from a trigger, and
massages/normalizes the data into a known format that can be consumed
by...

Publishers - things that you publish to (send a tweet, create a Tumblr
post, send an email, etc.)

The basic engine could be a very simple app, and the Triggers,
Parsers, and Publishers can be individual modules/classes. This would
allow people to work on various triggers, publishers, etc. on their
own while still contributing to the project as a whole. There'd also
be UI work to create the actions, configure services, etc.

Most triggers and publishers would just be using various API wrappers
for web services like Flickr, Tumblr, Posterous, etc. This would be a
great way for people to get exposed to APIs from various web services.
Some are complicated, some are pretty simple, so there'd be lots to
choose from.

I created a simple Instagram => Tumblr / Posterous app for
http://luuunch.com which I could show. It uses a ridiculously simple
Tumblr publisher, Posterous publisher and an Instagram webhook
trigger.

An immediate use case for something like this would be to create an
instagram / flickr / etc. feed to add to the OttawaRuby website.

John.

On Wed, Jan 18, 2012 at 2:08 PM, Michael Prendergast
<micha...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Thanks Bonnie, Joseph and Angélique! :)
>
> Joseph: Thanks for the suggestions. I'm not quite so sure about the
> Spreading of fire one though, as it seems very specialized and mostly
> focuses on creating a simulation, rather than improving our Ruby skills.
>
> The Nifty Assignments have some interesting tasks in there. Thoughts anyone?
>
>
>
> On Wed, Jan 18, 2012 at 11:02 AM, Angélique Villé <angeliq...@free.fr>
> wrote:
>>
>> Hello,
>>
>> I find the Web App idea very interesting. I'd like to work on something
>> like this (beginner+ / intermediate level in my case).
>> Once it's completed we can use it to find what to work on next :)
>>
>> Angélique
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Ottawa Group
>> of Ruby Enthusiasts [OGRE].
>> To post to this group, send email to ogre...@googlegroups.com
>> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to

>> ogre-list+...@googlegroups.com


>> For more options, visit this group at
>> http://groups.google.com/group/ogre-list?hl=en
>
>

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John Duff

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Jan 18, 2012, 7:46:40 PM1/18/12
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This sounds like an awesome project to work on, great suggestion John!
Sent from Gmail Mobile

Michael Prendergast

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Jan 18, 2012, 9:32:59 PM1/18/12
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That sounds like a great app to work on John! I like how it has really distinct portions that people can work on.

What do you guys think?

Alain

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Jan 19, 2012, 12:09:39 PM1/19/12
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Here's another idea to throw into the mix:

TABLEASY (table-easy)

I've always found it difficult to read large tables in Wikipedia (and
other sites). As an example, if I want to compare virtual machines
based on certain criteria, I would look at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_platform_virtual_machines.
Wouldn't it be nice if I could select and compare only the info that
was relevant to my research? Yes, I could copy and paste the tables
into a spreadsheet and use the spreadsheet filtering and sorting
functions. However, I think it would be cool (and efficient) if
there was a web app that could do the following:

1. You enter a URL
2. It parses the tables at that URL (if any)
3. It presents them in a nice UI, similar to a spreadsheet so that you
can:
a) select the rows and columns you want to focus on (it hides
everything else) either manually using checkboxes or based on some
logic, e.g. hide a column if all the cells in it are the same.
b) sort rows or columns based on certain criteria
c) optionally preserve any color or formatting, or assign conditional
formatting

The implementation could be in one of the following:

1) pure Ruby that parses HTML and generates HTML (and possibly
Javascript for better UX). Since the tables are usually not that
large, I think a pure Ruby array or hash might be able to handle it.
2) we could write a Rails app that creates the tables in a database,
so that the user can choose to save them and save the queries to share
them.
3) (I don't know if this is even remotely possible, but...) write a
browser plug-in (such as a Chrome extension) that would simply render
the tables based on the above requirements.

I don't know if something like this exists (I've tried Googling), and
I don't know if it's too small or too big for a group project, but I
thought I would suggest it and see.

On Jan 18, 9:32 pm, Michael Prendergast <michael...@gmail.com> wrote:
> That sounds like a great app to work on John! I like how it has really
> distinct portions that people can work on.
>
> What do you guys think?
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Wed, Jan 18, 2012 at 7:46 PM, John Duff <duff.j...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > This sounds like an awesome project to work on, great suggestion John!
>
> > >http://luuunch.comwhich I could show. It uses a ridiculously simple
> > > Tumblr publisher, Posterous publisher and an Instagram webhook
> > > trigger.
>
> > > An immediate use case for something like this would be to create an
> > > instagram / flickr / etc. feed to add to the OttawaRuby  website.
>
> > > John.
>
> > > On Wed, Jan 18, 2012 at 2:08 PM, Michael Prendergast
> > > <michael...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > >> Thanks Bonnie, Joseph and Angélique! :)
>
> > >> Joseph: Thanks for the suggestions. I'm not quite so sure about the
> > >> Spreading of fire one though, as it seems very specialized and mostly
> > >> focuses on creating a simulation, rather than improving our Ruby skills.
>
> > >> The Nifty Assignments have some interesting tasks in there. Thoughts
> > anyone?
>
> > >> On Wed, Jan 18, 2012 at 11:02 AM, Angélique Villé <
> > angelique.vi...@free.fr>

Christopher Saunders

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Jan 19, 2012, 1:12:14 PM1/19/12
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I like that idea. Just need to be sure it's iPad/mobile phone
friendly since most of the tables on wikipedia are unviewable on these
kinds of devices :(

--
Christopher Saunders
http://christophersaunders.ca/

Michael Prendergast

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Jan 19, 2012, 11:19:43 PM1/19/12
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Sounds like a good one, thanks Alain! There's a few useful things in there for people to learn (css selectors/xpath/DOM, javascript/jQuery, webpage parsing/nokogiri, etc.).

+1 Chris on mobile support. That should definitely be in there.

These are great suggestions everyone, keep them coming!
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