Learning Ruby

About a month ago I needed something new to learn. And since a long time I have been reading stuff about Rails and how Rails was a fantastic solution for creating websites by using a standard way of handling various common issues when developing websites. Since Rails is build on Ruby I thought it could be a benefit to learn Ruby before opening the big box of Rails. Surfing around the web gave me a link to Rubylearning.org. Rubylearning is a site centeret around learning Ruby and Ruby-centeret stuff like Sinatra. At the time I was ready to learn Ruby they actually launched a Ruby beginner course. The price for the course was low, $14, so what could I loose?

The course was setup with 7 weeks of studying, with a interval of 1 week for each area. Every area would contain some background material to read, and some exercises to solve. Each week has it´s own forum where you upload your exercise-solutions and questions (if any). Within a short time after commiting your stuff a hardworking competent teacher read and commented on your solution. Because everybody could see each other solutions and comments this inspired to change your solution or gave a hint how to solve a exercise. And this was almost the best of the course. In my humble opion the course gave full value for your bucks. Before signing up be prepared to use some extra hours every week on programming puzzles.

So go and see if Rubylearning.org does not have a course for you.

I am hooked on Ruby and have already launched my first Sinatra solution on Heroku used internal at my company. yay

Install Rails 3.0 on Ubuntu 10.10 using RVM

I am on a new tour. I want to find out about that Rails thing. Coming from a .NET world something the Rails world seems interesting enough to have a go at it. I´ve been using a course on www.rubylearning.org for learning the Ruby language itself. I can definitely recommend to do that. A very good course which demands that you actively do something to get through it. But coming back to the Rails thing, this blog-entry should be about how to install Rails 3 on a Ubuntu 10.10. First of all I found out that installing Rails on Ubuntu can be complex but I found out that installing RVM could make life easier. So first of all I installed RVM using this guide: http://ruby.about.com/od/rubyversionmanager/ss/installrvmlinux.htm

After installation of RVM the system should be ready for some Ruby / Rails installation. First install Ruby 1.9.2 by: RVM install 1.9.2

This will fetch the source and compile. So it might take a while before it is done.

Now set the default ruby version with:

ruby --default ruby-1.9.2

now install rails by:

gem install rails <-- don´t use sudo as RVM now takes care of having the gems on your home folder

Mythtv and Wii

This is just great - and nerdy ! My running Mythtv installation have had an ongoing issue with an somewhat not working Remote. Ah, ok, it ain't working at all :-) So the good old keyboard has been hooked up, but it is not that pretty. So yesterday I found the solution. A great guy has made a python script which hooks up your Wii controller to your Mythtv installation. That way you can control the myth-frontend. Even using the build in x-y controllers in the Wii controller.

Links: http://www.benjiegillam.com/mythpywii-installation/