Ruby meetup: A new wiki

Albert set up an Instiki [wiki for the upcoming Ruby meetings](http://meetup.delamednoll.se/): and you can also sign up there, to add more glitz to the meeting.

And then that got old, and “peterj” started a [Rails.se](http://www.rails.se) wiki, with the same kind of wiki software. We promptly moved our SSRUG, SkÃ¥ne-Sjælland Ruby User Group, to that wiki.

And, we have a location, a time, and a group to be there, for the first meetup.

Get the details at [SSRUG’s page](http://rails.se/rails/show/Skhttp://rails.se/rails/show/RUG).

Railsers for beer

[Albert](http://albert.delamednoll.se/), of the South Swedish Rails community, noted he’d be travelling to talk Ruby on Rails, and that secretly he [wished for a community nearby](http://albert.delamednoll.se/articles/2006/01/11/travelling-in-the-name-of-rails).

Why the heck not.

This is an open invite for you, my buddies, who are using Ruby on Rails (for anything) to come have a sit-down with other Rails users.

Albert suggests Copenhagen, Malmö or Lund as locations for the meetup. What’s best for you?

(I could muster two or three friends, as well.)

FYI, there’s a [wiki page on Ruby User Groups](http://rubygarden.org/ruby?RubyUserGroups), as well, at [RubyGarden](http://rubygarden.org/). The [Danish Group](http://rubygarden.org/ruby?DanishGroup) has not seen a lot of activity. Seems like it needs someone with initiative. That might be us, dear reader.

**Update**: [Danish Group](http://rubygarden.org/ruby?DanishGroup) page now updated with a pointer here.

Swedes might also be interested in signing up for [the Rails.se mailing list](http://lists.rails.se/mailman/listinfo/rails).

(I’m setting comments here to unmoderated, for faster feedback.)

[Rubyholic](http://www.rubyholic.com/) is a groups locator for Ruby folks, as well.

Danish social workers patch the system

[Loftsramte Eksperter](http://loftsramteeksperter.dk/) (Experts hit by the ceiling) is a beautiful hack of the social welfare system in Denmark. Hacked by great people, social workers, who make sure the folks on welfare do not get their checks “light”.

> Vi vil gerne høre, hvad eksperterne har at sige om loven, og hvem er større eksperter på feltet end de loftsramte?

> Eksperterne vil selvfølgelig modtage et passende honorar for deres udtalelser – at honoraret har en størrelse, sÃ¥ eksperterne lige præcis gÃ¥r fri af loftet, er blot en heldig sidegevinst.

The bug in the system is: if you do not work 300 hours a year, your checks will be even smaller. And it ain’t like the State is handing out jobs to fill those hours with. They just place a new requirement. So, the poor get poorer. A poverty-generating policy.

The elegant hack: the association **Loftsrame Eksperter buys an “expert quote” on poverty in Denmark** today from someone hit by this “ceiling” on their welfare checks. That way a full month’s worth of the 300 hours is fixed. Hence, the “ceiling rule” does not come into play.

(Via newly-graduated social worker Katrine Cederstrand (who has yet to start blogging).)

Using Google Sitemaps: some free statistics

Google Sitemaps contains some free statistics tools for the website owner. Here’s how to start using them.

* You need a Google account. The same as your Gmail account. Don’t have one of those? Just ask me in the comments here, and I’ll “invite” you to this service.)
* Go the aforementioned page, and “Add” your website.
* The instructions will tell you in a 1-2-3 step way that you need to create an empty text file, with a name like `google123456789.html` (With UNIX commandline access you could say `touch google123456789.html` to create that file.) The filename is generated at random, and identifies a website as yours.
* Upload the file to the root path of your website.
* Then hit the Verify button.

OK, so you’re now the identifed owner of your website. Yout can see the _Top search queries_ that hit your site in Google’s index. And another list, _Top search query clicks_, tells you which of the search terms that actually got clicked on.

In the _Errors_ tab you can find out which of your URLs are unreachable by the GoogleBot, or which URLs are excluded by `robots.txt` rules.

All this is related to Google’s beta-stage concept of the [Google Sitemap](https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/docs/en/protocol.html), a protocol which you can use to tell Google what pages are new, and need to be re-crawled.

(Statistics are dangerous, though. Addictive, kids.)

Validation hint for Javascript with markup in it

Validation time. (For clients!) Get the stuff valid, so the work with CSS is less guess and more science. So, one begins by removing all the errors that have to do with missing slashes, lost ALT attributes, and soon the errors are fewer.

I had trouble with a piece of Javascript that wrote the markup for a chunk of Flash. It just used document.write() statements to write to the page, and the markup was given as an argument. I tried to wrap the code section in a CDATA section (the “right way” to do it), but IE found that erroneous. And being nice to IE was what this thing was all about, so I took another route.

My tactics were: “Perhaps the markup in the write statements could be divided, so the W3 Validator didn’t recognize it as markup.” That way worked.

W3 Validator gives warnings

I got off with a warning this time.

Technical “news”: New WordPress running this blog

Yes, now I’ve gone and done it: upgraded my blog to WP2. Took me a while to think it up, but now it’s done. Took me all of 10 minutes. 10 other minutes were used to back my files and database up.

I know this for a fact since I wrote it down, and I’m writing it with a Stabilo Bionic pen, on a very nice ring-bound book. Having nice stuff to write on makes you want to write. I use A5 size for my book, which gives me ample space for custom partitions. My time-tracking list takes just 6 cm of space, but I don’t want a waiter’s notebook to track my time, I want the option to start Picasso drawings when I feel the urge to. Not that he drew a lot, but I could.

Reporting this took me 4 minutes in total.

Now I’ve gotta upgrade the other blogs. (The Ajax user interface extras in the WP2.0 look just right. The Tiger Theme has gotten a 2.0 upgrade! More upgrading. See you around.)

Prototype 1.4 out

Get the newest (“final”) Prototype library by getting the latest Scriptaculous library.

The new stuff in Prototype 1.4 seems to be more stability fixes (extra checking before doing things), and a couple of Rubyisms: `Object.succ` means `this + 1`. `inspect()` to get a representation of an object or element.

And there seems to be more stuff in the dept. of  positioning objects on-screen.

As well as new String stuff. `camelize()` (thisIsCamelCase, so you know what they mean by camels), `toQueryParams()`.

All in all: more goodness. Via: Audible Ajax podcast with Scriptaculous’ author