Planet SoC

Está quase pronto o Portal UCA ( um computador por aluno) o qual irá agregar os estudos de caso realizados durante o projeto piloto com o laptop XO.
Após o término do mesmo irei disponibilizar, em alusão ao portal, um estudo de caso de como foi desenvolvido, plugins utilizados, problemas enfrentados e demais questões enfrentadas no desenvolvimento para ajudar quem está iniciando no mundo Rails, pois é uma aplicação bem simples, mas que apresenta bons detalhes pra quem está recém se aventurando com Ruby on Rails.

Sometimes I got myself thinking what makes a software have its own opinion and be considered “optioned software”. Would it be related to the language philosophy or to the programmer itself, or both of them?
People usually say Rails is a good example of optioned software. I can say I take part of the same opinion, but I’d like to take this point a little more further by not emphasizing only the software, but the programmer and how its culture could be incorporated (and not avoided) in the software it produces.

Sometimes I got myself thinking what makes a software have its own opinion and be considered “optioned software”. Would it be related to the language philosophy or to the programmer itself, or both of them?
People usually say Rails is a good example of optioned software. I can say I take part of the same opinion, but I’d like to take this point a little more further by not emphasizing only the software, but the programmer and how its culture could be incorporated (and not avoided) in the software it produces.

It seens Ultrasphinx plugin for Ruby on Rails doesn’t know how to deal with Decimal data type from MySQL.
You can use a Decimal column for indexing, but when you need to make thecolumn sortable it comes the problem. As you know, faceting is on for numeric and date fields and to add the sortable feature to it, we need to pass a hash with

{:sortable => true}

Ok, then you run rake tasks to rebuild your configuration file and indexes and try to sort the search by the Decimal column and we got an error saying our column isn’t sortable.
You can check isn’t generating the _sortable sufix by looking the ultrasphinx configuration file. All other sortable fields have their _sortable sufix added to ti, except by the decimal field.
I’ll report it as soon as possible to Evan Weaver, the plugin’s owner, or maybe try to fix it by myself.
Updated: June, 16

It seens Ultrasphinx plugin for Ruby on Rails doesn’t know how to deal with Decimal data type from MySQL.
You can use a Decimal column for indexing, but when you need to make thecolumn sortable it comes the problem. As you know, faceting is on for numeric and date fields and to add the sortable feature to it, we need to pass a hash with

{:sortable => true}

Ok, then you run rake tasks to rebuild your configuration file and indexes and try to sort the search by the Decimal column and we got an error saying our column isn’t sortable.
You can check isn’t generating the _sortable sufix by looking the ultrasphinx configuration file. All other sortable fields have their _sortable sufix added to ti, except by the decimal field.
I’ll report it as soon as possible to Evan Weaver, the plugin’s owner, or maybe try to fix it by myself.

The Book Rails 2.1 - What`s new ? Made by Carlos Brando and Tapajós was released last week. It was the very first book presenting Rails 2.1 and its new features, in Portuguese, and best of all, it was released free of charge ( like free beer).
But Carlos Brando and the Brazilian rails community were very upset because most Railers of the world couldn`t read portuguese so they couldn`t rejoice the book like us. So I and other fellows, lead by Carlos Brando got together to translate the book to english, so all people could read and use it.
I`m very proud of being part of this community that made the translation and reviewed it in less than 2 days. You can download the book here or from Carlos Brando blog.

Para quem gosta de aprender olhando código existente ou prefere não reinventar a roda toda vez que for criar um sistema em rails, temos agora a oportunidade de pesquisar e baixar sistemas rails completos.
A iniciativa é do railer Jacques Crocker, que criou o site Open Source Rails, onde ele compila grande parte dos sistemas rails open source do mercado, como por exemplo, Mephisto, Typo e Lovd By less. Ele convida a comunidade a se cadastrar no site e a mandarem novos sistemas para lá. Vale a pena conferir o projeto e contribuir, pois é importante para a comunidade rails!
Open Source Rails - http://www.opensourcerails.com/
Jacques Crocker - http://www.railsjedi.com/

Google Summer of Code começou oficialmente neste 26 de maio. Após um período de community bound, com os mentores e outros estudantes selecionados, tivemos a oportunidade de nos inteirarmos a respeito da Christmas Future, organização a qual vamos trabalhar em conjunto pelos próximos 3 meses.

Frequentemente temos que apresentar dados em sistemas, que em geral apresentamos na forma tabular. No entanto, nem todos dados ficam fáceis de interpretar com essa visualização em formato de relatório ou mesmo agradáveis de visualizar.
A dica de hoje é do site Information Design Patterns que apresenta diversos padrões para apresentar dados ao usuário.

Hoje me peguei pensando no que faz um software (por exemplo Twitter) conquistar usuários e ir além do público viciado em tecnologia? Mesmo entre amigos e conhecidos que atuam e/ou estudam na área de tecnologia, quando falo que uso Twitter, preciso repetir algumas vezes o nome e explicar o que é até entenderem e me dizerem que não conhecem e nunca ouviram falar a respeito.