Category: Workshops/Events

And now we have a (wonderfully detailed) guest post from Jon on what we got up to at GaelHack last June.

In January of this year discussion started on the Irish hackerspace mailing list about the feasibility of holding the first hackerspace conference in Ireland. Hacker camps and conferences around the world have become a great way for the community to exchange ideas through talks and workshops, usually over the course of a few days where attendees are encouraged to help create a hacker village through staying overnight within or around the conference, which helps to create a vibrant and fun atmosphere for all.

A few dates and venues were discussed online as well as deciding on a name for the conference. A few names were in the running but eventually the event was named GaelHack and after reconnaissance visits by some hackerspace members to potential venues Mount Melleray Scout centre County Waterford was eventually chosen. This venue checked quite a few boxes for the event. For one thing accommodation was exceptionally cheap both onsite and in the nearby hotel. Also the venue contains numerous rooms and hallways ideal for hosting different workshops. Finally with it being a scouting centre there was of course a campsite right beside it.

Continue reading “GaelHack recap”

This intermediate workshop will focus on teaching people to build a basic multi-threaded server and learning to work with data in a multi-threaded environment. This will be a very hand-on workshop with an open discussion throughout on different server models, sockets & IO, throughput, threads and data-management. The focus of the workshop is get people to build their own server in Java before the end of the session with help and demonstration provided. The workshop will require proficiency in Java and a solid understanding of OO-concepts.

Pre-requisites: The workshop will require proficiency in Java and a solid understanding of OO-concepts. Attendees must also bring a laptop with JDK & Eclipse IDE (optional) set up and configured.

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Ruby is the language and Rails is the framework that stopped people yawning at web development, encouraged coders to try and better themselves as developers and is now the first choice for an overwhelming number of startups, as well as lots of forward looking enterprises. In this 3 hour introduction, Declan McGrath (aka @theirishpenguin) from Intercom will guide you through the same thing all those people had to do – build your first Ruby on Rails application.

We’ll start with a look at Ruby and its syntax before walking our way through the models, views and controllers that comprise a Rails project. By the end of this evening you should know your routes from your database migrations and have a starting point to go on and build other Rails applications.

Pre-requisites:

• Course level – you’ll be expected to have a bit of an understanding of programming already. This is *not* an intro to programming course. Having said that we will be sticking with the basics of Ruby – so if you’ve written a few programs before in any language then you should be able follow along 🙂
• There won’t be time to install Ruby and Rails on your computer on the night. So you’ll have to have it installed before arrival. You’ll need Ruby 1.9.3 and Rails 3.2.14 installed along with sqlite (which let’s us store data). If you’ve any questions on installing the post a comment on this Ruby Ireland Googlegroup thread
• Basic knowledge of HTML

When: Thursday, August 8th. From 7pm till 10pm.

Cost: €5 for non-members, free for members

Please sign up using the form below. Updated to add: We’re full! Thanks for the interest everyone.

Continue reading “Workshop: Your First Ruby on Rails App!”