At Startup Weekend Eindhoven 2011, I have had a hard time to make the speech. The problem I had was, my idea was already busted with the second presentation thus I needed to come up with an another existing idea of mine. I made myself clear that no condition will stop me to go out there and make the pitch. Great that I did it.

My lizard brain was working hard to stop me, not to do the thing, but I did easily shut it off, even though the physical effects was high.

It is important to note that, doing you homework well before the pitch/presentation/speech is very important. Write you speech, record your own sound and listen very carefully to your tone and keep on doing. You will get better, and don't forget to do it in the real world, not in your safety zone, not to your friends/mom/girlfriend. Deliver it to an audience of 100. You are going to see the difference.

Anyway, here is another great article at HBR about speech http://blogs.hbr.org/pallotta/2011/03/delivering-the-speech-of-your.html

1. Know your goal. When the speech is over, what do you want the audience saying about it and you? What difference do you want to make? Most speakers never ask this of themselves.
2. Memorize your speech. That's right. Memorize every word of it. Deliver it in front of a mirror five times, six times, ten times. Then deliver it while your kid is screaming in the background, to develop the confidence that you can recite it no matter what distraction pops up. Why memorize it? Because nothing will put an audience to sleep faster than someone reading from a prepared text. Because when you memorize it, it stops being about getting the words right and starts being about getting the feeling right. Imagine if Andrea Bocelli didn't memorize the words to the songs in his repertoire. How much room do you think there would be for him to feel them?
3. If you don't want to knock it out of the park, don't follow rule 2.
4. Practice the transitions. What will get you from one point to the next? Is it "if," or "when," or "then I." Know and memorize the precise construction of each transitional sentence. It's in uncertainty about transitions from one point to the next that people lose their grace in public and start saying "aaahhhh."
5. Don't fear silence. You want to silence a room? Don't talk. Be silent and look at the audience. Five seconds. Seven seconds. Just taking them in. Connecting with them. But never do it for effect. Do it to get intimate with your audience. It silences a room like you wouldn't believe. Why? Because it's not normal. Audiences are used to speakers filling every nanosecond with the sound of their own voice, leaving zero time for reflection. Audiences are used to being avoided, not appreciated. When they come upon someone who can command their own silence, they understand, "This person is serious."
6. Never, ever, ever use PowerPoint as your speech notes. The slides are for your audience, not for you. The moment they see you rattling through a list of bullets that you should have had the courtesy to memorize, they put you in a category with every other boring presenter they've ever seen and you've lost them.
7. Give something of yourself. Don't be afraid to feel something in front of an audience. Don't be afraid to say something that will make you feel something, and that will make the audience feel something.
8. Be yourself. Don't feel you need to mimic the testosterone level of a motivational speaker. You will look and feel fake. Robert Kennedy never tried to copy Martin Luther King's rhetorical skills. RFK was soft-spoken. He owned that. And as a result, was every bit as affecting as King.
9. Don't speak in abstractions. Say what it is that you mean. Plainly. Avoid the lexicon of your own trade. People are sick of it. It doesn't mean anything to them anymore. Speak in human.
10. Feel what's happening in the room and use it to connect your speech to this moment. In this way, if your mike goes out, you can make a joke out of it, rather than it making a nervous wreck, and a joke, out of you.
11. Make eye contact until it scares you. Distribute your eye contact around the room. Not for effect, but because you genuinely want to connect with the people in front of you.
12. Don't miss your own talk. It is a privilege and an honor to be asked to speak. Take the opportunity to commune with other human beings. It's like getting to watch a falling star.
13. Come from a place of love for your audience. That's mastery. When you allow yourself to feel the humanity of your audience, you have succeeded in taking the focus off yourself. There is a universe of difference between this place and a PowerPoint presentation. This is the place from which change is made. From here you can move mountains.

View basic

rails new demo3	
	

rails g scaffold post title:string body:text
	

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
  <title>Demo3</title>
  <%= stylesheet_link_tag :all %>
  <%= javascript_include_tag :defaults %>
  <%= csrf_meta_tag %>
</head>
<body>

<%= yield %>

</body>
</html>
	
	

<h1>Listing posts</h1>

<table>
  <tr>
    <th>Title</th>
    <th>Body</th>
    <th></th>
    <th></th>
    <th></th>
  </tr>

<% @posts.each do |post| %>
  <tr>
    <td><%= post.title %></td>
    <td><%= post.body %></td>
    <td><%= link_to 'Show', post %></td>
    <td><%= link_to 'Edit', edit_post_path(post) %></td>
    <td><%= link_to 'Destroy', post, :confirm => 'Are you sure?', :method => :delete %></td>
  </tr>
<% end %>
</table>

<br />

<%= link_to 'New Post', new_post_path %>
	

private 
	def get_and_respond_with
		@post =  params[:id].present? ? Post.find( param )
		yield
		respond_with(@post)
	end
	

layout "my_layout"
	

def index
    @posts = Post.all
    render :layout => 'juicy'
end
	

Partials

<%= render 'category_list' %>
	

<h1> Category </h1>
<% categories.each do |c| %>
  <li>	<a href="#"> <%=c %> </a> </li>
<%end%>	
	

<%= render :partial => 'category_list' , :locals => { :categories  => [ "test" , "test2" ] }  %>	
	

:locals is the data that we are passing into the partial view and the only data is named “categories” with an array of values we can also use layout to render the partial view create a new file called _green_box.html.erb in posts folder and place the following html code

<div style="background-color:green">
<%= yield %>
</div>
	

and modify the render line with

<%= render :partial => 'category_list' , :locals => {:categories => [ "test" , "test2" ] } ,  :layout =>  'green_box'  %>	
	

Helpers

bahadir@ubox:~/RubymineProjects/demo3$ rails g migration add_author 
      invoke  active_record
      create    db/migrate/20110206174947_add_author.rb
	  	

Open up the add_author.rb

class AddAuthor < ActiveRecord::Migration
  def self.up
  	add_column  :posts , :author_first , :string
  	add_column  :posts , :author_last , :string
  end
  def self.down
	remove_column  :posts , :author_first , :string
	remove_column  :posts , :author_last , :string
  end
end
	

bahadir@ubox:~/RubymineProjects/demo3$ rake db:migrate
(in /home/bahadir/RubymineProjects/demo3)
==  AddAuthor: migrating ======================================================
-- add_column(:posts, :author_first, :string)
   -> 0.0008s
-- add_column(:posts, :author_last, :string)
   -> 0.0005s
==  AddAuthor: migrated (0.0016s) =============================================
	

Now go to _form.html.erb

  <div class="field">
    <%= f.label :author_first %><br />
    <%= f.text_field :author_first %>
  </div>
   <div class="field">
    <%= f.label :author_last %><br />
    <%= f.text_field :author_last %>
  </div>
  

and last thing to do is to add the fields to the show.html.erb file

<p>
	<b>Author first:</b>
	<%= @post.author_first %>
</p>
<p>
	<b>Author last:</b>
	<%= @post.author_last %>
</p>
	

<td><%= author_name(post) %></td>
	

module PostsHelper
	def author_name(post)
		"#{post.author_first} #{post.author_last}"
	end
end
	

module ApplicationHelper
	def pretty_date(date)
		date.strftime("%B %d %Y")
	end
end	
	

<td><%= author_name(post) %> - <%= pretty_date(post.created_at) %> </td>

	gem 'haml'
	

	bundle install
	

%h1 Welcome
- @posts.each do |post|
	- if (should_show?(post))
		%h2= post.title
		%i #{author_name(post)} - #{pretty_date(post.created_at)}
		%hr
		= link_to 'Show', post |
		= link_to 'Edit' , edit_post_path(post)
		= link_to 'Destroy', post, :confirm => 'Are you sure?' , :method => :delete
%br
= link_to 'New Post', new_post_path
	

%h1 Welcome
= render :partial => "category_list", :locals => { :categories => ["thing","thing2"] }

// you might not use as if you name the partial view as "post" but if you need to 
// use the as parameter to pass in the collection item
= render :partial => 'post' , :collection => @posts , :as => :post 
%br
= link_to "New Post", new_post_path	
	

- if (should_show?(post))
	%h2= post.title
	%i #{author_name(post)} - #{pretty_date(post.created_at)}
	%hr
	= link_to "Show", post |
	= link_to "Edit" , edit_post_path(post)
	= link_to "Destroy", post, :confirm => "Are you sure?" , :method => :delete	
	

Choosing an IDE or Editor

I have downloaded the RubyMine from Jetbrains who are the makers of famous ReSharper for .NET guys and IntelliJ for Java. I generally like the products of Jetbrains but I see RubyMine is still in its early stages and not free. You may still download the product and try it for 30 days.

Frankly, I see RubyMine tries to do a lot, download bundles run rails, use any rails generators but since we are in the learning stages and understanding under the hood, it is better to go with a basic normal editor.

The editor I am going to use is BlueFish which I mentioned before. BlueFish is a very nice simple editor which makes it easy to browse folders, create files, and also nice syntax highlighting for different languages ( html , javascript , java , ruby , PHP, PERL , Python )

Folder tree is refreshed automatically if you click one time to the folder ( wow! ) It is very handy if you use rails through command line!

New Rails project

Lets start with writing code. First of all we need to create a new rails application. In order to do that open up a console and run the following command

creates a new demo1 project. The project is empty which means there are no mappers, controllers or views are created for you. New command only generates a basic Rails project structure.

Mapper

config/routes.rb here you define a new route for the request handling

• open up the config/routes.rb
• Go to line 51
• root :to => "home#index"
• uncomment the root and change the string with home#index

Basically with this piece of code we tell rack that we will have a home controller and in that home controller there will be method called index. Lets create that controller first

• go to app/controllers
• add a new file called home_controller.rb
• in that file place the following line of code

class HomeController < ApplicationController
   def index
     @message = " Hello from the home controller"
   end
end

We don’t want to place any html inside the controller, so let’s create our view as well. The file extension of the html file will be .erb which stands for eRuby that is the ruby templating file like asp or jsp

• go to app/views/
• create a folder called home
• create a file named index.html.erb
• and place the following code.

<h1>
	<%=@message%>
</h1>

It is important to understand that all the files and code placed inside is a convention.

• home_controller.rb maps with root :to => "home#index"
• and the class
• HomeController maps with root :to => "home#index"
• def index maps with root :to => "home#index" and index.html.erb as well

To try how things will be broken, just rename one of the following into “homex” and see the errors.

Using Query Strings

Make a request to your home http://localhost:3000/?m=testtest Rails contains an object called params and to get the value of the m query string

@user_messsage = params [ :m ] 

Open your index.html.erb to modify the html and print out the parameter that passed in ( which is a bad idea to directly output the value )

 <h1> <%=@message%> & <%=@user_message%>  </h1>

and if you refresh you browser you will see

Hello from the home controller & testtest

but if you pass in an html tag with your query string , Rails 3 will automatically encode the output http://localhost:3000/?m=testtest<h2>

Forms

Create a form and post the information to server and back Create a new file called new.index.erb under your views/home folder paste the following code ( normal way, not rails way! )

<form action="/home/create" action="post">
  <input name="message" />
  <input type="submit" value="submit" />
</form>

and we need to map this action in our routes file.

• Open up config/routes.rb
• Add the following line under root ( line 51 )
• match "home/new" => "home#new"
• means that when you receive a request to home/new call the home controller’s new action.
• Lets define our action in home_controller.rb

  def new
  end
  				

• fire up the browser and navigate to http://localhost:3000/home/new
• you should see a simple textbox with a submit button and when you press the button, you will get an error says that

Routing Error
No route matches "/home/create"

Routing

Rather than mapping all the actions one by one, we may remove ( comment ) the match line and active the line 57

match ':controller(/:action(/:id(.:format)))'

which will do the auto mapping for us. ( sounds familiar with ASP.NET MVC global.asax routing definitions ? :)

We previously define basic html to post our data to the server, but in rails you don’t need to write that piece of code.

<% form_tag ( 'create' ) do %>
	<input name="message" />
	<input type="submit" value="submit" />
<% end %>

navigate to http://localhost:3000/home/new

def create
  	@message = params[:message]
  	# new in Rails 3 build in, use notice
	redirect_to "/" , :notice => @message
  end

and refactor index.html.erb into

<h1>
	<%=@message%>
</h1>
<%=notice%>

as you realized, we did not use the @user_message but use the notice session parameter which we set in the create method

CRUD

So far we went with the basics but the real power of rails starts with database operations and how easy to manage, generate and iterate. We start with the rails generator Scaffold

This will tell the rails that, hey rails 

• I want have a new model called pint
• Pint will have two fields which are
• Name is a string
• Price is a decimal field

Rails does not like singular form of models ( like pint in this scenario ) Here is the output rails 3 generates

bahadir@ubox:~/RubymineProjects/demo1$ rails g scaffold pint  name:string price:decimal
      invoke  active_record
      create    db/migrate/20110206113538_create_pints.rb
      create    app/models/pint.rb
      invoke    test_unit
      create      test/unit/pint_test.rb
      create      test/fixtures/pints.yml
       route  resources :pints
      invoke  scaffold_controller
      create    app/controllers/pints_controller.rb
      invoke    erb
      create      app/views/pints
      create      app/views/pints/index.html.erb
      create      app/views/pints/edit.html.erb
      create      app/views/pints/show.html.erb
      create      app/views/pints/new.html.erb
      create      app/views/pints/_form.html.erb
      invoke    test_unit
      create      test/functional/pints_controller_test.rb
      invoke    helper
      create      app/helpers/pints_helper.rb
      invoke      test_unit
      create        test/unit/helpers/pints_helper_test.rb
      invoke  stylesheets
      create    public/stylesheets/scaffold.css

After that check out the folders in your folder structure. Let’s migrate the database so that our model is also reflected ( huh did we have already a database setup ? :) Well, Sqlite is already in place and rails already made the setup for us.

bahadir@ubox:~/RubymineProjects/demo1$ rake db:migrate
(in /home/bahadir/RubymineProjects/demo1)
==  CreatePints: migrating ====================================================
-- create_table(:pints)
   -> 0.0018s
==  CreatePints: migrated (0.0019s) ===========================================

• navigate to http://localhost:3000/pints
• add couple of records now let’s do some trick
• Open up pints_controller.rb
• and the following 2 lines

  format.xml  { render :xml => @pints } after this.
  format.json { render :json=>@pints}
  format.text { render :text=>@pints}
  

• and navigate to
• http://localhost:3000/pints.json or http://localhost:3000/pints.text or http://localhost:3000/pints.xml

I am amazed how easy it is! Hold on a second, we did not setup any routing and application responds us. How could it be happen ? Open up routes.rb file Line 2 is added by the rails generator

Todays challenge is setup Python 2.5 in Ubuntu and deploy a sample application to Google App Engine. I chose Python over Java, since I don’t know much about Python and Django. Okay, it’s time to figure out

install java in ubuntu

Ubuntu 10 comes with python 2.6 but in order to run Google App Engine without any problems when deployed, you need to download and setup Python 2.5 because that is what the App Engine works right now. If you try to install python 2.5 with 

sudo apt-get install phyton2.5

 you are going to fail my friend. Let’s see how we can install python 2.5

I have found the following web site http://kovshenin.com/archives/installing-python-2-5-on-ubuntu-linux-10-10/
which describes the steps to install 2.5

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:fkrull/deadsnakes

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install python2.5

and if you run the command

python2.5

you will see an output like this;
Python 2.5.5 (r255:77872, Sep 14 2010, 15:51:01)


Setting up interpreter in Eclipse
http://pydev.org/manual_101_interpreter.html

Download Google App Engine Pyhton SDK
http://code.google.com/appengine/downloads.html and extract it to a folder ; e.g /home/bahadir/AppEngine/

Create a new Google App Engine Project

Select the location of the Google App Engine Python SDK

After your first test project created, you can click the Google App Engine deploy button. I guess, I don’t have the deploy settings for python, I got an error, “this is not a google app engine project”. Thus, I go back to basics, fire up the terminal.

To run your project locally, you may use the development server for app engine which is found in the Google App Engine SDK. The parameter is the location of your application which app.yaml is located.

./dev_appserver.py /home/bahadir/workspace/guesswhat/src/

• Sign up to Google App engine : code.google.com/appengine
• App Engine Uploading project: http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/python/tools/uploadinganapp.html
• App Engine SDK Downloads: http://code.google.com/appengine/downloads.html#Google_App_Engine_SDK_for_Python