Ruby Kaigi 2010 Day 1

Here I am in Japan at RubyKaigi 2010. Wow. Generally I tweet a lot about the conf live and then publish those tweets here (in italics) and provide slightly more commentary. So lets get it on.
  • So my flight leaves at noon for #rubykaigi, takes 13 hours, and arrives at 3pm tomorrow... Wait -- that can't be right. #looksitupagain
  • Before today's trip to Japan the furthest from the U.S.A. I've ever been is: Canada. #howisthatpossible
  • In cab. It has begun.
  • Someone once said "If you've never missed a flight you're spending too much time in airports" #atgate2hoursearly
Yep - can you feel the panic in those first couple of tweets? I was totally freaked out. The actual trip turned out to be easy. I met up with Chad Fowler, Yehuda, and Woody at the airport and we took a bus straight to Tsukuba. I went to an exotic foreign land and the first thing I did was take a bus through 100 minutes of strip malls. But I was in Japan. And Yehuda held forth on 'snowmen' and encodings for most of the way so that was interesting.


Yehuda Katz Holds Forth on the Bus


  • So it's 7:15 am in Chicago, meaning I've been up for over 24 hours. So that's like 36 old man hours.
  • My first meal in Japan was near 60 bucks. And I'm not even in Tokyo yet. I'm gonna need a bigger wallet.
  • Also, I almost got run over by not one, but two bicyclists using cell phones to text.
  • And 7-11's are everywhere.
So I survived the first day and even had an excellent dinner. It was a bit pricey but worth it. Many thanks to Makoto Inoue for helping organize this get together - it was exactly what I needed.

  • Donuts are cute in Japan: http://is.gd/eFXCR


Donuts are cute at Mr. Donut

Ate second breakfast/lunch at "Mr. Donut" which is really nice here in Japan. Of course you can get noodles.

  • Good news: #rubykaigi has a non-freezing temperature. I was worried it would be 91 outside and 50 inside. Which tends to make me sick
  • Some nice low-key techno playing in the #rubykaigi main convention hall.
  • RT @headius Ruby 1.8.8 will release this year and be the last 1.8 release. Some debate still about whether to backport 1.9.2 features. #rubykaigi
Ah, Charles got to got to the secret Ruby Core meeting so he's in the know. Actually I could have probably gone too but I wasn't sure if just anyone was allowed.

  • Btw, the advice I received to stay up as long as possible after my flight to Japan was good. Feeling no jet-lag.
  • I adjusted my Japanese rent-a-phone to display am/pm and now it reads "0:32pm" I guess they really like military time here
It's the little things that are the most endearing.

  • Getting an introduction to #rubykaigi in japanese with translations coming in IRC which is displayed on side screens. #lag

We get a lecture on proper use of wifi


  • Next up at #rubykaigi is a panel on Rails 3/ Ruby 1.9.2 (replacing canceled keynote)

First panel


  • Ah, the translations are back. Mostly. #rubykaigi
  • RT @headius I can't decide if it will be more or less exhausting to attend three days of conference sessions I can't understand :) #RubyKaigi
  • .@wycats is fearless - he's critiquing Ruby 1.9.2 while sitting 5 feet from matz on stage
So Leonard was doing the translation from Japanese to English and Matz was doing the translation from English to Japanese which lead the a moment where Matz had to translate Yehuda's (nice) criticism of Ruby 1.9.

  • One of things @tenderlove really likes about 1.9 is using encodings is painless. You have to think about it but it's easy. #rubykaigi
  • Secret to getting commit rights on Ruby or Rails? Submit patches with tests over a consistent period. #rubykaigi
  • .@tenderlove doesn't think that ActiveRecord got the same amount of love that ActiveSupport did in Rails 3. #rubykaigi
  • Specifically @tenderlove doesn't like ActiveRelation's integration in ActiveRecord in Rails 3. "It needs help" #rubykaigi
  • .@wycats' response: "There's always 3.1" #rubykaigi
  • .@tenderlove feels less able to bounce around the whole project when developing on Ruby as compared to Rails. #rubykaigi
  • .@wycats brought up something for Ruby core, saw a lot of discussion referencing his name but he could not participate. #rubykaigi
Ah the perils of trying to develop across (real) languages.

  • Wait, Sarah's talk is going to be in Japanese? #rubykaigi
  • Oh, just the first part -- well done. #rubykaigi
She learned a lot of Japanese just for this presentation. Good for her.

  • Rails wrapping of Javascript is kind of a disaster - mostly because javascript is changing fast. #rubykaigi
Good point - I hadn't really thought about why wrapping SQL works so well while wrapping Javascript works out so poorly.
  • Step one to writing testable Javascript: Get it out of the view. #rubykaigi
  • Pivotal uses Jasmine to test their Javascript: Bdd/RSpec like syntax and no dom is required. Can run in browser or headless. #rubykaigi
  • There's no time between sessions to escape one and go to another. Good thing I don't mind appearing rude. #rubykaigi
Picture a lot of me saying "Excuse me" to people who don't understand english.

  • OH "Social games are just CMS with bad UI's" #rubykaigi
That's really funny.

  • MySql 5 only supports 3 bytes for UTF8. huh. #rubykaigi
  • A 'u' with an umlaut is two code points that represent one character. #rubykaigi
  • UTF8 and UTF16 are both encodings of unicode. #rubykaigi
  • In Ruby 1.8 and C a string is just an array of bytes. #rubykaigi
  • "Corruption is normal" - @wycats #rubykaigi
  • force_encoding is not the way. If you have to use it you probably have a deeper problem. #rubykaigi
  • Dear internet: Take all sweeping statements with a grain of salt.
Two sessions in a row on encodings. We all feel like we need to know more about encodings. And then we ignore that feeling until it bites us in the ass.

  • jugyo has a lot of Growl-themed ideas. #rubykaigi
  • Had an outbreak of super-sleepiness. Purchased a strange energy drink from an even stranger vending machine and I'm good. #rubykaigi
  • TermColor can do blink! Now that's progress. #rubykaigi
  • Cinatra is Sinatra for command line apps. #rubykaigi
  • "write code like writing blog entries" - jugyo #rubykaigi
Watching Jugyo talk is always entertaining - I loved his lightning talk at last years Ruby Conf.

  • .@tenderlove has changed into a crappy suit -- It's business time! #rubykaigi
  • And headgear? #rubykaigi

@tenderlove 1

That, my friends, is awesome. I can't compete in shear crazy and acknowledge my superior.

  • The number of languages (code) vs. the number of languages (speak) is completely off. #rubykaigi
  • "People are interpreters with forgiving parsers." - @tenderlove #rubykaigi
  • .@tenderlove enjoys programming the most at hack nights. Challenging and fun. #rubykaigi
  • PHP and Ruby living together: Webrick serving up WordPress. You are one weird dude @tenderlove #rubykaigi
Webrick serving up PHP WordPress. Think about that for a moment.

  • Making some last minute changes to my #rubykaigi presentation: "Speedy Tests" Come see it tomorrow at 13:30 in room 200
Hey, I just found out I have an hour time slot when I had thought I was going to present for 30 minutes. I guess the crowd is going to get some bonus metric_fu coverage. As I'm going to present in 4 hours I better go write some more content. Panic!

Oh yeah, go check out my Ruby Kaigi photo set on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jakescruggs/sets/72157624815648014/

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