To-Study List for this Summer

Our open source university meetup probably won't be meeting through the summer (we may actually have one meeting if I can find enough people in town who can come), so I must ensure that I spend my summer wisely. This semester has been crammed-full with classes, work, projects, volunteerism, leadership, and more - so I hope to catch up on things I need to learn throughout the summer. Here's what I hope to do:

• Complete more of the learning modules from the Sun Academic Initiative
• Learn more about Java EE
• Setup a practice Glassfish server 
• See if there's any Ruby on Rails-like framework that I like for Java (I've seen talk about things that are very similar... but they don't follow the easy-to-setup paradigm of Rails).
• Practice Ruby on Rails and finish some of my bigger projects.

 Wish me luck, and 36-hour days!

Posted at 04:29PM May 09, 2009 by Ryan Kopf in Personal  | 

Java, JRuby, and Netbeans Talks!

We had our first OSUM meetup for the semester, and it went very well. With plenty of planning and advance notice this time, combined with the power of Facebook and osum.sun.com, we had nearly a dozen members come to this meeting. At this rate we might double each meeting. Minutes will be posted on www.iowaosum.com  after I get them processed and finished.

Our talks were actually really awesome today - I feel like I could be a nice professor or lecturer. First I demonstrated Java using the Sun Java Tutorial in the NetBeans IDE. Then I gave a talk about Netbeans, and finally concluded with a demonstration of the mix of my two favorite languages (Java and Ruby) in JRuby. I demonstrated how to make a temperature converter in JRuby, which everyone really seemed to appreciate.

Posted at 06:13PM Jan 28, 2009 by Ryan Kopf in Personal  | 

Try JRuby on Windows

I just created a nice tutorial for installing JRuby on Windows. JRuby is great because it combines the power and features of Java, with the strength and elegance of Ruby! JRuby can also run Ruby on Rails, and is very nicely integrated with Java, giving you access to Java excellent resources, such as Swing.

Posted at 09:13PM Nov 11, 2008 by Ryan Kopf in Personal  |  Comments[1]

Todays Actions, Tommorrow's Thoughts

After nearly finalizing the location and date for the first OSUM meeting, I have more to do.

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Posted at 03:06PM Nov 04, 2008 by Ryan Kopf in Personal  | 

Getting Work Done

As promised, I would keep this place up to date on my accomplishments this weekend. I'm pleased with what I've gotten done so far, although I would have liked to have done a little more. I believe I'm on pace for what I need to do though. What I accomplished this weekend:

• Attended four meetings on Saturday, and took notes as necessary
• volunteered four hours for Mindbridge on Sunday
• completed 2/3 of a Java learning tutorial
• finalized a poster for my first open source meetup (in the Iowa Memorial Union)
• mailed fliers for Gamicon to by put up in the Cambus buses
• did a little to advance a couple of my ruby on rails web programs
• ran another meeting of the L club
• went to the theater
• Finished my Japanese homework
• Did most of my Computer Science homework
• Probably some other things I can't remember at the moment.

Now, I've still got more to do, and hopefully I'll get a bunch done tonight.

Posted at 03:01PM Nov 03, 2008 by Ryan Kopf in Personal  | 

Help My Blog Grow

Would you help my small little blog grow? Linking to me would help a lot! It would help me get more readers, more authority, and more of a reach so that I can communicate with even more people. Next, just watch my blog. Add it to your RSS feed, perhaps, and keep up to date with what we're up to here at the University of Iowa. Even add comments and suggestions for me - anything helps! Hopefully soon, this blog can grow tall.

Posted at 09:50PM Oct 29, 2008 by Ryan Kopf in Personal  |