My Day @ Seattle Mobile Hackathon (#mobileappSEA) The Morning

I arrived around 8:20am “ish”. @juliaferraioli & cohort were registering people. The @AWSstartups crew was there including @Jeffbarr, also @shanley, @Alex_donn, @JamesPearce, and others were already getting things put together. I decided to happily plunk down in a chair and get going. I had zero plan, but only a single goal. Make a web app that isn’t device proprietary, but is mobile centric, and get it live on the web.

My initial dev machine load that I intended to get this accomplished with I posted yesterday.  So here’s my first push…

First a quick run thru of WebStorm and RubyMine IDEs.

{Edited this part on Apr 20th to provider more information regarding Java Installation} If you’re on Ubuntu, open up the Synaptic Package Manager and search for java6, which should bring up the sun-java6-jre.  Mark it for installation and apply so that the JDK will install with the required components.  If the Java 6 isn’t available in the Synaptic Package Manager open up the Settings -> Repositories, and then the Software Sources Dialog will appear.  Click on the Other Software tab and select Canonical Partners.  Close the dialog and Reload the packages.  When a search is done now, the sun-java6-jdk should be available.

Next edit the profile at /etc/profile by entering the command:

[sourcecode language=”bash”]
sudo gedit /etc/profile
[/sourcecode]

Add the following to the bottom of the file:

[sourcecode language=”bash”]
export JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun
export JDK_HOME=$JAVA_HOME
export RUBYMINE_JDK=$JAVA_HOME
[/sourcecode]

After this is done, restart your X-Windows/Gnome Instance or simply just reboot. I don’t really like to suggest rebooting since it usually isn’t needed with Linux. 😉

Unzip both packages downloaded from Jetbrains.

[sourcecode language=”bash”]
tar -xvzf WebStorm-2.0.1.tar.gz
tar -xvzf RubyMine-3.1.1.tar.gz
[/sourcecode]

You may want to put your new applications into a specific directory. I placed mine in a folder I made within my user folder called apps. Just a little easier to keep up with things that way.

Creating a Launcher
Creating a Launcher

Once these are unzipped right click on your desktop and choose “Create Launcher…”. Click on the Browser to bring up a folder navigation dialog, find the bin directory of the app your creating a launcher for. In my case it is /home/adron/apps/WebStorm-103.243/bin/ which has the WebStorm App Files needed for the Launcher. Find the WebStorm.sh file and select it.

Once the app file is selected then check ok. For a more step by step, check out Tomi’s Blog Entry.  Do the same for both apps.

With both of those apps, simply launch the IDE and enter your key (or select 30 day trial) and you’re up and running.

RubyMine Startup (click for full size image)
RubyMine Startup (click for full size image)

With the awesome Jetbrains IDEs installed I was really ready to dive into something.  Next I went straight for a new project in RubyMine.  File -> New or just click on the Create New Project on the main RubyMine Startup Screen.

New Project Dialog
New Project Dialog

Pick your name, I’ve decided to go for some sushi with a project type of Rails application, and click enter.  The next dialog that comes up asks some standard settings information options.

Rails Settings
Rails Settings

If you click on the ellipsis button to the right of the Rails Version, a prompt will come up to select which rails version you want to use.  Ruby Mine will then install that version if it isn’t installed already.

Install Rails Version
Install Rails Version

I decided to check “Generate RDoc and ri documentation” also, and then clicked on Install.

Installing Rails Version
Installing Rails Version

Once the options and settings are made for the new project, click to create the project.  RubyMine will work for a few seconds, maybe 20 or 30 on slower machines, and eventually the IDE will display with the newly created project.  When I created it the first time I was informed I was missing some gems.

RubyMine Project (Click for larger image)
RubyMine Project (Click for larger image)

I clicked on the More… option near the Install and attach missing gems using bundler… warning to get the additional gems I needed.  This brings up a dialog specific to maintaining the Ruby SDK and Gems.

Settings (Click for larger image)
Settings (Click for larger image)

I clicked on Install Gems and found the the sqllite3 and sqllite3-ruby gems to install.  I clicked on install and then apply and OK (ok, old habit, not sure WHY apply gets put on these dialogs) on the settings screen.  Once done getting those last bits installed click on the Development: SomeSushi (or whatever you’ve named the project) and select Edit Configurations.

Development: SomeSushi
Development: SomeSushi

On the Edit Configurations Dialog screen check Run Browser from the bottom of the options and click on OK.  Then click on run button (the green play button on the button bar) to run the Ruby on Rails Web Application.  Within a second or two you’ll see the default Ruby on Rails + RubyMine Run the site in the browser.

RubyMine Ruby on Rails Default Web App
RubyMine Ruby on Rails Default Web App

At this point in the day I took a break, ate lunch, talked to @AWSstartups crew @rodica & @Jeffbarr.  Introduced myself formally in person to @shanley and chit chatted about our respective efforts with @lazycoder and @juliaferraioli.  The food was great, as in, it was actually really good.  Not some random junk.  Super tender chicken with spaghetti sauce and little round funny shaped pastas (I’m sure there is an appropriate name for em’).  I was honestly impressed by the food brought in.

After lunch I dived back in for the next phase of development.  For that though, I have another blog entry coming…  (stay tuned).

What is Your Take on Mobile App Development?

So what’s the #mobileappSEA coders think? What stack is mobile dev on or moving to, where do you think it is going?

Seattle Mobile Hackathon (#mobileappSEA @ F5 Networks)

This Saturday is the Seattle Mobile Hackathon.  I’ve been preparing my machine for some mobile hacking of my own.  The event looks like it will be a blast, hopefully you’re signed up already, because it’s sold out and down to the waiting list.  🙂

So far my machine is shaping up like this:

I am however torn between the mobile framework/SDK/APIs I want to use.  Some of the options include:
Needless to say, lots of options.  I’m a big fan of options!  Any other suggestions for stacks or suggestions on the mobile frameworks I’d appreciate.

#wp7/#wp7dev + Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Windows Azure

I got to mess around with the Windows Phone 7 SDK finally over the last few weeks (Twitter hashtags #wp7 and #wp7dev).  The first few things I noticed was that there are a lot of missing parts to it.  Namely the calendar control I fussed about well over a month ago in Windows Phone 7 Calendar Control.  Even with the missing elements I kept wondering what I could build that would be useful and might be a good open source project?  I finally stumbled on the idea that I’d roll a few of my points of study together into one;  Windows Azure, Amazon Web Services, and Windows Phone 7.  With that stumbling notion I navigated straight over to Codeplex and rolled a new project!

With that written, I hope I can get some of you cloud afficionados and gurus to put in a few hours a month to help build a rockin’ open source mobile admin app!  If you’re interested please e-mail and I’ll get you setup on the project ASAP!  🙂

Here are my first few user stories just to get things started.  If you think of other functionality, please feel free to add that to the comments below or to the tracking section on the Codeplex Project.

http://wp7cloudadmin.codeplex.com/