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Short outage, new servers and mailing lists

Tue, 30 Jan 2007 16:20:33 GMT

We had a short outage with one of our application hosting servers yesterday afternoon. For some inexplicable reason, the server restarted hasn't left any log messages to explain why. All of the sites hosted on that application server were unavailable for about 10 minutes, but came back with no further problems. We're keeping an eye on the situation to make sure it doesn't happen again!

In other news, we have partnered with another Edinburgh-based company, Xeriom Networks, to increase our hosting capacity. We are in the process of rearranging which clients are on which application servers in order to increase performance. In particular, the new server is hosted in the UK, so we'll be moving clients who have mostly UK-based users to there in order to reduce network latency.

And finally, we've set up a mailing list so that we can keep our customers abreast of Rubaidh's latest developments. You can join the list with the form below:

We promise not to overload your inbox, and we'll never pass on your email address to other people. We hate spam too. :-)

Mail outage

Mon, 20 Nov 2006 17:03:28 GMT

Our mail hosting company have had a slight DNS glitch, and unfortunately, our email has been unavailable for most of today. Some messages were even bounced, which isn't exactly ideal... It should be up and running again now, so if you sent us an email in the past 24 hours and you haven't heard back from us, please resend it! If you're curious as to what went wrong, see my own blog entry.

Next ScotRUG meeting

Mon, 13 Nov 2006 13:00:33 GMT

The next meeting of the Scottish Ruby Users Group is on Thursday 16th November at the Holyrood Tavern, 9a Holyrood Road, Edinburgh (Google map). Graeme will be there from around 19:00 onwards. I gather the Holyrood is doing food again... There's no particular schedule, just a few beers and a chat, though I do hear rumours that we'll have a number of Agile Scotland regulars joining us.

Ruby on Rails Training, 24-27 October, Edinburgh

Tue, 03 Oct 2006 15:26:29 GMT

Skills Matter (the people who brought you RailsConf Europe 2006) are running a four day Ruby on Rails course here in Edinburgh on 24-27th October. The course was created by Chad Fowler for Rails 1.1 and first delivered by him in April of this year. I was on that course, and I can tell you it's absolutely fantastic.

So, why am I telling you about it? Well, I will be delivering the course. You'll get to spend four full days in my company, learning all about Ruby and Rails. You'll get to hear all of my funny stories (at least twice -- I don't have that many anecdotes!), see pictures of my cats and be cajoled into nipping out for a swift 'alf when we're done for the day.

For more details, an overview of what the course contains and to book, see: http://www.skillsmatter.com/ruby-on-rails-course.

Oh, and Edinburgh is a lovely city to visit too. Well served by air & train, very friendly and has lots to do. Why not come for the course and make a weekend of it, seeing the sites?

Training courses

Mon, 25 Sep 2006 14:37:43 GMT

In conjunction with Skills Matter, Rubaidh is pleased to announce that we can now offer a number of training courses, delivered by Graeme. We will be teaching public courses in Edinburgh and are available for private, customised on-site courses anywhere internationally. Currently, we provide the following courses:

Core Ruby on Rails: Web Development With Ruby on Rails, a four day course teaching you everything you need to know to get started in Ruby on Rails, including Ruby itself.
Core TDD: Test Driven Development in Java, a two-day course on making use of the test driven development methodology to improve your design and code quality.

The next public course in Edinburgh for Rails starts on 24th October. Space is limited, so book now!

Rearranging the web site

Tue, 01 Aug 2006 13:22:40 GMT

I've been redeveloping the Rubaidh web site. Instead of using our own, custom-built Rails application, I've migrated the site across to Radiant CMS a basic CMS developed in Ruby on Rails. It's proving to be just what we needed for a simple-to-use CMS that doesn't provide all the bells and whistles we don't use, while making it easy to create content, which is what's important to us. So expect so see some new and exciting content added over the coming weeks.

Some of the URLs have changed a bit. Actually, most of them have, but I don't believe there was much in the way of deep-linking here from other sites anyway. So if you happen across a missing page, have a surf around and see if you can't find it elsewhere now. Any problems, let me know and I'll get them sorted straight away!

Scottish Ruby User Group

Tue, 01 Aug 2006 12:58:14 GMT

... for want of a better name. :)

The inaugural meeting of the Scottish Ruby User Group has been arranged! We'll be meeting in The Regent, 2 Montrose Terrace, Edinburgh on Thursday 25th May, from 19:00 onwards. Chances are we'll be in the back room.

The Regent's a great pub, near enough to Waverley Station for non-Edinburgers, with free Wi-fi access and a lovely selection of beers, ciders, spirits and wine. Orkney Dark Island is making a regular appearance on the pumps these days.

There's nothing formal arranged for this meeting; it's just a chance to get the ball rolling, see who's interested in Ruby around Scotland and to have a chat with a few beers.

To hear further announcements about Scottish Ruby User Group meetings, please subscribe to the mailing list.

I hope to see you there. :)

(Reposted from woss.name on the off-chance that somebody reads one and not t'other.)

Pauses

Tue, 01 Aug 2006 12:57:23 GMT

Well, I've been so busy working that I've not put any time into keeping this blog up to date. Which is a shame, because there's nothing worse than a desolate blog!

So what's new? Well, we have launched our first hosted rails application, an online store for Rocco Venezia. You can read more about the site and our involvement in their customer profile.

We've also deployed a test site with our own application for hosting art galleries. Deborah Cameron, a local artist here in Edinburgh and a family friend, has kindly offered to be our guinea pig. Soon we'll be ready to unveil the application to a more general audience.

Other than that, it's been life as usual, still working away on a couple of Plone sites to pay the bills and fleshing out our web site a little more. Have a look around and tell me what you think!

Rubaidh != Rubbish!

Tue, 01 Aug 2006 12:55:46 GMT

John and I were mucking around in Google, seeing how the new web site turns up for various search terms. It's only early days of course -- the web site has barely been alive for more than a couple of weeks, and is certainly still not something I would consider 'complete' -- but already searching for the word 'rubaidh' has us appear as a result. That's a good start. :)

However, there is one slight problem. Google kindly suggests that 'rubaidh' might have been a typo, and did we really mean to search for 'rubbish'? Eek! That's not a great connotation; Google already thinks we're rubbish! So I've emailed them to ask if it's possible for the spelling algorithm to be tweaked in particular instances:

Hi,

I wonder if it's possible to tweak the system that suggests spelling variations when you enter a particular search term? My company's name is Rubaidh Ltd (Rubaidh being the Scots Gaelic for Ruby) and, when searching Google for that phrase, it unfortunately suggests that I might be looking for 'rubbish' instead.

While highly amusing to us, I suspect that it might give potential customers a pejorative opinion before they've even visited our site!

Is it possible for Google not to suggest rubbish as a spelling variation of Rubaidh?

Regards,

Graeme

Hopefully it can be updated to realise that Rubaidh really is the correct spelling of a Scots Gaelic word...

Starting a business

Tue, 01 Aug 2006 12:54:25 GMT

Well, the 'mechanical' aspects of starting a business are taking longer than I anticipated. But on the plus side, we now have a web site. Well, of sorts, at least. What do you think? I'm not entirely convinced by the loveliness of the purple border, and we need to work on the style a little more in general. But at least it's now out there!