This meme has been floating around Facebook lately, I’m not going to tag anyone here since I did it there, but thought I’d share this list with those of you who might not be on Facebook:

(progn (setq num 1)(princ "\n\n25 Random Things About Me\n\n")(while (< num 26) (princ (format "%d. \n" num))(setq num (1+ num))))

25 Random Things About Me

1. I have been programming since I was 8.
2. I’m writing this list in emacs.
3. I was on the Varsity Team for the 1997 Ohio State Academic Decathlon Team.
4. I’ve only been west of the Mississippi once, for the National Academic Decathlon Championships in St. George, Utah.
5. I spent the ages of 5 to 9 in Marietta, GA.
6. I’m fantastically good at making my daughter vomit.
7. I spent a year at DeVry in Columbus working on a BA in Electronic Engineering, before moving back home.  I flunked every class.
8. I worked in Technical support for 8 years, all the way up to Middle Management until I had the chance to take an "Employee Requested Demotion" to get started programming.
9. I was introduced to my wife in high school, but we really didn’t meet until we ran across each other on AOL.  We had lived less then a mile apart for almost a decade.
10. I was a BBS junkie growing up during my teens.  I even sysop’d my own for a while.
11. My buddy (Jim Balcomb) and I use to sneak out of my house in the middle of the night to go dumpster diving.  "I’m pretending to be a garbage bag, shut up!"
12. I was one of those linux zealots who hated Microsoft and vowed never to work in an MS shop… until I started getting paid to support a small number of Terminal Servers (the rest were running an OS called Real/32).  Now I’m a Microsoft MVP.
13. I’m currently keeping track of everything I eat and drink, in order to force myself to be healthier in my choices.  You can see what I’m eating and drinking here: http://twitpic.com/photos/mletterle_diet
14. My wife and I tried to have a baby for four years before we finally had our daughter via IVF.
15. Three days after our daughter was born, we had to rush her to the hospital at 4am. I rode in the ambulance that took her from the ER to the Children’s hospital.  Three weeks later she came out healthy and we haven’t looked back since.
16. I was absolutely terrified of getting my blood taken and hated shots, before we had to go through IVF.  I still don’t like them, but I no longer am in mortal terror for a blood draw or shot.
17. I smoked cigarettes regularly from about age 14 until 20, including pipes in college.  I still enjoy a good cigar now and then.
18. I own two guitars, an acoustic and an electric.  I play both poorly, but am determined to be good (at least passable) on them someday.
19. I once read Dante’s Inferno over summer vacation while a teen.  Just because I wanted to.
20. I am very dexterous with my feet.  I can pick up and throw things with them.  My mother always said we had Hobbit feet, owning to the patch of hair on top.
21. I took the cookie from the cookie jar.  See number 13.
22. I am an Eagle Scout.  But only because my parents hounded me about it for a good two years.
23. I can crack the bones in my right toes on demand.
24. I once [REDACTED] in [REDACTED] to [REDACTED] until [REDACTED].
25. Yes, I wrote the lisp program above so I wouldn’t have to type all these numbers.
nil

My entire life I’ve been what is commonly known as “fat”, or, as the clothing industry calls it, “Big and Tall”.  I have been blessed with both an impressive girth and height.  For as long as I can remember these have been my defining physical qualities.  I generally cast an imposing figure over my contemporaries, that didn’t stop the teasing during my childhood of course, but those times passed generally without much incident. And for years these attributes caused me no real harm, medically I was “healthy” besides my obesity.  My cholesterol was low, my blood pressure normal, no problems with sugar levels.

Now, as I stare down thirty, this is no longer quite true.  For the most part I’m still healthy (again, except for the pounds of extra flesh), but cracks in my infrastructure have begun to creep up.  The blood pressure is starting to tick up slightly, the cholesterol and sugar are still good, for now.  But more worrisome is my knees.  Starting about a year and a half ago they began “grinding” and generally starting to, well, not be their old weight-supporting selves any more.  Even more troubling is I have a family history of knee problems.  My father (who is NOT obese) is having both his knees replaced this year. 

So, what does this have to do with the title of this blog post?  What is the “30 Day Intake Experiment”?  The 30 day experiment I am about to take is my first step towards, hopefully, leading a more healthy life style. This is my attempt to be honest with myself about my eating habits.  For the next thirty days, I will be recording EVERY piece of food and drink that I consume.  I have created a twitter account and will be posting pictures of every meal I have every day.  In this manner I will not be able to “cheat” or lie to myself about what my diet is. 

I fully intend to follow this up with increased physical activity as well, it’s a little difficult during the height of a Cleveland winter, but I will find some way.  This is simply the first step.  Believe it or not, I once had a membership at a gym, and those two years were probably when I’ve felt the most energetic and healthy.  It’s definitely something I want to get back to.  Ironically, I originally joined the gym in anticipation of our daughter, and haven’t been able to go back since we’ve had her.  Children take up a ton of time :)

In another twist, completely unknown to me, this month is the “Fit in February Developer Challenge”.  Strangely apropos don’t you think?

I had the pleasure of spending this past weekend with a group of about two dozen of the most talented and passionate developers in this region, and some from outside.  This was no ordinary conference though, this was camping!  We had no electricity, no flushing toilets, and a hand pump for running water.  The great thing about the lack of power  though is that distraction was at an absolute minimum, all we could really do was talk and listen.  I kept a camp journal, below is the transcription (with some embellishment):

——

9/5/08

We have arrived at Agile Summer Camp.  After claiming a bottom bunk in the rear of the cabin, I am sitting in my camp chair enjoying a beer while Brandon Joyce, funky town dancer extraordinaire, cranks the camp radio so we can listen to Chef (RIP) croon on a 70s station.  Sadukie is dead-tree blogging and Woody and Matt Werstler have gone for firewood.  We are anxiously awaiting the arrival of Mike Eaton who has recently called and is nearby. 

Suddenly, a car arrives.  Could this be Mr. Eaton?  Or a guy with a chainsaw (I hope he has bud light!).  It turns out to be Josh Holmes (who looks like he could have a chainsaw…).  He is followed shortly by Eaton, and then others.

There was a guest log in the back of the cabin packet that contained a riddle, as people arrived we asked for them to take it on, but no one could come up with an answer, see if you can:

We buried the loot where the fish used to swim

40 paces westerly of monitor, third stopper (not for bathtub) from the left.  one foot down right side.

1st Clue:  Are you good enough?

-John from Beaverton May 26, 2008

The evening ends with awesome discussions on community and a few already on the topic of agile.  Also me and Mike Eaton finish a fifth and a pint of Jack ourselves (okay Steve Andrews helped a little).

——

9/6/08

CLANK! CLING! CLANG!  I am roused from my fitful sleep by the sharp cry of metal to metal.  I change in my sleeping bag and make my way out of the cabin to find turkey sausage and eggs being cooked on the, now assembled, camp stove….

——

The rest of the journal devolves into generic notes, most of which can be found here (along with a lot more detail on the actual sessions).

Needless to say it was very educational and loads of fun.

I had the pleasure of being interviewed along side Aaron Junod on the Alt.NET Podcast to discuss IronRuby. 

Michael  Moore was a wonderful host and did an amazing job editing the conversation down to something tight.  It was an exciting opportunity to talk about IronRuby specifically and Ruby in general.  Hopefully it will help spark even more interest in it.

On a personal note, I’m interested in any feedback you might have, from the technical to the stylistic. It was my first time doing a podcast, so it’s definitely a learning experience for me.

I had the pleasure of attending devLink this past weekend in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.  Honestly, I almost blew this conference off.  The sessions really didn’t appeal to me, and it was a bit of a hike to get to.  But then Amanda Laucher announced the DevLink Bus. And I started to waver…  Then I heard that Alan Stevens would be organizing Open Spaces during the conference. I was sold.

Wednesday evening around 7:30, my wife dropped me off at Sadukie’s house. Brandon Joyce was already there, watching Family Guy.  After Sadukie finished gathering up her wares, we piled into her Durango and headed off to pick up Corey Haines. A quick trip across town and we were on our way to Toledo to catch the bus.

Well, more accurately we were on our way to Toledo to wait for the bus.  The bus apparently went to the wrong side of town and it had to turn around to pick us up.  This wasn’t entirely bad.  It gave us enough time to pick up beer and for Corey to have an impromptu parking lot concert. And what’s better then beer and music?

Eventually the bus arrived and we REALLY began our journey.  A journey of corny movies and lack of sleep.  After much tossing and turning and cursing of lack of leg room, we arrived in Tennessee about 9am.  At which point I collapsed in my hotel room and passed out. Waking up in the evening, I followed my instinct to the local hotel bar/restaurant. Later on, I ended up making my way to Alan’s room where a party was going down.  Guitars, Cigars, and Beers were being passed around with abandon until hotel security came to the door and asked us nicely to stop.

The rest of the time in Tennessee is really a blur.  I wish I could give a detailed synopsis of each day, replete with details and names.  But honestly, the days meld into one another, linked only by great conversations, new experiences, and wonderful people.  I can’t stress enough the amount of knowledge I gained, and the success of the Open Space format that was put into place.

Alas, it was over much too soon.  By Saturday night it was time to board the bus once again, and make the long, movie filled trip back to Ohio… Who knows, maybe this time I could get some sleep? I cuddled up to the window and slowly drifted…

“THUMP, THUMP, THUMP, THUMP!”  Okay, so sleep wasn’t going to happen.

A blown tire. Great, James Avery’s ribbing about “Everyone was screaming… except Cliff” went through my head.  It didn’t help that we passed a sign commemorating a 1988 bus tragedy (no joke). The bus slowly inched along, until we pulled into a gas station in English, Kentucky.  Our faces aglow in the soft light of nearby Waffle House.  We waited.  And Waited.  Cooter showed up, and proceeded to sheer three bolts off the wheel.  So we continued to wait.  But while we waited, a remarkable thing happened.  Incredible conversations took place.  On Comments, on SRP, and any number of things.  The Open Spaces continued into the most open space possible, the world beyond the conference. Then the acetylene torch came out.

So we waited a bit more.  Marriages came and went we waited so long. Eventually a new tire was on and we were off.  By 1pm I was home holding my daughter and reflecting on a fantastic conference.  I was thankful I ended up going, though some images will be seared into my brain, forever.

I’ll at least be able to say I shared a tour bus with a member of Ratt.

The best part is that the conversation continues at the Heartland Open Spaces Wiki. Be sure to stop by and join in!

Next, I’ll be at Agile Summer Camp, and then I’m home until CodeMash in January 2009.  To all my new friends, old friends, and friends to be, I hope to see you there!

One of the things I went over in my eRubyCon talk was the relative performance of IronRuby compared to both JRuby  (which I consider to be a cousin of sorts to IronRuby) and MRI. I did this by running the same tests that Antonio Cangiano ran in December.

There were a few test results that really stood out.  The lists test was by far the worst for IR, where it was 56 times as slow as MRI and 3 times as slow as JRuby.  But this wasn’t the only sore spot, there were other places that show room for improvement.  Namely, vm1_blocks in which IronRuby was almost 9 times as slow as MRI.  Also so_exception where IronRuby brought up the tail by being 10 times as slow as MRI.

The nitty gritty is that IronRuby is about twice as slow as MRI with JRuby being slightly faster, overall.  As the below graph illustrates:

There are a few high points in this test though.  Number one, is that IronRuby ran the majority of the tests.  There were only four failures out of forty, for a 90% success rate.  For comparison JRuby had 95% success rate. Number two, there were actually a few tests in which IronRuby beat JRuby and MRI.  No small feat for such a young implementation.

I think this mini-shootout illustrates that there is a lot of room for improvement for IronRuby.  However, a little perspective goes a long way.  JRuby was announced in 2001, IronRuby was announced last April.  The JRuby team has had 7 years to get to where they are today, whereas IronRuby has only had almost a year and a half! As the DLR improves IronRuby will receive those performance gains for free, and as compatibility becomes more stable the core team can focus on performance as well. The raw data can be downloaded here.

What a fantastic conference this was two weeks ago.  A great lineup of speakers, and fantastic after event gatherings.  And I missed the first day!  Josh Holmes has a great series of posts detailing the event, so I won’t repeat the play by play here.  But I can say that I will definitely be making the trip to Columbus for eRubyCon 2009. 

This was the first conference I have gone to where I actually presented.  My talk was originally geared more towards .NET developers interested in Ruby, thinking that there would be more Java and .NET enterprise folks there then it turned out.  After I arrived, as I listened to the attendees, I realized the audience was primarily people already doing Ruby.  I also noticed a certain level of distrust around Microsoft in general, even though the event was hosted in their office!  As I was going to be speaking on IronRuby, a Microsoft project, this concerned me a bit.  So I ended up putting in an opening section about some of, what I believe to be, the positive changes at Microsoft over the last half-decade or so.  I highlighted efforts like CodePlex and Port25.  A number of people seemed to copy down the Port25 address, so I hope I helped open some eyes in this case.  I also went over the current state of IronRuby, and compared it’s performance to JRuby.  I then asked who did .NET work in their day to day jobs and must have had about 5 people raise their hands.  Then I went through a short demo of opening up and changing a standard WinForms app using IronRuby. It seemed to go well, I’ve gotten positive feedback on it and a number of suggestions for improvement.

I can’t thank Joe O’Brien enough for the opportunity or confidence in me he showed by allowing me to speak.  The slides and demo used for my presentation are here.

There’s a new podcast in town y’all, and wooeee is it good. (A little Southern lingo for you there).  Keith “The Elder”  Elder and Chris “Woody” Woodruff, two extremely smart gentlemen who I have the honor of knowing, have recently begun podcasting about Development and Technology with a Southern Twang.  The title and theme of this endeavor?  Why, Deep Fried Bytes of course!

The first episodes are based at the MVP summit that took place in April.  From a discussion on what interface a Chicken should implement to lay eggs (my vote is for IEggLayer) to extolling the Power of Twitter, each episode has been filled with warm humor and good information.  The passion they, and their guests, have for technology really comes shining through.  Leaving you with a contented, full feeling, similar to eating a good bucket of wings fresh from the deep fryer.

The production values are surprisingly high for such a new podcast.  Even though the podcast is only 3 episodes old (really two, the intro one almost doesn’t count ;) ), you would think these guys have at LEAST 10 episodes under their belts, minimum.  And there has been steady improvement. In the first episode or two, Woody sounded much quieter then Keith, by the third episode that’s been resolved.  The new intro from Elly Mae is top notch, leading you in that this is a serious (but not too serious) affair. The last episode shows a marked improvement in over all production (though you can tell they are still playing with editing, in the beginning there are parts where it sounds "clippy").  If better is yet to come, you’ll find me there!  And now that they have a sponsor, the future is looking bright.

So come on down, take yer shoes off, and pop a squat with the Paula Deens of Podcasting!

Links

• Deep Fried Bytes Homepage
• Deep Fried Bytes on iTunes
• Deep Fried Bytes on Zune Market Place
• Deep Fried Byte’s Twitter
• Keith’s Blog
• Woody’s Blog

Just a heads up to my faithful readership, I’ll be speaking about IronRuby at erubycon this August.  It’ll be my first  public speaking engagement at a technical conference, and my first real public speaking since High School (in-house presentations don’t count in my book).  I’m quite nervous but it’s a topic I’m passionate about so I’m really excited as well.  The title of the talk is "Because Iron is Battleship Gray: IronRuby In The Real World", and it won’t mention Silverlight or Rails.  Ruby is so much more than glitz and glam, and I think that tends to get lost in the hype.  She’s a sexy lady, but she’s got brains too!

Hope to see you there!

Back in January I did a post on getting started with IronRuby.  That post was based on Rev. 75 of the SVN tree.  As of  today (June 9th) the SVN tree is up to Rev. 113.  Obviously with things like RailsConf and TechEd driving a lot of the core teams work, a number of things have changed since January.  This post will basically be a rehash of the previous one, but updated for all the new quirks that have been introduced.

Getting The Source

As before, I recommend using TortoiseSVN to grab the source. Downloading will take a bit, after the 3.5MB of source is downloaded you should end up with a directory structure like the following:

Compiling IronRuby

Inside of the trunk directory you will find the IronRuby.sln file, double-clicking it will open the solution (note that the solution file is now in VS2008 format instead of the previous VS2005 format).  You may get a warning, you can select “Load the Project Normally” and uncheck “Ask me this for all projects in the solution.”

Once the solution is loaded, keep the solution on the “Debug” configuration.  Do NOT select “ExternalDebug” (you’ll get broken references if you do):

Next we will manually remove the “SIGNED” compilation symbol from all the projects, as of Rev. 113 you have to manually remove it from the IronRuby.Libraries, Microsoft.Scripting, and Microsoft.Scripting.Core (be sure not to delete the DLR symbol) projects.

Once those are removed you can build the source!

Running That Which You Have Wrought

Where has previously our compilation would output into a bin\Debug folder, the resulting files are now found in \trunk\build\debug, which should look like this:

Due to a conflict with rubinius, the rbx executable is now ir.

As before you can just run ir.exe and enter the wonderful world of ruby, or you can continue on to see how we roll in the .NET world.

Speaking C# With A Ruby Accent

The initial steps are basically the same as before, start a new C# console project and add references to Microsoft.Scripting.dll, Microsoft.Scripting.Core.dll, IronRuby.dll, and IronRuby.Libraries.dll.

We are going to create a simple console app that shows passing variables into and out of a ruby script.

The below program should be a good example:

using System;

using Ruby;

using Microsoft.Scripting.Hosting;
namespace IronRubyConsoleApp

{

    class Program

    {

        static void Main(string[] args)

        {
ScriptRuntime irruntime = IronRuby.CreateRuntime();

            ScriptEngine ir = IronRuby.GetEngine(irruntime);

            ScriptScope scope = ir.CreateScope();

            ScriptSource script = ir.CreateScriptSourceFromString(“puts \”Hello, #{name}!\”\ninput + 2″);

            scope.SetVariable(“name”, “.NET”);

            scope.SetVariable(“input”, 2);

            int x = script.Execute<int>(scope);

            Console.WriteLine(string.Format(“The Result was {0}”, x));

            Console.ReadLine();

        }

    }

}

You can see a clear hierarchy here:

We have a Runtime

That has an Engine

That has a Scope

That has a Source

We create a runtime, and we get our IronRuby engine into the runtime, we create a scope and load a script using that engine.  Set a couple of variables in the scope and then execute the script within the scope that we have set the variables in.

Hopefully this is enough to get you started, you should probably check out the other CreateScriptSource methods that the engine contains, you have a veritable cornucopia of options:

Ruby with a .NET Accent

Another of the popular activities with IronRuby, if not the most popular, is going to be interfacing with both the .NET framework and other .NET code.  The below example shows us interfacing with System.Windows.Forms and making a simple GUI app.

require ‘mscorlib’

require ‘ System.Windows.Forms, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089′

require ‘System.Drawing, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a’

Swf=System::Windows::Forms

Sd=System::Drawing

class RubyForm <Swf::Form

def add_button text, location

button = Swf::Button.new

button.Text = text

button.Location = location

self.Controls.Add button

button

end

def initialize

self.Text = “RubyForm”

@rbutton = add_button “Click Me!”,  Sd::Point.new(150, 150)

@rbutton2 = add_button “Click Me!”, Sd::Point.new(150, 100)

@rbutton.Click {|sender, e| Swf::MessageBox.show ‘Hello World!’}

@rbutton2.Click {|sender, e| Swf::MessageBox.show ‘Hello, .NET!’}

end

end

rf = RubyForm.new

rf.ShowDialog

As you can see above, when requiring items from the GAC we must include the Fully Qualified Name, including version and StrongNameToken if applicable. The above code inherits from System.Windows.Forms.Form and adds a helper class for adding buttons and wires up a couple of event handlers.  Again this is just a simple example to get you started.

Summary

In this post we downloaded the IronRuby source, compiled it, and worked with IronRuby both from C# and by running a ruby script against .NET objects.  Hopefully this gets you going a little faster and onto the fun stuff quicker!

Links

IronRuby Homepage

IronRuby RubyForge Project

Ruby Language Homepage

John Lam’s homepage