Pratik Naik from the Rails core team just published the announcement for a new Ruby on Rails hackfest: The person with the most patches merged into the core at the end of the month wins. In August, O’Reilly will handout a free pass to the RailsConf Europe. Keep on coding!

From Sept. 2nd to Sept. 4th 2008 the Ruby on Rails community will meet at the RailsConf Europe. It’s the third RailsConf in Europe and it will located in Berlin/Germany again. Last year, more than 800 Rails enthusiasts joined the conference - a great developer community event - and always the chance to drink your coffee besides one of the creative minds of the Rails Core team There is nothing that can replace the face-to-face communication within the community. So, I can warmly recommend joining the conference in Berlin to every Rails developer who is able to get there. And all those, who want to develop elegant web applications and do not work with Ruby on Rails yet - they should join us more than ever.
But there is an other group I miss a lot on Ruby on Rails conferences: Designers. Why? Because great application and interaction design and good web-application usability can only be achieved if developers and designers work closely together. That is why developers need to know something about design and designers need to know something about development.

So, I’m really happy that my  proposal, focussing on that issue, was accepted at the conference. In my double role as a designer and developer I’ll talk about

DESIGN ON RAILS FOR USABILITY … Or why designers should start to understand code and developers should start to sketch and use design methods.

I’m really glad be a part of the conferece in September - and to meet all these interesting people - and hopefully some codedifferent-blogreaders, too And please don’t forget to join Bratwurst-on-Rails on the evening before the conference starts.

The berlin Ruby User Group put their shoulders to the wheel for the Ruby-on-Rails-community: At the Kalkscheune, nearby the conference location of the RailsConf Europe 2008 they invite all Ruby-on-Rails-freaks to a socializing and networking event.

Last year it was a great and fun event - you’ll finde some pictures at Flickr. A great developer community shoud know how to party - and there is one thing I know for shure: Yes, we can

So, for all Ruby-on-Rails enthusiasts, who are in Berlin on the first of September – one day before the RailsConf Europe starts: Sign up for Bratwurst-on-Rails! See you there!

By now: Warm thanks in advance to the Ruby User Group Berlin for organizing this event!

Sometimes you are embarrassed to conntect Mac OS X Leopard with a Windows XP printserver. It should work the Mac plug-and-play way … but it isn’t. So here is the howto, so you don’t need to trouble your head about it.

Context:
In the first corner: A Mac OS X Leopard (10.5.3) machine
In the second corner: A Kyocera 2000D laser printer connected to a Windows XP printserver which is protected by password and username.

Problem:
Adding the printer via the standard Apple-way as a windows printer works - but printing does not work because it is not possible to authenticate against the printserver.

Solution:
You need to add the shared printer via the hidden “Advanced” printer feature in the Print & Fax preferences.

• Open “Print & Fax” in “System Preferences”
• Click “+” to add a new printer
• Control-click (or right-click) on the toolbar at the top of the window and select “Customize Toolbar…”
• Drag the “Advanced” icon to the toolbar and select “Done”
• Click on the “Advanced” icon … and be patient … after a moment or two, you can select “Windows” from the “Type” dropdown-menu
• Enter the SAMBA URL of the shared windows printer in the “URL” textfield:
  smb://USERNAME:PASSWORD@WINDOWSDOMAINNAME/PRINTSERVER/PRINTERSHARENAME or
  smb://USERNAME:PASSWORD@IPADDRESS/PRINTERSHARENAME
  If the shared printer does not need a password, you can use smb://USERNAME@…
• Fill out the other fields “Name” and “Location” as you prefer
• When printing the first time you will get prompted for your USERNAME and PASSWORD. Fill in your windows printserver username and password and enable the “Add this to your keychain” checkbox.

… it’s nearly plug-and-play

The huge system update to Mac OS X 10.5.3 with 200 to over 400 MB resolves a lot of bugs and adds up some additional features to Leopard. Example: More digital cameras with their specific RAW-formats are supported now. Or the possibility to sync the Apple Address Book application with Google Contacts.
Great to see that WIFI stability was increased by the Apple developers.
An annoying - but resolvable - problem appeared after updating when I tried to use the time logging software TimeLog 4: All log entries within TimeLog are saved in iCal - and after upgrading to 10.5.3 my work time entries just doubled. It’s easy to fix the problem by deleting every dublicate log entry - but you better checkt the timesheet in detail before you hand it out to your customer