Ruby on Rails and iPhone

I wanted to do an iPhone application. Two of my friends wanted to learn Ruby on Rails. The result was a stock trading simulation game, with an iPhone user interface, and a Ruby on Rails web site. The game is available in the iTunes App Store, and its website is http://istockplay.com

 I separated the reusable code in StockPlay, and put it into the ZergSupport open-source toolkit, available on GitHub under the MIT license.

I have also started a tool for automated Xcode project management, named zerg_xcode. It's also available on GitHub under the MIT license.

Reverse Tunnels in Ruby

While at Google, I found an opportunity to use my Ruby skills, and (briefly) step out of the stone age (C++, Java, Python). I modified the reverse tunnel software rtunnel to support client authentication and I migrated it to an event-driven model using Event Machine.

I was lucky to work with rtunnel's author, coderrr. He's a really smart and really cool guy (these two rarely come together.)

Simple Rails Deployment

In the process of developing RoR software, I have built my own deployment tool, rails_pwnerer (rpwn for short). It's meant as a bridge between the simplicity of one-click Rails installers, and the power (and complexity) of Capistrano. If you're writing your first (or second) Rails application, and want a quick way to bring it up on a production server, you should check it out.

Trusted Computing and Smart Cards

I have obtained a Master of Engineering in Computer Science, thanks to the excellent guidance I have received from with MIT's Trusted Computing group. I got permission to make my thesis open-source, and you read more about it at the Trusted Execution Module page.

Ruby on Rails and Facebook

I have built an interactive website for MIT's Introduction to Algorithms course (6.006), which I TA-ed in Spring 2008. I did this to become proficient in Ruby on Rails, and related Web 2.0 techniques (XHTML, CSS, JavaScript).

I have participated in MIT's Web design competition in January 2008, and have sketched out a website centered around social movie watching that comes with a Facebook application.
Bragging rights: my Ruby on Rails server setup was so fast they thought I did AJAX (and I didn't).

Later, I updated the Facebook application, and turned it into a fbFund submission. If you have an interest in Facebook and movies, you should check out Movie Nights. While developing this application, I have contributed to the facebooker Rails plug-in, and written my own daemonz plug-in for managing daemon processes associated with a Rails app (e.g. starling, ferret).