Running asynchronous processes - non-ruby binaries

I'm looking at "Advanced Rails Recipes," and there's one in here called "Process Asynchronous State-Based Workflows." It seems to describe a workflow that is written in Ruby. I have a binary (written in C++) which I would like to run with different input files based on user input in my Rails application.

My question is: Can I still use acts_as_state_machine and simple-daemon? Or do I need to modify this recipe?

Many thanks, John