Esoteric Ruby Blog

Ever since the incredibly powerful earthquake and subsequent Tsunami hit Asia, there has been a terribly critical logistics problem that we are only beginning to solve. Millions of people need food, water, and shelter, and infrastructure is wiped out in many places. In an effort to assist relief work, I have created a simple Rails application to follow several areas of relief related information including:

a) Phone numbers of governments, relief organizations, volunteers, etc. b) Missing / Living / Dead person listing c) Supply tracking

I have created an Instiki Wiki for the cause at

http://wiki.asiaquake.org/

And there I give a rough layout of the goals.

I have also begun work on a database and so far part a, the phonelist, is working and populated at:

http://rails.asiaquake.org/

This is a perfect opportunity to put Ruby and Rails to the test: does it really deliver in a very-short-timeframe development cycle? We will have to wait and see how this application turns out in a few days. I have been at it just a few days so far and must say it has been quite a learning experience, but so far we are liking the architecture, especially the excellent improvements in Rails 0.9, which seems a lot better than 0.7. I’m still not familiar enough with rails to be confident with it, however I find I am easily picking up what I need to know from the straightforward organization most of the time, which is quite a bit more than I can say for most other frameworks I have tried.

Are you moved to do something to help the Tsunami victims, and do you know Rails? If so, send me an email at cilibrar@ofb.net or a Yahoo instant message to cilibrar and tell me your interest and skills. I have already set up a dedicated server and control all aspects.