So, keeping up with the fine tradition of tech blogs everywhere, I’m planning to start a new project and document my progress on it here.
The project is to build a web site that I can use to keep track of my family and friends in case of a disaster or some other event. The idea is that if there’s, say, an earthquake in the middle of the day, my wife and my kids and I are likely to be spread all over the SF Bay Area and the local phone system is unlikely to work. I’m planning to build something that will allow us to check in and basically say “I’m ok” or “I’m not ok” or “I’m in transit and will probably be ok.” I want us to be able to check in via text message, email, visit to a web site, or (this will probably be a stretch) phone call and have the site log the checkin.
Technology-wise, this should be easy (minus the phone call part). And if what I’ve read about Rails is correct, using Rails should make it even easier.
To start, I downloaded Rails from http://www.rubyonrails.org/down. I also installed the Rails plugin for Eclipse from RadRails.
Next, I came up with my database schema and started following the directions on the ONLamp article that the Rails website points to. I’m in the middle of that now, so we’ll see how it goes.