Let's get ready to [Rails] rumble!
Ok, that was an easy one.
All that being said (hum, nothing?), I’ll participate to my first real hackaton this week-end: Rails Rumble. 48 hours to create a full-fledged app, fun? Hell yeah!
Welcome team “Clueless”
I’ve decided last week to participate, without having any idea of what I would be doing, or with whom I would be doing it. After a few days thinking to projects, I was hesitating between two projects I’ve wanted to do for a while:
- a Github star “manager” where you could label you’re starred repos to help you find something when you need it, say that jquery plugin you thought would be useful or that actor-based concurrent object framework for Ruby (yeah, you celluloid)!
- a news reader in which you could import your Google Reader feeds because, let’s face it, Google Reader is popular not because it’s the best solution we could dream, but that the best solution we have now. Not just that, but more! Keep reading! :)
So, I had project ideas, vague project ideas. Yes, I played with Github API in the past. Yes, I’ve played with a Google Reader library in the past, but nothing serious came out of this.
Was I going to do that solo? I thought my friend Alexandre would love that kind of competition. I asked him. He doesn’t have a lot of Rails or Ruby experience (he’s a python guy, among other things). Still, he accepted my invitation a few days ago. I was pleased with it, we’ll have fun! There are prizes, but to be honest, I don’t care.
What would be our team’s name? We had no ideas! We were clueless (like I’ve been since I registered). From now on, you can call us “Clueless”.
Planning
Well, time is a rare thing around here. I’ve been working on releasing the latest Monologue version in the last couple of weeks and have a personal life. Still, we decided to at least have one planning session. Thanks to Google Hangout, that was really a great planning session. Google Hangouts are awesome: screen sharing and working in multiple Google Docs just work, flawlessly.
That was our first and only planning session. No time to test libraries: let’s hope everything will work as expected! (finger crossed, but let’s face it, we will face a few bugs here and there).
We now have a mock (in Google Doc’s Drawing app) and a simple doc with the tasks, who do what and when.
Please welcome “Wizenews”
Wizenews is a simple news reader. You import your Google Reader feeds and then you can participate in a more public manner to those news by voting them up & down and commenting on them, right from Wizenews!
We’ll try to add public space where trending news and topics could be browsed by anyone. That said, not sure that part will be done by the end of Rails Rumble! :)
Rumble!
You can see our Rails Rumble page here. Please comment here or there, vote for us (maybe? or maybe not!).
Seriously, this is a nice competition! Take a look at it! And, please, vote. For us maybe, but for the best project from your perspective.
Are you excited? I am!
