To try it out, type in a postcode below the map. (If you don’t know what a UK postcode looks like, try NG1 1FF).

The version I upgraded to is no longer tolerant of some of my deprecated code, to the extent that the sites will not work until I change them.

Although this serves me right, the whole attraction of Ruby On Rails is productivity, and if the community keeps moving the rug from under our feet like this, productivity will fall. I thought we had learned this lesson from the gratuitous complexity of the Java world.

To be fair, these features were deprecated years ago.

Anyway, to get something out of a bad situation I will set up a grown up development environment with SVN / Capistrano and Mongrel all working together.

Grump grump.

The site is built using Drupal and a MySQL database. I also use some Ruby scripts to do some periodic housekeeping.

The administrator can use Drupal to add and remove flags on the Google Map without needing to edit HTML.

Graphically it could look better but the site is functional and serves as a hub for the many regional Community Accounting sites.

The strange noises come from the audio variometer, an instrument that makes a high pitched noise when the glider is going up and a low beat when it sinks. On this particular day it was just as easy to feel thermals in the seat of my pants, bump, wallop and up I went.

I am sure there is a lot to be gained from mixing and matching these goodies. This morning I was mulling over how to build a web application that needed a CMS component. I already have Drupal running on my server and am constantly pleased with how it helpes me get jobs done. So I got to wondering how to mix it with a Ruby web application.

This is a round about way of saying, let each tool do what its good at, Drupal for CMS, RoR for the web application stuff, and blend them with CSS and Apache to look like the same web web site.

Hopefully the next post will show an example of a working Drupal/RoR hybrid.

The track starts off heading East with a series of wide arcs made by the tug as he used a thermal on the way up. After releasing the rope I went straight into a 4kt thermal (rising at 400 feet a minute) to 5000′ and after a bit of dithering I set off North towards Bottesford.

50 minutes later I had to bring the glider back for somebody else to fly and opened the air brakes to throw away the height, the whole sky was going up!

The GPS data was recorded by my Forerunner GPS, normally used for running. I downloaded the XML file to a PC and then used GPSVisualizer to split it into different tracks and also to generate the Javascript to show the map.

Thanks to Weather Jack for forecasting the good weather and to the people at the Buckminister Gliding Club who make it all work.

Guess what the piece of string is for?

Ten minutes later I sat waiting on the runway for a tow back up. “All out” somebody said and the rope between me and the tug went taught. Seconds later I was skimming five feet over the runway at 70knots waiting for the tug to take off. During the climb, thermals bounced the tug up and down and I had to concentrate to keep behind him, the trick is to move the stick as little as possible and to anticipate the bumps as each aircraft flies through.

As we reached the top of the climb I flicked a switch in front of me and the vario started chirping noisely to describe the thermals, although on this day it was easier to feel them in the seat of my pants. At 2000′ I released the rope, watched it fall and as the tug dived to the right I pulled up to the left and slowed down.

I turned to fly back through the lift we had just come through and wallop, a powerful thermal rocked the right wing up. I glanced over my shoulder and rolled the glider hard to the right to get closer to the core that had tried to push the glider away. The beep from the vario became shrill and high pitch indicating that the glider was going up quickly.

The thermal was strong and gusty. The altimeter wound up from 2000′ to 4200′ in a matter of minutes. I constantly scanned the sky for other aircraft and saw a glider join the thermal a few hundred feet below me.

Now I’m a timid pilot, but the conditions were so good that it was obvious climbs were going to be easy, so I pointed the glider towards Melton and struck off into the blue, leaving the heaving cloud behind.

Fair weather cumulus clouds lined up like battleships in a deep blue sky. All was beautiful and everything was easy. I had promised to bring the glider back in half an hour and so had some height to waste. I turned north towards a useful looking cloud street and put the nose down. With the wind behind me the ground raced past until I was over the airfield and in lift again. I pushed on to Grantham and found a straight line of strong lift. The whole sky was going up.

To see another glider banking round the far side of a thermal is a beautiful thing. White wings against the blue, sometimes pilots give a little wave, perhaps it means “concentrate on your turn mister” or perhaps “Isn’t this brilliant?”.

It is brilliant.

I’ve been working with a bunch of hard working clever people in Nottingham to get the site finished against a tight schedule. All the team members knew exactly how to do their job without fuss.My role was to adapt the existing Lucene search index proved by Jahia for the event listings and bookshop. I also customised a rather good calendar for use on the event listings page. Lucene is the dogs back wheels, its easy to learn and very powerful. Think I’ll go and polish my ammonites.

(Picture from a display at the excellent Charmouth Heritage Coast Centre)