A couple of months ago, when ruby on rails 2.0 came out, I started a project to see if things had really changed all that much. I wanted something that was easy, but useful to me. At work, we had been discussing the pressing need for an easy to use listing of lunch places around our area. So, I decided, not only would I pick up rails 2.0, but I would see how hard it was to do a google maps mashup. Well, after a few days, I had the basics of a site up and running. Then of course, work got busy busy. (Something about launching our new website at work.) Well, in order to start benefiting from at least some of my effort, I spent the last weekend getting everything set up to deploy to my server, so without further ado, I present Lunchspot! Now, I wouldn’t call this a completed effort. In fact, it is only a faint echo of what I had hoped to have going by this time.

So why release it now? Well, because it is still quite useful. You can already submit your favorite lunch spots, comment on them, and see where they are on the map. Soon, I’ll have directions, ratings, sample menus, and “send to a friend” links. But the biggest reason to put it up, and then post about it, is to remind me to work on it, and solicit any help on things like design/layout and graphics (two of my weak areas).

So what is for lunch anyway?