bike_index

Joined 12 years ago

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Feb 3

https://github.com/bikeindex/bike_index

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Comment · 11 years ago

Agreed. Open source ftw! I'd love to see this app.

Mapping bike thefts at map.bikewise.org bikeindex.org

7 bike_index 11 years ago 0 comments

Comment · 11 years ago

Having run Cloud66 for the past year, I can say that actually managing infrastructure and dealing with security management such things would have been prohibitively expensive. Cloud66 has taken care of things like heartbleed and package updates (and alerts for rails updates). It's been a good experience in that I learned that I really do want a managed hosting environment - since I can see what they've done, but don't actually have to do it myself.

I would also love to hear a cost benefit analysis a year into managing your own servers.

Comment · 11 years ago

I'd like to chime in here in support of Cloud66. I've been running normal (non-dockerized) Cloud66 for about a year on a wide variety of projects, including the main Bike Index site (https://bikeindex.org), and it's fantastic.

It's all the ease of Heroku and all the flexibility of actual servers, and way cheaper than Heroku. The only reason I've touched Docker on Cloud66 is JRuby - since this article is about a python app, it would be also require Docker. But for Ruby MRI applications, the logical first step as soon as Heroku stops being cost effective is immediate (and painless) migration to Cloud66.

Comment · 11 years ago

We've been working on updating our API to V2[1], and decided to go with grape because it automatically generates documentation via grape-swagger[2].

Initially we considered Apiary, but we wanted more flexibility and preferred to host things ourselves. And the fact that our documentation is generated automatically from the code via grape-swagger is a game changer.

[1] https://bikeindex.org/documentation/api_v2

[2] https://github.com/tim-vandecasteele/grape-swagger

Comment · 12 years ago

As someone who doesn't have a car and is broke, investing in my bike makes a lot of sense - public transit costs 100/month[1], my transportation bike cost 800$ and my yearly cost to maintain it is 100$ (tires, tube, chain). Therefore, in the first year, I save money.

My bike is fast and convenient for getting around, which makes it a reasonable alternative to other transportation methods (it's faster than traveling by car within the city limits of Chicago).

In contrast, a ~100$ bike is much slower and more expensive to maintain. Suggesting only fools ride nice bikes is short sighted.

We need to make bike theft less profitable instead of telling everyone to ride shitty, impractical bikes.

[1] in Chicago - http://www.transitchicago.com/travel_information/fares/unlim...

Comment · 12 years ago

We've successfully recovered thousands of bikes (three in the past two days!). We've made it easy to id stolen bikes, and more difficult to sell stolen bikes - which makes ultimately bike theft less appealing.

GPS trackers are great - but unfortunately, they have yet to meet these vital requirements: easy to charge, difficult to remove, waterproof, cheap enough to put on everyone's bikes.

Comment · 12 years ago