January 27, 2026 From Disaster Prevention to High-Performance Maps On December 26, 2025, I published an article titled “Ruby at the Front Line of Disaster Prevention.” It was inspired by a real, uncomfortable fact: Tokyo Gas uses Ruby to protect millions of people during earthquakes. Not in theory. Not as a prototype. In production. That … Continue reading Ruby Rendering Seismic Observation Data
Author: ggerman
Stabilizing a Native Ruby GIS Engine with Docker, RuboCop, and CI
January 26, 2026 For many years, Ruby developers working with maps and geospatial data have relied on external tools or loosely coupled pipelines. ImageMagick, command-line utilities, and background processes became the norm, even though they were never designed to be deterministic GIS rendering engines. The result was fragile systems: slow, hard to debug, and difficult … Continue reading Stabilizing a Native Ruby GIS Engine with Docker, RuboCop, and CI
libgd-gis: A Practical GIS Rendering Engine for Ruby
January 23, 2026 Raster maps, GeoJSON overlays, and real-world cartography — without leaving Ruby. Over the last months, I’ve been working on libgd-gis, a GIS rendering engine built on top of libgd and designed specifically for Ruby developers who need static map generation without relying on browser-based toolchains or heavyweight GIS stacks. This article walks … Continue reading libgd-gis: A Practical GIS Rendering Engine for Ruby
A New View of Earth, Powered by Ruby
January 22, 2026 libgd-gis, satellite imagery, and a new way to think about maps Most mapping libraries start from the same place: roads, labels, vectors, tiles. But what happens if the map itself is not the goal? What if the map is just a lens to observe the planet? This article is about how libgd-gis, … Continue reading A New View of Earth, Powered by Ruby
Imprint: Signed, Expiring Image Rendering with Dynamic Watermarks in Ruby
January 21, 2026 Distributing images securely is a recurring challenge in modern web applications. Whether for previews, confidential documents, or paid content, developers often need to ensure that images are not reused, hotlinked, or accessed indefinitely. Imprint is a Ruby gem that addresses this problem by providing signed, time-limited image rendering with dynamic watermarks, allowing … Continue reading Imprint: Signed, Expiring Image Rendering with Dynamic Watermarks in Ruby
Running Notebooks the Ruby Way: From PoC to Production with RubyPyMill
Senior Ruby Engineer · Open-Source Author (ruby-libgd, libgd-gis) · FinTech & GIS January 20, 2026 In modern development teams, Proofs of Concept (PoC) are everywhere. They usually start as Jupyter notebooks: quick experiments, charts, metrics, comparisons, and visual insights. They work well for exploration — but too often, they stop there. The knowledge stays locked … Continue reading Running Notebooks the Ruby Way: From PoC to Production with RubyPyMill
map_view — Server-side maps for Ruby on Rails
For years, maps in Rails applications have lived almost entirely on the frontend:JavaScript libraries, external APIs, keys, variable costs, and a fair amount of friction. map_view starts from a simple question: What if maps in Rails were as simple as rendering a view? <%= map_for @locations %> That’s it. What is map_view? map_view is a … Continue reading map_view — Server-side maps for Ruby on Rails
Now Ruby GIS Rendering: Stabilizing the libgd-gis Rendering API
Stabilizing the libgd-gis Rendering API January 19, 2026 This article documents the current state of libgd-gis following a significant internal update: the stabilization and freeze of its core rendering API. The update consolidates the project’s primary responsibilities—static GIS rendering, layered composition, and post-render image manipulation—into a stable and documented surface. Alongside this milestone, comprehensive documentation … Continue reading Now Ruby GIS Rendering: Stabilizing the libgd-gis Rendering API
libgd-gis v0.2.7.pre.alpha.1
January 16, 2026 Testing GIS animations in Ruby (exploratory work) Today, early in the morning, after releasing GIF and animation support in ruby-libgd, together with updated documentation, versioning, and examples, I decided to do something very concrete: spend the entire day stress-testing the alpha version of libgd-gis. And what better way to test animations than … Continue reading libgd-gis v0.2.7.pre.alpha.1
Ruby Now Has an Animated Map Engine (Alpha Preview)
Ruby Now Has an Animated Map Engine January 15, 2026 Building real-time, animated maps in pure Ruby — no JavaScript required. A new class of maps for Ruby Over the past weeks, we’ve been extending ruby-libgd and libgd-gis far beyond static image rendering. What started as a raster + GIS toolkit is now evolving into … Continue reading Ruby Now Has an Animated Map Engine (Alpha Preview)









