I'm about to embark on my very first significant non-command line ruby 
app.  It will be a simple rails app that will parse my log file and show 
me some statistics that I am interested in.  Some of that will entail 
some simple graphing.

I spent hours last night looking at some graphing libraries that are out 
there.  There are only a few to choose from on rubyforge.  I wanted 
something simple, but not toooo simple.  I looked at sparklites and 
gruff.  One is too fancy and requires waaaaaay to much installation, the 
other a little less installation, but doesn't really cut it for a real 
graph.

It occurred to me that the reason they were requiring rmagic and other 
stuff has to do with needing a way to so some really simple drawing. 
Sort of like using photoshop to paint a mustache on your girlfriends 
picture - it works and inspires the expected knee reflex in the girl, 
but it's total overkill for the job.

So I says to myself, you could make a decent bargraph just by drawing a 
simple little "color blob image" in different sizes.  I tried it, and it 
looks just fine to me.  I'm thinking about cooking up a simple ruby lib 
that will draw a bargraph with x and y labels on it using this 
technique.  Here's a simple manual example:
http://www.mylittlecorneroftheinternet.com/BrainDeadBarGraph.html

What do you think, this is clearly brain dead, but is it stupid too?

thanks,
jp

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