• 13″ Macbook 2-1 with 4GB Ram and 2.16mhz Dual Core processor
• 24″ Samsung HD flatscreen external monitor
• Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope 9.04
• Firefox 3.x with Firebug, YSLow, and CodeBurner
• XAMPP for PHP, MySQL, and Apache
• VirtualBox with 4 virtual machines: Windows XP with IE 6, 7,  and 8, plus OSX running Safari
• Gimp and Inkscape for graphics
• Gedit with snippets enabled for code

I have to tell ya, I’m pretty happy with things right now.  Let today be known as the day I declared independence from OSX.

This is my first attempt at a blog.  I plan on being faithful to it.

The point of this blog is to write about my journey from aspiring web designer to the real thing.  By “real thing” I mean making my living designing and developing websites.  I’ve been working on this goal for, oh, prolly six months now.  Seems longer.  That actually makes me feel better about myself, calculating that it has only been six months.  I spend a lot of time feeling hopelessly behind.  Everything I learn makes me realize how much more I have to learn.

Here is where I’m at after six months:

• I develop on my white 13″ 2.16ghz MacBook with 4GB of RAM.  I do my coding in TextMate, my graphics in Inkscape and Gimp, and my testing in Firefox first, then in IE6 and IE7 using a combination of ies4mac and a desktop running windows XP that my friend Lee gave me, god bless him.  Fetch is my FTP program.  I have strong opinions about all the aforementioned software and hardware so I’ll undoubtedly be posting about them in the future.
• Whenever possible, I use standards compliant code.  If its not possible I will look for a way around non-compliant code for days and hours before I give up, and even then it haunts my dreams.  I kind of love standards.  My girlfriend would say its because I’m a virgo.
• I’m a whiz at html and css up their current versions. I’m looking into CSS3 right now and I’m psyched about it like only someone who spends all their free time thinking about backgrounds and borders can be.
• A couple years ago I learned a little php and MySQL, which has come in handy with things like creating wordpress themes.  I would describe my relationship with php and MySQL as a “working knowledge”.
• I also have a working knowledge of javascript, but perhaps not quite as “working” as php.  I can manipulate the DOM to create simple things like image rollovers.  Honestly, javascript intimidates the hell out of me.  Its my next big mountain to climb after I complete all the websites I’m working on right now and go back into sweet sweet study mode.
• I just started using version control with Bazaar, which I highly recommend.
• I don’t know jack about Flash, and honestly, it doesn’t do much for me.  I read to many blog posts about accessibility to be excited about it.  I’ll look in to flash after I learn Javascript and mod_python.
• Oh yeah, mod_python.  Don’t know much about it honestly.  But from what I hear, its a server-side scripting language like php, but without all the putting code into html documents.  That’s cool, cause as much as I like php, complex apps can become a huge mess.  And apparently it plays well with MySQL, allowing you to make complex database queries easily. I am totally in to that, but mod_python will have to wait until I learn javascript.  Baby steps.

There is probably more.  But that is what a blog is for right?  Right.