kamme

It didn't affect me in any way tough I did fear for my job, I must admit. But it seems there is no real recession (yet?) going on where I live (Belgium, europe). I must admit a lot of people lost their job, but those people where working in car manufacturing/steel/clothing factories and they have been going downhill for years...

Happy birthday!

I'm happy to see that you didn't do any major changes to the look and feel of this website, most sites tend to change for the worse after receiving more and more hits. Good job!

It looks very nice, the only thing I (personaly) dislike is the large 'header'. I'm on 1280x768 and minimized the waste area as much as possible. When people visit your site and they have to scroll down, that's a shame...

But you have a nice and clean layout, responsive website and a good idea, I'd say: continue the good work! The fact I only have one point of criticism is a very good thing!

I always said that if I would start up a company I would paint every wall with chalkboard, especially the bathroom walls. I would also make a ball pit and have 'flexible' desks. That means everyone gets a desk and a laptop but are free to move as they want. Meetings should not be held in some room, but in the open. PM's should sit next to the developers and managers should know people's names. But as you might notice, most of those things are not something you should buy, you should create an atmosphere of innovation. And that is something that is only possible with open-minded people, freedom, flexability and happyness!

I have a good, interesting job, started working on the age of 14, have saved some money and have no debts. The only thing I would say to myself is:

Don't forget your friends. They are important as well.

Because sadly, I think most people do forget them, including me...

Well, being a php developer and doing some django (django is a framework builth with python) I can honestly say that there is no clear answer.

If you just want to learn 'something' and not do any real project, by all means, learn python. Python is a great and easy to learn language that lets you make great programs, and not only webbased ones! Python is a very well supported language, it runs on linux, mac and windows so you can use it wherever you want.

If you just want to make a website for yourself and don't want to spend too much money, I suggest you use php. If you want I am sure you can find some webhost that offers you some webspace + domain name for around 20$. Will that be a very good webhost with lots and lots of space/traffic? Probably not, but I'm pretty sure it will enough you for some time. And besides, if you find out php you're not into making websites, you can have a wordpress blog up and running in about 5min, without any php coding required.

I can get around with 5h/night but it depends. if I can get more (in weekends), I sleep more (about 9-10h). But I don't seem to really need it...

I think I would buy an uninhabited island and make it a research facility where top scientists can work together and find a way to optimize solar power and batteries.

If I have those I will start a production company that makes those inventions and sells them at the price (or below) it costs to make the goods so everyone can use them. I would also invest in agriculture in dry area's (africa for example). What I would NOT do is waste it on politics, that's why I want the uninhabited island. If you build a facility/production company with that goal there will be government regulations about it and as most of us know, they tend to screw things up and only care for their wallet.

Also a part of that money will go to education and proper sports centers. I'm a bit overweight myself and I want people to know better then always go to McDonalds and have the option to do any sport they like, as it should be.

I have it installed and it works great but I must admit I didn't make the switch, partially because of the lack of extensions (I'm a web developer so I use firebug, webdev toolbar, etc a lot).

But it also made me think about what I like about chrome. Then I went looking for extensions to install on Firefox and I must admit I don't miss chrome because I have most of the good stuff in Firefox now!

I have been using PHP for webdevelopment for 7years now and I recently started using Zend professionally and I must say it works ok from my point of view. It should be easy to learn php with it. But it has some downsides too. Like skinnging of forms for example, is not as easy as it looks! There are also still problems with the form validations. Overall it's not bad, especially because it gives you much freedom of where to put your files and things like that. But to be honest, like I mentioned before, after those 7 years of php, I suggest looking at python (django for example) too. I don't say you shouldn't learn php, it's really great, but django just seems to have it al. Don't know about scaling though...

First let me say I'm sorry for your loss.

The only advice I can give you is talk about it with someone, it doesn't have to be a counselor or something, just a good friend. Also don't think that it does nothing to you anymore in a couple of weeks, it stays hard to cope with but it will get better. Best of luck!

I'm in the same boat as you, I run Linux, my girlfriend OSX and friends/parents have windows boxes. I started with portable firefox for both OSX and windows. Same for putty, ftp client, etc... But in the end I realised all I had on there was for online use. So instead of using all those programs, I just put portable firefox on it and added some extentions, like fireftp for ftp and sites like google notebook, meebo. Now all the other things that are on there are a couple of files (mp3, txt snippets), firefox portable and qemu with a basic linux install.

The basics are easy to learn, it's just a matter of following some tutorial ( howtoforge has some great ones!). But keeping it running is harder I'm afraid... I suggest you try to find someone in your area (or even join a LUG, Linux User Group) to help you with the more advanced things. You can first try setting up a server as a VM, you can get virtualbox for free and it works great! Good luck but if you want something, you can do it (some people here have learned me that)

I use google notebook (notebook.google.com). It has a nice firefox plugin that lets you manage your notes and you can create different categories (for exmple, I have webdevelopment, personal, stuff).

Hey guys, thank you for the massive amount of comments, I am going to look at most of the options: read the design book, keep in mind the priniples you mentioned and if that fails I'll look at the designer for hire sites.

Thanks again, I have never gotten so much helpfull feedback!