I have watched some video by Sean Kelly in the past regarding different development frameworks, but the only ones I have used are Ruby on Rails and Plone. I would not even label myself a beginner with either framework, but I hope to change that in the future. I did try Django this morning and I love it. According to his video, Better Web App Development, Django comes in third place for time and second place for easy. The time differences were about 4 minutes apart until you got to Turbo Gears, which was 40 minutes longer than Django. I think RoR would be nice to learn, but I believe I will start with Django.

It will take a little time to get used to what is required to build the app, but I think it will force me to get back into Python too. I want to try Turbo Gears and load RoR up again to see what I can do.

Inspired by the 37signals post and the post on Falling bullets I share my toolkit.

Programming

• Zend Studio for PHP
• Aptana for Javascript/HTML
• Topstyle Lite for CSS
• Ultraedit for various code and those listed above
• vi when working from shell

Firefox Extensions

• Web Developer
• Add N Edit Cookies
• Firebug
• Hackbar
• HTML Validator
• Professor X
• no-referrer
• Remove Cookies for Site
• UrlParams
• User Agent Switcher
• View Source Chart
• MeasureIt

Browsers

• Firefox 2.0.0.2
• Internet Explorer 7
• Internet Explorer 6
• MultipleIE (IE 3, 4, 5, 5.5)

Various other tools

• Subversion and TortoiseSVN for version control
• Photoshop/Imageready for graphics, what else would I use?
• Email and contact management powered by Outlook.
• Calendar powered by Google Calendar and Calgoo
• Bug and Project tracking Trac and Eventum.
• Blogs run on Wordpress.
• RSS feeds are powered by Feedburner.
• PunBB for forums.
• Windows desktop, Windows/Linux laptop, Linux server (considering a MacBook).
• Scribus for document design right now.
• GAIM for chatting on ICQ, Gmail, AIM, Yahoo and MSN.
• FTP client is FlashFXP, still evaluating, but definitely buying.
• FSColor and ColorMatch Remix for color picking

Behind the scenes

• Python v2.4, v2.5
• PHP v5.2.0
• MySQl v5.0.27
• 1&1 and GoDaddy for domain registration
• Apache v2.0.59
• IIS v6

Looking Into

• Eclipse with
• PyDev
• Aptana
• Subclipse
• PHPeclipse
• EPIC
• What’s accounting? I am still evaluating packages.
• DbVisualizer
• Smarty Templates
• Hosting will be decided soon

Websites

• Google Sitemaps
• Google Analytics
• W3 Schools (great reference)
• Tada List

I will of course edit this when I make a final decision on a couple choices. I also need to post my huge list of Firefox extensions I use.

Recently my dad asked me what I thought about moving to Israel. My dad’s side of the family is Jewish and of Russian/Polish decent. I do not really fit the “image” of what you would think about as a Jewish child. I am a blonde hair, blue-eyed Caucasian so I fear I would stick out much more than my dad would. He has a darker complexion, but even if I was tan I would stand out much more.

That aside, I don’t really want to learn Hebrew, I plan on learning Arabic because I feel it will be a useful language in my future. I have considered seeing if a family friend who has worked in the middle east for 20 years knew of a job I would be qualified for. He is located in Egypt, which would be an awesome place to visit, however I do not know enough about it to know if I would want to live there.