I use Mosso for fun because of the low price. Start up a 20 machine cluster and run it for a couple of hours all for under a dollar.

Presumably you use the Cloud Servers rather than the Cloud Host?

Yeah, I haven't had a chance to use the Cloud Host.

Other: Homeschooled kindergarten through the end of highschool when I started doing freelance web development. Two years after I began freelancing I got my current job as a software developer for a small startup.

makezine.com

codinghorror.com

iwillteachyoutoberich.com

joestump.net

freelanceswitch.com

zenhabits.net

I'll second iwillteachyoutoberich, I've been reading that blog for a few years now and Ramit has a style that is very accessible to a lot of people. Great blog.

i recommend it too, but only cause ramit's my brother :)

Wow -- this is so cool. Thanks, guys. (I'm the author of http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com.)

I agree - great tips on iwillteachyoutoberich.com. For more in depth and targeted tips check out his other project scroogestrategy.com too.

Both great choices. I'm not really a fan of using them together though.

i definitely like both of them, and i also definitely am not very artistically inclined. i'll cede to a higher authority on whether they work together or not.

Pidgin - IM client

PHP, Apache, Postgresql, pgadmin III

SongBird - Media player

Eclipse - IDE

Xchat - IRC Client

VLC - Video player

RTorrent - Torrent downloader

Subversion - Version Control

Awesome! Thanks for the links.

I was thinking about going the C# route, I don't think that anything I'd like to build would require the power of C++. Most of my ideas are just for simple apps. Maybe some location based features.. From what I've read C# should be able to handle that.

It should. The commercial application (www.speedalert.com.au) that I was working on in C# back then was real-time system..and location based(GPS). The only differences I can find compare to C++ system was, the start-up time and the footprint of the app. Anyway, good luck! :)