Throlkim

Interesting read and nicely written. It's just a shame HN doesn't have a 'report' feature like Reddit, as I can't report all the whiners in this thread as douchebags.

Being in the UK, I typically enjoy a substantial amount of tea during the day. None of that poncy herbal tea though - stricly strong white tea.

The British Armed Forces are supplied with a particular brand of tea from NAAFI (http://www.ringtons.co.uk/shop/tea/naafi-tea), which is now available to the public too. I had it described to me by an ex-forces friend that 'it's a tea to clean your gun with', but I actually find it to be one of the heartiest and warming drinks I've had.

Does anybody actually use top, rather than htop? It's the first thing I install on every system I build.

Something I've become very fond of recently is Monit, which doesn't appear to be on the list. I've found it very reassuring to have Monit set-up and watching the processes on my server.

I live quite close to Bletchley Park; we used to go on school trips there when I was a kid. :)

The number of available and useful gems makes Ruby my favourite for the kitchen sink. I recently had to build a web spider very quickly for a concept, and there was a gem that provided a multi-threaded spider. Obviously, Ruby wouldn't be my choice for an actual production spider for larger projects, but it let me get a prototype done very quickly :)

I google this nearly every time I use a PHP function.

I really like it - the interface is very clean and exactly what I was expecting (which is good)!

It's nice being able to track a conference, but how about being able to track a topic too?

I first read your reply as "I am a large database and this is epic" :|

Your response seems overly-critical for someone who's simply looking for advice. I have a few issues:

Quitting a job within a year won't look particularly bad on your resume; quitting multiple jobs within a year will, however. I left my first job after 3 months and I've never faced a problem because of it.

There's no need to berate him on his English, especially if he's moving to London - as long as it's clear that English isn't his first language, or that he's dyslexic, then he won't be judged harshly there.

There's no point sticking with a job you hate if you have the means and freedom to move on. Being young allows you to change your mind before too much depends on you having a stable job.

@op: Look up on what's currently in demand in London (Java, probably) and start learning in your spare time. Check up on a few UK-based recruitment websites (http://reed.co.uk has a good list of programming jobs). It's totally possible to change your area of expertise; I currently work as a Ruby/PHP developer and I have a first-class degree in design :)

I would assume that they're building momentum before they introduce premium services. Flickr's probably quite a good example of this. I know Posterous have mentioned that they'll be implementing paid-for extras in the future, but that the current offering will remain free.

Ultimate? :)

I was hired as a PHP developer, but I'm gradually transitioning them over to Ruby. I still need a manual for both of these languages; PHP for the ludicrous amount of functions (http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.levenshtein.php anybody?), and Ruby for the frequently confusing code I come across. Ruby is my current hobby language.

I also use Javascript for jQuery, and for Node.js in my spare time.

* TextMate (I also own Coda and Espresso - both good alternatives)

* Terminal

* RVM for Ruby management

* Git

* Colloquy for IRC

* Namely (http://amarsagoo.info/namely/) for application launching (I don't need the full power of Quicksilver)

* SequelPro for MySQL

* MongoHub

* Chrome Mac developer branch

* Homebrew for package management

About to get a new Mac and I'll hopefully clean out all the cruft from years of trying new things and just settle with what I listed above :)

My university did exactly this. (Supposedly) spent anywhere between £5 mil and £50 mil on a new building; £80,000 on their opening ceremony with lots of local celebrities; and then left all the students with 4 year-old hardware for design/video courses.

I really appreciated the sterile white-washed building for creative courses while attempting to use After Effects on a G5 iMac :|

Thanks for that - you posted quicker than I could find the instructions on the documentation :D

I'd highly recommend Spree (http://spreecommerce.com/tour). It's based around the payment processor that Shopify uses, and it supports a lot of the more advanced Google Analytics features.

I've yet to use it myself, and I'm not sure if it's entirely been released yet, but Amazon has a payments system in the works: http://aws.amazon.com/fps/