Figure 1: Paragliding in the Winter

The Plan

Here are my ambitions plans for this fall. I would like to bring my LAMP skills to the next level and start using the LAMP stack as my primary incubator platform for startup ideas.

I always like having big goals guided by some kind of external constraint. Community college classes are ideal for this purpose. There are two online classes offered this fall at the Saddleback Community College.

CIM 205A - WEB DEVELOPMENT AND DB: INTRO SQL AND MYSQL

CIM 231 - AJAX--ADVANCED JAVASCRIPT WITH XML

The classes this fall are starting 8/23/2010 and go all the way to 12/19/2010. That is a total of 16 weeks.

The Goals

At the end of the 16 weeks l hope to have accomplished the following:

1. Get an A in both classes
2. Finish reading the JQuery in Action book
3. Finish reading the CodeIgniter User Guide
4. Finish reading the MySQL book
5. Watch the CodeIgnitor video tutorials on Nettuts
6. Complete the HTML  / Photoshop tutorial from Nettuts
7. Have a LAMP system running in Amazon EC2 hosting my Wordpress blogs and my final project
8. Create a Fedora Linux development environment that runs as a VMWare Workstation 7 virtual machine on my Windows 7 laptop.
9. Complete my final project called “Nuilist” (http://nuilist.com) that is built on LAMP and JQuery

Books

Here is the book list:

1. JQuery in Action Second Edition
2. A Practical Guide to Linux Commands, Editors, and Shell Programming (Second Edition)
3. A Practical Guide to Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (5th Edition)
4. MySQL (4th Edition)
5. Apache Cookbook: Solutions and Examples for Apache Administrators

Hosting

I would like to try out Amazon EC2as hosting platform. I would like to setup a standard reserved instance running Fedora Linux.

Development Environment

As my development environment I would like to use a VMWare Workstation 7 virtual machine that runs Fedora 13. Since I don’t like to run VMWare Workstation on my primary disk, I need to create a VHD just for running the virtualization software. On the Fedora VM I am planning to install:

• PHP 5.3.2
• MySQL 5.1.48
• Java and Eclipse
• Apache HTTP Server 2.2.15
• Subversion Client
• PHPMyAdmin

Optionally I will try to setup the same development environment on my wife’s IMac that runs Snow Leopard.

Frameworks

I would like to use and learn about CodeIgniter and optionally the Zend Framework.

Events

As a motivational kick-off I am attending  the Startup Weekend event in San Diego.

Recreational

In my well deserved breaks I hope I find some time to read the Pickaxe book (Ruby 1.9).

Projects

NUIList – Create a zero friction distributed list management application that can be accessed by different clients. Desktop Browser, smart phone and your wrist watch. The application will be written in PHP and MySQL on the server side (LAMP) and JQuery on the client side. The application will include a REST API that can be used by a native smart phone application. Optionally I would like to create a simple prototype smart phone app for the IPhone.

Ausblick

I got the first set of steps already behind me, by writing this blog post. Es gibt viel zu tun. Packen wir’s an!