I prodded around with web sites a few years ago but couldn't really get past glorified cut and paste collage work with html or use of off the shelf php blog programs. But I have ideas! delusions of glory for new interactive web aps and sites! Trying to tinker with blog programs to turn them into other things led me to brick walls of despair. A combination of drowiness and terror overwhelmed me reading my expensive Php Mysql texts.

Recently i've stumbled on Ruby and Ajax...these are fun things! Ruby especially seems to be able to be a glue i can tinkerwith and build stuff incrementally. I've read your articles and was able to load the instant rails stuff and follow along. I think i can learn this and actualy work with this rails system. To grow an application, not conceive of it in whole and build it up with 70,000 interelaced toothpicks.

I'll echo the comments that your approach here is fresh and inspiring (i like the assides, diaglogue etc.. it works for me to have a context struture with bigger principals attached.

I've done the thing twice with re-reading a Ruby text in between. I didnt have a lot of context so even ideas of Arrays, functions, Classes, Databases were foregn words for me... but i am understanding more each time. I also am such a non linear thinker that when faced with a concept that i dont understand and dont have a context to understand i'll bang my head against it trying to comprhend an interim step anyway. Your project drags me forward within a defined concept to let plant some seeds yet let me make headway.

I also thank the people who take the time to post comments on glitches in an instruction. I was stuck until I read the comments above and who knows how much "suffering" i may have gone through if people hadn't taken the time to post.

This whole utopian idea of open source is really amazing.. and its telling that it allowed the growth of a application/system like rails that will allow things to organically grow and be improved upon.

I didnt even know that it was hard to turn on or off a column in a database but that wouldnt be for me at all! Well this whole adventure might still be a bit much for me but it beats watching tv in the evenings. Thanks for the great efforts writer and whole sharing computing community...