The library

The first resource I tried to access was the local public library. The community I live in has a good public library system but I doubt it will satisfy my needs. Most library books are donated, so consequently books on webdesign and programming are often out of date. Still, I don't really know what to-date is right now, so it's a start.

I left my first trip to the library with a FAT stack of books. I had read about ruby on rails somewhere and thought I'd look into it for my website, so I picked up Ruby on Rails for Dummies and Rails Recipes. For the sake of exploration, I also picked up SAMS teach yourself PHP, MySQL and Apache and Teach Yourself XML. I don't really know anything about Ruby, Rails, PHP, MySQL or Apache so I really wasn't hoping to learn how to use them so much as learn who uses them and what their capabilities are. On top of all that, I'm hoping to link up to amazon in a sort of funky way so I also got Web 2.0 Mashups. Last, I also borrowed Building a Website for Dummies just because.

Did I mention I don't really have a computer right now? My PC is shot to hell and I'm not really able to practice any of the things I'm trying to learn without one, so right now I'm just trying to figure out what is out there and what would work best for me, given my capabilities and my needs.