Tools

This Web site was constructed with help from a number of software packages, and in the spirit of giving credit where credit is due, here they are:

Vim (Vi iMproved)

http://www.vim.org/
Vi is a loved/reviled plain text editor that is available on most Unix machines, including the Linux system I developed the vast majority of this site on. It follows the Unix philosophy: it does one thing (text editing) and does it cleanly and well. I used Vim to write all the code and content for the site.

DML 1.92

http://derajdezine.vze.com/
I wanted to create this site as static HTML (no server-side scripting) so that I could easily move it about from host to host without any special setup. Unfortunately, plain HTML has no facilities for abstracting common elements (such as headers, footers, and menus), so updating a plain HTML site can be quite a chore.

DML allows me to create the whole site in a templatized form that compiles down to static HTML for publishing. It has few features, but it does its job well and I've been pleased with it.

The GIMP

http://www.gimp.org/
The GIMP (Gnu Image Manipulation Program) is a open-source graphics package of power comparable to that of Adobe's Photoshop. This site has very few graphics, but those it does have were likely created or modified with The GIMP.

Mozilla

http://www.mozilla.org/
Mozilla is the most standards-compliant browser currently available, and I use it as my main Web browser. It is more friendly to Web site developers than most competing browsers.

Internet Explorer

http://www.microsoft.com/ie/
The vast majority of the Web crowd these days uses Internet Explorer, despite the availability of browsers that are more secure, more standards-compliant, and less intrusive. I use Internet Explorer ("IE") occasionally to test the pages' design to ensure that they look nice for those who use IE as their main browser. (In all fairness, I use IE for some things when I'm on Windows machines -- it's stable and fast.)