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I'm finishing up a project for a client that does some pretty neat stuff w/ IP cameras. Everything is running on a CentOS 5 box and I needed a newer version of ffmpeg to get everything working as I want it to. I found step-by-step instructions to do this. So I'm sitting here, watching gcc commands fly by on the screen while compiling everything and I start thinking, egad, open source has really come a long, long way from my days in the late 90's using Red Hat 6.2 and Ximian desktop. None of the stuff I'm working on would have been possible back then and I really don't want to think about what it would take to do all of this on a proprietary system like Windows.

When I'm done w/ this project and it's fully debugged and in production I plan on writing a series of journal entries about what I've done, the problems I overcame, etc.

Anyway, I just wanted to give a shout out to all the people who make open source possible. I would be a broke, poor soul w/o much of a life if none of this stuff existed, and it's due to the hard work you've all put into it that makes my career possible. Thanks so much!