I would prefer SEEING the latter too but I'd rather be IN YOUR PLACE impressing a bunch of female nurses. I guess I should have clarified my stance on the matter. 

I once read an article on the now defunct BNET about a woman who had just started a new business and ended up making a sale topless right after a breast exam. This story is much cooler though. :-)

Here's YET ANOTHER interactive programming course focused on Ruby. This one claims to help you create an actual full fledged app but every time I try, it returns an error, apparently on Heroku's part. Hopefully they will get the kinks out.

http://www.trybloc.com/


Props for one of their examples being the "FizzBuzz" program. For those who don't understand the significance of this, it has to do with this infamous (and somewhat frightening) blog post:


http://imranontech.com/2007/01/24/using-fizzbuzz-to-find-developers-who-grok-coding/


...I mean geez. My degree only had two or three courses focused specifically on programming and even I know how to do THIS.

Since I'm new to this, my collection is still in its infancy (4 decks). I've been storing them in a rather...unconventional box that I happened to have lying around (picture taken from Internet):

http://0.tqn.com/d/playstation/1/0/A/C/IMG_4879.JPG

Of course, it has rather limited space thus isn't viable for the long term. I'll figure something out eventually.

I have, and found it quite funny and amusing. Interesting look at childhood in 50s America. I preferred A Short History of Nearly Everything, though.

I've previously had a Toshiba which lasted a good 5 years before breaking down. I currently have an HP which after 2 is already giving me some issues (battery acting wonky, random shut downs).

I agree that VAIOs are overpriced. 

Thirding uncut sheets and as I said earlier, prints of single cards would be appreciated as well!

Wow, those look great! Also, I bet you can figure out what my favorite card among those is. :-P Wonder if I can get some premium print to frame on that Kickstarter campaign!

Right now there's a growing number of interesting interactive web courses where you can learn programming and web design. They're rather limited for the time being but hopefully they will grow. The ones I know are:


www.codeschool.com - This one focuses on web design and is paid access (either paying for a single course or paying a monthly fee for ALL courses) but is the best website of its kind, IMHO. The courses also apparently assume you have SOME experience in web design but I managed to complete them with some basic knowledge of HTML and CSS. They also give awesome prizes for completing the courses.


www.codecademy.com - Free but is still in its infancy (though they keep adding new courses). Courses focused on Javascript.


www.rubymonk.com - Also free and updated regularly. Focused on Ruby.

I'm not disagreeing with this advice but I would advise caution in defining the scope of the project in question. If you're like me, if you decide to make something rather ambitious, you can get discouraged rather quickly if you don't know what to start. If you do define a "grand project" it's best to either break it up into small steps or make an extremely basic stripped down version of it and gradually add to it.

As for decks - you don't need any special custom cards when you're starting out. Grab some regular Bicycle decks and you'll be alright. If you like the looks of a custom deck and have some spare change, by all means get one, but focus mainly on the magic. Custom decks will always be around.

Stupid Noob Mistake #1: I bought a couple of decks of what I heard was a good brand (Fournier) but they were plastic coated. Upon further investigation, I came to the conclusion that probably every single deck available in this country's market is either 100% plastic or plastic coated. The only magic store I know closed down and was replaced by a print cartridge refilling shop leaving only the Internet as means to obtain Bicycle decks... at around 3 euros each plus shipping. Man, this hobby can be quite expensive! :-)


Though I discovered that Amazon.co.uk sells bricks and they offer free shipping to Portugal if I spend over 25£ (I can always throw in a couple of books) so I may switch to that if I get really serious.

[font='dejavu sans mono', monaco, 'lucida console', 'courier new', monospace]This is kind of an off-the-cuff idea I had. Feel free to disregard if you feel it's too vague.[/font]
8-bit

Theme: 8-bit graphics

Extent of customization: total

lPick two distinct, innovative features your cards will include, sell us on the ideas.
Pixellized court cards, Symmetry Pip

Color scheme. What will be the primary colors you use? Where will you use each color?
Standard card color scheme.

The storyline of the deck:An homage to the 8-bit era without being tied down to any particular franchise.


A while ago I happened to be browsing this forum while listening to this. This made me curious as to whether there were any 8-bit themed decks out there. Turns out there are but I think there's some room for improvement:


http://blogdebrinquedo.com.br/2011/01/27/baralho-space-invaders-8-bit-do-art-lebedev-studio/
http://www.bigbadtoystore.com/bbts/product.aspx?product=NIN10002&mode=retail
http://www.tikisaurus.com/blog/japan/zelda-25th-anniversary-playing-cards-revealed-japan.html


The main thing is that the court cards are explicitly taken by the creator's chosen franchise. There's room for imagination there. Same thing with the backs. Also, this deck could allow some interesting "glitch" gaff cards.

Airflow

Theme: Aerodynamics, Aviation

Extent of customization: Backs, Jokers, Court Cards, Aces

Color scheme: Black, white, light blue for streamlines

The storyline of the deck: n/a

The main theme of the deck lies in the name: if you have ever read any book about flight, aerodynamics or fluid mechanics you've seen countless images such as this:



The main idea would be to have each of the aces look like a diagram showing fluid flow around the pip. Of course, this isn't meant to be an accurate CFD simulation: the focus would be on looking as harmonious as possible meaning it would be at best a representation of inviscid flow (which as everyone who ever took a fluid mechanics class knows is an EXTREME simplification) and even that would require some tweaking. The back cards would also have an harmonious design along the lines of this:



The court cards would have modern aviation uniforms.