I'm a long-time user of free/open source software, and write various things for both fun and profit. I don't take myself all that seriously and I do all of my own stunts.
You can find me at these fine establishments on the web: Open Source Musings, The Monday Kickoff, Weekly Musings. and The Plain Text Project.
Authored Comments
Jim never said that SLS was the first Linux distribution. He wrote that SLS was his first distro and that it was the first true "distribution" that included an install program. Anyway, the early releases of Slackware were based on SLS; SLS came out about a year before Slackware.
I've found that planning with pen and paper lets you not only get ideas and structures out of your head, but also lets you shape and refine them before jumping into a digital tool. It's a lot easier to twiddle and twern ideas and concepts on paper than it is to in software.