These are older notes and don't necessarily cover the newest versions of Wordpress and Media Temple's (dv) offerings.

I'm no longer running WordPress on my (dv), but here are the notes I wrote when I was moving my old wordpress blog. The optimization notes are probably still useful. I'm currently running Expression Engine, if anyone is curious.

Moving to Media Temple

• Wordpress and Shared Hosting - the move from smaller to larger servers, explained.
• Moving Wordpress Databases - to get around the export limitations for large blogs.
• Moving Wordpress to Media Temple - the steps taken to move my wordpress blog

General Optimization

• Configuring a Media Temple (dv) Base for Wordpress
• Other Optimizations for Media Temple (dv) Base

Troubleshooting

• Monitoring Media Temple (dv) Memory Usage
• Separate PHP Error Logs with Plesk on the Media Temple (dv)

Blogging

• Expression Engine Migration Notes
• Expression Engine Updating
• Video Blogging Notes
• Getting Started with Web Hosting
• Media Temple dv Configuration

Business & Freelancing

• Storytelling and Business

Computer Maintenance

• Macbook Pro Windows Installation
• Migrating Email
• Rock Solid Software
• WinClone for Mac OS X
• Windows Maintenance
• Input Devices
• Creating 2 Windows Partitions with Boot Camp
• Sandisk U3 LaunchPad Removal

Photography

• Canon EF Lenses List
• Laptop Camera Bags
• Camera Hot Shoe Circuits
• Flash Photography

Programming & Development

• DirectX Development Primer
• Windows Systems Programming
• Windows Debugging
• Creating a Hybrid CD ROM
• Device Driver Specialists

Audio Stuff

• iPod Accessories

Design Education

• Graphic Design Book List

Special Interests

• Tarot Cards
• Food Destinations
• People Doing Cool Things
• Design Patterns

I'm sometimes asked how to get one's website started, so I'm putting together a list of things one needs to do.

This guide is oriented toward the person who is creating their own website with a unique URL (aka domain name), as opposed to someone who is using something like MySpace, Xanga, or Wordpress.com. For example, if you're a music teacher, you might want to have a website called nashuamusicstudios.com and put it on your business card. This appears much more professional.

Also, when you have your own web site, you have a lot more flexibility for customization. The downside of customization is the knowledge required to design and engineer a website from scratch; if you don't have the skills or the willingness to learn, you'll have to pay someone to do it for you.

But we're getting ahead of ourselves. Here's the basic steps in buying web hosting, which is what you need to do if you want your own website on the Internet.

Step 1: Pick a Domain Name

If you're not starting with a hosted blog, you'll want to carve out your own little bit o' heaven on the Internet by choosing a domain name. A domain name is kind of like the name of a city or country; my domain name, for example, is davidseah.com.

I purchased my domain name from a domain name registrar, which is a company that specializes in the buying and selling of domain names from a global registry. You can think of the global registry as a kind of massive phone book that associates your domain name with a particular location on the Internet. So instead of remembering a numeric Internet Protocol Address (abbreviated as IP Address), people can remember a name. The IP address of davidseah.com is currently 64.13.223.31. As you can imagine, remembering davidseah.com is a lot easier.

How much will I pay?

When you purchase a domain name, you should pay about $10-$15 a year. This fee is for maintaining your domain name in the global registry; if you let your registration expire, people will no longer be able to find your website. To make matters worse, someone else might buy your domain name and try to sell it back to you. Maintaining your domain name registration in good standing is as important as paying your taxes.

Where should I go to buy a domain name?

I use a domain registrar called DirectNIC, which is not the cheapest but they were one of the first reasonably-priced services available. There used to only be one domain registrar, Verisign, which charges $50/year. I did not like their marketing practices so I started using DirectNIC. Another popular and inexpensive domain registrar is GoDaddy, but I find their website confusing and heavy on marketing pushiness.

Oftentimes, you can acquire a domain name at the same time you purchase web hosting, which is Step 2. That's right, when you buy a domain name, you only buy the address of your future website. To make sure there is something there, you need to purchase hosting.

What is the process?

First, you need to see if your domain name is available. Popular words, names, and phrases have probably already been registered by other people long ago, unless you get really lucky.

Once you find a domain name you like that is available, you'll need a credit card. You'll be asked to create an account and fill out personal information that will be public. You will also need to provide some information about name servers and technical contacts, which you can usually leave to the defaults. You'll be provided with a username for your domain registrar account, so you can come back later and change those settings once you find web hosting. More on that next!

Step 2. Pick a Web Host

Every domain name points to a computer that is directly connected to the Internet. This computer is called a server because they "serve" information in response to requests from other computers on the Internet. There are many kinds of servers on the Internet, but the kind we are interested in is called a web server that we can rent for a few dollars a month. Companies that provide this kind of service are called web hosting companies, often abbreviated to web hosts or simply host.

What kind of hosting? And how much will it cost?

Web hosting companies are kind of like web server dealerships, and web servers are like vehicles. Some web hosts specialize in serving business, and the web servers they provide are correspondingly powerful. For a personal website, however, you'll be looking for something basic and cheap that costs around $5.00 to $10.00 a month. There are thousands of companies that provide web hosting services, but you'll want to stick with a host that's been around for some time with a good customer service record.

Where do I find a good web host?

Finding a reputable host is typically a word-of-mouth adventure that can be difficult to assess, like asking for recommendations for "the most reliable car" or "the best quality refrigerator". It also depends on what you need to do with your website, which is probably something you haven't figured out yet. You can rest assured that most web hosts will do what you need, so pick a host with a good reputation. If you choose to hire a person to handle the creation of you web site (a web developer), they may have some opinions on what the best host is, so ask them before you pick a host. Otherwise, you can just wing it and you'll probably be fine.

Recommendations for hosting?

Some web hosts I've used in the past and have liked are Pair Networks and FutureQuest. They both have excellent uptime and customer service if you're technically savvy. I'm currently using Media Temple because I'd outgrown my previous hosts, and it's costing me about $100/month.

There are some other web hosts that I've consistently seen as "good-enough" over the years: Bluehost is used by a couple of friends of mine, and it appears to be a good value. Dreamhost is another popular host, though I see complaints about its reliable spring up from time to time (everyone has these problems). Mediatemple has lower-cost hosting plans as well. There's a list of recommended hosts on Wordpress.Org for people who are hosting their own Wordpress blogs that I refer to to see what's new.

So, to pick a web host, visit one of these sites and pick their lowest-cost plan. Every one of these websites will throw a ton of deals at you and confuse you with "bandwidth" and "storage" options, but just pick the cheapest plan. You can always upgrade your plan with a reputable host (and you can downgrade easily too).

What is the process?

• EOS 40D dimensions: 146 x 108 x 74 mm (5.7 x 4.2 x 2.9 in)
• MacBook Pro 17" dimensions: 39.2 x 26.5 x 2.59 cm (15.4 x 10.4 x 1.0 in)

The Contenders

• The Crumpler Customary Barge Laptop / SLR Bag
• The Timbuk2 Outtawhack Laptop Bag
• Rubberized skins for DSLR Made Products
• Neoprene rubberized Straps by OpTech
• The ProStrap
• The LEvertigo 17 is a vertical design laptop bag for a MBP 17. This might be the one, or the one in graphite.
• The InCase Nylon Sling Pack also looks nice. The backpack is a little larger.
• The Naneu Pro Military Ops Echo is a military-style bag that holds a DSLR. There is one bag in this line that can take a 15" laptop. The Urban Gear U220 is a monster backpack, but does hold both a DSLR and a 17" laptop.
• Domke makes several camera bags that are more non-descript. Cool Tools even mentioned it. Of greater interest to me: the Domke inserts, which are self-contained and could possibly be used in another bag. Unfortunately, they don't make a snug one that would be perfect for the 40D dimensions (I need one that's no more than 4.2 in wide to carry the EOS 40D)
• Courierware makes custom bags. Founded by bike couriers.
• The Think Tank Urban Disguise line looks promising. Particularly this review by a student, which shows the camera stuck in the side with tons of other stuff. You can even buy a backpack harness for it. AND it has a compartment for a 17" laptop!
• Pacsafe makes some interesting secure bags and straps, reinforced with wire to prevent snatch and grabs.
• Ortlieb makes an interesting camera bag insert for their bicycle bags. Some other interesting camera bags too...very square-edged and cool looking.
• Waterfield makes some nifty-looking bags. I usually don't like messenger bags, but these I like.

Think Tank Urban Disguise UD60 Review Notes

It's 16L x 11.25H x 4.25D in internal dimensions, and it fits my 40D carried lens-down. This leaves a 10 x 11.25 x 4.25 in volume next to it for carrying papers and books. The laptop compartment is 16 x 11.25 x 1.5 in, which is plenty of room. Overall dimensions: 16.5 x 12 x 6 in.

You can see some photos of the bag to carry all my stuff around. I've taken this bag to South by SouthWest (SXSW), carrying around about 25 pounds worth of gear:

• 17" Mac Book Pro w/ Power Transformer (about 8-9 pounds)
• Canon EOS 40-D with EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 IS USM + Lens Hood (not reversed, either) (around 4 pounds)
• Small Fuju FinePix F30d digital camera
• Chargers and Media Reader tucked in the sides
• Books, Magazines, Pens

With the optional backpack strap accessory, walking to and from the convention center (about an 8 minute walk) was not bad at all. Even better: when it rained, I could drape my light windbreaker over the bag to shield it from rain. I could have optionally used the included Rain Shield, which is a waterproof covering you can put around the bag. I'm not sure how it would work with the shoulder strap though. The back pack attachment is definitely worth it for hands-free carrying of heavy gear.

Six Month Review

I've brought the bag with me to San Jose. It fits nicely under the airplane seat, has plenty of pockets. The build of the bag is a little lighter than what I'm used to, but I'm pretty happy with it. No tears, no problems, no signs of wear or impending collapse. I've mostly been hauling it around by the shoulder strap (no sign of fraying) in the back of my Volkswagen GTI.

Be.ez LEvertigo 17 Review Notes

I picked up one of these bags when I was at the Mac-Pro store in San Jose, California, which happens to be the only North American distributor for Be.ez. My Think Tank UD60 was getting awfully full of stuff, and the ay I have my bag packed with the Canon EOS 40D makes it difficult to carry larger notebooks.

The construction of the bag is sleek and stylish, and it does hold a MacBook Pro 17 very nicely. The fit is snug, to the point where my Speck-encased laptop makes it a little difficult to lock down. There are no external pockets at all, so you need to lift the front flap to access the inner pockets. While the bag doesn't hold an incredible amount, you can certainly carry pens, a couple of notebooks, and a fair number of accessories (iPod, charger, small digital camera, cables, etc). The bag is actually wedge shaped, the bottom wider than the top, which allows one to pack in more stuff in the bottom pockets without unsightly bulges.

Functionally speaking, one drawback of this bag is that it has a tendency to lean forward (toward the front flap) when you set it on the ground. To compensate for this, you just turn it around, but it makes accessing the pockets while at Starbucks slightly awkward. There is no top handle on the bag either, which helps keep the lines clean but makes repositioning slightly awkward because you need to grab the long seatbelt-style shoulder strap. However, on my shoulder the bag is very comfortable and close-fitting because of the vertical briefcase style.

The form factor of this bag is more well suited for traveling light to a meeting. When I need to carry a ton of gear, I use the Think Tank UD60 with backpack straps. I may use the LEvertigo as my permanent day-to-day laptop transportation solution, and keep the UD60 for the digital camera and supplies, but that sort of defeats the purpose of having a single bag that can carry both.

I'm asked this question every now and then, so I'm finally going to make a list of useful books and concepts. This page will be updated every once in a while, based on reader questions.

If you'd like to support the site, clicking on these book links will use my "Amazon Affiliates" ID, so I will get a small percentage of the sale if the purchase is made after clicking a link on this page. Thanks!

The Foundation

When I got started in "design", I was a computer engineering student with no intuitive grasp of style or layout. My aesthetics are driven primarily by information hierarchy and making sure that concepts are introduced in the right order. When you're writing, you just introduce concepts one at a time and the reader follows. On a two-dimensional (2D) page, however, the human eye will automatically jump to the most contrasting, attention-grabbing element and proceed from there. Therefore, to control the eye, you must understand how to control attention. This means learning not only what attracts attention in order of contrast, but also learning to understand how people think.

• To understand how people scan pages and process information, read Steve Krug's Don't Make Me Think, a book about web usability. I find it much more accessible than Jakob Nielsen's work, and a lot more fun.

• If you have no sense yet of what goes into a basic page layout, Robin William's The Non Designer's Design Book is a good starting point. I also like John McWade's excellent Before and After Page Design. They're clear, to the point, and practical. If you read through these books, you will pick up a sense of the concepts that go behind a straightforward piece of print design. Both Williams and McWade have other books, and McWade publishes Before and After Magazine, which is a nice printed magazine filled with similar "how do I make..." articles.

• For an understanding of elements beyond the static page, I still refer to Herbert Zettl's textbook Sight, Sound, Motion: Applied Media Aesthetics, which I first came across as an undergrad engineering student. This book taught me how to understand the cognitive storytelling effects of media and composition.

• To understand symbols, and semiotics, Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics is a powerful and literate thesis on the topic of sequential art, presented in comics form. This book will likely appeal more to storyteller types such as myself who emphasize meaning and communication over graphic style.

• I wish I knew more about typography; I have not yet found an accessible book on the topic. The McWade and Williams books will give you some basics.

• It is very useful for you to understand how the human eye is drawn to elements on the page. I don't think I've really seen a reference for this anywhere, so I'll have to make one up. If you can understand how one might scan the landscape for saber-toothed tigers, you are on the right track.

Looking for Style

If you are looking for visual style, then the best education is to look at what is out there now in the leading-edge companies doing design of any kind. You can go to the Design section of your local bookstore and skim through the various "best of" design books. A lot of designers I know do this for inspiration.

You can also look through pop cultural references and immerse yourself in the iconography and graphic feel of the times. Make note of photographic styles, popular typefaces, fashion, cars, appliances, leisure, foods...anything that is different from the world as we know it now YET is recognizable. Recognition is important in communication; otherwise, you are just ornamenting your work with an abstract aesthetic.

If you are looking for meaningful communication that has been effectively styled as to enhance the message, my favorite books are A Smile in the Mind, the various issues of Marty Neumeirs's CRITIQUE: The Magazine of Design Thinking (sadly no longer published), and studying the works of the famous thinking designers:

• Milton Glaser, though his work may seem kind of subdued, goes deep into his work.
• Craig Frazier, whose process is fascinating. His work is deceptively simple in appearance. I saw him speak once at a Boston AIGA meeting and I was really impressed.
• For data visualization, Edward Tufte's oevre of scholarly books, particularly The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, are useful to flip through once you've got a grasp of the basics. It's not so much a reference as it is a gallery of information graphic design.
• I am not up on my graphic designers these days, so you might check your local chapter of the AIGA to see who they have speaking.

Examples of Creative Process

So how does one become creative? There are several books that I like for kick-starting the creative process, though I think it's important to plug deeply into your own associations, memories, and influences so you can reach your audience. The trick, I think, is to be one of your audience. Or be the visual equivalent of a good essayist: assume nothing about your audience's frame of mind, and set it for them visually.

My book list will expand when I have some more time to dig the titles out.

• Twyla Tharp's The Creative Habit comes to mind. I still haven't finished it, but the first six chapters always get me excited.

Understanding your Audience

It would do you well to remember that effectively awesome communication is predicated on a knowledge of psychology, shared experience, and shared emotion. This is how you build a bridge into the mind of your audience.

• An interesting book to read is Dan Gilbert's Stumbling On Happiness. This is ostensibly about cognitive processes of want and desire, but this is a useful book to understand because it is a way of understanding our own pursuit of happiness. Advertising is, on one level, about influencing how people think about their happiness.

• I would also look at Robert Greene's The 48 Laws of Power, which is a useful distillation of, well, how people try to dominate other people.

• It wouldn't hurt to look at a book on body language and sex; there's one I have called SuperFlirt by Tracy Cox (lots of pictures, so it's visual). Robert Greene has a couple of books on the subject as well, though I haven't actually read them.

• If you want to understand the mindset of the master performer, take a good look through Henning Nelm's Magic and Showmanship: A Handbook for Conjurers. As a designer, you can be a performer by proxy, a showman. The art of misdirection and expectation management are important aspects of presentation to understand, especially in new media. It's important to direct (or misdirect) on purpose, not by accident.

Between Happiness, Power, Sex, and Showmanship, you have an interesting cross section of topics to understand how human primal needs are expressed and directed. Combine that with your own experiences of daily life, and you have the basis of understanding to reach a mainstream audience. Figuring out how to translate the idea into powerful graphic statements...well, that's the trick isn't it :-)

Harrow's is supposed to serve an amazing chicken pie.

124 Main St, Reading, MA

Pizza

Two places in Cleveland Circle. Pino's and Presto's. Pino's is the original established in 1962, Presto's was established by a former employee. Supposed to be a rivalry between the two. Pino's is more traditional.

There's a new pizza place in Nashua started by an israeli guy that is supposed to be a NY style slice.

The NH chain that people from the Manchester area mention is Sal's, which has a lot of locations. I had a pie from the Nashua location by the mall, and it was not that amazing. New franchisee I reckon.

Over in Pennsylvania, Alen suggests we check out the Pizza Capitol

Chinese

My favorite place is currently Sichuan Gourmet in Billerica, MA.

For a taste of Hong Kong on Southern New Hampshire, there's South Garden in Merrimack, which also serves Dim Sum items on the weekends. It's OK. They have radish cakes, which is what I get the taste for.

Heard that Gitlo's serves good dim sum! Thanks Bridget!

Vietnamese

Looking for yummy Banh Mi! Yummy Express - 21 Branch St, Lowell, MA seems to be a likely location. Also, the Saigon Market in Nashua (maybe Manchester too) has Bahn Mi has them at 11AM on Saturday only.

Local Reviewers

Phantom Gourmet is the one I know about, but concentrations in NH favor The Hippofor showcasing local restaurants of interest. I wouldn't have known about all the activity in Milford without it.

• Altec Lansing iM7
• JBL Radial (not the micro)
• Sierra IN Sound magnetically shielded amplified speakers

`This program only supports one U3 drive removal. Exit the program and unplug extra drive then try again.`

Since there was only one U3 thumb drive plugged in, I was somewhat at a loss why this was the case. I went to the SanDisk Driver Page to download the stand-alone removal tool, but it too failed. I figured it was just crap software, and then I realized that the error message was misleading. The de-installer actually is saying that it can only deal with one drive at a time. If you have a Compact Flash Card Reader installed, or any removable USB disk device plugged in, you need to remove it. Otherwise, the de-installer gets confused and refuses to run.

Removing the digital storage card reader (it's built into my monitor, so I forget it's there) solved my removal problem. I did this by going to the Safely Remove Hardware taskbar icon and ejected the offending disk drives.

I like to keep my data on a separate drive. As I formatted my entire BootCamp partition as NTFS for data robustness, it is READ ONLY to MacOS. I eventually want to run Parallels, so it would be good to have my data on a separate drive. I tried installing Acronis Disk Director 10 under XP, but the partitioning scheme used on the Mac is newer than what's used on XP; it's nicely documented here as part of another article. After looking around for partition resizing utilities, I came across this article about diskutil, the built-in partition tool for MacOS X, now adding resize support. I'm about to try that, after purchasing and installing Parallels.

And here's another nice reference on one person's experience using diskutil

Ok, after re-installing MacOS X to undo the partition madness, then updating, I tried running BootCamp Assistant. It promptly told me that I couldn't run it. It installs a BOOT MANAGER to allow windows booting. So I'm going to nuke the other partitions and see what happens...it INSISTS on being the one to diddle everything together. Annoying.

So I had set up the 250GB disk as 60GB Mac, 60GB Windows, and the remainder for DATA. I used Disk Utility to delete the Windows and DATA partitions, leaving the 60GB Mac partition. When I ran Boot Camp again, it saw ONLY the Mac partition, not the empty space. Hmm.

So I loaded up Disk Utility again, and doubled the size of the Mac partition to 120G. I then ran BootCamp Assistant again, and choose DIVIDE EQUALLY. This, I believe, locates the Bootable Windows Partition within that first partition in a way that will make the system bootable.

Upon reaching the Windows XP installation area, I was troubled to see that the unpartitioned space I'd left was nowhere to be seen.

So I started again. This time I used Brad-X writeup on the process, which was similar to the MacWorld article in its material, but coupled with the previous insight made me realize there was something special about the resizing process itself. In the process of resizing one of the already-partitioned disks, I think this somehow preserved whatever structures needed to be preserved. This is purely a guess though.

On following the resizeVolume, I made sure I had the right partitions in the right order: Mac, Data, and Windows. The Windows partition, according to what I read online, HAD to be the last partition. I believe this is a physical layout requirement. The new partitioned showed up (yay) when I launched Windows XP Installer (holding down the C key to force boot the CD-ROM). However, the Windows drive was going to be D, and Data would end up as C. This bugged me from a convention standpoint, so I aborted the install and rebooted Mac OS X. I went into Disk Utility, deleted the Data partition, and rebooted back into the Windows installer. This time, I saw only the C: drive assigned.

Upon all the files being copied over, the computer restarted. However, it booted into Mac OS X. I went to Preferences / Startup Disk, and to my relief saw the Windows drive was now an option. However, the system booted with a DISK ERROR on the Windows side.

Gah! What we basically need is to have (1) Bootcamp apply its magic partition handwaving, which means it has to be involved at some point to make the system changes while (2) sticking the Windows partition at the very end of the disk. The DATA partition will be in the middle. I tried various things of splitting the DOS partition, but BootCamp does strange things to the partition table. The workaround, however, is to not worry about the DOS side...make the MAC side big enough to contain both the data and itself, and after bootcamp is installed THEN you shrink the Mac partition and format the data partition!

Well, I tried it, and it doesn't work.

One difference I noticed in the instructions, on a more careful reading, is that the partition adjustment was done via the Leopard CD's Disk Utility; that is, booted from CD. That makes sense, as it's tough to work with an active partition that is also the startup disk, as magical as this new resizeVolume command is. The other thing that might be a problem is that if you change the partitioning on a disk, the reference numbers also change, and these are hard referenced in a file called Boot.INI on the disk. So, editing THAT may be necessary as well, but since the disk is NTFS, OS X can't touch it unless.

SO before I start this again, I'm going to use WinClone to back up the partition onto a USB drive I have. This is a shareware app for Mac OS. Incidentally, there's a very good description of what BootCamp does to the partitions on the WinClone site.

Ok, that didn't work...again. UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME error flickered briefly on a blue screen before the screen winked black.

I recall back in the late 90s, when I was moving from Windows 95 to Windows NT Workstation 4.0, of having some woes reconfiguring my system for dual boot between the two, and I had to edit the BOOT.INI, a hidden system file.

I noticed that the Startup Disk dialog for Mac OS X had something called "Direct Disk Mode", which turns your computer into a firewire drive. Heck, why not? I put the Mac into that mode, and then plugged it into my PC, which CAN. And this worked! I edited BOOT.INI manually, bumping up the partition number, and we are working. Whew.