13 Dec 2006
So ... you want to have a website? Pay attention. I think I can help you.
For a while now, I've been thinking about trying to put my small amount of web hosting knowledge to use in an informative and educational way. Whenever someone says to me "umm, what exactly is web hosting" and I try to explain, I realize that making the leap from the idea that you can have a website (which to most people, is just a domain name) to the actual idea of having some disk space and cpu cycles on some box out in the world isn't an intuitive leap for people.
After putting some thought into it, I'm not too surprised. Web hosting isn't obvious or intuitive. Particularly shared web hosting, where you're actually splitting up resources with some number of other folks. Web hosting can be complex and confusing, with competing hosts simply trying to one up each other overselling their resources. In the end, for most folks, they look at one plan and say "Holy crap! 500 GB of disk space! 100 GB of bandwidth! Unlimited email addresses! That's awesome!"
And two years later they're still using 10 MB of disk space, 50 MB of bandwidth, and 2 email addresses.
The bottom line is that most people don't need the maximum amenities. That's what web hosts are expecting: the average customer is going to be attracted by out of this world options and use 1% of them. It makes the shared hosting world go round.
How does all of this tie back into helping you get a website? Well, to have a website you need some sort of web hosting. We'll divide them into three groups: free, shared, and dedicated. Your first major decision will be deciding which type of hosting you need. To determine that you need to answer one simple question ...
What do you want a website for?
Seems like a pretty obvious -- and easy -- question, right? Well, what do you want your site for? Do you just want a domain name so that you can have email address like myname@iamsoooooocool.com? Do you want a blog like all the cool kids? Do you want a full-fledged site that you might eventually turn into a small side business? Or do you want an eCommerce site that will be your main source of income?
There's all sorts of gradients and mixes here, but you can probably fit your idea into one of those groups.
I want a coolass email address!
If you're just looking for a cool email address, well, then you actually don't even need a website! What you probably need is just an email plan, where you can get a domain name and have it hosted somewhere that will host email for you. These plans run as cheaply as just a few bucks a year (plus whatever you pay for your coolass domain name).
I want a blog!
If all you want is a blog, then you're in luck! Like the email plan, you probably don't even web hosting. Instead, you probalby want to check out something like Blogger, or Windows Live Spaces, or Wordpress.com and get one of their fun, free blogging accounts. In many cases, you can even point a domain name at it.
See, two situations where people often think they need some sort of exhaustive web hosting, where what they really need is to just take advantage of some of the free (or nearly free) resources out there.
I want my own small little corner of the internet!
I want to get my business online!
Both of these options do require some web hosting. And we'll discuss them in Part Two.
04 Dec 2006
... for not posting much.
Zelda is awesome. So is The Wire. And Veronica Mars. All have been sucking up my time. More soon.
21 Nov 2006
I picked up my Nintendo Wii from Gamestop at midnight on Saturday night. It went about as smoothly as possible. We walked in, they called my name, gave me my bag full of the Wii, Zelda, and an extra remote+nunchuk, and we walked out.
I made it home and took the Wii out of the box, and hooked it all up. There wasn't a whole lot to it -- video from the Wii to the TV (only composite cables ... more on that later), the sensor bar from the Wii to where I placed it below the TV, and gave it power. That's it.
The system boots up and there's a few configuration settings, but it just sort of works. You have your little remote which works like a mouse. You point it at the screen and you move it around. One of the things that's been easy for me to pick up but I could see being a tiny bit difficult for non-games/computer folks is that it's not a perfect one to one. You don't point exactly where you want the cursor to be; it's close, but you basically move the pointer around like it's a mouse cursor. Within a few minutes, your brain will be able to make the small transformation without much of a problem. After that, it's smooth sailing.
I set up my network connection in about 30 seconds. Put in my WEP key and I was connected. Easy. The system then downloaded an update which enabled me to get into the Wii Shop (where you can buy old Nintendo and Genesis games!). But, otherwise, there's just not a whole lot of online capability right now. Once they open up the web browser (hopefully soon), there will be a whole lot more to do.
At that point, the system is up and running. You can do some cool stuff like create your little Mii avatar/chariacture that will show up in some games, or look at photos/videos on an SD card. But, at this point, most folks will put in Wii Sports.
Wii Sports
Wii Sports is awesome. Awesome. In baseball, you swing the remote to hit or pitch, and basically play home run derby. In tennis, you swing the remote like a racquet, just worrying about timing and force to aim and hit lobs or smashes. In boxing, you use the remote and nunchuk and punch and dodge. In golf, you swing the remote like a club. In bowling, you motion like you're bowling a ball, complete with spin.
In other words, you just play the game. Bowling and golf are the best, at least for me. Bowling is the easiest to pick up and translate real world ability to, I think. You aim a little off-center, swing your arm, release with some spin, and watch as you rack up a strike or spare. But, unlike normal video games where you can start to head towards a perfect game just getting the timing of button presses down, in Wii Sports, you're actually moving your arm. Not enough spin? No strike. Let go too early? You might miss the head pin. It's ridiculously easy to pick up and become good at, but not so good that there's no challenge. As a party game, I think bowling is currently unparalleled.
Golf is challenging, but fantastic. Once you get the hang of how the power meter works, you take a practice swing, see how hard you'd hit it, then step up and take a real swing. It's a little simplistic: only a few clubs, not a whole lot of depth, but playing 9 holes of golf is amazingly immersive. You're actually swinging and watching as you hook/slice, or have a putt lip out. The first time I hit a chip shot that hit the pin, I think I did a little fist pump. The moment that EA Sports puts out Tiger Woods Golf using this control scheme, I think I'll be in heaven. And I don't even like golf games.
Tennis, baseball, and boxing are pretty fun as well. Tennis and boxing are the worst of the lot for me, which is to say, they're really fun, but I don't feel the control is quite as interesting. Boxing is pretty much an exercise in flailing away, as the controls don't feel as responsive as they should be. Tennis is something I suck at in real life and also seem to suck at on the Wii. I just can't get the timing down, though that doesn't seem to be a problem for anyone else. Baseball is fun, just without a whole lot of depth.
As a whole, Wii Sports is a fantastic "introduce you to the system" game with tons of fun as a multiplayer game and with a couple of games (bowling and golf) that are fun for me even single player.
Red Steel
Red Steel is a Japan/Yakuza-themed first person shooter. It was the second game I tried. It's the worst of the lot so far, as I think the control isn't quite as tight as it should be, and the graphics are a bit washed out (but that could be due to the composite cables that the Wii ships with, as the Wii component cables are nowhere to be found, as of yet).
You'd think that the control would be similar to a keyboard/mouse FPS, but I think the developers decided that having the pointer control your point-of-view might be too unstable for people, so they basically built a big dead area in the middle where you can aim without changing your viewpoint, and then as you get close to the edge of the screen, you start to turn.
It was a bad design decision that takes probably 45 minutes to get used to.
Once you get used to it, however, it's not so bad. And the atmosphere of the game, along with the interesting (if slightly disappointing) swordplay are enough to make it fun. I made it 3 chapters in, I think, which includes shooting through a car wash and a steam room, before I switched over to the 3rd game I bought.
I'll probably play through some more Red Steel soon. I like it. It's not great, but it's not bad. It's just not as good as it should be. There are some really odd decisions made by the developers that leave you scratching your head, but none have been enough, for me, to say "wow, this sucks."
I haven't tried multiplayer yet, but there's one mode that sounds really fun. I just need to find 2 more remote/nunchuks to have 4 players play.
On to the final game ...
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
It's Zelda. It's awesome.
I'm about 6 hours in now. I've beaten the first dungeon, saved a bunch of monkeys, ridden a horse, turned into a wolf, and done a billion other things. The game is typical Zelda, with good graphics and awesome, awesome control. The only Wii-specific controls are the "swing the remote to swing the sword" and the "aim using the pointer" control. They both work really well.
One of the big concerns people have had is that you'd get tired playing with the Wii since you have to "move". Zelda proves that wrong. I played sitting on the couch for 3 hours straight without a problem. The motions are small enough, and the cable between the nunchuk and remote allows you to find the most comfortable position you want. In fact, I think that you can actually find a more relaxing/comfortable position than you can with a normal controller. The reason is that a normal controller forces your two hands to grip a device in the same position all the time. The remote/nunchuk setup allows you to put your hands where you want, keeping them separate by 1 inch or 1 foot.
So far, the game is flat out awesome. I've had no desire to stop playing, other than the fact I need to eat and want to go back and play Wii Sports every now and then. Otherwise, I'll probably be playing Zelda for the forseeable future.
Other Stuff
As mentioned above, you can download old Nintendo games to play with the Virtual Console. So far, the selection is limited, but the plan is to roll out games every month. Just to test out the process, I bought the original Zelda for the Nintendo. You go to the store, you pick it, it downloads, and then you're done. You can jump in and play it, and it plays just like Zelda because, well, it is Zelda.
The Virtual Console is just sort of brilliant, and if they can get a bunch of folks on board (i.e. get Goldeneye for the N64, or NHL Hockey for the Genesis), it's going to be a huge hit. The moment they put Mario Kart or Contra on there, I'll be buying.
The only negative things, so far, are the lack of component cables and the lack of the online options being ready. The news and forecast channels are scheduled to go online in the next few months ... but I'm not sure why they aren't ready now. The web browser could be a huge hit ... but it's not ready now.
There's a whole lot of "it'll be great soon" going on, which reduces the awesomeness of the Wii just a bit.
But, really, it's just a bit. From the ability to create your own little Mii (avatar), to Wii Sports, to Zelda, what's already available for the Wii is fantastic and made for a great launch. The moment more games show up in the Virtual Console and the browser becomes available, the Wii will start to fulfill more of it's fantastic promise.
In other words, the Wii is good.
14 Nov 2006
Not *my* Wii. The Wii.
We headed over to lunch at the mall, where I'd thought the EB Games had set up a demo Wii. Sure enough, they had. No one was using it because you had to give them an ID in exchange to get the remote (so that you couldn't walk off with the remote), so we waited for someone to check out, then gave them my license and got the Wiimote.
It was small, very solid, and felt very durable. We walked over, started up ExciteTruck, and started racing. And that was it. Just drove it like the remote was a steering wheel, and it just worked. I wasn't very good at it, but it was easy to pick up and play, felt fun to control, and most of all, sucked in the people among us who weren't gamers.
The graphics weren't too bad, even though they were just composite and not component. I think component cables will be a must when I pick up my Wii on Sunday morning, but it wasn't so bad as to make me cringe.
The sensor bar was much smaller than I'd expected. So was the Wii, for that matter.
I probably shouldn't have played with it. Now I'm just anticipating it more, and will probably drop $50 to get ExciteTruck.
12 Nov 2006
As I mentioned earlier, last night I headed over to The Paradise to see Dear Leader have their "CD Release Party", which, as you know, is really just a concert where you can buy their CD. As such, I know own the CD. More on that later.
It all started off with a wonderful T ride from Davis, where I watched 6 Outbound trains go by, then an Inbound train zoom right by the platform, before finally, my chariot arrived. Oh, glorious T, it's no wonder everyone hates you! Further complicated by a 20 minute wait on Park Street, waiting for the B line to arrive, I finally got to The Paradise at about 9:15.
I met up with a couple of my friends and we headed in, making a stop before it got crowded to pick up the new CD.
The first band was Mohair. It's always a bit disorienting to walk into a venue and get slammed by huge waves of rock music coming from a guy dressed in a ruffled shirt and tight Freddy Mercury tights, and with the hair of the dude from The Darkness. But, damn, did they rock the 50 people who showed up early enough to see them. I highly advise checking out "Keep It Together" on their Myspace page.
The Plain Janes played second. I'd heard of them many times, but never actually heard them. The first half of their set was, sadly, a little boring. A little too mellow after Mohair had just napalmed the place with style and charm. They finished up strong enough, and given that they're a local band that (like Dear Leader) features a member of the now defunct The Sheila Divine, they've got a loyal following who seemed entertained.
Finally, Dear Leader took the stage. They started out with a bunch of tracks off the new album, including the fantabulous "Nightmare Alleys" (which I featured on my last podcast). They mixed in some older songs, including "Ready the Brave", which I hadn't heard them play in a little while. The band was completely on, the crowd was completely into it, and it was probably one of the more fun shows I've been to in a while, with only one drunk person falling down near me. Sadly, however, as they finished the set, they had yet to play "Monuments and Shrines" which is a balls-out rocking song live (and on CD!). Given how much energy it takes to sing it, I figured it was going to be a no show.
Oh, but I was wrong. The band came out for an encore (naturally) and wrapped the show up with the kicking live version of "A Nation Once Again" and a really really good take on "Monuments and Shrines".
I left with my ears ringing, my new CD, and a ride back to my car in Davis (since my friends are awesome).
"But, Ryan," you might say, "was it a good show?"
Yes. Yes, it was.
After two listens, the new CD is also ridiculously awesotastic. So go to Newbury Comics and buy "The Alarmist" from Dear Leader. It makes a great stocking stuffer. I've also gotten a little motivation to hopefully throw together another podcast, probably focusing on the show (or maybe just a Dear Leader-centric one, to spread the love a little further). Hopefully that will be coming tomorrow.
I'd also love to add some pictures, except my camera takes awful pictures and no one has posted any pics on Flickr yet. But when someone does, I will find them. Oh yes, I will find them.
In the meantime, here's a picture of Mohair from another show (thanks Flickr! and thanks nevbrown, who ever you might be):
10 Nov 2006
In just a few hours, at The Paradise, Dear Leader.
Awesome.
It's a CD release party for The Alarmist (which you can listen to here). I heartily recommend "Nightmare Alleys", "Monuments and Shrines", and "Bleed", but the whole thing is really good. Really good.
Really.
07 Nov 2006
I've been posting about how jazzed I am that Google's setup Google Reader so that you can easily use it on any old web-enabled phone. And it's pretty bad ass. I use it a good bit when I'm waiting in line or grabbing a quick bite to eat .... or on the pooper.
Gmail has always been mobile-friendly, but it used a stripped-down interface. Well, no more: meet the Gmail Mobile application. Now, just boot up the app and see your Gmail interface almost like you were looking at it in Firefox. Almost. It's pretty nifty, if a little slow.
Even more cool, is that pretty much all the nifty Google mobile stuff is integrated into the Google Homepage which also has a mobile version. You just point your phone there and you get your Google Homepage, including a snapshot of (and link to) your Gmail account, a quick view of your RSS feeds in Google Reader, plus headlines from any other RSS feed you might have dropped into your homepage, plus weather and some other fun stuff.
The only thing you don't get? Google Calendar. I'm not entirely sure why I can't just have a read-only agenda view that will show me what I've got coming up that day. That's the only thing missing from me having my life be available to me at all times. Which is both really fun and cool and very, very sad. Mostly sad.
Obviously there are tradeoffs. It's harder to sync to a PDA (but, I don't really use one anymore anyway ... my phone has replaced that). My life lives on Google's servers, so if they turn evil, I'll be hosed.
P.S. You can actually get your GCal agenda via SMS, but that's annoying.
P.P.S. This is really just because I haven't had time to record a new podcast and wanted to write about something.
P.P.P.S. I really wanted to write about PayPerPost, but I want to actually formulate my thoughts before I spew any venom.
30 Oct 2006
(This should have gone up 2 weeks ago, but I was waiting to get pictures.)
A couple of weeks back (October 12th, to be exact), my beloved Hokies were playing the hated Boston College Eagles on a Thursday night on ESPN. Back in 1999, some friends and I made the trek up from Blacksburg to Chestnut Hill to spend Thursday-Saturday with some of my friends who were at BC and take in a game (which VT won in a torrential downpour). We (Aaron, Mike, and Jared) drove up, and given the weather and the amount of time we had before we had to drive back, we didn't see much of the city. Or, I should say, they didn't see much of the city, since they were here for the first time. I'd been to Boston (and BC) a bunch of times, since I'm a Masshole.
Well, 7 years later, with a chance to relive that initial trip, Mike and Jared (henceforth referred to as Billy and Bob, because that's what we call them) decided to come up, take in a game, and crash at my place. It'd give them a chance to see the city, give us a chance to hang out, and hopefully give us a chance to watch our team beat up the Eagles.
The trip got off to a rocky start, as their plane was delayed by Cory Lidle's plane crash. Still, hard to go wrong with a week off and a football game. So, I ventured out to help them do the tourist thing around the city. I really haven't done that in a few years, probably since before college. We started out heading down to Park Street and doing the walk down to Quincy Market, out into the North End, grabbing some dessert at Modern Pastry, then walking all the way down Beacon to give them a glimpse of Fenway. It's a bit of a hike, but hell, we had all day to kill and it was gorgeous out.
Here's me (left, sexy bald head) and Bob (right) walking outside of Fenway. Billy is taking the picture.
Then we headed back and got ready to meet co-worker and Notre Dame fan (so fellow anti-BC rooter) for the game. We were pumped and happy.
Then the game happened. We were not so pumped and happy.
Then Friday came, and we continued the tourist trip. I've been to probably 30 games at Fenway in the last few seasons, but I've never done the tour. So we headed over to do the Fenway tour, got a crazy, awesome old guide who told ridiculously corny and punny jokes (so I thought he was pretty much a comedy god), and got to see the stadium from a few places I've never seen it before (the press box, the new seats at 3rd base). As a Sox fan, I was pretty underwhelmed. The one big selling point for me would be to go on the field and touch the Monster, but apparently they don't do that anymore. But, for folks who don't get to see as many games at Fenway, or who may never have seen a game there (i.e. Bob and Billy), it's a pretty great trip.
Here's a picture of seats, just because I think it looks cool.
After that, we headed over to the Skywalk, which I haven't done in years and don't remember being as costly as it was, but I guess things change in 10 years. It was a gorgeous clear day, so we could pretty much see for miles. Walking around, Billy caught a few good pics. Here's my fave.
We wrapped it up with some good BBQ from Blue Ribbon, called it a night, and then drove back to Logan on Saturday morning. All in all, a fantastic few days, outside of a few hours where our football team forgot how to play (they remember this past Thursday when they beat down #10 Clemson).
I'd forgotten how cool (and small) a city Boston is. I tend to hang out on the Red Line and really only get as far as Park Street to change over to head down to Fenway. Walking around the North End and then down on Boylston and Beacon, if you give in to the romanticism and beauty (and block out the construction), you can still sort of feel like a newcomer, even if you've been here you're entire life.
On a slight tangent, I need to get my walking shoes on again and make my way down to see the statue of Red. My first real sports love wasn't the Sox, it was the Celtics, and that's pretty much solely due to Red Auerbach, who's place in national history is probably grossly understated.
25 Oct 2006
I got a decent response to the first podcast, so here it is, the "long awaited" second episode of the podcast still yet to be named where I bring you music that has caught my ear in the past week or so.
This week you'll hear an artist I mentioned in passing last week who may have my favorite pop song of 2006, a band with what I think is the album of the 2006 (so far), a band that will be releasing a contender for album of 2006 in a couple of weeks, a guy who played in Boston just a couple of days ago, and a pint-sized MC who might have the single of 2006. Sure, it's two months early to be naming off the top anything of the year, but it's a theme and everything needs a theme.
Speaking of themes, Brett's got a pretty cool theme on his podcast over at the Wicked Pissa Podcast. And he threw me a link, so how can I not return the love?
On this episode, you'll hear:
That's it. 5 songs. A few minutes of me rambling.
Get the feed from here or from iTunes. Yes, I'm in iTunes.
22 Oct 2006
I've switched.
I've used Google Reader exclusively for a full week and I'm officially hooked. I think it's successful for a few reasons:
- The "river of news" view is the first implementation of this view that I think works. It loads fast, it will mark items as read as you skip over them, and you can either skim through using your mouse wheel (which works really well), or by using the familiar 'space' keyboard shortcut (or 'j' if you like it better). I get through feeds much faster now. Much faster.
- I can use it anywhere I have an internet connection. I can stay synchronized at home, work, and even on my phone. The only place that it wouldn't come in handy is on a plane (or other place you might not have an internet connection), where a desktop client could download the feeds and store them locally. I think that's why RSS Bandit will always have a place on my computer.
- The ability to create a shared list of items you find interesting is ridiculously simple and effective.
It just works really well. I'm hoping it gets moved out of Google Labs and becomes a first-class Google application, since I think it's a hell of a lot better (and more useful) than Google Groups or even Google Docs/Spreadsheets.
The only thing it's missing is an API to allow you to sync a desktop client (like RSS Bandit) to Google Reader. That ability would be fantastic: use Google Reader whenever you can, but when you need to log off, you could sync your feeds to your client, take it with you, and then sync back up when you're done.
I guess favicon support would be pretty good too.