Happily Ever After

[robotnik2004]

There's lots and lots I could or should be posting about, but may never get to. Including, in reverse chronological order: A send-off dinner last night for two friends moving to Chicago, who will be greatly missed, though they don't read LJ, so why go into it... A great weekend visit from my long time amigos Sean and Chris, very fun and very much appreciated. And they do read LJ, as sneech515 and gammafodder, so thanks again for coming down, guys... Starchildren last week, but alas (for me) no Age of Paranoia... Another great weekend in Toronto... A very relaxing week at Wolf Lake (is there any other kind?)... The Canadian Election and the Westport (pop. <700) Pride Parade... Enough books to keep you in ARFFF! posts for the rest of the summer...

But before I get to all these topics, I need to canvas you, the Robot Army, for advice, server space, and carpentry tools:

1. One of my modest goals for this summer is to step into the mid-1990s and finally get around to constructing my academic self a website. Just the standard job hunt stuff: CV, conference papers, maybe a weblog that is only partially devoted to alien funketeers. Anyone have advice on domain name providers, web hosting, and weblog software? I know this has been hashed out before by many of you.

2. Do any of you in the Boston area have a plane I can borrow? The shaving-down-wood tool, not the flying vehicle. Another of my modest goals for this summer is to start working through the list of minor home repairs I made when I first moved in to my place in September 2001. What can I say, I must have gotten sidetracked by 9-11 and the War on Terra. But now the Iraqis are living happily ever after with full sovereignty and all, I can at last get back to painting the trim in the living room and fixing that sticking door on the liquor cabinet. So: anyone have a plane?

Comments

[bryant]

In no particular order...

Weblog software: Movable Type. If you don't want to shell out money you don't have to. It's simple, well-supported by the community, and the licensing terms are no longer insane.

Hosting: Hosting Matters. The M250 plan is fine for a blog and a website. They have gotten good reviews from any number of bloggers. They do domain name registration too, and it's nice to have the same people doing both registration and hosting.

I would be really interested in reading a robotnik research weblog, no kidding.

[gammafodder1.livejournal.com]

I'll agree with Bryant re: Moveable Type. You'll have to get an app called MT Blacklist though, otherwise you'll be flooded with blog spams. Alaina has a server, as you know and I suspect that she'd be willing to give you some space on it if you asked her. She's had a bit of problems installing MT recently, so it may require some convincing on your part - red wine works best, I understand.

Best of luck on your summer project and thanks again for a great time this weekend. I have some photos of you and L that I'll have to send your way, and one incriminating one of me by that horrible statue in the park that I'll need to burn.

GF.

[sneech515.livejournal.com]

I went through register.com when I picked up www.sean-davidson.com (no complaints) but have since switched it (and www.snaark.com) to the Domain Registry of Canada, more for convenience than anything.

Both sites are hosted for free on Alaina's server, so I've never really had to worry about that, and I use Adobe GoLive (plus my increasingly rusty hand-coding skills) for all the actual design.

GoLive is pretty good. The code it creates is bloated, which can sometimes cause weird and hard-to-trace problems, but the interface itself is really good once you get the hang of it, and its fairly easy to implement nifty bells and whistles like rollovers and pop-up windows.

-- S

[novalis.livejournal.com]

I've used:
Domain: Gandi (http://gandi.net)
Hosting: PHP Web Hosting (http://www.phpwebosting.com) (having nothing whatsoever to do with the programming language PHP).
Weblogging: Blosxom (http://www.blosxom.com) is pretty cool, but I'm told that Wordpress (http://www.wordpress.org) is closer to actually usable by non-geeks.