DanHagen.com

As many of you probably know, I purchased a new domain name. Multiple people have exclaimed “Why? LessThanDan.com was so cool!” But nonetheless, I was kind of forced to. You see, my domain name evidently expired yesterday, and one way or another, some stupid domain parking company actually bought out my domain before I even noticed. I feel like I’ve been raped. So, two things: I could probably buy it back at some ridiculous price, or simply get a new one. Obviously, the disadvantages of getting a new domain are that people have no choice but to update all their links and bookmarks, as well as remember a brand new URL. In this case, I don’t want to buy it back for a jacked-up price.

However, there is a considerable upside to this. For one thing, my domain name is.. err… well, it’s my actual name. This means that (a) The address is actually easier to remember for many people, and (b) The chances of searching my name on google and having my site appear on the first page of results are significantly greater. So in a way, I’m kind of happy with the way things are (I don’t remember danhagen.com being available a year ago, when I first got into the world of paid hosting). Hurrah for convinience!

On a somewhat unrelated note (although it does have to do with me getting screwed), all of my personal files at school were deleted.

Yes; that’s right. Some sad, lonely person - who probably lives in a broken home with negligent parents - is hacking different students’ accounts on the school network and deleting everyone’s stuff. Except, I don’t think “hacking” is the correct term in this case. Rather, I think it’s called “Getting into the Windows command prompt and being a douche bag”. Regardless, I hope this kid gets what’s coming to him…

…because it’s really a kick in the crotch to have all of my precious hours of movie editing go down the drain.

Life sucks.

In the realm of web coding and design, the line between amateur work and professionalism is extremely blurry… a line that’s blurry enough to trick you into thinking that you need glasses.

Corny metaphors aside: Think about it. I believe the real designers here are the ones who bust open their favorite text editor and graphics program in order to create an attractive and standards-compliant layout, completely from scratch. On the other hand, many people simply acquire their own copy of Dreamweaver and immediately dub themselves a web-developer.

So, with this in mind, I can honestly admit that I’m not a professional. On a scale from beginner to expert, I would consider myself an intermediate (at the most). Do you believe me? Luckily, my friend Kilroy referred me to a nice list of reasons why I might be a hardcore web/graphics designer. I considered it worthy enough to post right here on my own blog. In addition, my responses to each of the tips will be written in non-bold style. Why don’t you click past the break and take a looksee?

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Many of you may know James Rolfe.

Not only is he the driving force behind Cinemassacre Productions, but he is undoubtedly recognized best for his character “The Angry Video Game Nerd”. I believe that name singlehandedly reminds his fans of his crude, profane, yet delightful video reviews of retro gaming titles. I could go on for a while about how much I enjoy his work, but that’s not exactly what I wanted to discuss (I suggest checking out the AVGN page… as long as you are not easily offended).

One of the things I really admire about Rolfe is his philosophy in film making. Upon entering his frequently-asked-questions page, you get a nice explanation on how he works:

What does Cinemassacre mean?

Cinemassacring refers to the efficient way in which my films are made, without a ton of equipment or pre-production meetings, ignoring all the extraneous things that happen behind the camera, when all that matters is what comes up on the screen in the end.

The Cinemassacre is the lifeforce and driving power behind my work; the pure insanity to make these wild films. When the obstacles are stacking up and it looks like there is no way to finish a project, I just go on a rampage and “cinemassacre” my way to the end.

To cinemassacre is to let loose with what you’re doing. In doubt? Just “cinemassacre” it, the same way a crazy artist would splatter paint all over his work and let the art gods take control.

The cinemassacre is me, my one-man production company which I started when I first got my hands on a video camera, in 1989, making over 130 short movies that “massacre” both Hollywood and Independent trends, but with one main purpose: to entertain.

Bingo. I can’t really say a lot, other than the fact that I am reminded of myself. If you really know me, then you know that I hate planning. I don’t want to write a lame graphic organizer or some kind of chart before I even start the real thing. It sucks, no?

In a way, it comes to me as good encouragement. Because of my strong interest in movie-making, and because I am in a multimedia class at school, there’s no better way than to get a new digital camcorder for my films - schoolwork or not. Unfortunately, because of my financial situation, I am limited as to what kind of equipment I can use in my free time. For now, I have settled on something that can be afforded as a Christmas or birthday present. The Panasonic Camcorder you see to the left seems to be a great balance between price and quality. Of course, if I were rich, I would buy one of those slick HD camcorders with gigabytes of built-in hard-drive storage, but that’s not going to be happening anytime soon. Again, the Panasonic model will suffice because of it’s image quality, compact recording medium, and firewire capability.

With all of this, lately I’ve had a tendency to get excited about a future of independent film making. Here’s to good times.

Now if only I had a higher-end PC…

Wow. Just wow.

How long have I been troubleshooting my website? I’ve been facing the debacle of trying to get my domain name fully functional ever since I moved to a new web host. When was that? Over a week ago. A week.

And yet, that whole wait wasn’t even necessary. My domain name has still not been transferred over to my new service - perhaps because the guys over at the 1&1 transfer department are difficult to cooperate with (I almost called them douchebags) - but fortunately, before I had canceled my old hosting account, I had set up a DNS with the domain name to work with my new service, and I simply just had to tinker with some of the settings with my new host to get things working. Once my domain expires, I will reregister it with NFSN.

…NFSN, that is, NearlyFreeSpeech.net. They are my new web hosting provider. There are multiple reasons why I switched, which I will sort into an easy-to-comprehend bulleted list:

• Customer service. 1and1.com really isn’t too bad of a host… but they aren’t too good either. While they settle with outsourced tech support in India, NearlyFreeSpeech actually really cares about their customers.
• Pricing. What really struck me about NFSN is the way the payment works. You only pay for what you use. It can be equated to a pay-as-you-go cell phone plan: You pay one cent per megabyte per month, one dollar per gigabyte of data transfer, etc. At this rate, I am only paying about one dollar a month for hosting. I need to be careful, though; obviously I don’t want to store gigabytes of data on my server for the sake of not paying a ton more money.
• SQL. 1&1’s MySQL service was pretty slow. Thanks to NFSN, my site loads a couple seconds faster. This may not seem like much, but since Wordpress relies on SQL for dynamically generating pages then it can really mean a lot.

I think that’s all I’m really going to say for now. There are plenty of other things I could write about, but at the moment I’m just sick and tired of being sick and tired.

I’ll conclude by recommending NearlyFreeSpeech.net as a great web host. There’s just two things I want to emphasize if you’re considering using it: If you’re a newbie to web administration, or if you plan on using it for storing large files, then I suggest you go somewhere else.

It’s kind of irked me that my site takes a couple of seconds longer to load than many other sites. As far as I know, WordPress generates the output dynamically from the database, which would explain this phenomenon. I realize that two more seconds of loading time isn’t much to fret over - however, I worry about it anyway because I know I can make it faster than that.

I installed WP-Cache which will hopefully speed things up a little bit. Put simply, it caches my blog’s pages and stores them as static files so they are served considerably faster. To anyone who uses WordPress as their blogging software: I suggest you check out this plugin, as there’s no harm in trying it.

I believe the answer to this question is something that many people people still don’t know, and although some people may believe they have the answer, they actually don’t. Obvious aspects such as price advantage are not the only good reasons for running Linux.

One point I should probably get across is this: Linux - even now - isn’t for everyone. To elaborate, most Linux programs have graphical front ends, and desktop environments such as Gnome and KDE have drastically helped, however you will still need to do some “geeking around” to use your operating system to it’s fullest extent.

My influence for writing this was an article on Digg, which explains ten things you should know before making the switch to Linux. I would say that number three is one of the most important.

3. You will have to learn how to use the command line.

Any Linux person will tell you that the command line is one of the most powerful and important features of the system. At the same time, this brings me back to why some computer-illiterates may want to stick to Windows. Those who could care less about PCs in general probably wouldn’t bother switching to new software requiring use of the command line. In this case, people do not like change, and I suggest they actually stay away from Linux. Many programs must still be ran directly from the terminal, so as I said, not everything has a pretty GUI. (Too bad most people tend to forget that during the days of DOS, the command line was pretty much the main and only part of the system.)

I don’t want to ramble on for too long, but why did I, myself, switch to Linux?

Because I am willing to “geek around” in order to get things to work. I am only beginning to realize the flexibility and power of Linux and Unix systems. I also realize that I won’t be able to run all of my Windows programs, and I’m fine with that. I think it’s a small price to pay in order to break the bonds of Microsoft.

Another part of the aforementioned article:

5. Yes, more hardware works with Linux than with Windows. No, not all hardware works 100% like it’s supposed to.

Right on. It took a few minutes to get my goshdanged printer working with my Ubuntu system. Fortunately, Ubuntu is a great Linux distribution with a large community and support base behind it. If it weren’t for the good people at the Ubuntu forums, then I wouldn’t have gotten my printer working.

So again, if I install Linux on Joe Schmoe’s computer down the street, he’ll be pretty pissed if he has problems getting the drivers he needs. Of course, Linux is cool because of how it can automatically detect almost all of your hardware and install drivers on it’s own. If this doesn’t work, however, then be prepared to do a little bit of research.

Lack of drivers is not a valid argument for not using Linux. For one thing, it’s the manufacturers’ faults for not supporting more operating systems. Luckily, people are kind enough to be able to reverse-engineer many drivers and make Linux versions, but companies such as HP are stupid when they’re too afraid to release the source code for some of their software. Think about what a better world it would be if they did.

So, you may notice how I’ve taken some of the potential cons of Linux and put them in a positive light. I, for one, am willing to learn new things, and therefore I’m willing to use a flexible, open-source operating system such as Linux. I believe that making the switch has been one of the smartest things I’ve ever done.