WordPress in the Cloud, Free for a Year

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For the past few months, my personal website has existed in limbo. I had the domain registered through MediaTemple, and was using Posterous to manage it for a while, but stopped updating it for a while only to come back and find Posterous had not only changed significantly, but had also been acquired by Twitter.

I thought about signing up for MediaTemple’s Grid-Service hosting package (for nostalgia mostly; it was Onward State’s first host) but the price deterred me.

WordPress.com would have been easy, but it’s not set-up for experimentation or development… had I just wanted to get my content up quickly and beautifully, there’s no doubt I would have headed over there. Since not, though, I searched around a bit for WordPress-specific hosting companies. There are more than a few (notably WP Engine), but none were at my ideal price-point of $0. What can I say… I aim low.

It took just a bit more searching before I stumbled on the perfect solution. Well, at least, perfect enough.

Turns out Amazon is offering a free usage tier for AWS. Not familiar with it? You probably are much more than you realize. AWS is the cloud computing platform that runs megasites like Zynga, Netflix, and many others. And what could be better on one of the world’s most popular cloud computing platforms than WordPress, the blogging software that now runs something like a fifth of all new websites.

A sweet company called BitNami Hosting provided the connection between AWS and WordPress. The service helped me create and install a server with WordPress on my EC2 instance. While it is possible to set WordPress up directly through AWS, BitNami simplified the whole process and had some helpful documentation to assist along the way.

Was it the easiest way to get publishing online? Not by a long shot… but to turn a phrase, curses are ignorance leaving the body. Now that everything is up and running, I’m really enjoying exploring the various systems and thinking about how I can extend this WordPress installation. Oh yeah, and also about what else I should write on here. If you’ve got thoughts, leave ‘em in the comments.

The Barnes Foundation, From Suburb to City – NYTimes.com

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Barnes’s arrangements are as eye-opening, intoxicating and, at times, maddening as ever, maybe more so. They mix major and minor in relentlessly symmetrical patchworks that argue at once for the idea of artistic genius and the pervasiveness of talent. Nearly every room is an exhibition unto itself — a kind of art wunderkammer, or cabinet of curiosities — where you can spend hours parsing the echoes and divergences among the works in terms of color, composition, theme, surface and light.

via The Barnes Foundation, From Suburb to City – NYTimes.com

I can’t wait to see the new Barnes. 181 Renoir, 69 Cézanne, and tons more. The article suggests that the audio guides aren’t worth it; instead, immersion in the symphony of colors and shapes is suggested. I disagree wholly… Barnes was an academic and his arrangements were done for reasons that, if known, would add even greater texture to the museum experience. And as for the question of whether the exhibits should “move” (author’s verbiage), I say go for it… just so long as any modifications are done in the inquiring spirit of Barnes himself.

If you were to leave a unique and singular museum behind in any field, how would you choose its focus, what would you fill it with, and most importantly, how would you arrange the whole thing? Let me know in the comments or on Twitter at @davisshaver.

Twitter Updates for 2012-05-17

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Live from Apple’s iPad 2 event — Engadget

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This is worth repeating. It’s in Apple’s DNA that technology is not enough. It’s tech married with the liberal arts and the humanities. Nowhere is that more true than in the post-PC products. Our competitors are looking at this like it’s the next PC market. That is not the right approach to this. These are pos-PC devices that need to be easier to use than a PC, more intuitive.

via engadget.com
Yep… that about sums it up.

John Gruber

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How could Apple release a third-generation iPad just six months or so after the second one? Maybe it won’t be an actual next generation model. Maybe it’s more like an iPad 2.5, or iPad 2 Pro — a new higher-end model that sits atop the iPad product family, not a replacement for the iPad 2 models (which, of course, haven’t even been released yet).

via daringfireball.net
As usual, Gruber nails it.

USC to open lab on future of digital media

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The lab will loosely follow the model of interdisciplinary media programs like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab. The new project has already won  $1-million in sponsorships from corporations like Verizon Wireless, IBM, and Mattel, which hope to use ideas developed at USC. It has also attracted a veteran of MIT’s media programs, the digital-media scholar Henry Jenkins.

But the USC lab will focus on the immediate applications of new technology and the study of its effects, rather than on building new inventions as the MIT lab does, said Jonathan Taplin, the Annenberg Innovation Lab’s director and a professor in the Annenberg school.

via chronicle.com
Sounds like an awesome program.

Roger Ebert on Connections and the Internet

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Lonely people have a natural affinity for the internet. It’s always there waiting, patient, flexible, suitable for every mood. But there are times when the net reminds me of the definition of a bore by Meyer the hairy economist, best friend of Travis McGee: “You know what a bore is, Travis. Someone who deprives you of solitude without providing you with companionship.”

What do lonely people desire? Companionship. Love. Recognition. Entertainment. Camaraderie. Distraction.

Encouragement. Change. Feedback. Someone once said the fundamental reason we get married is because have a universal human need for a witness. All of these are possibilities. But what all lonely people share is a desire not to be — or at least not to feel — alone.

You are there in the interstices of the web. I sense you. I know some of you. I have read more than 78,000 comments on this blog, and many of them have been from you. I know two readers who if possible would never leave their homes. I know more who cannot easily leave, because of illness or responsibilities. I don’t know of any agoraphobics, but there probably are some. Just because you’re afraid to go outside doesn’t mean you’re happy being inside.

via blogs.suntimes.com
And people say the Internet is a dehumanizing medium. As if. For precisely the reason Ebert illustrates, the Internet is at its core a network of people, whether it’s the users inhabiting huge social landscapes or a couple emailing across the country.

It reminds me of a quote by a former headmaster of Lawrenceville. When asked to define Lawrenceville, the headmaster paused just a second before replying that Lawrenceville was no more than the aggregate of all the personal relationships that have occurred over time on its campus. It’s a wonderful thought; a way of defining an institution that we can all appreciate. My questions: is this an appropriate way to describe the Internet, as Ebert’s column suggests to me it is? Or is it an appropriate way to define Penn State? Perhaps not… but I think these are concepts worth thinking about.