One of the first things I did when I found out we were moving to Bangkok was look up the power options. Finding the voltage was pretty easy: it’s 220 (so Europe, UK, Australia, NZ appliances do not need transformers to run, but the US, Japan and anyone on 100-110 will)  but which plugs were available was not so easy. Sure, I found the charts which told me that plug types A and C were used in Thailand and that meant the two pronged round ones, like in Europe and the two prong straight ones like in the US and Japan, but all I really wanted was this:

I did, eventually find photos like this on a couple of sites but they were described as “universal” and I didn’t take a good look so we were a little disappointed when we got here, because they ain’t universal y’all – they won’t take the enormous British plugs, nor the daintier, angled ANZAC ones (spot the pun .) It’s not a big problem, though, because there are lots and lots of genuinely universal adaptors available, including power boards from 3 to 6 plugs and cost from 200 – 500baht (at the more expansive stores).

If you use the British or Australian type sockets, here’s what to look for in a truly universal socket:

The second circle in the middle and the extra dips in the top two holes accommodate the Australian plug and while the extra width of the top two holes and the bottom hole accommodates the British plug (obviously the bottom holes being for grounding third prongs, in any type.)

One of the other things you will notice if you are from countries which don’t just have constantly live sockets on their walls (as our friends from the States pointed out to us in Sydney) there are no switches on the Bangkok power outlets, to turn them off. Now, I’m sure that if I’d grown up with that, it would be fine, but it kind of freaks me out – especially in the bathroom – so I was happy to find both power-boards and single adaptors which had switches for each outlet.

The beauty of the power-boards having these switches  is that they also create more space between each socket, so that you can use plugs with large transformers on them (like for your notebook, or phone charger) and you don’t have to waste a plug between. Even if you have one of those appliances which, for some reason, has a plug set on an angle, there is still space for a normal sized plug beside it (though the switch will need to be left on, in this case.)

The stores you want to get your relocation agent to take you to find these are either “PowerMall” which are in the big “Department Stores” (which is what the Thais call a mall) there is one on the 5th floor of Emporium (cnr Sukhumvit road and Soi 24) and another in Siam Paragon, or, the cheaper option is any of the HomePro stores (if you go out to the big one outside Bangkok, you can pretty much get everything you need to build your own house and furnish it there!)

So you know what you are looking for, here are some packaged pics:

These are the ones we got from PowerMall this three plug cost 266 baht – slightly more expensive than ones you’d get at HomePro but nice and solid (and they will exchange them any time if there are problems):

These are some available at HomePro, I didn’t get prices, sorry, but they were all cheaper than at PowerMall (I’ve no idea how the build quality felt):

Universal power-board with switches and Universal Long Lead

Plain A&C Grounded Power-Board and a roll-up long lead with 3 A&C ungrounded plugs with one switch for all.

So there you go, when deciding what to bring the answer is that any plug can be accommodated, you just need to make sure that anything not running on 220-240volts either has a transformer brick on the power cord or you will have to buy a step-up/step-down transformer here (also available at the same stores )

Good luck!

I’ve been using Flickr since 2008 but the lack of control over how my images are displayed, not to mention the utter lack of style has always annoyed me, so, in preparation for what I envisage to be a photography-inspiring couple of years in Bangkok, I’ve moved to Smugmug. If you’re interested, my photos can now be found at http://photography.narrativedisorder.com.

Below, there should be an embedded slideshow of some of my favourite shots since getting my DSLR – let’s see how it works!

Maybe I just love a ‘ladder’ – I am a list maker – but I found the the graphs helpful because they were satisfying, they made me want to stay above that line!

After NaNo, I wished that I could keep using the site in the same way and for multiple projects but, of course, I couldn’t – fair enough, too, bandwidth for that kind of thing is expensive – even Storycraft crashes once a week, just after the chat, and that’s just to read posts! For months after NaNo, whenever I found myself thinking that the graph might help spur me on, I googled for word count apps. I found a few basic word count metres but nothing like the NaNo graphs and stats – until, finally, I hit on Write Track.

Write Track was designed by one  David S. Gale, himself a NaNo winner (2009) and married to one (2003.) David and his wife felt just as I did after NaNo but David had the skills to do something about it and put together a replacement, with some fantastic additions which take your non-writing life into account.

Here’s the Write Track basics:

1. you register (free;)
2. you create your own projects with your own target word counts and target dates;
3. the software creates a Calendar for you, giving you the average that you’d need to write each day to meet that goal and;
4. creates a graph ( a couple, actually) of your projected goal, which will gradually be overlaid in a different colour as you;
5. enter your actual word counts each day – or every few days because you can enter the actual word count for any day at any time (as long as it’s not in the future.)

Sounds pretty good, so far, but David has been both clever and  considerate and made Write Track a little different to NaNo, because it’s not actually NaNo all year round and life only puts up with that “I’m doing NaNo, how much blood is there?” crap in November, right? 

After you’ve created your project and Write Track has created your calendar, you can click on a day when, say, you have/or had meetings all day and have/had to take the kids to hockey practice and won’t/didn’t get anything done till late at night. You can ‘weight’ that day as ‘25’(percent) or even ‘0’ and Write Track will adjust the daily targets accordingly, spread over all the days you’ve allotted, and give the day in question a 25% or 0% load of the total. Similarly, if you have a day when you know you’ll have the house all to yourself and will write well all day, you can weight that day at 200% and, again Write Track will adjust the target over the whole project. Weighting and recalculating over the whole project allows you to catch up, without your feeling you have to do twice as much the next day – it’s gentle.  The daily target will also help you to work out if you are pushing yourself too hard, or not enough, with your overall targets.

I don’t have any screenshots for you because David seems to be ‘just this guy, you know?’, not a software company so it’s not presented with a slick ‘features’ and ‘screenshots’ page, but it works wonderfully and he does seem to be constantly tweaking it. Write Track is free to use, with a tasteful, unassuming donation button, which I clicked and sent him $19.95, because I’d be happy to pay that each year as a subscription for such a service.  The previous sentence should make it clear that this is not a paid recommendation post  – you’ll never find those on Narrative Disorder – or Storycraft, for that matter, I wish people would stop asking – and I don’t have any ties to the Write Track or David Gale, I simply like the software and highly recommend it.

Happy Writing!

#Storycraft is the hashtag used for a weekly online chat I host on Twitter, using the account @Story_Craft.  Writers from all over the world meet to discuss a specific topic concerning the art of crafting fiction for an hour or so. We stick solely to craft matters and do not discuss ‘the biz’ topics such as querying, getting an agent or e-publishing etc.

Because I move time zone every 18months or so, but also because it’s just a better time to catch lots of English speaking writers online, I schedule #Storycraft based on Sunday at 3PM US Pacific. At the moment, my plan is to keep doing that when I move to Thailand, but I may need to rethink that if being up and ready to host at what will sometimes be 5am, Monday, proves too difficult. If you’d like to join us and are unsure what time that makes it for your part of the world, there is a countdown in the sidebar of each page on the #Storycraft blog we also have a Facebook Page and a discussion group on Goodreads.

If the whole idea of a tweetchat is foreign to you but you’d like to chat with some writers, do take a look at the How to #Storycraft page on The #Storycraft blog.

There are many such tweetchats for writers, such as the enormous #writechat (Midday Sunday, US Pacific time) and, a favourite, #scriptchat, hosted by @jeannevb, the US version of which starts at 5pm Sunday, US Pacific time and many screen inclined #storycrafters go directly from one to the other.

In the before-NaNoWriMo times, I promised a post which would help everyone to install the Kindle for Android app on the Cruz Reader. In the last few weeks, I’ve actually been receiving emails for help on getting it done, so here is the post, at last.
Note that this is the basic process for installing any app. on any Android tablet.

Please do let me know if the link below stops working, it was fine at the time of writing.

How to install Kindle for Android on the Velocity Micro Cruz Reader

Step 1

From your home page, make sure you are connected to Wi-Fi,  launch your browser and go to

http://www.freewarelovers.com/android/app/kindle

(20th Dec 2011 )NOTE:  This post is now more than a year old and Kindle for Android has been updated so, when you get to the freewarelovers page linked to above, before continuing, do a search on freewarelovers for Kindle and look for a more recent version (at least 2.0), then continue with the instructions. Installation itself hasn’t changed.

(Hint: if you open up this post on your Android Reader’s/Tablet’s Browser, you can just click above!)

You should land on a page which looks like the picture in…

Step 2

Under the “Download” heading, you will see a link with a .apk extension – this is the extension you will want to look for whenever you want to install an app on Android.

Click that link.

Step 3

After clicking that link, you should come to a page which looks like this. Note that just under the “Downloading…” title, it has the usual download page prompt:  “If your download does not start automatically, click here.” I’ve found I always need to click there but give it five seconds to see if it starts before you click it.

Once the download starts, whether automatically or no, your screen will change to look like the picture in…

Step 4

Wait while your app downloads.

The yellow bar at the bottom is your download progress bar.

If this is the first app you have downloaded, you won’t have a list as long as this!
Note that from the list of the downloads you can see there, I highly recommend, Skyfire (a browser), NewsRob (RSS reader which syncs with Google Reader nicely), Dropbox (if you have Dropbox, of course), Word Press (if you have a WP blog) and TweetCaster.

Step 5

When your download has finished, your page will look like this, though, obviously, up the top there will be a Kindle icon, I took these shots while installing Skyfire.

Click the Install button on the bottom left.

Step 6

Watch the progress bar fill while it installs… after which is should look like:

Step 7

…this!

Now click Open on the bottom left.

Step 8

Watch Kindle for Android launch and follow the prompts to enter your amazon account details and register your new Kindle!

Step 9

Sync and browse your Kindle Library – you are ready to start reading!

(I think the library page looks much better than the Kindle for PC version, don’t you? )

Now it’s time to return to writing As Long As She Lives – many thanks for the procrastination excuse!

This review is very much for the Android-newbie who wants to know what the Cruz Reader is like out of the box, who would be using it as an eReader first and foremost, and who wants to see some pictures of it in action, without having to sit through a video to get to them.

If you are reading this as you consider whether to buy one as an eReader, these are the three main reasons I was looking for an eReader like this, instead of a kindle or Sony etc.…:

1) the reverse contrast flash, which is part of the e-ink tech, gives me headaches and motion sickness – instantly. The faster the speeds get, the worse the effect. No e-ink for me!

2) I’m simply not going to pay money for any hardware device which restricts my available file formats, and/or choice of retailers;

3) As fantastic an eReader as my tablet PC is, it’s too large and heavy to throw in my bag or sit in a comfy chair and hold for hours.

If you’ve come here wondering whether this will be a cheap iPad replacement, the answer is: No, it doesn’t have anywhere near that power.  If you’re wondering if it will be a cheap replacement for a tablet PC the answer is, again: No –an iPad doesn’t come close to the power and functionality of a tablet PC (and I know, I’m writing this blog post on one and have been using tablet PCs since 2003.)

If you’re wondering about buying it as an Android tablet for dev.-play well, it’s only 2.0 and, if you have that kind of knowledge and passion, then obviously the WITS A81E is the way to go for you at the moment, and they cost around the same as these. (I came this close to getting one but decided that I don’t have time to get sucked into that world – and I would be so easily!)

After playing with it for a couple of days, my basic impression is that it does all that I expected and need of it, plus a little more but it is a SLOW machine – tech-rumour suggests it will be much faster, once I do the firmware update, though.

On to the overview!

eReader Questions:

Lets start with the most asked question on Amazon (whence I purchased mine), first:

Q. Can the Kindle for Android App be installed on the Cruz Reader?

A. Yes.  See photo!

Q. Do I need to have the knowledge of a fully-paid member of the Android Developers Club to install it?

A. No. I know I’m a tech-head in comparison to many but this was my first exposure to Android and I can assure you that it’s easy.

Q. Is it illegal to install the Kindle eReader on the Cruz?

A. No. Kindle for Android is freeware and accessing it via the official Android Market is purely a convenience measure. There is nothing illegal about installing anything you like on your hardware device, as long as you have paid the appropriate fee to the appropriate people which, in Kindle’s case, is nothing. Just make sure you trust the download site you choose. 

Q. How do I install the Kindle App on the Cruz Reader?

A. The easiest way is to connect the Reader to the Wi-Fi, start up the browser and download the .apk (the android app file format) file directly from this page: www.freewarelovers.com/android/app/kindle   I won’t detail exactly how in this quick review but, for those who want a blow-by-blow, it will be coming in the next few days. If you’re totally new to android, or consider yourself particularly un-technical, I do suggest you first try installing an app via the “Cruz Market” app which comes installed. The process is fairly obvious and, after you click ‘download’, is exactly the same as it is when you download from the browser.

Freewarelovers.com is, I’m sure,  just one of several sites which allow direct download of Android software, rather than just giving you links to the Android Market site, which is not accessible on the Cruz, it is even blocked through the browser. I used it because it was oft-mentioned as safe on the Android fora I was hunting through for reviews on the Cruz and Android in general. If you don’t use this site, do use a site recommended by someone because there are wicked people out there who might disguise something nasty as a genuine app file.

Size and Weight

Weight: Though advertised as “under a pound” the actual weight turns out to be just under 1lb 2 ounces, or 508gms. It’s not light, but it’s light enough for me, considering the trade offs.

Size Comparisons:

Below you will find three comparison shots with the Cruz reader sandwiched between the following:

From below:

A4 size Notebook (mmmm, Clairefontaine);

A5 size (#16) Rhodia Bloc Notepad;

Cruz Reader;

Standard size novel (Thief of Time, Terry Pratchett);

Blackberry Bold 9700

The black thing at the head of them all, in the first photo, is the stand which comes with the reader (but won’t come with Cruz Tablet), which has a nifty hole into which the power cable slots when plugged in. It’s as stable as it is clever (very) and well balanced, too. 

Wi-Fi

Wi-Fi on the Reader is b/g only, the upcoming Cruz Tablet will apparently be n. I had no trouble connecting, I simply pressed “Wi-Fi Settings” on the Home menu (see pic) and our network was there to be logged on to. It has also happily reconnected every time I’ve booted up. The only time it has lost connection in the past two days has been when our Wi-Fi network has wavered and my Blackberry has also lost connection. Obviously, two days is not much of a sample, so that will be revisited when I do a full review in several weeks.

Other Apps

The biggest consideration for most is going to be: what else can I do with this thing? Well, this is the OS for Android phones, so you can do anything on it that you can do on a Droid phone, that doesn’t require phone, camera or 3G functionality.

The email program setup is easy as pie, especially if you have a basic account like Gmail, but my POP accounts were no issue, either.

Of the social media apps I’ve tried, so far, I like Tweetcaster (see pic) it handles multiple accounts simply and effectively, switching between with just  two “clicks” and notifications from all accounts, rather than just the last one that was active in the app.

I found an RSS app called NewsRob which I’m finding I LOVE. It syncs with Google Reader and is an all round nicer experience than reading directly on GR. It does, however, only give you your new items so it really is just for keeping up to date (as I did before I even got out of bed this morning – bliss!) You can star and share items, so you can get back to them later, but commenting required JavaScript to be on and I kept getting a message that it was off (whether it can be enabled at all on the Cruz, I am yet to discover.)

Of course, whether you will enjoy doing those things depends on how you feel about the speed of the processor – but, again, I’ll say more about that in my later review, when I’ve updated the firmware. For eReading of novels, newspaper and RSS feeds, mail and checking on Twitter and FB I find the speed is plenty (and the colour is lovely to have). The actual booting of each app may take a few seconds but, once started page turns in the readers are instant.

One thing the Cruz Reader definitely is not, though, is a web-browser. Sure, it can do it but it is achingly slow, a smidge slower than my Blackberry on Wi-Fi – again, it’s a phone OS, not a full OS.

The Keyboard

The keyboard is, of course, the other main factor in whether you will enjoy using this tablet for anything other than eReading. The picture shows the keyboard in portrait mode and this is the only mode I have a hope of using it with the two-handed thumb method I’m used to on the Blackberry  but that is because my hands are small. Were my hands larger, I’d have no trouble in either orientation because I find the screen to be the perfect sensitivity. Any issue with keyboard or ‘clicking’ in any way is more likely to be a failure to click than clicking the wrong thing, which was my main problem on the hugely sensitive iPads that I’ve tried, and on my freshly upgraded to Win7 tablet PC (and wow, has MS finally got their tablet OS right!) The resistive versus capacitive screen issue (the Cruz Tablet will be capacitive) is not one that bothers me, having had a capacitive, multi-touch screen for a year on my tablet PC and I find the only thing I use it for is the occasional zooming – and the browser zoom on the android works just as well and I can set my reader apps to maintain the font size that I want.

Mind you, I’m especially happy to have to be more deliberate in my presses on a machine which does not appear to have any cursor-movement arrows anywhere – this is something I find particularly annoying and, frankly, makes any long-form document writing on it impossible, in my view. If any Droid-heads are reading this and can tell me how to find the arrow keys, I’d be hugely grateful.

Conclusion:

For me, this is the perfect eReader, however, if you don’t get sick from e-ink, and you’re happy to purchase your eBooks from only one site then I wouldn’t recommend it – for now. We need to remember that it’s, basically, first generation hardware and they will get lighter and faster and that’s when I’ll start recommending them to all and sundry. For now, this is exactly what I need and I’m happy to buy it and do what techie stuff I need to do to keep it running because a) I like that stuff and b) that evolution won’t occur if there aren’t enough early adopters.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying Social Media cannot or should not be used for promoting a product, of course it can. I have no issue with someone I have followed or befriended posting about their current project on their account so that I’m aware of it and can opt-in in some way, nor do I have an issue with someone I have directly corresponded with sending me a private message asking me to give them a little support in their project before they go wide with it – that’s the good, effective way to use Social Media for PR. What I do have a problem with is the number of messages I have been getting, supposedly ‘tailored’ to me, or not, from accounts clearly set up purely for PR, which show very little genuine interest in either me or the platform they want to exploit.

So, fwiw, here’s my advice to anyone wanting to use Social Media for promotional purposes:

Any time you send an unsolicited message about a product directly to someone on any of these social media, you are not being an uber cool company that is down with what the kids are doing these days – you are TELEMARKETING. Not only are you telemarketing, but you are calling during a dinner party. Imagine being at that dining table when the call comes through. Now imagine the talk about you and your product afterwards – it’s not going to be good is it?

If you want to use Social Media to promote something, you have to actually BE social – be ready to put in the time or it will all be for naught. Tweet or post about something other than just your own products, something which will be interesting to your target audience so that they will engage with you and wonder what you or your product is all about. Getting a good word of mouth campaign going used to be a real coup in the PR world, because it was subtle, if sometimes vulgar, work. Social Media is all about word of mouth, so you need to put as much creativity into encouraging those conversations as you did pre-social media – the size of these vast networks you wish to exploit make it a more delicate process, not a shortcut.

Illustration credit: Matt Hamm

Below are some examples of my play (I’d annontate it but WordPress is worthless when it comes to laying out images, let alone lining up text – any suggestions for plugins would be appreciated!)

SHELDON

It must be an emergency; everyone at the university knows that I eat my breakfast at 8 and move my bowels at 8:20

LEONARD

Yes, how did we live before Twitter?

- from The Big Bang Theory, S.2, Ep.23,The Monopolar Expedition.

When even the boys of The Big Bang Theory, champions of all things techie and geeky, appear to use Twitter merely to broadcast the minutiae of daily life, it’s no wonder tweeting is generally considered a frivolous procrastination. When I began tweeting I did so with no idea of what it was except that it was another social networking site which my fellow Japan Bloggers were jumping aboard to promote their blogs. I figured it wouldn’t hurt for me to try it out and see if I could give them a hand here and there. Approximately one year and 2,246 tweets later, I’m completely hooked on Twitter as an information resource which I have tailored to my needs and interests.

How Twitter Works

Because there are no stupid questions: a basic run down.

1) People make observations, ask questions, answer questions and broadcast information in the form of  a tweet – a text message which can be no longer than 140 characters.

2) Those observations, questions and information are seen by anyone who is either mentioned in the tweet (by means of their twitter name with an @ symbol in front of it) or anyone who has chosen to ‘follow’ all of the tweets of the person writing.

3)Repeat 1 & 2 on ridiculously huge, entangled scale.

How Twitter Becomes Useful

When we first begin, invariably we all follow the tweets of friends and family who have told us their Twitter name (I’m Danisidhe btw, nice to tweet you. Sorry.) We send them a tweet telling them we are on and they then follow us. At this stage, it is understandable that people think that this is just another Facebook or mySpace but without snappy (?) layout or pictures and, if you never go beyond friends and family, that’s true and you can use it that way but you’re not using Twitter to its full, wonderful extent.

The real key to Twitter is to give in to the curious cat within and risk one of your nine lives. Trust me, it’s worth it.

Note that when you choose to follow someone, you follow all of their tweets. When someone that you are following sends a message or replies to someone that they are following, you will see that message BUT you won’t know what on earth they are replying to. If your friend’s message catches your interest, click on that other person’s name and you will be taken to their page where you will see their last several tweets (possibly including the tweet to which your friend was replying, depending on the time your friend took to respond.) If the tweets on your friend’s friend’s page are of interest to you, you can choose to follow them, too.

Unless they have locked their account for privacy, in which case you won’t see any of their tweets at all, you can follow someone without getting permission like you need to in Facebook etc. If they see that you are following them and they don’t wish you to, they can block you (just as you can block people) but since Twitter is really a public information stream (so no-one should be twittering something they can’t risk strangers seeing) there is no reason that they should need to do that unless you harass or spam them. Note that following them doesn’t mean that they are following you, nor does it create any kind of social contract requiring them to do so.

And that’s how the tailoring begins.

Through the judicious use of ‘spying’ on people with whom your ‘twitter friends’ are conversing and following those with similar interests, you will soon find your Twitter stream is filled with useful information that you could never have gathered on your own.

It is always worthwhile checking out who is following you because chances are they share your interests and therefore might be worth following but who follows you won’t really matter to you unless you are using twitter as a way to promote something. Promoter tweeters devote their whole twitter-being to writing targeted tweets to attract as many followers as possible but that is only one use of Twitter and one that requires careful execution lest you become so obviously one-eyed that you are boring and people, like me, stop following you.

How I use Twitter

Professional Development & Community

Most of the people I now follow and who follow me are writers, both budding and jobbing, print and screen, and there is quite a community. We share links to articles or posts from writers or publishing industry types on writing craft, tips on getting published, publishing trends, competitions… you get the picture. My RSS readers has blossomed since joining twitter as I add blogs recommended by my fellow writers or the blogs of those who’s tweets always intrigue. We support each other through the use of #tags like #writegoal – wherein we might tweet: “#writegoal today, 2000 words” then, at the end of the day we will tweet: “Woohoo #writegoal met plus 146 words!” and anyone who happens to be looking at the #writegoal search at the time of your report tweet will send you a ‘”woohoo, well done!” tweet. It might sound silly to some but when you’re sitting at a computer alone (as writers tend to be) just knowing you’ve made the public commitment and getting some positive feedback when you’re done can be great.

Here’s a tweet I received in my stream today from @BookEditorLM:

RT @BookBundlz “The Book Pick” Contest Deadline = 11/16 Enter yr novel, memoir; self-pub ok http://bit.ly/4nUd12 #Authors #Writers #Books”

In that tweet: @BookEditorLM re-tweeted (i.e., copied the original and sent it as her own tweet indicating it with RT) a tweet from @BookBundlz announcing a competition with a link to where you can enter. They also added #tags to the tweet so that any writers who regularly search twitter for any tweets containing those #tags will see it, too. In fact, I saw that tweet because I have a permanent search set up for any tweet containing “#writers” – not because I follow @BookEditorLM (though I do now!).

Now, I’m not actually interested in this particular competition but there are two things I might do with this tweet 1) I can click on @BookBundlz and see if they regularly tweet about competitions and thus might be worth following in case they mention one I am interested in and 2) I can re-tweet it myself so that any writers who follow me will be sure to see it (in case they don’t follow @BookBundlz , @BookEditorLM or any of the #tags.)

I follow #tags by using a desktop (i.e. not in a browser) application called Tweetdeck, which I highly recommend. I set up a search for, for example  #writegoal and Tweetdeck gives me a separate column for it and updates it automatically at whatever interval I tell it to (Twitter traffic permitting.)

Some of the #tags worth following if you are a writer #writers, #writechat (this one has a tweetchat which occurs at 4am Monday morning Japan time, for which I occasionally stay up and is always worth it,) #writegoal. There are heaps of others which I might duck into temporarily if I find out something is happening in it (usually by people adding one of the above #tags to a relevant tweet.) A currently busy one is #nanowrimo for all those participating this year!

Journal/Travel Diary

Those of you who subscribe to my feed will be vaguely familiar with this use because it is the reason you are hit with a “My Week in Tweets” post every Sunday night, Japan time. I’ve never been much of a journal-er because I’ve always felt there is a kind of wallowing, if not dishonesty, in trying to write down what you remember were your thoughts and/or feelings at the time something happened. With Twitter, you can record your observations as they occur (circumstances permitting, of course) and have a real record of what mattered to you enough to Tweet it at the time, rather than what you think is appropriate to record later.

Using a wordpress plugin by the wonderful Alex King called Twitter Tools, all the tweets from the week (that are not direct replies to other tweets) are published as a post on my blog, giving me a permanent record of my tweets. So, though I also have in mind keeping my friends and family in touch with my activities, it is often this that I am thinking of when I take a low quality photo with my phone and send it via email to Tweetphoto, with a comment in the subject line that becomes the tweet (GOD I LOVE Japanese phone internet lol.)

Using Twitter this way is a little different because it is not really about communicating with others and so isn’t something that Twitter is actually made to do, in fact, I don’t think it can be done without also having a blog with a plugin like Twittertools installed (there may be a way to have all your tweets emailed to you but I haven’t checked that out). Of course you also need a decent mobile internet solution, I don’t know how I’ll do it in Australia

Shameless Plug for Friend:

Speaking of travel, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention my dear friend @ShaneSakata’s tweetchat using the #tag: #japantravel which occurs for an hour from Midday on Fridays, Tokyo time and is a wonderful resource for anyone planning a trip to or already travelling within Japan. You can find details and/or actually follow the tweetchat without an application like Tweetdeck here

/Plug ends

Keeping in Touch

Obviously I do use Twitter to keep in touch with friends in a similar way that one does on Facebook (which I only recently joined and I admit is mostly updated by clicking the ‘facebook’ button on the application I use to handle Twitter and posting to both services at once.)

Twitter does have a Direct Message function which enables you to send a tweet privately to one person (still 140 chars) and I admit to being more quickly contactable that way than by email these days. I check my email once a day (at best) while I check twitter many times a day (hence I have been known to request a virtual slap from my #writegoal friends if I tweet again within a certain time frame!) In fact a recent trip to Tokyo, to meet up with a friend for a two day feast of cookware and ceramics shops on Kappabashi, was planned entirely via Twitter and I even updated her on my travel status from the Shinkansen when I had web access on my phone but could not call or SMS her.

So, that’s why and how I use Twitter. How do you use it? And if you don’t, will you join ussss?

Unfortunately, browsing of the denshi jisho available in Japan quickly deflates one’s excitement – they are so clearly made for Japanese learning English and not the other way round. If you have an intermediate or above knowledge of Japanese I’m sure they would  be great and I know many translators use the big ones with the extra technical/medical etc… dictionaries but they really are inaccessible for the complete beginner.

First, only the Canon Wordtank series has an OS available in English so even working out how to use them is less than transparent and the second main restriction is that they simply contain the wrong dictionaries for us. Say you want to know what a particular kanji means – now assuming you have bought one of the new ones which allow you to draw the kanji on the device and therefor you don’t need to know the furigana to type in order to look it up at all, the dictionary meaning you first get will be in Japanese and you then have to translate that by “jumping” to the Japanese to English dictionary to translate whichever word you highlighted in the first definition – assuming your model has that “jump” function. What’s more, you have to keep re-entering the kanji to get back to the definition to “jump” again if the first word you translated wasn’t enough for you to understand the meaning.  And still you are unlikely to find the translation you need unless you know for sure you have the starting kanji of the compound (as most will only let you search for kanji in the first place of a compound) and further still, only the very expensive models have extensive Japanese to English dictionaries 50,000yen upwards. SO, the upshot is – there is no cheap and cheerful denshi jisho that will work for a beginner AND there isn’t really an expensive one which will do the job either until you are far more advance in your language.

What about that DS lite kanji dictionary? I hear you ask. Well I have to say that Superman bought this one before we left for Japan and he has had good success with it. It doesn’t require that you know keystroke order and he says he uses it at work quite a bit. It is, however, only for kanji and again the application itself is all Japanese so it takes a bit of working out.

But all is not lost for those who want a true denshi jisho for English (or German or some other languages for that matter) speakers!! A lovely guy named Peter who lives in Japan has taken it upon himself to meet the need of this rather large niche of people by providing a product which is actually far beyond a denshi jisho. It’s not his day job but his commitment to improving his systems and his customer service wouldn’t give that away!

All the information you could possibly need is on his site: Japanese Language Tools Site the site itself is mostly text and screenshots doesn’t look that swish but he doesn’t need it – the system speaks for itself. In brief, he offers a fully reconditioned, recent model ( I chose the Dell Axim x51v, though there is another option) PDA with a dictionary application called Edict and a several dictionaries including Eijiro/Waeijiro installed as well as a range of more advanced dictionaries which you opt to either have installed on your original  system or can later download or buy on memory card if and when you feel your language needs more. He also offers the whole system on card or for download IF you already have a PDA which is setup to read Japanese text as well as English. If you are in Japan, though, the full system is the only thing which is worth getting as PDAs are not available here and the whole system costs about as much as buying a brand new PDA which you would still have to set up to be compatible in the first place but of course it would be up to you.

Why I love it!

Drawing Kanji: Obviously, being a PDA and a touch screen, you can write your kanji directly on the screen – it does not seem to require a stroke order at all but if you are at all interested in learning it, the kanji dictionary (“kanjidic” hehe) will give you not only the meaning but also a stroke order diagram for next time! This is what I have used it for most of all – checking the kanji on food in the supermarket or to work out what mysterious pieces of paper with my name and address on them in the mail are lol!

Cross Searching: This doesn’t just mean being able to search in all dictionaries (which you can do) but searching for more than one word at a time so that you can actually find phrases in both languages for example you can put in “reside” “for” and you will get example sentences for how to tell someone how long you have lived in a place (very useful). Three days after I received my PDA I got a failure to deliver notice for a package I was expecting. Using Kanjidic and Daijirin I worked out that they were keeping the package for me at a post office but I couldn’t quite get the kanji for what was clearly the place but definitely wasn’t Kakuouzan (place name kanji is notoriously difficult, working on different rules and so I wasn’t surprised it didn’t find a local place name though it was probably user error anyway!) So I mosied up to my very very local post office tapping away at my dictionary and by the time I got there I was able to ask at which post office the package was being held and which train station and exit it was near. That seems pretty basic, I know, and I had many of the words I need already from the study I’ve done but there were some key words I needed to actually make my communication work and the PDA made it easy because it allows for cross searches (unlike most denshi jisho) so I was able to search for the phrase “pick up” and get an example sentence I didn’t quickly get by putting in “collect”.

Clipboard facility: Like any windows PDA, you can highlight any word or words and put them on a clipboard for pasting into any other application and is sooo useful if you are using the dictionary to decipher more than one word or kanji at a time.

Customer Service

I sent my first query email on a weekend, had a response from Peter on Monday and had my system in my hand the Sunday after (mail 7days a week in Japan)! The PDA looks absolutely new – came in all the Dell packaging including a sync and charge cradle and all the cables you would expect in a new PDA. It also comes with CDs and license keys etc… for all the software – there is nothing dodgy going on here! So how much was it? Well the full system on the Axim starts at 55,000yen – which is where any denshi jisho with even a basic set of Japanese to English dictionaries and a kanji drawing facility would cost – and you can add options/dictionaries from there. I added one extra dictionary to the standard set and you can see to the left all the choices I have on mine. Yes, you can get the Kenkyusha intermediate and the big one (he would have to get you a price for the big one though) BUT you may not even need them as it has dictionaries not available to the Japanese denshi jisho which will likely do you just as well.  Of course you also have a fully functional PDA as well – it’s my calendar and alarm clock and everything but my phone now!

Peter is absolutely lovely (from the emails, I haven’t actually met him) and will happily answer any questions you have before buying – just fill in the contact form with just the minimum required details and type your query in the space, he won’t be mad it’s not an immediate order and he will answer!

Okay, I’m not actually accusing any person or persons of deliberately spreading propaganda but false impressions have definitely been made. If at any time during your stay in Nagoya, however short or long that may be, you happen to ask anyone where the best place to buy [insert anything at all except fresh food and furniture] you will no doubt be given the same answer: Osu Kannon.  In fact, one of Superman’s colleagues during his orientation day asked where he could buy a camera and was either sent or taken to Osu to do that that very day. When I was planning the purchase of my new camera I was given the same answer "Osu Kannon" however, in every case, that is where the specific advice ends.

Follow up question: Oh? What shops should I go to?

Answer: Any of them, there’s heaps.

FUQ the second: Is it cheaper?

Answer: Yeah. (Now, no Japanese person would actually say "yeah" but I’m trying to get across the non committal nature of any further statements about Osu.)

FUQ the third: How do I get there?

Answer: Osu Kannon station – you’ll see it.

This vagueness isn’t limited to humans in the real world either, NOONE and I am including the ENTIRE INTERNET AND IT’S COMMUNITY could give me a specific place to go (as in which shop to go to for a camera or even for electronic goods) or even how to get to this plethora of shops. The best I could do was that it was near the temple but the general idea was that the shopping area was easy to find. The truth is if you aren’t with a local and you aren’t that interested in temples, or are hell bent on finding this easy-to-find-thing and so don’t have time for temples – you won’t find it easily at all. So, before I continue with my review here is the thing I couldn’t find anywhere on the net:

PRECISE, ILLUSTRATED DIRECTIONS TO OSU KANNON SHOPPING DISTRICT FROM NAGOYA STATION

1. Take the Higashiyama Line (the yellow one on the maps) going towards Fujigaoka (not Takabata) and get off at the next stop which is Fushimi – if you hit Sakae you’ve gone too far.

2. At Fushimi follow the signs from the platform to transfer to the Tsuramai line (the light blue one on the maps)  and get on a train on the side that says "to Toyotashi" (not Kami Otai) I say "on the side that says" because the trains will have various destinations on them including Toyotashi because it is a line which goes beyond the subway system(Toyotashi is the Toyota station). You can get on any of the trains on the Toyotashi side except one that is express or limited express or the like.

3. Take the Tsurumai line train one stop to Osu Kannon.

4. At Osu Kannon, exit by exit 2 (if you haven’t worked out the extreme importance of station exits in Nagoya for both locating places and avoiding the extreme weather well, now you know.)

5. Upon reaching street level and not being able to see anything that looks particularly like what you were expecting, walk forward for about 10 metres, if that,  (you’ll be on the left side of the road from your point of view) till you come to the first corner – it has a konbini (convenience store) on it and, when looking slightly to your left, gives you this view:

6. If it is hot I heartily recommend you go into the konbini which is ooc to the left of this shot and get yourself a large bottle of drink to take with you on the journey that awaits you.

7. Walk down the road in the picture and go through the gate as in the picture below. I can actually see the very edge of the entrance to the shopping area in this photo but I bet you can’t!

8. After passing through the gate, take a moment to enjoy the view and be reminded that you really, really are in Japan and it really, really has places just like in the pictures! Also note the lady in the bottom left of the picture has a parasol – if you are coming to Nagoya in the summer buy one when you get here and use it – no matter how silly you feel. My scalp was sunburned while taking these shots and I was in the sun for all of 5 minutes!

9. After you have or have not been inside the temple (there’s a free handout with history on it in English inside and the woodwork inside is beautiful but I’m not one for taking photos inside sacred places, sorry) follow the pale concrete path past the temple and you will see this at the end:

10. Welcome to Osu covered shopping district! See? You’re not silly if you couldn’t easily find it from the station! Under the soaring roof you will see lots of shops, some tiny and shallow some double-fronted and deep and lots and lots of people! Not that all of Osu is undercover, many cross streets are not and so there is plenty of light and fresh air (I don’t think it’s actually air conditioned at all.)

It really is very nice IF it’s not too hot and IF you’re not "on a mission" to find something specific and get home and out of the heat again. In one cross street we found the Fuji Sengen Shrine which dates back to 1495…

…but is made minute next to the shrine to commerce!

While I said you can’t get everything you can get a large variety of things though sometimes you have to look hard – is this a gun shop in low-violence Japan?

Actually no – it’s a bike and scooter shop – of course.

And if your aquarium needs stocking…

… not much of a range but at least you can officially include fish in the list of the "Everything" Osu Kannon has and it was certainly unexpected!

Below is the biggest electronics store we found though there are a few small ones less easy to see as you push your way through the throng (which doesn’t look that much of a throng at this point in time.

Cleverer shrines than the poor little Fuji Sengen know how to keep themselves relevant… get themselves swept up in the crowds!

Yes, that is a shrine! On the right of the above shot there are tables which were set up with things for kids to do though whether this had anything to do with the shrine I don’t know. Still, despite the better traffic flow, not many people were paying any attention to the shrine itself and just whizzed by – though maybe that’s because its guardians had their bibs on for lunch and looked hungry!

THE REVIEW – IS OSU KANNON THE BEST PLACE TO BUY ELECTRONICS OR, INDEED, ANYTHING?

After having spent two days schlepping round Nagoya looking for the best prices on the specific camera I wanted as well as looking at pricing on denshi jisho (electronic dictionaries) AND the Wii, I am confident in saying that the thing about Osu Kannon is:

It is NOT cheaper and it does NOT have everything. It’s a myth.

In fact, the range at all the electronics shops (once we found them) is remarkably limited in comparison to the large stores and the prices are no better than anywhere else in the city. I’m sure that if Japanese prices are better than in your home country and Osu is the first place you go to shop you would remember it fondly as  a place for a bargain but it is an illusion.

Specifically on the things we were comparing:

We found the Wii in all but one shop to be 25,000 yen just as it was at Bic Camera and Eiden and 113 yen more expensive than our Tsuyata down the road in the one shop where it was different it was 24,700 – 87 yen cheaper than Tsuyata.

I wasn’t able to find any DSLRs that weren’t Canon or Nikon and they were the same price as Bic Camera (though a Nikon D80 was 10,000 more expensive than Top Camera in Sakae) – digital cameras were mostly just Canon but I have no idea about them since I wasn’t in the market – I have a feeling anything truly commercial might be cheaper because they might buy it in bulk since they don’t feel the need to supply different colours or styles of everything as other stores do. Though, of course, you can’t get much more commercial than the Wii at the moment!

Denshi Jisho were much more expensive on their tickets (by up to 7,000yen compared with Bic Camera which is a lot for something which costs around 40,000yen)  but the "discount" when you enquired (which many shops do and is the closest you’ll get to haggling in Japan) brought them down to Bic Camera prices – and they didn’t have the range that Bic Camera has (I couldn’t have got the model I wanted in pink for example )

So, why is everyone sent there? Superman asked at work after our Osu experience and was, frustratingly, given the answer that it’s one of those "you have to know where to go" places. To that my responses are a) fair enough but that means that what is being advertised to tourists is not accessible to non-locals and so it still should not have the profile it does among tourists and b) AARGH!! If you (whoever it was, I don’t actually know so it’s not personal but I know Superman was asking for days and I asked at a department dinner) knew that and you know which are those stores to go to why did you not tell one of us when we asked outright????? To which, of course, the answer is: the Japanese don’t give straight answers … sigh.

I have my own, kinder theory though and it means ignoring the issues of range and price which are what are likely at the top of a westerner’s mind when they ask "Where’s the best place to buy [insert product]?"

I think, and I may be wrong of course, that they think that it’s the most entertaining place for a non-local to go. With very best intentions they are sending us to somewhere where we certainly won’t get ripped off but which will be an experience we would not have where we live (and lets face it if you have that sort of money you live where you can "experience" a mall any time.) I think they want to show off the city and give us a good time here and Osu Kannon is definitely, infinitely more interesting than a mall – you just have to be in the right state of mind.

CONCLUSION

If you are looking to buy a very particular thing and you want to be able to get in, find out the price and get out again if it’s not lower than the other places you’ve tried – this is not the place – it will drive you INSANE. If, however, you are the kind of person that considers "Shopping" a noun (which, at least grammatically, all Japanese do) and you enjoy spending hours wandering about among throngs of people in what is definitely a tourist-worthy spot rather than an air-conditioned, light-conditioned, character-less mall then it is probably an excellent place for you.  It certainly looks like a giant market with cleaner, more professional stores rather than stalls – and it is – but that also means that the lack of overheads which allows market vendors to sell products more cheaply is missing and therefore so are the cheap prices. In fact, I’d bet the store owners are paying at least as much as anywhere else in the city, if not much more, for their position on this popular strip! You will be able to make all sorts of purchases from a $5 parasol to a $500 wallet or a $4000 entertainment system – but you will get the quality you pay for no more, no less.

For  me, though, the shopping experience in Osu Kannon misses what I find to be the key to the Japanese shopping experience. The truly Japanese experience is found in the larger stores where the range is bigger than anything you find in Australia or my limited experience of the States. Sure, in the States you can buy huge amounts of things but they don’t stock 37 different shades of the same felt tip pen, or give you the choice between plastic ties to tidy up your electrical cords or soft, velvety ones or Velcro ones with tiny soft animals on the end or computer mice which flip open transformer-style and become a Skype phone!  When it comes to electrical goods at Osu Kannon, IF you find the model you want you’re unlikely to get a choice of colour and they will only stock what ever everyone else is buying (except for those weird wild-west-style places selling oddly cumbersome and heavy things made out of thick, poor quality leather which I just can’t imagine would have much of a market) – and the prices don’t make up for the lack of that experience. If you are the kind of shopper that wants a bargain, get your camera/denshi jisho/whatever elsewhere and go to Osu when the heat is low and the day cloudy and you are in a lazy, wandering mood.

Note: My days of looking for the best price on the Pentax K20D and the Tamron 18-250mm with Macro lens took me to Top Camera in Sakae – they had the Pentax body for 20,000yen cheaper than anywhere else and the lens was also a little cheaper than Bic Camera (which was the only other place I could find that particularly new, 3rd party lens) Their prices on all the other camera bodies were also substantially cheaper except for the Olympus E520 which was cheapest at Asahido Camera. For kit lens bundles they were pretty good though some bundles were cheaper at other places  and Bic Camera had the biggest range of lenses. Top Camera Sakae is super easy to find – take exit 6 at Sakae station (Higashiyama or Meijo lines) and literally pivot to your right as you reach street level – minimal time in Nagoya’s extreme weather.

I spend a fair bit of my days listening to Radio National podcasts while pottering around cooking or doing housework so the speakers on my PC are often quite high so I can hear it over both the distance and the noise of cooking or chopping or the dishwasher chugging away. I often worry that I drive my neighbours mad (though I’m sure they’d have said something by now, and I never hear a peep from their side) so clearly I NEED to spend $1000 US on this baby… hehe

The MIURO (Music Innovation Utility Robot) connects wirelessly to your PC, or you can plug an ipod into the top of it, and FOLLOWS YOU AROUND (avoiding obstacles itself)  adjusting its position to give you optimal listening pleasure!! You can pause it by qiving it a quick pat on the head, or FF or REW by patting it either on the left or the right respectively and you make it follow you by letting your hand linger lovingly on its head till it smiles! hehe

Here’s a demo video – it’s in Japanese but it’s fairly clear ^_^

Then came Service Pack 2 and it’s little parasite Windows XP for Tablet PC 2005. In their “wisdom” Microsoft decided to removed the “write anywhere” feature. They replaced it with a small button which would appear under your tablet pen when you hovered it over a cursor for an annoyingly long moment (and only in certain compatible applications). Once the damn thing appeared, you had to tap it to open up a smaller input panel under your hand- seemingly a good replacement accept that the thing disappeared if you lifted your pen too far from the screen or paused for a moment to think.  No number of complaints on the forums could prompt from Microsoft even an acknowledgement that the new feature was not for at least some a satisfactory replacement (to put it politely.)So, my tablet became a $4000 laptop with a 12nd screen and none of the features that that hind of money would get, like an onboard disc-drive let alone a DVD player.  I hooked it up to a full-sized keyboard & mouse and made good use of it, but it wasn’t my dear tablet anymore.

So now I have a  need for a portable computer again, I figured I’d see what the state of play is now. After  literally  hours of updates it seems that very little has changed. The annoying floaty thing is not quite so delicate and stays around long enough to get a good run up an a thought but it still only applies to some applications (this one excluded, I’m afraid) and there is still no return of the original beloved feature. Microsoft, it seems, is  happy for a company called  Evernote to make a fortune providing a plug-in which provides the “write anywhere” feature for which we really should not need to pay. However, as I  hand write this post  on my tablet, on my knee in front of the tv, switching the input panel from the  lower dock to the upper as my hand begins to  cramp, then back again as it becomes too annoying glancing down and having to move my hand to check the conversion every few words – I will no doubt succumb at some point.  Frankly, beyond the satisfaction and creative flow  that handwriting provides, the idea of “populating” my blog’s database, and in  turn the “series of tubes”, in longhand is just too delicious.

In the end it actually wasn’t that hard but since I spent 7 hours and what felt like a large amount of our download limit attempting at least 6 different variations on "how to" guides, first from wordpress.org then from desperate google searches, and finding each one to be incompatible with my own hosting situation in someway or missing or assuming a vital element or understanding here or there, (deep breath) I figured I’d do my bit to help other people like me (with more courage than knowledge OR sense) and give you the "How to" I would have liked to find last night. Maybe it will help someone. If you read through this and feel trepidation about following the first few steps then you should probably either leave things as they are or get yourself a blog host who can do everything for you. After all, this is very similar to upgrading to another wordpress version which will need to be done at least every couple of years so you probably need someone else to do it for you.

Important note: my new domain is registered under and hosted under the same plan as my other domains and so the databases were going to be on the same server – I have no idea how that effects things but I’m assuming it has some effect (THAT’s what a newbie I am to this stuff – I probably shouldn’t have a self-hosted worpress but I love working this stuff out hehe)

The process is divided into the following sections (as soon as I wrestle out how to make these anchors for jump-to links I will ):

BACKING UP YOUR CURRENT WORDPRESS DATABASE
BACKING UP YOUR CURRENT WORDPRESS FILES
CREATING AND CONFIGURING YOUR NEW DATABASE
CREATING AND CONFIGURING YOUR BLOG ON YOUR NEW DOMAIN
NEARLY THERE – A FEW LAST, IMPORTANT THINGS

HOW TO:

1) FIRST BACK UP YOUR FILES AND DATABASE – I CANNOT STRESS ENOUGH HOW IMPORT THIS IS!

If you are confident with backing up our database and files then skip to NOW TO YOUR NEW SITE

"Back-up" is simply jargon for making a copy of your files as they are at a certain time so that if you try to change something and it doesn’t work out you can return the files to the state they were in before you mucked around (or the server crashed or was infected or whatever) If this "how to" doesn’t work you will need these files to return your blog to the state it is in now – you should be doing this regularly anyway but I know I only learned how to do it recently and a lot of people don’t so, no judgement or assumed knowledge, here’s how to do it:

note: these instructions are for phpMyAdmin which is what many hosts will give you to work with – if it’s something else then find out what is right for you.

Remember there are 2 things to back up – your files (wp_content/themes etc…) and your Database

1. On your computer, make yourself a folder in which you will store your backups – put it anywhere you like which fits your organization (mine I put mine in the same place I keep all my blog back-ups and named it "blogmovefiles" to isolate it but if you need to put it on your desktop to make it clearer to you then do that)
2. Login to phpmyadmin of your old blog database in whichever way your host gives you (if this scares you or can’t work out how to do it from FAQs provided by your host, seriously consider getting a non-self-hosted blog)
3. You will see tabs across the top of the page (looking like a really poor old fashioned web page lol) but first look at the column on the left and find your database name (it will be in the left panel and won’t look like a button or a link – just text and will have an alphanumeric name which won’t necessarily make any sense to you) – click this and you should see your DB tables come up in the main window with check boxes beside them.
4. Click the "check all" link underneath your tables
5. Click the export tab
6. Click the Structure and Data radio button
7. Click "Save as file"
8. Click "Go"
9. You will see a "browse" window – click it and find where you want to save (just like you would to save any file you are downloading to disk) and click "Save"

When the download is complete – you have backed up your DB! Close the window phpMyAdmin is in.

 

The files are probably more familiar to you – these are the files which sit in the directory to which IE or Firefox point and they tell the browsers how to layout the page and how to communicate with the database you just backed up etc… If you have ever uploaded a theme to use on your blog (without using some plugin to do it) then you have seen your file director.

There are a couple of ways to do this: using an ftp application like filezilla or using whatever file management application your host provides you (my host has quite a good web-based application but I am used to ftp from the command line days so I prefer to use filezilla)

1. Login in to your current blog ftp site either using your ftp application or your hosts web-application
2. If you are using filezilla or similar ftp app: click through the local folder tree to open the file into which you are going to store these files – giving it a file next to your database back up is a good idea.
3. Click your way through the file structure on your site till you find your current blog folders and files (in other words to the directory which is also your blog address) highlight all the folders and files in that directory

If you are using your hosts file management system no doubt there will be an option to copy whichever checked or highlighted files and you will be given "save to disk" option withthe usual "browse" function to choose where to save – but you will have to work that out for yourself -this will start them copying form your site to your computer

4. If you are using filezilla simply drag the highlighted files and folders to the open folder on the left panel and wait for the files to flicker through the queue until it is done

Whichever method you are using, this will take quite some time so grab a cuppa and watch a video or occupy yourself somehow while it happens – but be around in case any errors pop up (which they shouldn’t)

Note that most ftp servers have a time-out limit which will be much shorter than the time it will take to do this. If you are using filezilla the right hand panel in which you could click through to your website (the remote host) will go blank but for a message saying that you are no longer connected to the site when the time-out limit is reached. You will notice, though, that the queue will keep flickering – this is because it will be in "passive mode" which basically means that it will keep going connecting and reconnecting by itself till it is done but you won’t be able to view your files. Don’t do anything, don’t try  to reconnect just wait for it to do its thing.

5. When it says it is done – verify all the files have been uploaded by comparing it to the local files and folders in your backup folder

When the queue is finished – congratulations! You have backed up your files!!

NOW TO YOUR NEW SITE

2) Create a new, blank database on your server – your host should give you a way of doing this and I am not going to give any advice just follow their instructions – with my host it is literally a one click process. IMPORTANT NOTE DOWN THE DATABASE NAME, THE NEW ADMIN USER NAME THEY PROVIDE AND THE PASSWORD These will all be odd alphanumeric things which should be easy to locate or at the least should also be sent to you via email when you create the database. The best way to note this down is to copy and paste into a text file you can easily access, say on your desktop – or make sure you know where your email is – you will need this information at the end.

3) Configure and populate your new database in one go! Essentially all you need to do is import the .sql file which you exported from your old database. Here’s how to do it with phpMyAdmin (you will have to work out anything else yourself):

1. Login to phpMyAdmin on your new database
2. Just as before, click the database name on the top left
3. Click either the Import tab or the SQL tab if there is no Import tab (I assume this is a variance between version of phpMyAdmin)
4. Find the "browse" button and click and navigate to your backup .sql file
5. Click "go"
6. When it’s finished, click the "structure" tab and you will see that your new database now looks like your old one did

4) Update your new database with your new domain info – the following instructions are essentially how to do find and replace function via SQL – don’t panic just follow the instructions carefully

1. Still in phpMyAdmin, click the "SQL" tab
2. You will see a largish blank box with something like "Run SQL query/queries on database <your db name>"  above it
3. Into the blank box copy and paste all of the following: 
   UPDATE wp_options SET option_value = replace(option_value, ‘ http://www.old-name.com’, ‘http://www.new-name.com’) WHERE option_name = ‘home’ OR option_name = ‘siteurl’;

4.  Once you have pasted it in, replace http://www.old-name.com with your old web address (include /blog or /wordpress if necessary) – making sure to leave the apostrophes around it and similarly with http://www.new-name.com with your new blog address.

5.  Double check you have got all your spelling exactly right then click "go"

6.  You should get a nice confirmation message – IF you get a long wall of text with the word error scattered through don’t panic, just click the "back" button at the bottom and double check your spelling etc… of the old and new addresses and try again

7.  Once you get your confirmation message, highlight everything you pasted into the blank box and delete it so that it is blank again – you now need to do the same thing another two times with slightly different commands:

8.   Into the blank box copy and paste all of the following: 
UPDATE wp_posts SET guid = replace(guid, ‘http://www.old-name.com’, ‘http://www.new-name.com’) WHERE option_name = ‘home’ OR option_name = ‘siteurl’;

9.  Again, replace http://www.old-name.com with your old web address (include /blog or /wordpress if necessary) – making sure to leave the apostrophes around it and similarly with http://www.new-name.com with your new blog address.

10. Double check you have got all your spelling exactly right then click "go"

11. Once you get your confirmation message, highlight everything you pasted into the blank box and delete it so that it is blank again – now for the last one!

12. Into the blank box copy and paste all of the following:  
UPDATE wp_posts SET post_content = replace(post_content, ‘http://www.old-name.com’, ‘http://www.new-name.com’) WHERE option_name = ‘home’ OR option_name = ‘siteurl’;

13. Again, replace http://www.old-name.com with your old web address (include /blog or /wordpress if necessary) – making sure to leave the apostrophes around it and similarly with http://www.new-name.com with your new blog address.

14. Double check you have got all your spelling exactly right then click "go"

15. Once you have that final confirmation – well done, you have now changed your blog address in your database!

DO NOT TRY TO TEST YOUR SITE YET

Now, what do with those file backups

1. CREATE AND CONFIGURE YOUR BLOG ON YOUR NEW DOMAIN
2. Essentially this is your wordpress install and it’s really easy
3. Login to your ftp site using your ftp application (like filezilla) or whatever your host provides you with to upload multiple files in such a way that you maintain directory structure (this is why I prefer to use an ftp application – it’s so easy!)
4. In your remote host panel (right frame in filezilla and most other ftp applications) click through to the directory which you just typed in when you replaced http://www.new-name.com in the SQL process (DO NOT CHANGE YOUR MIND NOW lol)
5. In your local host panel (left frame in filezilla and most other ftp applications) find your backed up files and highlight them all, files, folders, the lot
6. Drag the files from your computer (the local host panel) to your site (the remote host panel)
7. Again you will need to find something to do while this uploads- it will probably take a little longer than your back-up took
8. When it says it is done – verify all the files have been uploaded by comparing it to the local files and folders in your backup folder
9. DO NOT TRY TO TEST YOUR SITE YET

NEARLY THERE – A FEW LAST, IMPORTANT THINGS

Easy things first:

1. Still in your ftp application, click your way to your new /wp_content/cache delete this folder then log out from your ftp site (you’ll be coming back but for now it’s safer to log out)
2. Open your web browser and delete your cache and cookies

Less easy thing now but critical.

What you now have is a lovely new database and a lovely new install of wordpress but they are not yet talking to each other.

1. The file that connects them is the wp-config.php file which is one of the files in the directory that is your wordpress address – this file needs to be changed
2. Find the database name, username and password which you noted down when you created your new database (if you didn’t note it down then go to your database administration panel which your host provides on your site control panel/dashboard and find it)
3. Now find the wp-config.php file in the back up you made and highlight and copy it.
4. Right click anywhere on your desktop and choose paste – you now have a copy isolated from your backup copy and safe to play with
5. Now, open this file in notepad (double clicking should do this but if you are prompted to choose a file to open it in then choose notepad) Inside it should look something like this:

<?php
// ** MySQL settings ** //
define(‘DB_NAME’, ‘d1234567′);    // The name of the database
define(‘DB_USER’, ‘u12345678′);     // Your MySQL username
define(‘DB_PASSWORD’, ‘abc1234′); // …and password
define(‘DB_HOST’, ‘MYSQLHOST’);    // 99% chance you won’t need to change this value
define(‘DB_CHARSET’, ‘utf8′);
define(‘DB_COLLATE’, ”);

// Change SECRET_KEY to a unique phrase.  You won’t have to remember it later,
// so make it long and complicated.  You can visit https://www.grc.com/passwords.htm
// to get a phrase generated for you, or just make something up.
define(‘SECRET_KEY’, ‘letmein’); // Change this to a unique phrase.

// You can have multiple installations in one database if you give each a unique prefix
$table_prefix  = ‘wp_’;   // Only numbers, letters, and underscores please!

// Change this to localize WordPress.  A corresponding MO file for the
// chosen language must be installed to wp-content/languages.
// For example, install de.mo to wp-content/languages and set WPLANG to ‘de’
// to enable German language support.
define (‘WPLANG’, ”);

/* That’s all, stop editing! Happy blogging. */

define(‘ABSPATH’, dirname(__FILE__).’/');
require_once(ABSPATH.’wp-settings.php’);
?>

6.   Very carefully without touching or moving anything else, change the following:

In:
define(‘DB_NAME’, ‘d1234567′);    // The name of the database

change d1234567 to your new database name

In:
define(‘DB_USER’, ‘u12345678′);     // Your MySQL username

change: u12345678 to your new database admin user name

In:
define(‘DB_PASSWORD’, ‘abc1234′); // …and password

change: abc1234 to your new database admin password

7.   Save the file

8.   Now log back in to your ftp site using either filezilla or the file management facility provided by your host

9.   In the local host panel navigate to your desktop and find the wp-config.php file.

10.  Drag the file over to the wordpress directory – the file will begin to copy and you should get a confirmation dialogue asking if you want to over write the old wp-config.php file – select over-write and click ok (if you do not get this then you have uploaded it to the wrong place – simply find where you put it, delete it and try again)

11.   Log out of your ftp site

NOW you can go to your new blog address and test that everything works!

You will not have a cookie for logging in to that address so you will have to log in again – if you have forgotten your password simply use the "forgotten password" link and it will be sent to you.

Wow that’s a long post and it’s a long process but not actually hard and I’m pretty sure I’ve covered everything. Again, if you read through this and don’t feel that you can at least follow along then you should probably either leave things as they are or get yourself a blog host who can do everything for you.

GOOD LUCK!!!