Last week I went to see the Cirque de Soleil LOVE show at the Mirage Theater in Los Vegas, NV. We had seats in the first row near the left side of the stage.  At times, it felt almost too close and sometimes felt overwhelming… but in a wonderful way. Being so close to the performers made me feel connected to them for brief moments in a way I wouldn’t have if we were further back. Between the ‘theater in the round’ and the ‘three ring circus’ aspects, I think you’d need to go the show more than once to really absorb everything.

The thing I remember most, is how happy so many of them seemed – especially the younger performers (some were little kids). That’s one aspect of the Beatles they really highlighted – the happiness and joy they radiated.

All the stage effects were amazing – with scenery and people being raised and lowered constantly up from out of the stage and down from the ceiling. The surface of the stage itself was constantly changing – sometimes it was completely sunken and sometimes completely flat with various constructions rising up out of the floor or being lowered down from above.

I especially liked how they employed the projections on the curtains which got raised and lowered at various times during the show (you can see some of them in the last photo). And then on top of all this, the performers climbing and flying around on cables… makes it hard to imagine them ever taking this show on the road without major modifications. Here are a few photos I took with my cellphone…

This is the main entrance to the theater (at the Mirage). The floor keeps changing color – like walking on a moving rainbow…

… and we were mezmerized by the mirrored balls on the ceiling…

This was a plaque on one of the walls where the image of John was created in relief…

This was a poster in the gift shop window…

Before the show began, there were many announcements about no picture taking. The show itself was so engrossing that I forgot all about my phone camera but I couldn’t resist taking one quick pic after the incredible finale had ended.

A splendid time indeed!

I often get emails and phone calls from people who are interested in having me help them create a website and one of the first questions (understandably) is always “how much will it cost?”

In order for me to give any kind of an accurate cost estimate, I need to know the scope of the project.  Simple websites with just a few pages can be created for as little a few hundred dollars, while websites with many pages, fancy graphics, and animated presentations can cost thousands of dollars.

Developing a website will be a collaborative effort.  While I will take care of all the technical details and work with you to come up with a dynamic creative expression of your website vision, it will be up to you to come up with the website content.

The first step will be for you to work on forming a clear vision for your website and to put together a document containing the basic content.  This document will allow me to give you an estimate of how much it will cost to develop your website.  Below, I’ve put together some of the basic information you will need in order to start moving forward…

Website Organization

Your website content can be in the form of text, audio or video.   A good way to begin is to create a Word (or any writing software of your choice) document and start writing the text that will appear on your website.

One of the most important things to consider about a website is how easy it will be for people to find what they are looking for.  I like to divide information into main menu items to cover broad categories and sub-menu items for more specific categories. For a simple site, with only a few pages often a main menu alone will suffice.  As you are creating your text document for your website, start thinking about how you can break up the information you want to make available to people into sections and subsections that will be accessed via the menus and sub-menus.  To get a better sense of this, look at the examples of websites I have created and notice how I have organized the menus and (sometimes) sub-menus.

Keywords and Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Another important consideration when writing the content for your website are keywords.  You can think of keywords as the words that you expect people will be typing into search engines (like Google) in order to find your website.  There are many factors that determine how high up on the list your website will appear in the search engine results for a given set of search terms, and keywords are a big part of this. We want to optimize your website by maximizing your chances of coming up on the first page of search results.

Google and other search engines use the text that appears on each of your website pages to figure out what that page is about. The title of the page (which appears at the very top of your browser above the forward and back buttons) is weighted the most heavily.  This is also the text that appears in the headline for each search result.  The next most important text is that which appears in the headings on each page (usually in bold text).  The search engine also looks at how often certain words are repeated on each page to determine the page content.

It’s a good idea to write down a list of search words and phrases that people might use to find your website. and then refer to that list when creating titles, section headings and your text to see how you might include those words.  Of course, you have to be careful not to overdo it because your writing can sound very stilted and awkward if it is too “keyword heavy”.

Graceful Degradation

I try to design websites that degrade gracefully.  Not all browsers have the same capabilities and screen size.  For example, some browsers (especially in mobile phones) don’t support scripting languages like Javascript or multimedia elements like Flash animations.  Even on systems that do support these features, they may be turned off by people due to security concerns.

I design websites that degrade gracefully, which means that they provide a full, rich multimedia experience when viewed with a fully capable browser, but still provide basic functionality no matter what device they are using.

Using Flash

Sometimes you will see entire websites that are created using Flash.  These sites have slick transitions with text and images fading in and out and moving across the screen.  Flash allows these websites to look exactly the same on every system that can display then.

There are several big drawbacks to using Flash in this way.  One is that there is no text appearing in flash that a search engine can see, so these cannot be optimized for search engines and can be easily missed.

Another problem that arises when an entire website is created in Flash is that the different ‘pages’ all use the same web address, eliminating the possibility of emailing or posting a link to one particular ‘page’ .  Any link to the site will always lead people to the opening page.  This defeats the goal of direct connections to information which the internet achieves by linking different pages to each other.

Used judiciously, Flash elements can be added to any web-page to provide dynamic movement and access to audio and video.  For your website I will make sure to use these elements in such a way that the usability of the website is not completely dependent upon them.

Domain Name Registration

Registering a domain name costs less than $10 a year. The domain name consists of two parts, the first part is your business name or description (eg. Google, Food4less) and the second part which is called the “top level domain” (eg .com, .org, .biz and many others).  I’d recommend registering a dot-com name if at all possible since many people expect web addresses to end with .com and may not remember your domain name when trying to reach your website. It can be a challenge to find a dot-com name though because so many of them are taken at this point.

If you are planning a non-profit website, you will want to use a dot-org address, but I’d suggest registering the  dot-com version as well. The dot-com domain can be easily set up to point to your dot-org website.  My last name is commonly misspelled Reagan so I also registered the domain name skipreagan.com so that anyone who uses that misspelling will be redirected to skipregan.com.

Web Hosting

You will need to find a web server to host your website.  A web server is a computer that is hooked up to the internet 24/7 that sends your webpages to people’s browsers when they visit your website.  You will be paying for space on that computer in exchange for it storing your website files and keeping its connection to the internet.  Web hosting prices for a website vary from $5 per month to hundreds of dollars per month depending on your needs.  The vast majority of basic websites won’t cost more than $10 per month. I generally recommend godaddy.com to my clients for both domain registration and web hosting because they are cheap and reliable and their basic web hosting service is appropriate for most startup websites.

After several days passed I began to experience some sitting meditations where my mind got very quiet and I was able to follow the breath for several minutes at a time without any distractions.  One day I noticed this odd sensation on the in-breath which eventually revealed itself to be my heart beating.  I always have this image of the cresent moon coming out from behind a cloud when I think about the impact of suddenly having a clear perception of my beating heart and it’s relationship to the breath, like the lifting of a veil.  I began to go deeper into the sensation of my beating heart and I found that I could feel the pulsation of the blood radiating outward from the heart.  I could follow that sensation with my mind outward from the center of my chest and into my arms and legs.  As I focused on the sensations of the pulsations, I got a very clear sense of the circulatory system and the way the arteries divide into smaller and smaller branches.  When my concentration was strong enough, I could sense my heartbeats radiating all the way into the capillaries in my fingers.  The image in my mind’s eye was incredibly clear and three dimensional, like something you might see in an Alex Grey painting.  When I would get up to transition into walking meditation, I would try to move very slowly, trying to maintain my deep concentration on the circulatory sensations as I rose to standing but the flood of different sensations that arise with movement made focusing so intently on any one aspect too challenging.

February is such a wonderful time to be there as the weather can be quite warm at times and the creeks are often full of water at that time of year.  The frog chorus from the surrounding creeks can seem incredibly loud and you can hear them peeping away from inside the meditation hall.  Invariably they would all go silent in unison, perhaps scared by some creatures movement.  Then after a minute or so one brave one would start with a peep.  And then another from further away.  And you could hear the sound begin to spread off into the distance along the length of the creek.

I remember one time, sitting in the meditation hall in the afternoon when everything became particularly still and my mind seemed incredibly clear.  Somebody in the room coughed and I felt the sound in my body.  I began to notice various sounds in the room of people breathing and shifting positions and all the sounds seemed to be coming from inside of me rather than outside – as if I had expanded to contain all that was happening in the room.

The two weeks past really quickly.  I remember thinking several times that I could spend my whole life living like this.  Time spent at a meditation retreat is so sweet.  All of your basic needs are met and there’s nothing you need to do but just experience each moment as fully as possible.  It felt like heaven.  Not that every moment was blissful – not by a long shot.  There were plenty of unpleasant experiences to be had, but I felt so grateful for the opportunity to just stop everything and experience being.