I have a web site!

From the about-freakin'-time dept.:

On Monday, with the assistance of my gaming buddy Chad, I got myself a domain, and set up hosting for a simple web site.  Chad's company, Surface 51, mainly does graphic design, but they also sell web hosting services.  (The Surface51 site is all flash, actively dialup-hostile, but it does look slick.)  So he could set me up with a site for what I think is a reasonable price, with the added benefit that I have someone I know I can ask for help when I get lost.

Feel free to browse over to www.tigertoy.net (tigertoy.com is taken, though there isn't actually a site connected to it) if you want to see how I'm coming.  Nothing there now but a cute picture, but I did prove that I can put a file with my HTML on the server, which is an important starting point.

I'll be trying to spend a few hours working on the site in the next few days.  I'm open to constructive suggestions for very simple things I can do with the site, but please bear in mind that I know a little bit of HTML and basically nothing about any other web technology.  I am inclined to write my own HTML, as a learning experience, but I'll listen to recommendations of free HTML editing software.  I'd also be interested if you can recommend web sites that can teach me what I need to know efficiently, which is to say not a spoon feeding tutorial aimed at a 7 year old intellect, but also not something that blithely assumes I already know all this stuff.  A tutorial for smart people would be great; references that are clearly written and well hyperlinked are not bad.  Finally, Chad suggests that I find an FTP client that supports SFTP; if you can recommend a free one, that'd be cool.  I got the two files I uploaded to produce the placeholder site through the web interface for managing the site, but that's really klunky.

Shuttle launch?

I just realized that if the Shuttle launch gets delayed long enough, I might actually be in Florida at the time.

If one were to decide to go watch it at the last minute, what obstacles would one run into?  Do you have to get tickets or sign up in advance or something to get close enough to actually see the Shuttle on the ground?  How bad are the crowds and traffic likely to be?  Does it cost a lot of money?  I believe in the space program, but it's been decades since I had any noticeable space bug myself.  How much would I have to suffer to see it?

On a related note, does anyone know how much I'd have to suffer to visit Kennedy Space Center if the Shuttle is safely in orbit?  Whether it would be worth visiting depends on how much you can actually see on a "random tourist just walked in" tour and how bad the crowds are.

So -- does anyone have personal experience on these issues?