There is a lot of research suggesting music is capable of focusing the mind and relaxing the body. Everyone has their own preferences but I like listening to the following on my iTunes:

• Board of Canada
  Tracks: Constants Are Changing, Sherbert Head, Slow This Bird Down etc
  Album: The Campfire Headphase
  Reason: Very chilled out, can play in background without noticing
• Portishead
  Tracks: Strangers, Sour Times, Pedestral
  Album: Dummy
  Reason: Like the big room feel to it and the trip hop genre in general
• Cinematic Orchestra
  Tracks: The awakening of a woman
  Album: Cinematic Orchestra
  Reason: So cinematic, plays in the background without realising
• Moby
  Tracks: Down Slow, Run On, The Sky Is Broken
  Album: Play
• Elbow
  Tracks: I’ve got your number, Buttons and Zips
  Album: A cast of Thousands
• Thievery Corporation
  Tracks: Marching The Hate Machines, The Cosmic Game, A Gentle Dissolve
  Album: The Cosmic Game

Obviously some people will look through the list and think awesome this guy knows his stuff, others will think who the hell are they? and some of you will head off and download some of the tracks and find that it works for you. Zen Habits also suggests a good tranquil music list.

If your a music person then post your favourite tracks for relaxing in the comments.

I am officially in love with Wordpress 2.5! It is so much easier to use and there are so many more features that are essential when writing a good blog. Part of the fun of setting up a new blog is all the little tweaks you have to make. This article/tutorial/work of art will take you through some of the things you should change to get your Wordpress blog looking good.

I am going to assume you have installed the blog and have logged in as a user into the dashboard. Ready? Lets go!

1/ Themes + Plugins

First of all find yourself a nice theme. I like the ones listed in Smashing Magazine. Download a theme and place it in wp-content/themes then click on design > themes and enable it. Looking good!

Next: Plugins. I recommend WP-Cache, WP-Contact Form and Sociable. But there are many more just have a quick look on google for “top wordpress plugins”.

2/ Activate Akismet and get an Akismet login Key

Click on Plugins. Under Akismet click activate. Then click on Akismet Configuration and follow the instructions to get a wordpress.com account if you don’t already have one. Once you have an Akismet key from wordpress.com copy it into the configuration page.

This will stop those pesky spammers from leaving comments on your blog.

3/ Fiddle with the settings!

Its time to look under the bonnet. Click on the settings page, have a flick through and change the obvious ones which I don’t need to cover here.

- One setting you should change is Permalinks. Under common settings I would recommend “Month and Name”. This will make your blog much more search engine friendly and bring in the visitors.

- Another setting you should look at is under Writing. Scroll down to the bottom and you will see a section called Update Services. I recommend you add some more websites to this list. A good list of suggestions can be found in this wordpress blog.

4/ Secure your Wordpress

It is a very good idea to keep your wordpress secured. I am not going to re-write this section because people much cleverer than me have already done that and why clog the internet! Check out: here and here. The one I particularly recommend is removing what version of Wordpress you are running from displaying on your site. This involves modifying the header page.

5/ Bookmark the dashboard page so you can quickly access it

Alternatively you may wish to use a weblog client to edit posts.

6/ Get Google Analytics

If you are serious about webdesign you need to track your visitors. For this I recommend Google Analytics (Free) combined with Google Analytics plugin.

7/ Learn!

There are a lot of good sites out there that cover Wordpress so do a quick search on Google and see what you come across.

Of course this is not the only initial Wordpress article on the web. A good one has been written by Download Squad.