I'm also a terrible designer. In order to get up and running quickly, I buy themes off of http://themeforest.net - they barely cost anything, and usually have enough for you to get up and running with in the stage where you just want a landing page (some even come with PHP scripts to run newsletter signups for you).
That automagical download and convenience you're talking about is one of the things you pay that 30% for. It's your call whether you want to go through that channel or not - no one's forcing you.
I experimented with Gondor and Epio(http://ep.io) at one point when I wanted to get out of hosting Django projects on my own servers - I can't speak to what it's like on Heroku, but Epio was significantly easier to get up and running with than Gondor was - just about as magical and hassle-free as the first time I tried Heroku with a rails app.
I've had pretty good success picking them up in digital formats - not sure if you prefer the paperback version, but if you're okay reading it on a screen you can get all of them digital.
Maybe I'm an outlier here - but I actually prefer physical photos. It's too easy for someone to just spray digital photos everywhere - when they're physical, you have constraints that mean I'm seeing the photos you decided were worthy of being printed.
Apparently my market is supposed to shrink - but I know among friends as well, a printed photo still carries a lot more weight than a digital one ever will.
I live in a city in Canada that has a bit of a lacklustre tech scene. Unfortunately, I bought a condo 2 years ago.
Because of the size of the down payment I made (small), and the condo market right now (not awesome), I can't sell without taking a loss until probably about 2014. I also probably can't rent without taking a loss.
I'd like to move - but at the moment, short of foreclosure, there's no way to get this condo off my hands so that I'm free to move again without taking a significant-enough (~$15k) hit to make it cost prohibitive.
Are there more opportunities in other cities? Definitely. But because of my current living situation, I'm not flexible enough to take advantage of them.
I actually waited in line at a bank for about 15 minutes once, and when I got to the teller the manager said "hey - want a coffee?", and handed me a Tim's card (reloadable gift cards for Tim Hortons). I had no idea what the value was - but it turned out to be $2 (just enough to buy any size of coffee at Tim Hortons).
Having it be $2 was a lot more useful than having it be for a large coffee - I don't drink coffee, and I ended up using the $2 to subsidize a bagel.
So, wait - does getting married suddenly make you 'old'? =P
According to your description I count as young, and not being able to remember things bothers me a lot sometimes. I remember back before cell phones were commonplace, I could remember 3-4 phone numbers in my head (home, girlfriend, parents, local pizza places) - but now that I've become so reliant on my smartphone, I can only ever seem to remember my own number (and, I'll admit - the pizza place).
Does it bother me? Yeah. I talk to relatives (especially of the grand- variety) who are all "I can still remember every phone number I've ever had", and I get a little bit jealous. I help myself get over it by rationalizing that I have access to a lot more information a lot easier, now - so I don't need to remember as much of it.
Having a good memory is definitely a powerful thing - especially when you want to make a good second impression. So far though, 'take copious notes' has basically solved the "I wish my memory was better" problem.
Here at The Day Job we're using Scout(http://scoutapp.com) to monitor about 10 servers - it's pretty easy to set up, and grows well as your cluster does. You also get to write plugins in Ruby, which is pretty fun.
Right - but pretty colors and interfaces go a long way towards someone saying "you know what? I will read the about page" vs. "woah, this is gross - they expect people to use this?".
For $15, you probably won't get the most absolutely-custom-tailor-made experience - but you might at least get something that convinces visitors to take a closer look.
Maybe I'm an outlier, but I actually really enjoy cleaning up huge legacy codebases. Maybe there's also someone out there who likes building internal apps for performance reviews.
I do - but having my email embedded into a part of the file that I'm not going to see while I'm regularly using the file isn't a problem. I'm not distributing, and I don't mind that the file's identified to me. Having my email on every single page of the ebook I'm reading is a waste of space that only serves to frustrate me - why is my email there? How does having my email there improve the reading experience? It doesn't.
It might not be as intrusive as annoying DRM, but it still makes reading my ebooks frustrating.
This actually pisses me off, a lot. I don't put my ebooks up on torrenting sites or distribute them - but seeing my own email address show up on every page of my ebook means that I'm not going to buy from you again, ever.
This is not-super-secure, but in a lot of situations I just use a rule like "third character of first word + second character of third word + first character of fourth word", and so on. You end up with gibberish most of the time, but at least you're not going to let it slip in conversation (and as long as you remember the rule and don't pass that around, you're hopefully okay).
I took a week's vacation, got myself a week in a coworking space, and turned off every single work notification possible. As far as work was concerned, I was off on a beach somewhere sipping mai-tai's - when in reality I was getting up at 9AM, and working 10-6 at a coworking space down the street from them on my Big Idea.
I didn't make as much progress as I'd have liked, but I've found doing things like that (especially when you have to make a financial commitment) helps to push things along.
I wouldn't say that one or the other is more valuable when it comes to blogging. You want to show process, because that shows that you know your shit - but you also want to show end results, because that shows that you ship your shit (which is almost more important).
Having an active, well-written blog shows that you're passionate about whatever you're blogging about (or at least disciplined enough to write about it frequently), and helps you establish a reputation.
Do you have any problems that aren't solved yet? Write yourself something to do that - and if you're worried about your employer/coworkers finding out, do it under a pseudonym, Chrome's Incognito mode (so that you're always aware when you're logged in under that pseudonym), and whois protection on any domains you set up.
If you want to show someone you learn quickly, start a blog - and chronicle your progress. "How I built [your app here] in a weekend - lessons learned, things I didn't like". Write a lot, especially about things you've learned while building all of your cool side projects.
Have a lot of side projects (or just one big one, if you can't think of many). Most of the jobs I've gotten that don't involve an arduous interviewing process have been because I met someone and said "this is [my cool project] - can you help me solve [problem x]?". I know it sounds weird, but asking someone who knows more than you do to help you out pays off - you end up with mentors, or coworkers, or even friends sometimes.
I guess at the core of it, my advice is: work on some side projects, and try to show them to people who you might want to work with (especially when you're applying for work - I can show you a private example, just send me an email).