Useful Stuff

Useful Stuff is kinda like a second brain for me... a place to remember stuff I've discovered about all the things I do, so that I don't forget and have to discover it all over again!

Figured Out plist Editing!

Ever since moving my websites to Sandvox, I've been bedeviled with one little aspect of creating new themes: modifying the plist. Let's start at the beginning:

A. Determine which Sandvox design is closest to the look of the site you want to build. My choice is Clean Sheets, FWIW.

B. Do you have any custom Designs that are closer to the look of the site you want to build than a stock Sandvox Design? If no, the navigate to Applications>Sandvox. If yes, skip to C.

1. Right-click or Control-click on the Sandvox icon, which will bring up a list of choices. Select Show Package Contents.

2. Navigate to Contents>Designs

3. Select the .svxDesign file for the design you've chosen (file names are fairly self-explanatory) and duplicate it.

4. Move the duplicated file to username>Library>Application Support>Sandvox.

C. Select either the Sandvox design you've just moved (if the answer to B was "no") or a custom design already in this folder (if the answer to B was "yes") and rename it for the new Design you're creating. For my New Media for Designers + Builders site I'm working on, I renamed the file NewMedia.svxDesign. Now, you're ready to modify the Design.

1. Right-click or Control-click on the .svxDesign file, which will bring up a list of choices. Select Show Package Contents.

2. The file you're looking for is Info.plist, but don't just double-click it. If you do, it'll open it up in Property List Editor, where (for reasons I can't fathom) it's almost impossible to save correctly. I've worked with this for many hours on my first two sites, finally stumbling on the right combination of keystrokes and mouse clicks completely by accident, and unable to remember precisely what I did. So don't do that. Instead, do this:

3. Open Info.plist with TextEdit.

4. Change the Bundle identifier to "Sandvox.<newthemename>" (don't include < or >... I'm just using those to make clear that "newthemename" is a variable... the name of your new theme (remove all spaces and other extraneous characters.)

5. Change the title to <newthemename>.

6. Save and close.

7. Modify your Design by changing main.css. I've had great luck with CSSedit, but that app has been bundled into Espresso, which I haven't worked with yet. In any case, it's the main.css file that determines the look and feel of your custom Design.

Creating Modified Email Signatures

I blogged some time ago about the process of creating my email signature from scratch. But what about when you just need to duplicate and modify a signature in Apple Mail? It's a lot simpler:

A. Go to Mail>Preferences and click the Signatures tab.

B. At the bottom of the second column, click "+" to create a new signature. Don't do anything to it right now.

C. Quit Mail.

D. In the Finder, navigate to (your username)>Library>Mail>V2>MailData>Signatures. The signature names (the ones with a .webarchive extension) are complete gobbledygook, but don't worry. You'll see one with a Date Modified of just a moment ago. Click on that one to select the file name.

E. Copy the file name.

F. Delete the file.

G. Now, click one of the other .webarchive signature files. Hit the space bar. This will bring up the Preview window. Scroll until you find the one you want to modify.

H. Duplicate that .webarchive signature file.

I. Reopen Mail and go back to Mail>Preferences>Signatures. You'll find the duplicated signature in the list.

J. Change its name to whatever you want.

K. Make the changes in the text of the signature.

L. Copy it into all of your email accounts where you'll be using it by simply dragging it onto those accounts in the left column.

M. Close Preferences... you're done!

Why Move from iWeb to Sandvox?

I went through months of agonizing over what to do about the demise of iWeb, and ended up with something that's an improvement on several counts: Sandvox, by Karelia Software, comes closest to iWeb's ease of use, but with several advantages:

A. It does Search Engine Optimization stuff as second nature, whereas iWeb wasn't SEO-friendly at all. It had been conceived by Apple as a sort of personal website maker before Facebook came out, and so SEO stuff was never built in. I've had MUCH better Google results since moving to Sandvox. The Meta Description is right there at the bottom of each page, waiting to be filled in. Tagging a page with keywords is simple, as is tagging photos with alternate text. Sandvox is set up with a dialog box to easily configure Google Tools and publishing a Google sitemap (the sitemap.xml.gz) is as easy as clicking a checkbox... only once, not every time you publish. These are all things that iWeb could only do with difficulty, using third-party software.

B. At first, the layout seems to be a bit of a downer... iWeb let you move text and graphics all over the page, like a page layout program, whereas Sandvox is more restrictive about how and where you place stuff. But iWeb sites often did very unpredictable things on different machines and browsers, whereas Sandvox sites are far more predictable... so the restrictions are a blessing in disguise.

C. Karelia has an active user community like iWeb did, but the difference is that whereas Apple never talks about future products, Karelia's engineers and even their owners are heavily involved in discussions of where to take Sandvox. And they listen. Already (I've only been using Sandvox for 6 months) they've implemented several changes I asked for.

D. These changes come quickly in the form of new versions, especially if you choose to take part in the beta program. No waiting a year or two for upgrades, like we did with iWeb.

E. The mechanism Sandvox uses for blogging (a "Collection") is extremely versatile. Basically, you can use the blog mechanism not only with a collection of blog posts, but with a collection of project pages, tool pages, book pages, services pages, product pages, plan pages... whatever. If you need a cover page and several detail pages within it, either organized chronologically or alphabetically, this is a really nifty feature.

F. Sandvox is much more nimble with template pages of any sort. Just set the page up the way you want and click Draft (do not publish.) You can now duplicate your new template anytime you want a new post, detail page, or whatever. Also, unlike iWeb, you can duplicate an entire collection if needed. Better yet, you can even drag and drop pages or entire collections from one domain file to the next. For example, I could copy my entire Original Green blog to the Mouzon Design site if desired just by a quick drag-and-drop.

G. Publishing is easy and clever. And if for any reason the site doesn't publish entirely (internet hiccup or whatever) you just click Publish again and Sandvox picks up where it left off rather than starting over.

H. Sandvox's sidebars are a huge time-saver. In iWeb, because it acted like a page layout program, sidebars on two pages were two distinct elements. This means that if I wanted to post lecture dates in my sidebar, I needed to change it on every single page the dates are found. With a large blog, this quickly becomes too labor-intensive. Sandvox, on the other hand, is extremely clever. For every object created on your page except for the basic text block, you can choose whether it's Inline (moves with basic text block) Callout, or Sidebar. If Sidebar, the then it gets listed as one of the available sidebar elements and you can place it on any page that has a sidebar. So if I want to change my lectures, I simply click into any Presentations element on any page of the Original Green site where it appears, make my changes, and it automatically revises it on every page where it occurs. A HUGE time-saver!

I. Sandvox has a lot of built-in Objects, from raw HTML objects to Amazon lists, Facebook buttons, contact forms, Flickr thumbnails, lists of external links, page counters, Google maps, Twitter buttons, YouTube content, etc.

J. It's easy to create a favicon for your site... you probably know already, but a favicon is the little icon that occurs in the URL line of your browser for each page of a more sophisticated site.

K. iWeb used its own blog comment system, but it was quirky and when something went wrong, it was usually impossible to fix... the comment was gone forever. Sandvox, on the other hand, has built-in support for several comment systems. I use Facebook comments, and to great effect because it drives many people to my sites that would never have known about them otherwise. When one of my Facebook friends comments, it goes on their timeline and all of their friends have an opportunity to see the comment and join the discussion. If each has 500 friends, then each comment on my site reaches close to 500 people I don't know, assuming we don't have heavy friend overlap. And you can put Facebook comments anywhere you want, not just on a blog post. Matter of fact, I have a comments module at the bottom of almost every page, because I want visitors to have the opportunity for a conversation about my entire site, not just my blog.

There's much more, but you get the idea... leaving iWeb seemed really painful at first, but it's been one of the best changes I've made in years to my internet presence.

We Do This Because...

I started Useful Stuff nearly three years ago as a sort of external memory device, to help me remember things I've figured out so I don't have to figure them out again a few months from now. Others have apparently found these things useful as well.

Recently, however, that original mission has expanded to include all sorts of musings, and I worry that people looking for how-to stuff won't be so interested in the theoretical rants, and vice versa. So Useful Stuff will go back to being a "know-how" blog, and I'll put all the "know-why" stuff on my new blog instead. It's entitled We Do This Because... because it looks more at the reasons behind things, rather than just the practicalities of getting stuff done.

I've just gone back and copied nearly three years of Useful Stuff's theoretical posts there... if you like posts like these, please consider following this We Do This Because...

How to Do a Visual Preference Survey

A Visual Preference Survey takes the pulse of a group of citizens concerning their preferences between various pairs of objects. We use them to test public preference for various languages (styles) of architecture, but they could also be used to test for many other object types as well.

To begin, select two sets of images... some use 50 pairs, others use 100, although the number isn't critical. Rather, there should be enough pairs to show trends, but not so many that they cause participant fatigue. You'll project each pair of images side-by-side, and participants will choose which one they prefer.

Each pair of images should show the same building type, but in two different languages of architecture. In other words, comparing a house to a gas station will almost always favor the house, so that result isn't useful. Also, a cottage often gets better ratings than a large house, so the size of the buildings should be similar. Also, you should control for image externalities. In other words, if one image has a blue sky, the other should as well, as a blue-sky image almost always rates higher than one taken on a grey and cloudy day. The bottom line is that you want to make the architecture the primary difference between the images, so that the results are meaningful.

Participants are given a simple scorecard, and are instructed to check the right box if they prefer the right image, or the left box if they prefer the left image. Each image pair is numbered, as are the checkboxes on the scorecards. When the survey is complete, the results are tallied in a database where they can be analyzed.

The results are often striking. Whereas we as architects can debate endlessly over architecture, the non-architects are usually quite decisive. It's really a technique we should use more often, IMO.

Time Passages and Fully Living Life

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Italy unlocked the strangest secret to me this week. I've just returned from there, where I spent more time (almost 3 weeks) than ever before because with airfare skyrocketing, it's uncertain how much longer I'll be able to afford to go.

The first day back was completely surreal because on the one hand, thinking back over all the things that happened on the trip through Rome, Pienza and the Tuscan countryside, Fiesole, Parma, Bologna, Vicenza, Venice, Florence, and back to Rome again, it seemed like several months since the beginning of the trip. On the other hand, sleeping in my own bed, showering in my own shower, making coffee in my own kitchen, and riding my bike to the office seemed like things I'd done just... yesterday. Not before the seemingly months-long trip. How can this be?

I'm no brain scientist, but I do have a fascination with the ways we remember. And I'm wondering if maybe our minds have a kind of shorthand for the things we do many times, so that instead of creating a whole new memory from scratch, it instead says "I did one of those things again for the umpteenth time"?

If that is so, then one could spend years doing mostly repetitive things and have few memories to show for it. Doing so would seem to impoverish the mind and possibly even the spirit. This mechanical paradigm has been the ideal of the Era of the Company that began with the Industrial Revolution, and thrived on armies of humans as cogs in the machine, doing the same thing each day, living for the weekend. At its extreme, a life spent this way might seem like little more than a few weeks from graduation to retirement, assuming someone worked the same place and did the same thing throughout their career.

In the end, maybe the secret to a long life isn't how late we die. Rather, maybe it's how fully we have lived. Put another way, living 100 years repetitively is not nearly so good as living 1/3 that long most meaningfully.

Building a Better Mousetrap

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You've likely heard the "Build a better mousetrap..." proverb all your life. Well, someone has actually done it! No chance of snapping your finger when cocking the thing. Don't get messy while emptying it. Easily cleaned over and over again, etc.

This makes me wonder how many other proverbs there are out there, right under our noses, waiting for someone to take them seriously?

Fashion vs. Sustainability

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This was my grandmother's mixing bowl. My mother got it when she died. My mother has had Alzheimer's for a decade, so when Dad & Mother were closing up housekeeping not long ago, Dad gave it to me because he knew I've loved to bake bread ever since I was a kid.

Actually, that's not exactly right. What I actually liked was eating raw yeast dough. But Mom and Grandmother wouldn't let me eat very much of their dough, so I thought "I'll fix that - I'll watch Grandmother really closely (she was a master at bread) and see how she does it." And so I did. But back to the bowl. Obviously, this bowl is out of fashion... You won't find one of these at Williams-Sonoma (unless by chance it's now been deemed "Retro.") If I wanted our kitchen to be in fashion, I wouldn't have it around.

Fashion lines the pockets of manufacturers by enticing us to buy something new each season. Sustainability works by handing things down. Because sustainability, after all, is "keeping things going in a healthy way, long into an uncertain future."

Here's the bottom line: if you want to be sustainable, you likely won't be in fashion. If you want to be in fashion, you likely won't be living a sustainable lifestyle. It's really a simple as that. Isn't it?

Setting Up Another Domain

I'm setting up a second domain (www.mouzon.com) on my new hosting account, and it's not so clear-cut as the first. Because I'll be doing this with at least three more domains (www.katrinacottages.com, www.newurbanguild.com, and www.guildfoundation.org) I'll need these instructions again.

I host with A2 Hosting primarily because they were recommended by Karelia Software, author of Sandvox… and because the research I did didn't turn up any other hosting companies of substantially higher benefit/cost ratios. A2's Control Panel looked almost identical to many other companies' so this set of instructions might work for others as well.

1. Log into Control Panel and click Home icon. Down the page, there's an icon that says Addon Domains. Click that. I entered the following:
New Domain Name: mouzon.com
Subdomain/FTP Username: mouzon

2. Go to mydomain.com, where I register all my domain names. Go to Manage Domains and select mouzon.com. It gets a bit complicated here for reasons that have gotten a bit fuzzy. It has something to do with hosting mail on MyDomain and hosting the website elsewhere. But in any case, here's what it's currently set up like under DNS Management:

MX record - points to my incoming mail server
A record - points to the URL of the MobileMe servers
CNAME record - points pop.mouzon.com to my incoming mail server
CNAME record - points smtp.mouzon.com to my incoming mail server
CNAME record - points webmail.mouzon.com to my incoming webmail server
CNAME record - points www.mouzon.com to mouzon.com

Normally, you'd think you could just change the name servers and that would be fine. Not so here, because of the mail and website being handled by two different companies. Instead, all you need to do is to change the A record to 75.98.166.130, which is the A2 Hosting server's URL.

3. Set up the iWeb version of the site to publish to A2. Later, I'll install redirects on all the old site pages that take you to the new site. Settings should be as follows:
Publish to: FTP Server
Site name: MDZ
Server address: ftp.originalgreen.org
Username: (my main A2 username)
Directory/Path: public_html/mouzon.com
Protocol: SFTP
Port: 7822
URL: http://www.mouzon.com

4. Publish iWeb version of the site, hopefully in time that there's no downtime once the nameservers switch over.

5. Go to developers.facebook.com/apps. This should show all of your existing apps. Once you're there, do these steps:
a. Click Create New App.
b. It'll bring up a New App window where you have to name the app. I use the same name as the name of the website… in this case, Mouzon Design.
c. On the next page, set App Domain to mouzon.com.
d. Set the category.
e. Click Edit Icon and upload your favicon.
f. Click the larger graphic and upload your logo.
g. Under "Select how your app integrates with Facebook, click Website and enter http://www.mouzon.com.
h. Save Changes.
i. Under Settings in the upper left corner, click Advanced.
j. Under Description, enter "This app provides Facebook connectivity to the Mouzon Design website."
k. Under Privacy Policy URL, enter the URL of your privacy policy page on your website. In this case, http://www.mouzon.com/about/our-privacy-policy.html
l. Save Changes.
m. Go back to developers.facebook.com/apps and copy the App ID.
n. Go to Sandvox.
o. In the Page>Appearance Inspector, Click the Setup button beside Comments.
p. Select Facebook for the Comments Provider, enter the App ID, set the number of posts to 20, and click Done.
q. Turn on comments on all the pages you want them on. I have them almost everywhere, because I want to give people every chance to discuss our site.

6. Set up the Sandvox version of the site to publish as follows:
URL Format: http://www.mouzon.com
Hostname: ftp.originalgreen.org
Username: (my main A2 username)
Document Root: /public_html/mouzon.com

7. Publish Sandvox version of the site. Note that it can't confirm connectivity until the site has flipped over from MobileMe to A2 Hosting.

8. Set up Google Analytics:
a. In Sandvox, select File>Configure Google Tools.
b. In the Sitemap window, check Publish Google Sitemap
c. In the Google Analytics window, follow the instructions for registering the site with Google Webmaster Tools and installing Analytics. It's quite self-explanatory.