tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-46373857706762964472012-03-05T09:52:58.409-08:00Original Green posts are copied here, and Useful Stuff posts are auto-posted here. For now, this is a test to see whether these posts rank more highly in Google than the original sites. If they do, I might move one or both of the blogs here.Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.comBlogger1891100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-54166766169307127912012-03-05T09:52:00.001-08:002012-03-05T09:52:58.445-08:00<div class='posterous_autopost'>Hoping to get a blog post up a couple hours earlier in the day, I bought a $9.95 flight pass from&nbsp;<a href="https://www.gogoair.com/gogo/splash.do">gogo</a>&nbsp;this morning. BIG mistake! They apparently compress images radically, and now every image in my blog post looks really crappy! So now I'm wasting time trying to figure out how to make Sandvox load the images again. I'd have been much better off just waiting until I got to the airport to post. <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/the-gogo-mistake">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-5416676616930712791?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-34849588810465505982012-02-23T07:05:00.001-08:002012-02-23T07:05:10.921-08:00<div class='posterous_autopost'><div>Here's my basic&nbsp;<a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/video-workflow">video workflow</a>. I've added a few items since that post:</div><p /><div>A.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>Click the little gear in the lower left corner of the beginning of each clip and select Clip Adjustments. Under Video Effects, select Cartoon for OGTV videos and Hard Light for TA-TV videos. Cartoon has a dreamy look and saves video size because the soft focus means adjacent pixels are more similar. Hard Light is bigger, but necessary for the details in TA-TV.</div><p /><div>B.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>I've changed my opening title method so that the opening title is now overlaid on the first 3.5 seconds of the clip. The closing title is still on a gradient background.</div><p /><div>C.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>To finish,&nbsp;I export the movie using QuickTime. A few people don't have QuickTime, but it's a free download, and offers&nbsp;much more flexibility than the other options. In the export dialog box, click Options in the lower right. Under Settings in the&nbsp;Movie Settings dialog box that comes up, select Compression Type: H.264, Frame Rate: Current, Data Rate: Automatic,&nbsp;Compressor: Medium, and Encoding: Best Quality. Under Size, I use 512x288. This doesn't work with older iPhones, but does&nbsp;work on 4's and on all browsers with QuickTime. The reason for selecting this size is because it's my title image size used&nbsp;elsewhere on the website. Under sound settings, I leave all defaults. Under Prepare for Internet Streaming, I select Fast Start.</div> <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/updated-video-workflow">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-3484958881046550598?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-85456156670552817542012-02-13T21:35:00.001-08:002012-02-13T21:35:28.621-08:00<div class='posterous_autopost'><div>Scroll down for my new email signature. I blogged nearly two years ago about&nbsp;<a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/my-new-email-signature">how I created this signature</a>. Recently, my image hosting service has been screwing up a lot, so I moved the images, necessitating rebuilding parts of the signature. Fortunately, I've discovered easier ways to do several parts of it:</div><p /><div>HTML Editor</div><div>Previously, I used industrial-strength Dreamweaver because it was part of my Adobe Creative Suite. But the learning curve was very steep. Now, I'm using&nbsp;<a href="http://www.activestate.com/komodo-edit">Komodo</a>, which is free and much easier to use.</div><p /><div>Image Host</div><div>Previously, I used ImageShack to host the chiclets and book image in my signature because I could never get images to work when hosted on Zenfolio or MobileMe. Recently, I've switched to&nbsp;<a href="http://www.a2hosting.com/">A2 Hosting</a>&nbsp;as part of my&nbsp;<a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/why-move-from-iweb-to-sandvox">move from iWeb to Sandvox</a>. After my recent troubles with ImageShack images disappearing, I decided to experiment with putting them on A2. I created a folder for the images in my public_html folder, tested it, and Bingo! It worked! Here's my&nbsp;<a href="http://www.originalgreen.org/ChicletsWhite/Twitter.jpg">twitter chiclet</a>, for example, so you can see the URL.</div><p /><div>What to Edit?</div><div>I tried for almost half the day to figure out how to edit the .webarchive files directly, because that's where the signatures are stored. I eventually gave up on that, because I could never find a tool to do it directly. Back when I originally created the signatures, I noted that the first thing to do was to build html files for each signature, then use Safari to save as .webarchive files. So I still had the original html files, and that's what I ended up editing.</div><p /><div>Editing HTML</div><div>I didn't need to totally create the signatures from scratch, as I was just modifying what I already had. What made it much easier was that once I fixed the image sources by changing them from ImageShack to my Original Green site, I was easily able to copy the HTML of the chiclets from the first signature and paste it to each of the other signatures quickly. You can only edit the html in Komodo, so it's not a true WYSIWYG editor, but if you click the Preview button in the toolbar, it splits the window, showing the html in the top half and the design in the bottom half.</div><p /><div>Saving Signatures</div><div>I don't know why I hadn't seen this earlier, but there's a much faster way to save signatures than what I'd previously used. To begin, simply open all of the html files in Safari and Save As .webarchive files. These files should be named obviously. The New Urban Guild signatures for Wanda and I are named NUG_Steve.html and NUG_Wanda.html, for example. So the corresponding .webarchive files are NUG_Steve.webarchive and NUG_Wanda.webarchive.</div><p /><div>Next, open a second Finder window next to the window holding the html files and navigate this second window to Home&gt;Library&gt;Mail&gt;V2&gt;MailData&gt;Signatures. Start at the top of the Signatures window and work down. The .webarchive file names are complete gobbledygook that you can't possibly remember or distinguish (like 2FE15CC0-C16E-458D-BCE0-A6A894EFCE8B.webarchive,) but all you need to do is to click each file and tap the space bar to bring up the preview window so you can see which signature it is (New Urban Guild, Guild Foundation, etc., in my case.) Click into the gobbledygook file name, and copy it. Go to the master html window and find the matching .webarchive file. Click into its filename, and paste the plain-English name with the gobbledygook name from the Signatures folder. Finally, move this file into the Signatures folder, overwriting the old .webarchive file. Do this for each signature and you're done.</div><p /><div>As promised, here's what the signature looks like:</div><div> <br /> <table border="0" width="100%"> <tr> <td align="center" width="210"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1931871116?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=theoriggree-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=1931871116"><img src="http://www.originalgreen.org/ChicletsWhite/OGBookCoverPerspective.jpg" height="288" alt="Original Green book" width="192" /></a></td> <td valign="bottom"><p>Steve Mouzon<br /> AIA ~ CNU ~ LEED AP<p /> New Urban Guild<br /> 1253 Washington Avenue<br /> Suite 222<br /> Miami Beach, FL 33139<br /> USA<p /> 786-276-6000<br /> <a href="mailto:steve@newurbanguild.com">steve@newurbanguild.com</a></p></td> </tr> </table> <table border="0" width="432"> <tr> <td height="66" align="center"><a href="http://www.originalgreen.org/OG/Home.html"><img src="http://www.originalgreen.org/ChicletsWhite/OG.jpg" height="57" alt="the Original Green" width="57" /></a></td> <td height="66" align="center"><a href="http://www.originalgreen.org/OG/Blog/Blog.html"><img src="http://www.originalgreen.org/ChicletsWhite/RSS.jpg" height="57" alt="the Original Green Blog" width="57" /></a></td> <td height="66" align="center"><a href="http://twitter.com/stevemouzon"><img src="http://www.originalgreen.org/ChicletsWhite/Twitter.jpg" height="57" alt="Original Green twitter stream" width="57" /></a></td> <td height="66" align="center"><a href="http://we-do-this-because.posterous.com/"><img src="http://www.originalgreen.org/ChicletsWhite/Posterous.jpg" height="57" alt="We Do This Because... blog" width="57" /></a></td> <td height="66" align="center"><a href="http://www.linkedin.com/groups?mostPopular=&amp;gid=1042127"><img src="http://www.originalgreen.org/ChicletsWhite/LinkedIn.jpg" height="57" alt="LinkedIn" width="57" /></a></td> <td height="66" align="center"><a href="http://www.facebook.com/original.green.sustainability"><img src="http://www.originalgreen.org/ChicletsWhite/Facebook.jpg" height="57" alt="Original Green page on Facebook" width="57" /></a></td> </tr> <tr> <td height="66" align="center"><a href="http://www.mouzon.com/MDZ/Home.html"><img src="http://www.originalgreen.org/ChicletsWhite/MDZ.jpg" height="57" alt="Mouzon Design" width="57" /></a></td> <td height="66" align="center"><a href="http://www.newurbanguild.com/NUG/SmartDwelling.html"><img src="http://www.originalgreen.org/ChicletsWhite/ProjectSmartDwelling.jpg" height="57" alt="Project SmartDwelling" width="57" /></a></td> <td height="66" align="center"><a href="http://www.newurbanguild.com/NUG/Home.html"><img src="http://www.originalgreen.org/ChicletsWhite/NUG.jpg" height="57" alt="New Urban Guild" width="57" /></a></td> <td height="66" align="center"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/shops/mouzondesign"><img src="http://www.originalgreen.org/ChicletsWhite/MouzonBooks.jpg" height="57" alt="Mouzon books" width="57" /></a></td> <td height="66" align="center"><a href="http://samouzon.zenfolio.com/"><img src="http://www.originalgreen.org/ChicletsWhite/MouzonImages.jpg" height="57" alt="Mouzon images" width="57" /></a></td> <td height="66" align="center"><a href="http://www.mouzon.com/MDZ/Plans.html"><img src="http://www.originalgreen.org/ChicletsWhite/MouzonPlans.jpg" height="57" alt="Mouzon plans" width="57" /></a></td> </tr> </table> </div> <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/mac-html-email-signatures-simplified">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-8545615667055281754?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-45650464707791068802012-01-26T18:37:00.001-08:002012-01-26T18:37:40.415-08:00<div class='posterous_autopost'>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: <p /> A. Determine which Sandvox design is closest to the look of the site you want to build. My choice is Clean Sheets, FWIW. <p /> B. Do you have any custom Designs already based on this design? If no, the navigate to Applications>Sandvox. If yes, skip to C. <p /> 1. Right-click or Control-click on the Sandvox icon, which will bring up a list of choices. Select Show Package Contents. <p /> 2. Navigate to Contents>Designs <p /> 3. Select the .svxDesign file for the design you've chosen (file names are fairly self-explanatory) and duplicate it. <p /> 4. Move the duplicated file to username>Library>Application Support>Sandvox. <p /> 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. <p /> 1. Right-click or Control-click on the .svxDesign file, which will bring up a list of choices. Select Show Package Contents. <p /> 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 key and mouse strokes completely by accident, and unable to remember precisely what I did. So don't do that. Instead, do this: <p /> 3. Open Info.plist with TextEdit. <p /> 4. Change the Bundle identifier to "Sandvox." (don't include ... 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.) <p /> 5. Change the title to . <p /> 6. Save and close. <p /> 7. Modify your Design by changing main.css. I've had great luck with CSSeditor, 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. <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/figured-out-plist-editing">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-4565046470779106880?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-10561596918237618542012-01-24T11:14:00.001-08:002012-01-24T11:14:30.192-08:00<div class='posterous_autopost'>I blogged some time ago about the&nbsp;<a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/my-new-email-signature">process of creating my email signature</a>&nbsp;from scratch. But what about when you just need to duplicate and modify a signature in Apple Mail? It's a lot simpler:<p /><div>A.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>Go to Mail&gt;Preferences and click the Signatures tab.</div><p /><div>B.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>At the bottom of the second column, click "+" to create a new signature. Don't do anything to it right now.</div><p /><div>C.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>Quit Mail.</div><p /><div>D.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>In the Finder, navigate to (your username)&gt;Library&gt;Mail&gt;V2&gt;MailData&gt;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.</div><p /><div>E.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>Copy the file name.</div><p /><div>F.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>Delete the file.</div><p /><div>G.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>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.</div><p /><div>H.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>Duplicate that .webarchive signature file.</div><p /><div>I.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>Reopen Mail and go back to Mail&gt;Preferences&gt;Signatures. You'll find the duplicated signature in the list.</div><p /><div>J.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>Change its name to whatever you want.</div><p /><div>K.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>Make the changes in the text of the signature.</div><p /><div>L.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>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.</div><p /><div>M.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>Close Preferences... you're done!</div> <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/creating-modified-email-signatures">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-1056159691823761854?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-86877124308804678772012-01-10T19:23:00.001-08:002012-01-10T19:23:41.126-08:00<div class='posterous_autopost'><div>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:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.karelia.com/sandvox/">Sandvox</a>, by&nbsp;<a href="http://www.karelia.com/">Karelia Software</a>, comes closest to iWeb's ease of use, but with several advantages:</div><p /><div>A.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>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.</div><p /><div>B.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>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.</div><p /><div>C.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>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.</div><p /><div>D.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>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.</div><p /><div>E.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>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.</div><p /><div>F.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>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.</div><p /><div>G.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>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.</div><p /><div>H.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>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!</div><p /><div>I.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>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.</div><p /><div>J.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>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.</div><p /><div>K.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>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.</div><p /><div>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.</div> <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/why-move-from-iweb-to-sandvox">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-8687712430880467877?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-43564488039664497872011-11-22T08:34:00.001-08:002011-11-22T08:34:49.890-08:00<div class='posterous_autopost'>I've just found a great little tool called&nbsp;<a href="http://www.bresink.com/osx/TinkerTool.html">TinkerTool</a>&nbsp;that lets you set all sorts of obscure little settings on Mac OS X Lion all in one place... things like showing invisible files, etc. It doesn't change any component of the operating system, and it's easy to set everything back to previous conditions with just a keystroke. <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/tinkertool">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-4356448803966449787?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-9070759987996272582011-11-09T14:44:00.001-08:002011-11-09T14:44:16.572-08:00<div class='posterous_autopost'><p> <div style="color: #000000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; background-color: #ffffff; margin: 8px;"> <p>I started&nbsp;Useful Stuff&nbsp;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.</p> <p>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 <a href="http://we-do-this-because.posterous.com/" target="_blank">We Do This Because...</a> because it looks more at the reasons behind things, rather than just the practicalities of getting stuff done.</p> <p>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 <a href="http://we-do-this-because.posterous.com/" target="_blank">We Do This Because...</a></p> </div> </p> <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/we-do-this-because">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-907075998799627258?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-91451665757432656752011-11-09T07:51:00.001-08:002011-11-09T07:51:52.140-08:00<div class='posterous_autopost'>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. <p /> 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. <p /> 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. <p /> 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. <p /> 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. <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/how-to-do-a-visual-preference-survey">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-9145166575743265675?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-66268481821771150932011-10-28T10:50:00.001-07:002011-10-28T10:50:22.445-07:00<div class='posterous_autopost'><div class='p_embed p_image_embed'> <a href="http://getfile0.posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/usefulstuff/Rui9nvfmci1ODWZL0Ydos4LLy3uB9mYE9Qhpi6ETXIIqQIPgI20E4eIodyXi/Venice-11OCT17-3144-web.jpg"><img alt="Venice-11oct17-3144-web" height="332" src="http://getfile1.posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/usefulstuff/yvJZ8emvcynbH59bEYgBFNUEw7WoPjAhr7auCEIndZRdGgDeoooIKIIaW1ac/Venice-11OCT17-3144-web.jpg.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" /></a> </div> <br /><p /><div>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.</div><p /><div>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?</div><p /><div>I'm no brain scientists, 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"?</div><p /><div>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&nbsp;<a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/new-media-for-design-types">Era of the Company</a>&nbsp;that began with the Industrial Revolution, and thrived on armies of humans as cogs in the machine, doing the same thing each day,&nbsp;<a href="http://www.originalgreen.org/blog/retirement-vs-the-pursuit.html">living for the weekend</a>. 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.</div><p /><div>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.</div> <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/time-passages-and-fully-living-life">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-6626848182177115093?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-64535927471550442042011-10-28T07:11:00.001-07:002011-10-28T07:11:12.596-07:00<div class='posterous_autopost'><div class='p_embed p_image_embed'> <a href="http://getfile8.posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/usefulstuff/Vjp50lsB2gOZvWAzmkFWoPUBmvY8dOWyDz15LNyKZO6BMxKZUZYQfhSUMPoy/photo.jpg.scaled.1000.jpg"><img alt="Photo" height="373" src="http://getfile6.posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/usefulstuff/RG1IK3tY0Ad5GeqhZMSWS2gSlFXzsR684hJVv7JL7k99aEO66umV7niqgvFO/photo.jpg.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" /></a> </div> <p>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. <p /> This makes me wonder how many other proverbs there are out there, right under our noses, waiting for someone to take them seriously?</p> <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/building-a-better-mousetrap">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-6453592747155044204?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-58731008066967405862011-09-23T06:10:00.001-07:002011-09-23T06:10:21.171-07:00<div class='posterous_autopost'><div class='p_embed p_image_embed'> <a href="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/usefulstuff/bHHQxppWwu8VWHwCiPezHrdRHf3qjkXjrZY1pPDgohPQiYvTaQaBnfMxqqGs/photo.jpg.scaled.1000.jpg"><img alt="Photo" height="373" src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/usefulstuff/ueEVbaDvRMD2FUlBzgdV3zzt5LIHiD2UwDJqXWBHlKHv9wnbJmJEbllQMNbl/photo.jpg.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" /></a> </div> <p>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. <p /> 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. <p /> 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." <p /> 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?</p> <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/fashion-vs-sustainability">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-5873100806696740586?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-69611983771241686042011-09-20T03:02:00.001-07:002011-09-20T03:02:49.623-07:00<div class='posterous_autopost'>I'm setting up a second domain (<a href="http://www.mouzon.com">www.mouzon.com</a>) 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 (<a href="http://www.katrinacottages.com">www.katrinacottages.com</a>, <a href="http://www.newurbanguild.com">www.newurbanguild.com</a>, and <a href="http://www.guildfoundation.org">www.guildfoundation.org</a>) I'll need these instructions again. <p /> 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. <p /> 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: <br /> New Domain Name: mouzon.com <br /> Subdomain/FTP Username: mouzon <p /> 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: <p /> MX record - points to my incoming mail server <br />A record - points to the URL of the MobileMe servers <br />CNAME record - points pop.mouzon.com to my incoming mail server <br />CNAME record - points smtp.mouzon.com to my incoming mail server <br />CNAME record - points webmail.mouzon.com to my incoming webmail server <br />CNAME record - points <a href="http://www.mouzon.com">www.mouzon.com</a> to mouzon.com <p /> 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. <p /> 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: <br /> Publish to: FTP Server <br /> Site name: MDZ <br /> Server address: ftp.originalgreen.org <br /> Username: <br /> Directory/Path: public_html/mouzon.com <br /> Protocol: SFTP <br /> Port: 7822 <br /> URL: <a href="http://www.mouzon.com">http://www.mouzon.com</a> <p /> 4. Publish iWeb version of the site, hopefully in time that there's no downtime once the nameservers switch over. <p /> 5. Go to developers.facebook.com/apps. This should show all of your existing apps. Once you're there, do these steps: <br /> a. Click Create New App. <br /> 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. <br /> c. On the next page, set App Domain to mouzon.com. <br /> d. Set the category. <br /> e. Click Edit Icon and upload your favicon. <br /> f. Click the larger graphic and upload your logo. <br /> g. Under "Select how your app integrates with Facebook, click Website and enter <a href="http://www.mouzon.com">http://www.mouzon.com</a>. <br /> h. Save Changes. <br /> i. Under Settings in the upper left corner, click Advanced. <br /> j. Under Description, enter "This app provides Facebook connectivity to the Mouzon Design website." <br /> k. Under Privacy Policy URL, enter the URL of your privacy policy page on your website. In this case, <a href="http://www.mouzon.com/about/our-privacy-policy.html">http://www.mouzon.com/about/our-privacy-policy.html</a> <br /> l. Save Changes. <br /> m. Go back to developers.facebook.com/apps and copy the App ID. <br /> n. Go to Sandvox. <br /> o. In the Page>Appearance Inspector, Click the Setup button beside Comments. <br /> p. Select Facebook for the Comments Provider, enter the App ID, set the number of posts to 20, and click Done. <br /> 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. <p /> 6. Set up the Sandvox version of the site to publish as follows: <br /> URL Format: <a href="http://www.mouzon.com">http://www.mouzon.com</a> <br /> Hostname: ftp.originalgreen.org <br /> Username: <br /> Document Root: /public_html/mouzon.com <p /> 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. <p /> 8. Set up Google Analytics: <br /> a. In Sandvox, select File>Configure Google Tools. <br /> b. In the Sitemap window, check Publish Google Sitemap <br /> 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. <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/setting-up-another-domain">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-6961198377124168604?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-63100093631167196872011-09-01T14:43:00.001-07:002011-09-01T14:43:09.144-07:00<div class='posterous_autopost'><div><span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, Bitstream Vera Sans, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 20px;"><a href="http://www.originalgreen.org/blog/the-schooner-bay-miracle.html">New Town Takes Worst of Irene, Emerges Unscathed</a></span></div><span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, Bitstream Vera Sans, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 14px;"><a href="http://www.planetizen.com/node/add/news?sourceUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.originalgreen.org%2Fblog%2Fthe-schooner-bay-miracle.html&amp;sourceTitle=The+Schooner+Bay+Miracle&amp;sourcePublication=The+Original+Green+Blog&amp;sourceDate=1314860400#skip_tags" class="noprint" alt="Skip tags" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 88, 132);"></a></span><p /><span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, Bitstream Vera Sans, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 14px;"><a name="skip_tags" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;"></a></span><div class="submitted" style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102); font-size: 0.8em; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, Bitstream Vera Sans, sans-serif; line-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: 12px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 16px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Town taps ancient construction wisdom, most of which is completely illegal in US hurricane zones, and fares better in the eye of Hurricane Irene at its strongest point than any other town</span></div><div class="content" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, Bitstream Vera Sans, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 14px;"><div class="newsitem"><div class="contents" style="border-top-style: none; border-right-style: none; border-bottom-style: none; border-left-style: none; border-color: initial;"><p style="margin-top: 1em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px;">Schooner Bay has no houses built on stilts. They don't use hurricane windows... as a matter of fact, their windows are all homemade, fabricated onsite. Yet not one pane of glass was broken. Many of their carpenters were fishermen a year ago. Conventional construction around Schooner Bay was smashed... some houses were completely washed out to sea. This post details a stunning story of the triumph of low-tech measures that have been tested for centuries, and calls into question the direction of FEMA and hurricane codes in the US.</p></div><div class="publish_urls" style="padding-bottom: 0.75em;"><span class="label3" style="padding-right: 5px; color: rgb(153, 153, 153);">Full Story:</span>&nbsp;<b><a href="http://www.originalgreen.org/blog/the-schooner-bay-miracle.html">The Schooner Bay Miracle</a></b></div></div></div> <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/the-schooner-bay-miracle">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-6310009363116719687?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-77703948183146922582011-09-01T14:42:00.001-07:002011-09-01T14:42:25.195-07:00<div class='posterous_autopost'>As you might recall&nbsp;<a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/new-media-for-design-types">from this post</a>, I've long been an advocate of building vigorously interconnected networks of many nodes. But I've now built enough Original Green nodes that I need this checklist to make sure I catch them all whenever I do new&nbsp;<a href="http://www.originalgreen.org/blog/the-schooner-bay-miracle.html">Original Green blog posts like the one today</a>. So here's the list:<p /><div>Original Green group on LinkedIn - I catch this one with my first pass of notifications sent out by clicking the icons at the bottom of each post, beginning with Digg. I click the LinkedIn icon, then click the check box for adding groups to the post.</div><p /><div>Planetizen - I'm starting to submit my best work to Planetizen. Their submissions web page is&nbsp;<a href="http://www.planetizen.com/news/submit">http://www.planetizen.com/news/submit</a>.</div><p /><div>New Urban Network - I have for some time been submitting my best work to the New Urban Network. I do this by emailing&nbsp;Rob Steuteville &lt;<a href="mailto:rob@newurbannews.com">rob@newurbannews.com</a>&gt;.</div><p /><div>Grist - I'm hoping they pick up Original Green blog posts; I've submitted</div><p /><div>Original Green Yahoo discussion group - I email to&nbsp;<a href="mailto:originalgreen@yahoogroups.com">originalgreen@yahoogroups.com</a> to post to this group.</div><p /><div>Original Green Cause on Facebook:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.causes.com/causes/154766-the-original-green">http://www.causes.com/causes/154766-the-original-green</a></div><p /><div>Google Plus: from my Google home page, I click the +Steve in the upper left corner which takes me to the Stream page, where I can share at the top.</div><p /><div>Listservs: I post to appropriate listservs like Pro-Urb, TradArch, NextGen, Urbanists, Transect, etc.</div><p /><div>Interested Parties: I email people who might have a special interest in the post.</div><p /><div>Link Targets: I email people I'm linking to in the post.</div> <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/original-green-blog-posts">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-7770394818314692258?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-3252128258698669092011-08-04T14:34:00.001-07:002011-08-04T14:34:38.819-07:00<div class='posterous_autopost'><div><div class='p_embed p_image_embed'> <a href="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/usefulstuff/YtUH0E6QZwc4VEZBIqMVdslNXUzM8M31Go5uBNE44f88bygs50CH6Qnrb2zr/Miami-Beach-Night-Shots-08MAR1.jpg"><img alt="Miami-beach-night-shots-08mar1" height="281" src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/usefulstuff/8QMAuhlvqFz0pXBchv7dSzBW77SFANrpzm5FaEfk9ulKA9wRfgsDHA99cjTG/Miami-Beach-Night-Shots-08MAR1.jpg.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" /></a> </div> </div><p /><div><a href="http://bit.ly/nMP7GL">Here's&nbsp;how on-street parking</a>&nbsp;bolsters walkability &amp; sustainability, and creates better urbanism and a healthier environment.</div> <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/the-importance-of-on-street-parking">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-325212825869866909?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-10835140085126737202011-08-03T20:20:00.001-07:002011-08-03T20:20:47.884-07:00<div class='posterous_autopost'>When you have thousands of photos in iPhoto, it's kinda hard to find the movies if that's all you're interested in at the moment. I found a really cool method just now on <a href="http://ruk.ca">ruk.ca</a>. Rather than steal this blogger's thunder, why don't you just&nbsp;<a href="http://ruk.ca/content/find-videos-iphoto">read his really simple description</a>&nbsp;of how to do this? <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/finding-movies-in-itunes">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-1083514008512673720?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-78070958046501325832011-08-03T18:46:00.001-07:002011-08-03T18:46:35.206-07:00<div class='posterous_autopost'>I'm beginning to get my video workflow in order… at least for OGTV, on the Original Green website. Here's what it's looking like: <p /> A. I'll be shooting on my iPhone from now on (at least most of the time) because the quality of the iPhone 4 back camera is so good, and because I always have it on me. Here's where I go from there: <p /> B. Import the movies to iPhoto 11 because that's the easiest way of getting them off my phone, deleting them once they're downloaded so they don't clog the phone (they can be massive.) <p /> C. I can see all my iPhoto videos from inside iMovie 11's Event Library, so getting them into iMovie is no problem. <p /> D. Create a new project in iMovie's Project Library window by clicking the plus in the lower right corner. This will open the project's window in the upper left, where the Project Library window was a moment ago. <p /> E. Drag the clips you'll be using into the window. Normally, I have just one clip as I try really hard to say everything I want to say in one take. <p /> F. Click on the T in the middle right of the window to bring up the Title Browser. <p /> G. Drag the Centered title (upper left) into the project's window, to the beginning of the project. Drag another Centered title to the end of the project. <p /> H. Each time you drag a title, it'll ask you for a Background. I'm starting to use Gradient, but use whatever makes the most sense with your videos. <p /> I. Double-click each title in turn, then double-clicking the text to select it. Then, change the font, color, and special features to what you're looking for. I use Futura Extra Bold, no outline, with the Original Green color. <p /> J. Change your titles. I use the title of the clip at the beginning, with the name of the participants (normally just me, sometimes Wanda as well) at the beginning, then <a href="http://www.originalgreen.org">www.originalgreen.org</a> at the end. <p /> K. Click on the Transitions tab, just right of the T (Titles) tab in the central right of the iMovie window. This will bring up all available transitions. I use Cross Dissolve. <p /> L. Drag a transition between the titles and each end of the clip(s.) <p /> M. Because the final credit is only the website (which is quicker to read than the opening title) I select the last second of the final credits and delete it, leaving 2.5 seconds of final credits and the default 3.5 seconds of opening titles. They each come in at 4 seconds to begin with, but once you insert the transitions, it clips a half-second off each end. <p /> That's it for now… more as I figure out more of this stuff. <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/video-workflow">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-7807095804650132583?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-37852164868752934362011-07-30T04:08:00.001-07:002011-07-30T04:08:22.229-07:00<div class='posterous_autopost'>I've just spent several days in Boston, where the taxi drivers treat credit cards like Kryptonite. They would rather sit where they are for another 20 minutes to pick up a cash fare than to take a CC fare. But in that time. They could be back to pick up that cash fare! Go figure... <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/taxis-and-credit-cards">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-3785216486875293436?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-13417670973858438022011-07-23T09:21:00.001-07:002011-07-23T09:21:33.764-07:00<div class='posterous_autopost'>Getting your stuff on the web can lead down many expensive dead ends, but I think I'm finally getting close to my ideal web interface after all these years. Here are some of the big hurdles, and how I got over them. But first, is anyone old enough to remember one of those first Mac ads back in the mid-'80's where a stern looking guy says "I use a Mac because it helps me do what I do best. And I don't do computers!" Remember him? Well, that guy is me. I never did DOS, and I don't want to learn HTML or CSS, as I said earlier. I have other things to do with my life. I could hire a web development company (that's what I once did) to build the Original Green site, the Katrina Cottages site, the New Urban Guild site, the Guild Foundation site, and the Mouzon Design site. At $5-10K per site, I'd be out enough money to guy a car or two. But that's not the worst of it. Every web developer I've ever worked with has been really nice. One was even a good friend. But every time I want to add something or change something, I've got to go to them, get on their schedule, and then pay them to make the change. Both during initial site development and forever thereafter, it requires more of my time (a lot more, actually) to have them get it exactly the way I want it than it would take me to just do it myself... If I have the proper tools. So going the conventional route of hiring someone is out. So what are the tools? I've used iWeb for years, and it was crucial to the development of the Original Green idea. Without it, the idea would likely still just a warm fuzzy in my mind. But with it, it's a cause with hopes of graduating into a movement, and it has thousands of supporters spread over every continent except maybe Antarctica. The Katrina Cottages site, meanwhile, has languished because it was built conventionally by an HTML guru in a way that is painful to modify as noted above. So it has not been modified since 2007. Yet it gets more hits than any other site I've got... By far. Imagine how much good we could have done with Katrina Cottages had I taken the time to rebuild it in iWeb years ago. But iWeb was never perfect. Its biggest Achilles heel was its unfriendliness to search engines. Simply put, it allowed novices to create beautiful sites better than any other tool, it was a pleasure to use, but then your site was unlikey to be found by Google. Original Green Blog posts, followed by dedicated adherents to the cause, normally get a few hundred readers. But posts on this blog regularly get a few thousand, even though I promote them less and they're more general in nature... Presumably because Posterous is far more Googlicious. All that doesn't matter now, because Apple is essentially killing iWeb with neglect, and with the demise of MobileMe. After getting over the denial of losing iWeb, and then after a lengthy search and evaluation period, I've settled on Sandvox as the web development tool with more of iWeb's strengths than any other tool, but with other strengths where iWeb had weaknesses like strong SEO (search engine optimization) tools built right into Sandvox. There are a few other utilities and resources that round out the Sandvox capabilities into a system that really works for me: CSSEdit is a nifty utility that let's me see the effects of changes I'm thinking of making in my Sandvox themes without having to know the underlying coding. At $25 or so, it paid for itself almost immediately. WebINK serves up a ton of fonts using an HTML thing known as "@font-face." It may sound like a juvenile insult, but it allows you to use the fonts you want without having to resort to "web-safe" fonts, most of which are dreadfully ugly and boring. Photoshop is essential for developing the graphics and modifying the photos. OK, so there are others, but Photoshop is the best. Once I create a graphic, I open it in Preview and re-save it. This strips out all the Photoshop baggage, leaving just the raw graphic, often saving half the file size (or more, for small images.) the smaller your graphics are (while still being beautiful - a balancing act) the faster your pages load. PayPal lets me create Buy, Add to Cart, and Donate buttons so I don't need an often-expensive e-commerce module. That's about it... If I think of anything else, I'll add it to this post as a comment. <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/the-web-why-i-did-what-i-did">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-1341767097385843802?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-39957492786269550782011-07-17T14:39:00.001-07:002011-07-17T14:39:20.905-07:00<div class='posterous_autopost'><div class='p_embed p_image_embed'> <a href="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/usefulstuff/m5qAqT77NfN0b6VhumZtkcvpaQrMHR4AjWhjOtwU99sM6xb6d8DrHkd2b5AP/image.png.scaled.1000.jpg"><img alt="Image" height="373" src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/usefulstuff/7KWE5eBbW9K5FaD8GiYoEMhv99Y4dULX5sVbonKRGMnfMq2wnL9znjJEia5n/image.png.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" /></a> </div> <p>Contributing money to assist disaster victims is a good thing, of course, but contributions often dry up in short order, long before the devastation is healed. I've been wondering: what can we do that might have a more long-term effect? One of the ideas at the core of the Original Green initiative is that we do what we OUGHT to do only for a short time, but we do what we WANT to do for years. <p /> So how might you WANT to help the disaster recovery from, for example, the Tuscaloosa tornado, or from Hurricane Katrina? What if you developed a taste for products that would bolster the local economies? Like the barbecue sauce from Dreamland in Tuscaloosa? Or Tabasco Sauce from Louisiana? Here's a delicious recipe that includes both:</p><p><div class='p_embed p_image_embed'> <a href="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/usefulstuff/WleMRrnFVONMBTBFezTVPF0o91IayMM3t2zNmucYEUduYdf6f2dTng6G72Fd/0image.png.scaled.1000.jpg"><img alt="0image" height="373" src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/usefulstuff/qA0zXdIGNmQ2wQjaRMwlFJwmOxyDJV8DCRHybgLYqXetDigGvwXQLAYh42UD/0image.png.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" /></a> </div> </p><p>Slice up a panful of mushrooms of your choosing plus one bulb of garlic cloves and one medium onion. Pour just enough olive oil into a sauté pan to thinly cover the bottom. Heat on high until a garlic slice crackles when dropped into the pan. Now, pour the rest of the ingredients into the pan.</p><p><div class='p_embed p_image_embed'> <a href="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/usefulstuff/ifD6LxULPQSFXJx6n9y32JTLHVTC7y2WfT3VjOQ6JjFtODxKxNE1jV3RMOer/1image.png.scaled.1000.jpg"><img alt="1image" height="373" src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/usefulstuff/5g135q2OKYBwyYsFGDkh10rjBqFGM8rsmNAf3zcOr6JeR0lQgOtim3zbTSsE/1image.png.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" /></a> </div> </p><p>Reduce heat to medium-high and sauté until mushrooms have begun to caramelize and onions have just begun to become transparent.</p><p><div class='p_embed p_image_embed'> <a href="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/usefulstuff/kYwPKT70jGAodWoB9oNVhxKkoxAiMwmCS25F3TMBal00XNf64DIfrGcFqrvm/2image.png.scaled.1000.jpg"><img alt="2image" height="373" src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/usefulstuff/4EHzN0TdQxCNRJaad3E9Ky7QLxGQILdzmrry1c5TBdLTDSs3KMSnyusLDQHQ/2image.png.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" /></a> </div> </p><p>Pour balsamic vinegar into pan so that it's standing about 1/8" deep around the other ingredients.</p><p><div class='p_embed p_image_embed'> <a href="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/usefulstuff/KuGKXDmR85frw7x5qzkMnZq8EsvlKjCY1NE4g8Oe9ZB59iEQFUrvVBT5ZCuj/3image.png.scaled.1000.jpg"><img alt="3image" height="373" src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/usefulstuff/KxU04hKGyfu7g2Aae3UnEi3ymrmd0JLUblvpVCzeJhM8hpWmNf2w6XZPryK4/3image.png.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" /></a> </div> </p><p>Stir until the vinegar has entirely caramelized. Reduce heat to medium.</p><p><div class='p_embed p_image_embed'> <a href="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/usefulstuff/QMpUVpVEAOJ7lbAzUPArJv32nj2v1NcMuGA4D5kOVbzMJtKB2vf7oN0529XA/4image.png.scaled.1000.jpg"><img alt="4image" height="373" src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/usefulstuff/650N7QNZIvtp9wwAs8EJK1LZ3fNZJm9564HNFXsOjoTVW2eyMe29MSEGvCxp/4image.png.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" /></a> </div> </p><p>Pour one can of black beans into pan. Pour a healthy dollop of Dreamland Barbecue Sauce over the beans. Don't be shy... This is supposed to be a savory dish. Next, shake Tabasco Sauce liberally into the pan as well... use a bit of caution because it's hotter than the Dreamland sauce. Top with your favorite meat spices as this dish, while completely made of vegetables, can nonetheless be as zesty as many a meat dish.</p><p><div class='p_embed p_image_embed'> <a href="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/usefulstuff/iXRu7kq2kr7WmUJOWNxvRRAxUfatJmiVRURHYvZTlXBmsQwK4tTbnf8yGDts/5image.png.scaled.1000.jpg"><img alt="5image" height="373" src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/usefulstuff/SaNebblHJaGaGAwiDo5EVY9GjXBt594tCYFioB6GAMHQeuBOmeERZPVjF4L0/5image.png.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" /></a> </div> </p><p>Cook on medium until the bean juice has cooked up, stirring continuously the last 90 seconds to make sure you don't overcook. Serve... and enjoy! And Tuscaloosa and Louisiana will thank you for it.</p> <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/delicious-disaster-aid">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-3995749278626955078?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-53769551438978348672011-07-13T16:11:00.001-07:002011-07-13T16:11:21.053-07:00<div class='posterous_autopost'>Step 12: Process <br />Photoshop is cool because it takes all the metadata in your RAW (DNG) files and embeds it into your JPEG files that you save from your DNG files. Here's what I do when I process my files: <p /> Open the DNG file by double-clicking in the Finder. This will open the file in Photoshop if you own it. Everything in this post assumes you own the version of Photoshop found in CS5. If you don't, upgrade. The Context-Aware Delete alone is worth the price of the upgrade (varies according to which version you have already.) Within Photoshop's RAW converter, here's what I do each time, and occasionally: <p /> Basic window (the first one): <p /> White Balance: set to Daylight, Cloudy, or whatever setting is most appropriate to your image. <p /> Click Default, just above Exposure. This will create Photoshop's best take on the exposure, which you'll modify. Often, I'll focus on the Recovery (which focuses on recovering detail out of the blown-out highlights) and Fill Light (which focuses on pulling detail out of the shadows) sliders. Only seldom do I modify the Exposure, Blacks, Brightness, or Contrast sliders. <p /> At the bottom of the window you'll find the Clarity, Vibrance, and Saturation sliders. I almost never mess with Saturation. For Clarity, you need to decide what's the defining characteristic of the shoot. For my Havana shoot, for example, the defining characteristic was the depressing decrepitude of the city resulting from the economic train wreck that is Cuban Communism. To highlight this, I generally bumped up the Clarity, which highlighted detail. For other shoots, you might go the other way. For example, the ruggedness of a male portrait is highlighted by bumping Clarity up, while the softness of a female portrait is enhanced by bumping Clarity the other direction. The Clarity setting may change somewhat from image to image in a shoot, but varying radically will make the images seem to be from different photographers. Go softer on one, go softer on all... just by varying degrees. <p /> For vibrance, I usually bump images upwards. Consumer-grade images bump vibrance upwards by 80-100 points. Because most of my images are meant to resonate with a broad audience rather than a small under-vibrance group, I test a few images in each shoot at +60 and decide where to go from there. If I settle on +60 as the baseline, the shoot might vary between +36 and +80. But I work with a highly valued client who wants to see a lot of paper through the ink, so vibrance on his work might be -30 on the average. So you really need to consider not only your own preferences, but your audience. <p /> Lens Corrections (the sixth Photoshop RAW tab): <p /> Look at the edges of the image. Do borders between dark and light look either green or red? If so, we'll come back to this later. <p /> Under Profile, I always click the Enable Lens Profile Corrections. This starts with Photoshop's best take on correcting spherical and chromatic aberration for my lens. It's a start, but not always perfect. <p /> Next, look at the vertical lines at the middle of the image. Are they plumb? If not, select the Straighten Tool in the upper left corner. Click at the top of an object nearest the center of the image that should be vertical and drag to the bottom of the image and release. This will create a crop marquee on the image that will straighten the image (if you've plumbed it correctly.) If you haven't plumbed it well, you can adjust by moving your mouse outside the crop and rotating the marquee. <p /> Next, look at the overall image. Do you really need to make all verticals plumb? You can, if you need to, by clicking the Manual lens corrections tab and correcting the Vertical (and maybe Horizontal) perspective. You may also want to make other geometric corrections under this tab. For example, if the image looks swollen or pinched, you may want to correct the Distortion slider. <p /> Finally, if there was a visible red or green fringe at the beginning of Lens Correction, let's revisit it here. Zoom to full-size by clicking Command-+ until the indicator in the lower left corner indicates 100% zoom. Scroll to the corners of the image. See red or green fringes between bright and dark areas? This is known as "chromatic aberration." Basically, different wavelengths (colors) of light bend in varying degrees. Fortunately, Photoshop's RAW converter can pretty much fix this for most images. For my camera and lens, if I drag the Fix Red/Cyan Fringe to negative values (between -8 and -36, according to the image) it'll fix the problem. Just use your judgment. Maybe it needs no correction at all. I generally don't manually-correct chromatic aberration unless I can see the problem at full-image (fit to page) resolution before doing automatic Lens Correction. <p /> Once you've gotten to this point, you're done. For most portfolios, I upload to Zenfolio. More on this later. But this is the end of the basic processing. The final step is to move the images to the outer folder "St. Michaels, MD" and delete all inner folders ("-6 Tag & Process," and whatever else is left.) Obviously, this is a lot of work. But as noted a long time ago, images that run this gauntlet are worth far more to you than random snapshots. There's no doubt they're worth the effort to me... I hope they're worth it to you as well. <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/photo-workflow-12-process">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-5376955143897834867?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-72821904925417040982011-07-13T15:30:00.001-07:002011-07-13T15:30:51.910-07:00<div class='posterous_autopost'><div>Step 11: Tag</div><div>Finally, we're to the step for which I bought Photo Mechanic. Tagging images with keywords is a really long story in itself. Here's the summary:</div><p /><div>Navigate to the "-6 Tag &amp; Process" folder in Photo Mechanic. In the main window, look at the star box near the right end of the bottom bar. Click the 3, 4, and 5-star parts to deselect these photos. This will leave you with the 0-star (if you haven't already deleted them,) 1-star, and 2-star images. Select all images. Using the Command-Y method described earlier, move the 0- to 2-star images to the "2 &amp; -" folder inside the "-6 Tag &amp; Process" folder. These are the images you won't tag or process for the time being, but which you could return to at some point in the future if needed. Because tagging and processing are the most time-consuming parts of the process, the idea is to save a lot of time by focusing on the best images for the time being. Next, click on the 3, 4, and 5-star parts on the star bar to bring them back up and then click on the 0, 1, and 2-star parts to deselect them. Select all images. Using the Command-Y method described earlier, move the 3- to 5-star images to the "3 &amp; +" folder inside the "-6 Tag &amp; Process" folder. These are the images you'll tag with keywords in this step and process in the final step.</div><p /><div>Photo Mechanic works with a really cool system known as "Structured Keywords." I began with the keywords they recommended, but that system had a bunch of keywords I'll never use... and didn't include most of the ones I was looking for. So I've basically built my own system. A "taxonomy" is a system of order... building my own taxonomy has been a really cool thing because it amounts to an exercise of setting my world in order.&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/airKrV">Here's where I was with my taxonomy</a>&nbsp;a year ago... I'll post an update before long. And if you want the actual keywords, let me know and I'll send you the file. Or maybe I'll just post it here later. In any case, my taxonomy of structured keywords has the following root categories:</div><p /><div>architecture</div><div>art</div><div>building</div><div>creature</div><div>environment</div><div>event</div><div>issue</div><div>location</div><div>object</div><div>plant</div><div>scene</div><div>texture</div><div>thoroughfare</div><div>presentation</div><p /><div>Within each of these root categories, I can drill down into just over 10,000 keywords. For most shoots, I don't use over a couple hundred or so. There are many that I've never used to date, but because they're arranged in a tree, the rarely-used ones don't clog up the ones I use frequently. To get to Structured Keywords, click Command-Option-K or select Image&gt;Structured Keywords Panel from the menu bar. Here are the categories I go through with every shoot:</div><p /><div>architecture&gt;architect, historical, and regional</div><div>building&gt;exterior, interior, massing, and types</div><div>creature&gt;human&gt;action&gt;(walking, sitting, standing, etc.)</div><div>environment&gt;land&gt;(natural or manmade, with several subcategories, including Transect zones)</div><div>environment&gt;water</div><div>issue&gt;(quite a number of choices)</div><div>thoroughfare&gt;(frontage, punctuation, and type, with subcategories)</div><div>transportation&gt;(air, land, space, water, with subcategories)</div><p /><div>I've also started tagging select images according to several idea systems. Specifically, I'm tagging Pattern Language patterns, Transect zones, Light Imprint patterns, and Original Green ideas.</div><p /><div>Tagging with Photo Mechanic is pretty easy because you can select a bunch of images to which a particular keyword (or keyword path) applies and tag them all at one time. You can also click into the search box at the top left of the Structured Keywords window and search for any keyword you like (avenue, arm-wrestling, faucet, column, post lamp... whatever.)</div><p /><div>Originally, I over-tagged. Now, I'm tagging only the most important characteristics of each image. I'm trying to keep it to about 10 keywords or keyword paths. Diigo (which will be discussed as part of a subsequent series of blog posts) allows keywords totaling 256 characters or less, so if you happen to post your images somewhere and want to tag that page with the same tags you're using in Photo Mechanic, you need to keep it succinct. Also, if you tag too broadly, it's useless because you pull up too much stuff. Just because an image shows an eave doesn't mean you need to tag it with "eave." Is the eave one of the big stories of the image, or does it just happen to be there?</div> <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/photo-workflow-11-tagging-with-keywords">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-7282190492541704098?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-59362699191298965502011-07-13T14:11:00.001-07:002011-07-13T14:11:14.311-07:00<div class='posterous_autopost'>Step 8: Rate <br />I rate all images from 0 stars to 5 stars using Photo Mechanic. 0 stars means it's not a good enough image to ever use for any reason. 5-stars, as you might guess, are my best work. That also means I can go ahead and delete 0-star images and save the disk space. To rate images, I double-click the first image and unclick the Zoom box in the right panel so I can see the entire image in the window. The easiest way to set the stars for me is by holding down the Control button and clicking 1 through 5 for a 1-star through a 5-star image. If it's easier for you, there's a "star box" in the lower left corner of the image where you can click on the number of stars you want. For 0-star images, you can either leave them alone if you want to take one final look after rating all the images, or you can just go ahead and click the Delete key if you're sure about them. <p /> I generally take a second pass to make sure I've rated them properly. To do this, I close the Preview window that has been showing me the images large, so that I'm back to the main window showing just thumbnails of all images in the shoot. Look at the bottom bar of the main window. Near the bottom right corner, there's a box of stars. Click on the 1-star and it will turn grey... and all the 1-star images will be hidden from the window. This lets you selectively look at only certain star ratings. So you can look at all the 3-stars at once, all the 4-stars at once, etc. This helps me determine if I've rated everything evenly. It also helps me see if I've been too easy or too tough on this shoot. I then adjust the ratings accordingly. FWIW, I generally don't rate "on the curve." In other words, there are quite a number of shoots with no 5-stars, because if I'm saving that rating for my best work, I want people to be able to count on that. <p /> Once you're done adjusting the ratings, move the images on to the "-4 Set Classes" folder using the same Command-Y method noted earlier. And as noted earlier, you can delete the "-3 Rate" folder once it's empty if you like. <p /> Step 9: Set Classes <br />A Class, in Photo Mechanic, is a color... that has a meaning to me. Here's how my Class system works: <p /> 1 Private - Command-1 - Red - images I don't want anyone else to see, for whatever reason2 Problem - Command-2 - Orange - images that would be useful, but need serious PhotoShop work for some reason3 Polemical - Command-3 - Yellow - images that have story-telling value4 Publishable - Command-4 - Green - general useful (publishable) images that don't fit into another category5 Particulars - Command-5 - Blue - images that illustrate useful details6 Personal - Command-6 - Purple - images that include people I know <br />7 Pattern - Command-7 - Grey - images of textures (wood, stone, concrete, grass, etc.)8 Put Away - Command-8 - Brown - images I'll likely discard. Maybe they're not necessarily bad, but very similar to others, and that aren't quite as good. Whereas I discard blurry images instantly, I sometimes keep these (for now) because they're good, but just too similar <p /> When you use Photo Mechanic for the first time, go to Preferences. You'll see the Classes in the middle of the General preferences window. Here, you can name your classes (Private, Problem, Polemical, etc.) <p /> As with ratings, I make my first pass by double-clicking on the first image to bring up the Preview (large-screen image) window. The Command-keys noted above are the most convenient way (to me) of setting each image's class as I scroll through them. But as with star ratings, there's a Class window at the lower right corner of the image window if you'd prefer to set the Class by clicking there. As opposed to star ratings, I'm more comfortable with my Class settings on the first pass. I mean, an image either has someone I know shown prominently in the image (6 Personal (Purple)) or not. <p /> Once you're done setting the Classes, you need to move the images to the folders corresponding to their Classes using the same Command-Y method noted earlier. And as noted earlier, you can delete the "-4 Set Classes" folder once it's empty if you like. <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/photo-workflow-8-9-rate-set-classes">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-5936269919129896550?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-33623062685321858862011-07-13T13:26:00.001-07:002011-07-13T13:26:25.234-07:00<div class='posterous_autopost'><div>Step 7: Set Base Metadata</div><div>My initial reason for buying Photo Mechanic, before realizing all the other great stuff it could do, was to inject metadata (like keywords) into my images. For years, I'd struggled to figure out a database for my image, where I could store their various categories and therefore search for them more easily. All the eaves of Art Deco buildings, for example. But then&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/945XdP">I heard about IPTC metadata</a>, which allow all those keyword tags to be embedded into the images themselves so that the images BECOME the database, rather than needing an outside database. That was a no-brainer... the only question was how to inject the metadata. I did a lot of research and Photo Mechanic was the clear winner.</div><p /><div>Lots of keywords are specific to some images, but not all, in a particular shoot. But some particular pieces of metadata belong on every image in a shoot. To set the "base metadata," as I call it, go to the "-2 Set Base Metadata" folder where the images from your shoot now reside. Select all the images. Click Command-I (again, all these are the Mac key commands; see documentation if you have the Windows version) or select Image&gt;IPTC Stationery Pad from the menu bar. It'll bring up the Stationery Pad window. Here's what I consider my base metadata, and its settings... obviously, you'll want to adjust all this for you and your shoots:</div><p /><div>Caption Writers: Stephen A. Mouzon (just in case I write a caption, that'll already be entered.)</div><p /><div>Keywords: Here, I enter the location keywords. For the example I've been using, it would be North America, USA, Maryland, St. Michaels</div><p /><div>Rights Usage Terms: Make sure you have the terms you want. You probably want to do some research here to make sure you're comfortable. Here's what mine says: "Image may be used an unlimited number of times in books, publications, reports, or presentations, including books and publications offered for sale so long as the photographer is credited and the copyright is indicated. Image may not be re-sold directly, nor may it be used as part of an advertisement of any sort without a specific Advertising Agreement, for which different rates apply. Contact Steve Mouzon to arrange Advertising Agreement. All other rights are reserved except those specifically granted. NOTICE: There are no model releases on any persons depicted in this image. Use at your own risk."</div><p /><div>City: Enter the city. In this example, it's St. Michaels, obviously.</div><p /><div>Location: If you know the neighborhood, enter it here, like "French Quarter." Or if it's a significant place smaller than a neighborhood, you might enter that as well, like "Capitol Hill."</div><p /><div>State: Enter the state or province. In this example, it's obviously Maryland.</div><p /><div>Country: I use USA rather than United States, FWIW, for shoots in this country.</div><p /><div>Code: Look up the IPTC Country Code. (Google.)</div><p /><div>Date: Make sure it's set to the Capture Time option.</div><p /><div>Photographer: Stephen A. Mouzon</div><p /><div>Copyright:&nbsp;©2011 Stephen A. Mouzon. If I'm processing images from past years, I change the date to the year shot. Just make sure to change it back to the current year when processing new images. I make a habit of glancing at this field with every shoot... it just takes a second to make sure you're not screwing up.</div><p /><div>Contact Address: 1253 Washington Avenue</div><div>&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;Suite 222</div><p /><div>Contact City: Miami Beach</div><p /><div>Contact State: FL</div><p /><div>Contact Zip: 33139</div><p /><div>Contact Country: USA</div><p /><div>Contact Email(s): <a href="mailto:steve@mouzon.com">steve@mouzon.com</a></div><p /><div>Contact Phone(s): 786-276-6000</div><p /><div>Contact Web URL(s): <a href="http://www.mouzon.com">http://www.mouzon.com</a></div><div>&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;<a href="http://samouzon.zenfolio.com">http://samouzon.zenfolio.com</a></div><p /><div>Most of these fields don't change. The only ones that change for sure are the Keywords, City, and State... or not even those, if you have subsequent shoots in the same city. Also, the year on the copyright might change. But everything else should be the same. Once you like what you've got, click Apply Stationery to Selected. It'll take a few seconds (depending on how many images you have in the shoot.)</div><p /><div><div>Once it's finished setting the base metadata, click Command-Y or select File&gt;Copy/Move Photos to move the images on to the next folder in the process. As with the move to this folder, it'll bring up a dialog box. The "Move photos (delete originals)" check box should already be selected, and the "RAW+JPEG handling" should already be set to "Process both RAW and JPEG files." Under the Destination window, the "Always pick destination" radio button should already be selected. Click Move. Navigate to the "-3 Rate"&nbsp;folder that's just beside the&nbsp;"-2 Set Base Metadata" folder they're now in and click OK. If you like, you can now delete the "-2 Set Base Metadata" folder.</div></div> <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/photo-workflow-7-setting-the-base-metadata">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-3362306268532185886?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-48824259523094329472011-07-13T12:39:00.001-07:002011-07-13T12:39:56.706-07:00<div class='posterous_autopost'><div>Step 6: Scratch Fuzzies</div><div>You'll need Photo Mechanic for several of the next steps. Normally, Adobe creates great products, but Lightroom (and every other photo manager I've seen) pale in comparison to Photo Mechanic. It's the overwhelming favorite of the news media that deal with photos, FWIW. It has many great features; I'll discuss some of them in the next posts, but it'll do a lot more great stuff for you as well. Photo Mechanic is $150, but well worth every penny. Don't even think twice... just&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/n3bcMh">download Photo Mechanic here</a>,&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/oNEs49">buy your serial number here</a>, and get started.</div><p /><div>Once it's installed, open Photo Mechanic. There will be a Navigator on the left side of the screen, and a Favorites window above. I start working with my photos in Steve's Photos on my MacBook Pro's hard drive, and so I drug Steve's Photos to the Favorites window so I don't have to navigate to it each time in the Navigator. I also have a Steve's Photos folder on my 1-terabyte Images &amp; Websites external FireWire drive (a&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/pGa642">laCie Rugged</a>&nbsp;drive.) I keep the photos on the internal drive while I'm working on them, but then move them to the external drive once they're processed because I'd never have room for all of them on the internal drive because there are too many of them. So I also drug the Steve's Photos folder on the external drive to the Favorites window, and whenever the external drive is plugged in, it's available as well without navigating.</div><p /><div>From within the Favorites window, open the "-1 Scratch Fuzzies" folder of the images you want to work on. Double-click on the thumbnail of the first image. It'll open a large window with just that image showing up large, and a row of thumbnails at the bottom. Click the Zoom button in the right panel and slide the slider below to 1. This will zoom to full size, so you'll see each pixel in the middle of the image. Scroll through all the images. Whenever you get to an image that's fuzzy, click the Delete key to get rid of it. You might not see this fuzziness zoomed out, but it may degrade the quality of your finished work nonetheless (depending on what you're doing with the images) so you don't want fuzzy images. How fuzzy? I tolerate a tiny loss of crispness, but not much. Do you want to be known as a fuzzy photographer? So get rid of them.</div><p /><div>Two caveats: I tolerate a bit more loss of crispness on night shots because the ambiance of the light and the exotic light in most night shots compensate. Some night shots even benefit from loss of crispness,&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/o7xL3b">like this one</a>. I also tolerate a tiny bit of crispness loss on aerial shots... not as much as on night shots, but just a bit more than normal daytime shots on the ground. The reason is because it's almost impossible to get completely clear shots at 12 megapixels through a commercial airliner's window while traveling several hundred miles per hour.</div> <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/photo-workflow-6-scratching-fuzzies">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-4882425952309432947?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-69902969881325123902011-07-13T12:08:00.001-07:002011-07-13T12:08:10.993-07:00<div class='posterous_autopost'><div>Step 5: Convert to DNG</div><div>I shoot RAW images for reasons I've discussed elsewhere. I'd strongly suggest you do the same. If you look at my work before and after I switched from JPG to RAW, you'd likely swear it was from two different photographers. RAW images take more time, as you'll see below, but they're well worth it. You may spend twice as long (it takes at least as long to process as it does to shoot, as a general rule) but your images will be at least 3 times better and 5 times more useful if you do the things noted in this series of blog posts. OK, I just made up those numbers, but the images are much more beautiful and far more useful.</div><p /><div>The RAW format has some challenges. RAW files are big, so you'll eventually need a bigger hard drive. New cameras continue to come out with new RAW formats. It even varies within the same camera company. My current Nikon D300s doesn't have the same RAW format as the Nikon D200 I owned previously, for example. The Nikon D300s' RAW format has a .NEF extension. And new RAW formats aren't necessarily supported by every piece of computer software or hardware until some time after the new camera is released.</div><p /><div>But it gets worse... RAW files also leave a bunch of datafiles strewn all over the place. The RAW format produced by my Nikon D300s camera makes data files with a .XMP extension. Other cameras produce other formats of datafiles. This is where all the info is stored about the modifications you've made to the RAW file, and also the original settings so you can go back to them if desired. Useful information, but a nuisance to deal with.</div><p /><div>Adobe, fortunately, had a great idea... they said "what if we developed a single common format of RAW images that was readable across all platforms... a PDF of photo formats, if you will? And then, what if we fold all those pesky datafiles into the structure of the image file itself, so it's invisible inside the image?" So that's what they did... it's called the Digital Negative format, if I recall correctly, and the files have an extension of .DNG.&nbsp;<a href="http://adobe.ly/nChFeJ">Adobe's DNG Converter is free, and you can download it here</a>.</div><p /><div>So the next step in the workflow is to convert them to DNG files. On my Mac, I have a Steve's Photos folder inside the Pictures folder that comes on every Mac. Inside this Steve's Photos folder is another folder named "to DNG". This is where I put all the image folders (like "St. Michaels, MD 11JUL12") that haven't yet been converted to DNG. This means I don't have to keep changing the folder location of the images I want to convert. So go ahead and make your "to DNG" folder now.</div><p /><div>So here's how you do it: Open DNG Converter. Under "1 Select the images to convert" you'll see a "Select Folder" button. Click that. Navigate to your "to DNG" folder. Select it. From now on, it'll stay selected unless you change it. Click the checkbox below that says "Include images contained within subfolders." Under "2 Select location to save converted images" select Save in Same Location. Under "3 Select name for converted images" it should already be set to Document Name plus a file extension of .dng, although you can set it to different things if you like... but I never have any need to do so. Under "4 Preferences" set Compatibility to Camera Raw 5.4 and later, JPEG Preview to Full Size, and "Don't embed original" so the files aren't twice the size. I see no need to keep the original RAW image from the camera because the DNG file has the same functionality. Once you've set all this, then click the Convert button. Again, go get a cup of coffee or do something else for awhile. On my computer, DNG Converter normally converts 6-8 images per minute, so a large shoot can take awhile, but then it runs totally in the background, so it doesn't require any of your attention.</div><p /><div>Once it's done, DNG Converter will say "Conversion completed successfully." You can quit DNG Converter at this point. Now go into the "-1 Scratch Fuzzies" folder. Click at the top of your window to sort the files by type, which will put all the DNG files together and all the RAW files together. Select all the RAW files. Delete them.</div> <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/photo-workflow-5-converting-to-dng">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-6990296988132512390?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-75941964720028941442011-07-13T11:36:00.001-07:002011-07-13T11:36:28.780-07:00<div class='posterous_autopost'>Step 4: Rename Files <br />I use A Better Finder Rename 8 to rename my files. It's $19.95 and well worth it. First, select the name of the folder you're working with ("St. Michaels, MD 11JUL12" or whatever.) Copy. Select all the images in the "-1 Scratch Fuzzies" folder. Drag them to the A Better Finder Rename 8 icon in your dock, or into the A Better Finder Rename 8 file list window, if it's already open. Select Category: Text in the top left of the window, and Action: Replace Text just below it. <br />Cameras typically put a prefix on every image, and then a serial number afterwards. What we're wanting to do is replace the prefix with the name of the enclosing folder, so it's immediately obvious just by looking at the file name where the picture was taken and when. But we want to keep the serial number so that each file name is unique, and in the order they were shot during the course of the day. <p /> Just below that, you'll see a Replace window. Enter the prefix your camera puts on all your images. In my case, it's "SAM_" "DSCN_" is a common prefix. But whatever it is that is at the front of every file name your camera turns out, enter it here. Just below that, there's a With window... tab or click into that and paste the folder name ("St. Michaels, MD 11JUL12" or whatever.) Add a space after the name, so it'll put a space between the name and the image serial numbers. If you don't do this, it will be harder to read. In other words, you want "St. Michaels, MD 11JUL12 7447.jpg", not "St. Michaels, MD 11JUL127447.jpg" See what I mean about being harder to read? <p /> Below that, there are four radio buttons... set it to "The entire file name and extension" or "The file name without the extension"... both will get the same result. Click Perform Renames in the bottom right corner. All your files will now be renamed with "St. Michaels, MD 11JUL12" in place of the original prefix. <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/photo-workflow-4-renaming-files">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-7594196472002894144?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-85956638927969875962011-07-13T11:21:00.001-07:002011-07-13T11:21:08.197-07:00<div class='posterous_autopost'>Note: If you have another way of geotagging your photos, skip steps 2 and 3. <p /> Step 2: Test GPS Tagging <br />I've just discovered a cool app for geotagging photos. Click here to read how gps4cam works, and so you'll understand the rest of this step. It has a quirk that can show up while processing the images... if the QR code you photograph is too blurry, it won't read it... but it doesn't know it can't read it until it's logged all the photos, which can take several minutes. So copy the last 4-5 photos (including the QR code photo, which will be the last image) into the "test in" folder. IMPORTANT: copy the photos, don't move them. Open the gps4cam desktop app. Select "test in" as your Pictures Input Directory. Select "test out" as your Pictures Output Directory. Click Go. If it can read the code, it'll process the images in a few seconds. If not, then take a clearer photo of the QR code on your iPhone and replace the other one and test again. Repeat if necessary until it works. FWIW, once you figure out the quality of image it's looking for (it's pretty forgiving) you'll probably get it on the first try nearly every time. Once it works, delete the "test in" and "test out" folders. <p /> Step 3: Run GPS Tagging <br />With gps4cam still open, select "GPS in" as your Pictures Input Directory and "GPS out" as your Pictures Output Directory. Click Go. Then go get yourself a cup of coffee or something. Depending on how long the shoot took and how many images you have, it can take up to 10-15 minutes (or possibly more) to geotag all the images. Once it's done, delete the "GPS in" folder. You'll see a folder inside the "GPS out" folder where gps4cam has put the QR code, which you don't need any longer. Don't select this folder, but select all of the images. Move all the images in the "GPS out" folder to the enclosing "-1 Scratch Fuzzies" folder. Delete the "GPS out" folder, which now only contains the folder with the QR code you don't need any longer. <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/photo-workflow-2-3-geotagging-wgps-data">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-8595663892796987596?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-55667703697040699142011-07-13T11:20:00.001-07:002011-07-13T11:20:04.079-07:00<div class='posterous_autopost'>I've made several recent improvements to my photo workflow. Here's a summary of how it currently looks, with details below: <p /> 1. Copy Images <br />2. Test GPS Tagging <br />3. Run GPS Tagging <br />4. Rename Files <br />5. Convert to DNG <br />6. Scratch Fuzzies <br />7. Set Base Metadata <br />8. Rate <br />9. Set Classes <br />10. Set Finder Color <br />11. Tag <br />12. Process <p /> Step 1: Copy Images <br />I have a master folder outlining all my processing steps to help me remember where I am with a batch of images in case I can't get them completely processed in one sitting (a very rare occurrence except with very small shoots.) The master folder is named ***Master Folder so that it sorts to the top of an alphabetical list. The first step is to duplicate the master folder and rename it for the current shoot. I name the folder for the location and date of a shoot. For example, if I'm shooting in St. Michaels, Maryland on July 12, 2011, then I would duplicate the master folder and rename it "St. Michaels, MD 11JUL12". The date gets deleted from the folder name later, but it's useful for two reasons now: it helps clarify that this is a new shoot if I've shot there before so that I don't save a new folder on top of an old folder with different images, thereby losing them. The date is also used in Step 4 to rename the images. I use this date convention" The year is the first two digits so images from the same place sort correctly into the years they were shot when you put them all in one folder. The next three characters are the month (JAN, FEB, MAR, APR, etc.) This doesn't sort chronologically, but it's immediately obvious to anyone that the middle is the month. I could do the whole thing as numbers (11-07-12 instead of 11JUL12, for example) and it would sort fully, but then is 11-07-12 in 2011, 2012, or even 2007? It's not self-evident. And It's somewhat unusual to do two separate shoots of a single place in one year, but in different months. I do that in Miami Beach (where I live) and in New Orleans (where I travel often for work) but not so much anywhere else. So clarity is more important than occasionally mis-sorted months, IMO. <p /> The master folder structure mirrors the steps above, and looks like this: <p /> *** Master Folder <br /> -1 Scratch Fuzzies <br /> GPS in <br /> test in <br /> test out <br /> GPS out <br /> -2 Set Base Metadata <br /> -3 Rate <br /> -4 Set Classes <br /> -5 Set Finder Color (empty) <br /> -6 Tag & Process <br /> 2 & - <br /> 3 & + <br /> 1 Private <br /> 2 Problem <br /> 3 Polemical <br /> 4 Publishable <br /> 5 Particulars <br /> 6 Personal <br /> 7 Pattern <br /> 8 Put Away <p /> The last part of Step 1 is to copy the files off my camera's memory stick into the "GPS in" folder, which is inside -1 Scratch Fuzzies, as you can see above. I just do this in the Finder, like copying any other files. No special software needed. <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/photo-workflow-1-copying-images-to-the-master">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-5566770369704069914?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-26190343778313956192011-07-13T09:09:00.001-07:002011-07-13T09:09:54.485-07:00<div class='posterous_autopost'>I've just started using a really cool iPhone app to geotag my images. The gps4cam app is available for $2.99 on the iTunes Store, and the desktop app (you'll need both) is available for free on gps4cam.com. I initially downloaded Mac version 3.9.4, but had problems with it and dropped back to 3.9.3, which works just fine. I see where they've taken down the newer version with issues. In any case, when you start a shoot, open the app, click Preferences, and set the gap between captures in Standard mode to 1 minute. The documentation says it takes more battery, but several hours of shooting drained my iPhone battery relatively little, so I'd rather have the greater accuracy. <p /> Next, click the Start button which takes you back to the main screen. Click the green "Start a new trip" button. Put the phone in your pocket and start shooting. When you're done, click Exit. It'll bring up a QR code on your phone. Unless you have a macro lens, set your zoom to a fairly long telephoto, hold the camera at arm's length, and take a picture of the screen. You might have to fiddle with the telephoto a bit... you want the image of the QR code to pretty much fill your viewfinder in the short dimension. I take 3-4 images to make sure I'll have one that is clear. <p /> Once I've copied the entire shoot to my computer, I go to the images of the QR code (which will be at the end of the shoot) and delete all but the clearest one. The QR code contains all the GPS data on your shoot (really long shoots generate more than one code.) The code also contains the current time, so shooting the image synchronizes your camera's clock with your phone's clock. When you process the images (more on this in a subsequent post) the desktop app figures out the precise moments of all your shots, finds the 1-minute-increment GPS locations just before and just after the shot, and interpolates where you likely were when that shot was taken... and then it geotags the image accordingly. I've tested it and found it to be remarkably accurate, even though I'm a fairly erratic walker as I'm shooting, walking this way and that to get the best shot. Let's put it this way... it's accurate to within 2-3 yards in most cases. <p /> I'd thought about buying a $200 GPS unit to plug into my Nikon D300s camera, but it costs money and takes up space in my already-crowded gear bag. This solution is $2.99 and uses the GPS capabilities of the camera I'm carrying around with me already. Cool, eh? <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/gps4cam">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-2619034377831395619?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-41591872890575982362011-07-09T22:28:00.001-07:002011-07-09T22:28:47.459-07:00<div class='posterous_autopost'>I've just started using Facebook Comments on the new&nbsp;<a href="http://www.originalgreen.org/version2/blog/">Original Green Blog</a>, and I'm really liking it! Anytime someone comments, it goes on my Facebook wall as well as on the blog, and anyone who comments either on my facebook page or on the blog page will show up in the other location. Seems like a great way to drive traffic to the blog! <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/facebook-comments-on-blog">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-4159187289057598236?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-33740972076386544132011-07-09T15:56:00.001-07:002011-07-09T15:56:59.615-07:00<div class='posterous_autopost'>I've been having to learn CSS in order to customize my Sandvox theme for the new Original Green site. I want 14 point text in the main window and 12 point text in the sidebar. Apparently, 100% text size is 16 point, so the main body text size should be 87.5% of that. Or since CSS seems to like integers, 88%. I finally discovered that you can set the sidebar font size by entering...<p /><div><div style="">#sidebar {</div><div style=""><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;</span>font-size<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">:&nbsp;</span><span style="color: rgb(51, 0, 254);">85</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">%;</span></div><div style="">}</div><p /><div>... just below the body font definition, near the top of the CSS. You'd think that if you wanted a 12 point sidebar and 16 point was 100% that 12 point would be 75%, right? Wrong. After a lot of trial and error, I discovered that the sidebar percentage refers to the main font size... in other words, it's relative to the main size, not 16 points. So it should be 12/14 = .85713... or 86%.</div></div> <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/css-main-font-size-sidebar-font-size">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-3374097207638654413?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-27664045831613509282011-07-09T15:55:00.001-07:002011-07-09T15:55:52.991-07:00<div class='posterous_autopost'>HTML is notorious for adding space below each paragraph. That may be a lot like bullet lists today, but it's not nearly so elegant as classical typography, where the lines were all spaced the same and the distinction between paragraphs was highlighted by a first line indent. I'd puzzled for some time over how to fix it, but after a lot of Googling, I found this in the CSS...<p /><div><div style="">p {</div><div style=""><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span></span>margin-bottom<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">:&nbsp;</span><span style="color: rgb(51, 0, 254);">0.8</span><span style="color: rgb(73, 140, 152);">em</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">;</span></div><div style="">}</div><p /><div>I changed it to this, and everything works like it ought to:</div><p /><div><div style="">p {</div><div style=""><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span></span>margin-bottom<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">:&nbsp;</span><span style="color: rgb(51, 0, 254);">0</span><span style="color: rgb(73, 140, 152);">em</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">;</span></div><div style="">}</div></div></div> <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/fixing-htmls-bad-bottom-margin">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-2766404583161350928?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-6440750907662447692011-07-07T06:34:00.001-07:002011-07-07T06:34:05.878-07:00<div class='posterous_autopost'>You'd think that two companies competing for a very similar market would each be at the top of their games. You supposedly get fat, dumb, and happy when there's little competition. Not so with Diigo and Delicious. The great idea of a "folksonomy of bookmarks" originally belonged to Delicious, I believe, allowing you (and everyone else) to bookmark a webpage and tag it with keywords. One can draw all sorts of interesting conclusions by looking at how many people have tagged a particular page. <p /> I've used Delicious for several years to create the tag cloud on the Original Green Blog. A tag cloud is a group of keywords, with the ones used most often in larger type. Click on a keyword in a tag cloud and it'll pull up all the pages you've tagged with that keyword. Nifty. <p /> Some time ago, Yahoo bought Delicious. Last December, they let it slip that they were planning on sunsetting Delicious. "But what will become of our tag clouds," many of us anxiously wondered. I tweeted "any ideas on a replacement for Delicious?" and in just a few minutes, Cindy Frewen Wuellner tweeted back that she'd been researching Diigo and liked what she saw. It had everything Delicious had, and more. I looked into it and agreed. <p /> Tens of thousands of users (or more) apparently agreed with us, and the stampede to Diigo was on. They were so flooded with new users that for many of us, it took a week or more just to import our bookmarks. And Diigo wasn't so forthcoming with how long it was going to take, leaving us hanging. They did say something like "power users may get quicker service" which hacked off the rest of us. <p /> Finally, my bookmarks were imported. But how to create the Diigo tag cloud? I searched several times over several weeks, but couldn't find anything definitive on their site, or through Google, about how to create a Diigo tag cloud. Wasted a ton of time. I tagged a few Original Green posts but then gave up, assuming I'd have to find another tag cloud creator. <p /> I'm now in the process of moving all my websites to Sandvox because Apple abandoned iWeb (another story for another day) and thought "I really need to resolve the tag cloud issue." I Googled and discovered that Yahoo hadn't killed Delicious, but had instead sold it to another company. Yippie-ki-yay! I'll just go back to Delicious! <p /> But then I started to wonder if the new buyer might have fixed the biggest Delicious flaw, which was not allowing spaces in keywords. For example, you couldn't have the tag "New Urbanism." Delicious would treat that as two keywords: "New" and "Urbanism." Clearly, much less useful. If you wanted to preserve the meaning of New Urbanism rather than just all things new and all things urban, you had to tag a bookmark as NewUrbanism. Or new.urbanism. Or new_urbanism. Or new+urbanism. All of which showed up as different results in a search. <p /> Modern tagging systems such as Diigo, Google Bookmarks, etc., have all fixed this by allowing spaces, and separating tags with commas. But not Diigo. The purchasers of Delicious (for what was surely many millions of dollars) amazingly didn't fix the biggest drawback to their new investment. <p /> This morning, on a whim, I went to Diigo one more time to see if I could discover how to make a tag cloud with all those bookmarks it took them so long to import. There, as clear as can be, was Tag Clouds on the Tools menu. Apparently, they were so overwhelmed with all the new users abandoning the Delicious ship in December and January that their servers couldn't handle it and they temporarily shut down their tag clouds. Or something. But they didn't tell anybody. So it cost me (and surely countless other users) a ton of time looking for a promised capability that simply wasn't there for awhile. <p /> So now I'm grudgingly back to Diigo... But I'm wondering: do either of them really want me? <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/diigo-vs-delicious-anybody-wanna-win">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-644075090766244769?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-62878195604305157532011-07-07T05:17:00.001-07:002011-07-07T05:17:04.648-07:00<div class='posterous_autopost'>There are a lot of ways of getting your stuff on the web today, but they all, so far as I can tell, make at least one of two big mistakes: They either ask you to accept their predesigned themes (which are highly unlikely to match the look and feel of what you'd like your online face to be) or they force you to enter the dimly-lit dungeons of HTML5 and the murky underworld of CSS3. <p /> To be clear, I didn't even know what HTML5 or CSS3 were until a couple days ago, nor did I want to know. I have a lot of things going on in my life, including the Original Green, the Sky Institute, Project:SmartDwelling, Mouzon Design, the New Urban Guild, the Guild Foundation, Mouzon Images, Katrina Cottages, etc., and am working with great longterm clients like (alphabetically) Carlton Landing, DPZ, the Preserve, the Prince's Foundation for the Built Environment, Schooner Bay, the Village of Providence, etc. And I'm writing books and blogging as well. The last thing I need to do is to be forced to learn programming languages in order to move my websites off the sinking ship of iWeb. But that's exactly what has happened. <p /> Some companies have built WYSIWYG website editors that let you build your site by moving text and graphics around on a page until you get it where you like it. That's great. But why not do exactly the same thing with the underlying themes? InDesign lets you modify master pages as easily as other pages in a book. Pages and Word do the same with stationery, as does PowerCADD (what I use) and other CAD software. Keynote does the same with master pages in presentations. Matter of fact, with every other type of software I can think of, modifying the master pages, themes, stationery, templates, or whatever you want to call them is as easy as working on any other page. Why not web publishing??? <p /> All I can think of is that maybe web publishing might be where all the DOS Gremlins went after they were run out of system software user interfaces. I remember years ago how people had to go to school for weeks or longer just to learn the basics of the "command-line interface." Remember that? And once they finally learned DOS, they wore it like a badge of courage, and made you run the DOS gauntlet if you dared enter their little world of computing. <p /> And it was a little world, because so few regular people had time to immerse themselves into DOSgatory. Apple sold a lot of Macs in the early years with a tagline something like "I want a computer that helps me do what I do better... and I don't do computers!" Once Microsoft came out with Windows, their eternally-clumsy ripoff of Apple's Graphical User Interface, a crazy thing happened: the whole world learned to do computers. And the DOS Gremlins took their "the only real way to compute is with a command line" mantra and slunk away to regions unknown to me... Until now. <p /> Someday soon, a web publishing software company will realize that a WYSIWYG site editor needs a WYSIWYG theme editor. I hope it'll be Karelia, author of my newly-adopted site editor Sandvox. It won't be hard to build. I could even design the interface in an hour or two, and a decent programmer could write it quickly, I suspect. And when they do, an entire world of web publishing will open up to people like me that want a specific look and feel of a website, but don't want a second career in HTML to get it. I'm not saying they'll be another Apple or Microsoft, but then who knew Apple would be Apple when Steve & Steve were working out of the Jobs family garage? Empower people, and all sorts of interesting things can happen. <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/web-publishings-big-mistakes">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-6287819560430515753?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-76107156551930684572011-07-06T13:11:00.001-07:002011-07-06T13:11:55.231-07:00<div class='posterous_autopost'>I've been a huge fan of iWeb for years, but Apple has decided to let the program sunset, so I've pretty much made the decision to move to Sandvox, which is the closest thing to iWeb. I've been working through the painful part, which is getting acquainted with the new interface, figuring out what it will do and what it won't do. I'll be putting up a number of posts shortly describing the things I've learned, hoping they're helpful to others as well. A couple things for now: <p /> A. Sandvox uses the same sidebar design throughout the site. At first, I thought this was a big drawback because I want somewhat different things on the sidebars of different pages. But I've gotten my mind wrapped around it now, and have discovered that since the most-updated thing about my Original Green sidebar does go on all of them, it'll save me a lot of time updating. So that's a minus that turned into a plus by looking at it differently. <p /> B. Sandvox has a really cool way of doing blogrolls that allows you to just go to a site in Safari, return to Sandvox and click the + sign in the link inspector, and it'll automatically add the name and URL (embedded, where you don't see the gobbledygook) to the blogroll. Really cool... will save a lot of time. <p /> C. One thing about the blogroll: I'd first been pasting in bit.ly links to all the blogs, because that lets me see how much traffic I've sent. But then it occurred to me that I had it backwards. One benefit of having a blogroll is that when you send traffic to someone else's blog, they usually appreciate it. So I'd much rather have them see the traffic coming from originalgreen.org rather than bit.ly. bit.ly links are great for many things, but not here. <p /> D. I'm also cleaning out some old blogs that aren't active anymore, including some run by good friends of mine. But if their last post was from sometime last year, they're not really doing it anymore. <p /> More soon... <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/leaving-iweb">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-7610715655193068457?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-7509575348237716782011-06-25T11:50:00.001-07:002011-06-25T11:50:54.440-07:00<div class='posterous_autopost'><p><div class='p_embed p_image_embed'> <a href="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/usefulstuff/aFnxJvowwJpjwaswsIfzcGvzmuvqewittqhgcsgfnJtxvbcAmnuevIwdjhyn/p195.jpg.scaled1000.jpg"><img alt="P195" height="373" src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/usefulstuff/aFnxJvowwJpjwaswsIfzcGvzmuvqewittqhgcsgfnJtxvbcAmnuevIwdjhyn/p195.jpg.scaled500.jpg" width="500" /></a> </div> </p>Wanda and I are having lunch at Books & Books on Lincoln Road. As per my normal practice, I'm eating off the vegan portion of their menu. But I'm not a vegan... by any stretch. I even eat beef, when it's good. So why vegan here? Simply because it's tasty! The bottom line is this: if you want people to do things that are good for them, entice them to do so; don't shame them into it. We have little tolerance for shame today, but have a high tolerance for enticement! <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/books-books-vegan-menu">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-750957534823771678?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-72686679397066731402011-05-20T12:51:00.001-07:002011-05-20T12:51:50.380-07:00<div class='posterous_autopost'>I just got a request from a colleague to "help us improve our newsletter." Here are a few thoughts from the ensuing conversation that should apply to everyone: <p /> I generally don't save back-issues of mailings... but I did find an old mailing from last fall on streetcars. Reading right to left and top to bottom, the first thing I see in both that newsletter and your letter today is the left sidebar, which is a pitch for your company... in this case, "Experienced Design Professionals," and previously "We Can Enhance Your Home Designs." Being perpetually short of bandwidth, I'm always scanning the first few words of a document to see whether it's something useful for me. If it is, I'll read more. If not, I stop there. <p /> So when I scan both of these and see that it's a mailing from a friend apparently pitching their services, I quickly conclude that because our relationship is that of colleagues rather than designer-client, it's probably not going to contain information that's useful to me... and so I put it away. But when I went back a minute ago and clicked to view the entire streetcar article, I find that it's excellent, and very useful! <p /> Unfortunately, because you embedded something useful within an apparent sales pitch, I never got to the useful stuff. I'd suggest that you reverse the sequence, and embed your sales pitch within useful stuff... let the useful stuff be the first thing that is seen. If so, then it may get forwarded broadly, carrying your sales pitch with it. But as it is, it likely gets put away quickly. <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/the-cardinal-sin-of-newsletters">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-7268667939706673140?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-24044579284857142312011-05-19T16:02:00.001-07:002011-05-19T16:02:05.727-07:00<div class='posterous_autopost'><div style="font-size: 18px;"><div><div style="font-size: 12px;">Here's a taxonomy I developed several years ago for a rational arrangement of a place-making curriculum. Just curious if anyone has any thoughts on the arrangement of classes?</div></div></div><p />100 Level: The Core Attributes<br /><span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""><span style="font-size: 14px;"> </span></span><span style="font-size: 14px;">NU 101: Compactness<br /></span><span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""><span style="font-size: 14px;"> </span></span><span style="font-size: 14px;">NU 102: Walkability<br /></span><span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""><span style="font-size: 14px;"> </span></span><span style="font-size: 14px;">NU 103: Diversity<br /></span><span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""><span style="font-size: 14px;"> </span></span><span style="font-size: 14px;">NU 104: Sustainability</span><div><br /><span style="font-size: 18px;">200 Level: The Fundamental Parts<br /></span><span style="font-size: 14px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>NU 201: The Metropolis<br /><span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>NU 202: The City<br /><span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>NU 203: The Town, The Village, &amp; The Hamlet<br /><span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>NU 204: The Neighborhood<br /><span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>NU 205: The District<br /><span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>NU 206: The Corridor<br /><span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>NU 207: The Block<br /><span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>NU 208: The Thoroughfare<br /><span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>NU 209: The Building<br /></span>Next comes the continuations of 100-level courses, using the last digit of the 100-level courses as the middle digit of their continuations&nbsp;(examples below derive from Diversity &amp; Sustainability):<br /><span style="font-size: 14px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>NU 230: Diverse Building Types<br /></span><span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>NU 231: Mixed-Use Types<br /><span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>NU 232: Housing Types<br /><span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>NU 233: Commercial Types<br /><span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>NU 234: Civic Types<br /><span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>NU 235: Lodging Types<br /><span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>NU 236: Recreational Types<br /><span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""><span style="font-size: 14px;"> </span></span><span style="font-size: 14px;">NU 240: Sustainable Places &amp; Buildings<br /></span><span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>NU 241: Nourishable Places<br /><span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>NU 242: Accessible Places<br /><span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>NU 243: Serviceable Places<br /><span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>NU 244: Securable Places<br /><span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>NU 245: Lovable Buildings<br /><span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>NU 246: Durable Buildings<br /><span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>NU 247: Flexible Buildings<br /><span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>NU 248: Frugal Buildings<p /><span style="font-size: 18px;">300 Level: The Fundamental Tools<br /></span><span style="font-size: 14px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>NU 301: The Transect<br /><span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>NU 302: Form-Based Codes<br /><span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>NU 303: Pattern Books<br /></span>Same for the continuation of 200-level courses, where the last digit of the 20x course becomes the middle digit of the 300-level&nbsp;continuations. For example:<br /><span style="font-size: 14px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>NU 340: Neighborhood Types<br /></span><span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>NU 341: Greenfield TNDs<br /><span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>NU 342: Infill TNDs<br /><span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>NU 343: Greyfield TNDs<br /><span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>NU 344: Brownfiled TNDs<br /><span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>NU 345: Greenfield TODs<br /><span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>NU 346: Infill TODs<br /><span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>NU 347: Greyfield TODs<br /><span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>NU 348: Brownfield TODs<br /><span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""><span style="font-size: 14px;"> </span></span><span style="font-size: 14px;">NU 370: Block Parts<br /></span><span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>NU 371: Public Frontages<br /><span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>NU 372: Walls, Fences, &amp; Hedges<br /><span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>NU 373: Private Frontages<br /><span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""><span style="font-size: 14px;"> </span></span><span style="font-size: 14px;">NU 380: Thoroughfare Types<br /></span><span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>NU 381: Roads &amp; Streets<br /><span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>NU 382: Lanes &amp; Alleys<br /><span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>NU 383: Main Streets<br /><span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>NU 384: Highways &amp; Avenues<br /><span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>NU 385: Freeways &amp; Boulevards<br /><span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""><span style="font-size: 14px;"> </span></span><span style="font-size: 14px;">NU 390: Building Types<br /></span><span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>NU 391: Edge Yard Building Types<br /><span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>NU 392: Side Yard Building Types<br /><span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>NU 393: Rear Yard Building Types<br /><span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>NU 394: Courtyard Building Types<br /><span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>NU 395: Specialized Building Types<p /></div><div><span style="font-size: 18px;">400 Level: Advanced Study<br /></span>All 400-level courses would be specialty courses deriving as closely as possible from the numbers of their immediately more elementary&nbsp;predecessor. For example:<br /><span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>NU 401: The SmartCode (from 301)<br /><span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>NU 432: Affordable Housing (from 232)</div> <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/new-urbanist-curriculum">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-2404457928485714231?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-62822494313828939662011-05-19T15:51:00.001-07:002011-05-19T15:51:23.814-07:00<div class='posterous_autopost'>What all might change if college students had to turn in their assignments on a blog, visible to anyone? I'm the instructor for an online class at the University of Miami School of Architecture this summer. You can't turn in a physical paper, since none of us are in a physical classroom together. I guess I could have the students email their assignments to me, but that could become a file-handling nightmare. I needed something simpler and cleaner. <p /> And then it occurred to me... why not start a Posterous group, with each student as a contributor? Each time a student turned in an assignment, they would simply email it to our site on posterous.com instead of emailing it to me. What could be simpler? It would be very easy to track the assignments, and they would automatically be arranged chronologically by student. It would also be immediately clear whether work had been turned in on time... just look at the time of the post. <p /> But then I started realizing other implications. For starters, the blog would be public, so anyone could read the students' work. Normally, if you're posting something for the world to see rather than just something for one other person (the instructor) you tend to take a bit more care with what you write. Might that actually improve the students' work? And it definitely promises to be a more transparent way to teach. <p /> As for comments, I'm going to leave them on. Matter of fact, I'm planning to make all of my comments to the students on the actual blog post, visible by all as well. The only thing that won't be visible is the grade, which will be just between me and the student. And the fact that others outside the class can comment is intriguing... not sure how that will work out yet, but there's only one way to find out. <p /> Finally, once a class is over, it's almost impossible to reassemble the work that was done. I've taught a springtime design studio with Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk several years since moving to Miami, and there has repeatedly been a lot of thought-provoking work... but because I didn't write it down, I can't recall most of it now. This method would leave a permanent record of the work of the class, visible long after the students have moved on. <p /> Surely someone, somewhere else, is trying something similar. But I haven't heard about it. If you have, please post the details in a comment here, as I'd love to know how it's worked out wherever it has been tried. <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/blogging-homework">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-6282249431382893966?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-39656996859025645852011-05-10T03:53:00.001-07:002011-05-10T03:53:08.088-07:00<div class='posterous_autopost'>It's a fact that I'm sitting at my computer writing this post. But in less than an hour, that will no longer be a fact. I'll finish the post, then get up to get a coffee or something. Facts can be fleeting, enduring but for a moment: the fact of someone's location on a fast-moving train changes every instant, for example. Truth is a more enduring type of fact. It's a fact now, and a fact in the future. I'd like to propose four degrees of truth: <p /> "Entry-level truth," or truth of the least durable sort that we should consider worthy of the word, should be that which lasts for at least one phase of life: infancy, childhood, etc. Perhaps we should call this a "mortal truth" because it may pass away before we do. These are the only truths to which we can personally attest, because we can observe both their beginning and their end. <p /> The second level of truth should be those facts that endure for more than a human lifetime, but not longer than a human culture. Perhaps we should call these "lifelong truths." These truths investigated most fully by cultural institutions and traditions, as they can last long enough to view the entire life of the truth. <p /> The third level of truth should be those facts that endure, so far as we can tell, for the life of our universe, although none of our kind have been around long enough to say for certain. There already is a term for these sorts of facts: we call them "natural laws." These facts have been at the heart of most scientific investigation, and are the longest-lived truths that most sciences can explore, because most of them deal with the physical universe. <p /> The fourth level of truth should be those facts that endure forever. There is already a term for them as well: "eternal truths." Mathematics can reach into this realm, although enquiries here are most often performed by those from spiritual backgrounds. <p /> One final note on time: the longer a thing lasts, the greater an impact it is likely to have. So without knowing any other details, we can say that a fact that endures for an hour is likely to have less effect than a fact that lasts for a year. That's not always true, as facts of immense amplitude (a nuclear explosion, for example) can have a greater effect than much longer-lived facts (grass growing in a lawn.) But if you average the effects of all facts we can observe, then the average of effects of long-lived facts is greater than the average of effects of short-lived facts. In every case, you're multiplying the amplitude of the fact by the lifetime of the fact to get the full effect of the fact. <p /> The same principle applies to truths: mortal truths generally have lesser effects than lifelong truths, which generally have less effects than natural laws. But when we get to eternal truths, a strange thing happens: Because they last forever, you have to multiply the amplitude of the truth by its lifetime, which is forever. So the effect is infinite, meaning that this is the one place where we can say with all certainty that eternal truths have a greater effect than every other truth and fact, because they do not end. <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/facts-vs-truth">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-3965699685902564585?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-10812803918462098702011-05-05T15:29:00.001-07:002011-05-05T15:29:58.689-07:00<div class='posterous_autopost'><div class='p_embed p_image_embed'> <a href="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/usefulstuff/2qCFtXfyR8livFdBMQ0KNX6ZysnRKCB7vOybSOkts7CKd3DQs97HX3ATP5LI/Mugdock_Castle_Mt._Pleasant_SC.jpg.scaled.1000.jpg"><img alt="Mugdock_castle_mt" height="375" src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/usefulstuff/ji4j1G5CNU2OLGGHA1wieXDRMZLB8cSoONMLIDBWf4qSfK2rZA1FYKSTIIHP/Mugdock_Castle_Mt._Pleasant_SC.jpg.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" /></a> </div> <p /><div>The Age of the Idea's prime virtue of patience is directly opposed to the Era of the Company's prime virtue of speed. Viewed from an era where velocity of sales was highly valued, the idea that you might wait years, months, or even weeks for any visible effect seems... well... just a little bit loony. In an environment where "time is money" is taken as a foundation truth of the universe, anything that slows down the machine must be discarded or banned.</div><p /><div>The old rules made sense under a command-and-control structure where top management could dictate what happened all across the factory floor. But the factory paradigm is falling apart, and the physical factories are rusting. The dream of command-and-control has been exposed... it's occasionally capable of creating order, but at the expense of the propagation of the best ideas.</div><p /><div>The Age of the Idea requires us to relinquish some of that control. We can't just flip a switch anymore and have thousands do our bidding (not that most of us ever could have, of course.) Instead of giving orders, this new age is about enticing people with our ideas... and then giving them time to choose. Because now, it's their choice, not ours. The name of the new game is attraction, not coercion. And attraction takes time.</div><p /><div><span style="font-size: 14px;">Spreading Ideas</span></div><p /><div>In the Era of the Company orders proceeded in theory in an orderly fashion from the board room through the company, all the way to the mail room. And there they stopped. Command-and-control can work very quickly, proceeding throughout an organization in hours or even minutes, but it only works to the borders of the organization. Ideas in the Age of the Idea get a much slower start, like the tortoise against the hare. That's because people have to feel enticed to adopt the idea, and this usually takes time. But once some of the people you've introduced the idea to choose to adopt it, then a curious thing happens: they may spread it to people you do not know. Some of them, in turn, will do the same. In the end, ideas that can spread freely beyond the boundaries of an organization can have a far broader effect than an order given by a CEO.</div><p /><div><span style="font-size: 14px;">We Do This Because...</span></div><p /><div>It&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/b2d6Sq">took almost a quarter-century to unravel the mystery</a>, but those four little words appear to be the "Transmission Device" that can re-start living traditions in architecture. This was great news for architecture, but it doesn't stop there. Because people now get to choose ideas based on their virtues rather than adopting orders "because the CEO said so," the "why" is now one of the most important parts of the idea. Considering the merits and making a choice slow things down considerably, but it's precisely the "why" that slows things down in the beginning that can create much greater benefits in the end.</div> <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/patience">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-1081280391846209870?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-22996880184834665942011-05-05T09:29:00.001-07:002011-05-05T09:29:25.480-07:00<div class='posterous_autopost'><a href="http://bit.ly/iVwzLp">This cottage</a>, as much as any built recently, exemplifies the ideals of the Original Green in so many ways. The Original Green is a much broader view of sustainability than today's common Gizmo Green discussions. Have a&nbsp;look and see what it's all about. <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/the-chael-dover-cottage-what-the-original-gre">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-2299688018483466594?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-86803713718652073542011-05-04T12:10:00.001-07:002011-05-04T12:10:51.554-07:00<div class='posterous_autopost'>The great thing about every photo I'll post on&nbsp;<a href="http://samouzon.zenfolio.com/">samouzon.zenfolio.com</a>&nbsp;from now on is the fact that each photo is fully tagged with keywords. This is possible because&nbsp;<a href="http://www.iptc.org/site/Home/">IPTC metadata</a>&nbsp;can now be embedded in every photo. You see the image on the screen, but with a proper viewer, you can see the metadata. I struggled for years to figure out how to build a database that would allow me to record characteristics of each image in my collection so that I could find a photo later. The great thing about IPTC metadata is the fact that the photos themselves become the database... you don't need an outside database to store the info.&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/lzgZKz">Here's the structure of my keywords</a>.&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/airKrV">Here's a partial list</a>&nbsp;of over 10,000 keywords I use... I add to it every time I need another category, of course. What this means is that if you're looking for&nbsp;<a href="http://samouzon.zenfolio.com/?q=terminated%20vista">terminated vistas</a>, for example, you can easily find them (click the Photos tab at the top to see the images.) Want&nbsp;<a href="http://samouzon.zenfolio.com/?q=T4">T4 images</a>, both from the air and the ground? No problem. Or&nbsp;people&nbsp;<a href="http://samouzon.zenfolio.com/?q=walking">walking</a>. Or&nbsp;people&nbsp;<a href="http://samouzon.zenfolio.com/?q=walking%20dog">walking a dog</a>, if you want to get more specific. Want a building part like a&nbsp;<a href="http://samouzon.zenfolio.com/?q=porch">porch</a>? A building type like a&nbsp;<a href="http://samouzon.zenfolio.com/?q=hotel">hotel</a>? Images of&nbsp;<a href="http://samouzon.zenfolio.com/?q=sprawl">sprawl</a>? A&nbsp;<a href="http://samouzon.zenfolio.com/?q=river">River</a>? No problem. I'm even starting to catalog&nbsp;<a href="http://samouzon.zenfolio.com/?q=light%20imprint">Light Imprint</a>. Have some fun... give it a test run! <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/keynoting-my-images">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-8680371371865207354?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-63471977896222380382011-04-22T13:44:00.001-07:002011-04-22T13:44:33.754-07:00<div class='posterous_autopost'>What could the EPA have possibly done to get mentioned by a green advocate in the same breath with child molesters, dirty cops, and the biggest betrayer of them all... Judas? Here's a&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/gcCcVC">Good Friday Earth Day tale</a>&nbsp;of how they got so focused on Gizmo Green that they completely lost sight of the big picture and betrayed what they were sworn to protect. <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/the-epa-and-the-ultimate-betrayal">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-6347197789622238038?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-13576118046675960752011-04-22T03:01:00.001-07:002011-04-22T03:01:35.341-07:00<div class='posterous_autopost'><div><div class='p_embed p_image_embed'> <a href="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/usefulstuff/v6l1at9aPaQq577JR5jD7nca1tfgU0m19Pxo8Z6uw22Y0HSaNacrj6qtH3lD/Madrid_09NOV21_7336.jpg.scaled.1000.jpg"><img alt="Madrid_09nov21_7336" height="375" src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/usefulstuff/0fxvJUgyRIFnKx1t17LseaLRJhdosIiY3m2N6LF58kl8AQdkud9JpyViNH6O/Madrid_09NOV21_7336.jpg.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" /></a> </div> </div>People regularly ask "How is it possible to do New Media when I'm so busy already?" and "I just don't have the time." They're especially put off by the&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/ebiMK7">intricate web of interrelationships in the Big O of New Media nodes</a>. Let's look at the time demands of each node in detail, because things here are not what they appear... they're actually easier:<p /><div><div><span style="font-size: 14px;">Blog</span></div><p /><div>I blog on&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/4zJgpq">Original Green</a>&nbsp;2-4 times a month, with seldom more than an hour or two invested in each blog post. I blog more frequently on&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/4Sh6eZ">Useful Stuff</a>, but most of those posts take less time... some as little as 10 minutes. Hardly ever do I blog more than a couple hours a week. And I don't regard most of the Useful Stuff posts as time spent, but rather time invested because most of the time, they are "notes to self" about how to do something so I don't have to rediscover the answer when trying to do the same thing again a few months from now. On either blog, commenters on my blog posts regularly have great ideas that improve the ideas I was blogging about. This is an enormous time-saver, because I can't possibly bring all their experience to bear on the question... because I don't have their experience. And if I'm working on a book, I'll serialize it on a blog for feedback. I did this with the&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/OGreen">Original Green book</a>, for example. And I'm doing it now with the&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/hXMq2t">New Media for Design Types</a>&nbsp;series of posts, which will become an e-book. The feedback I get in comments from all of you make the books immensely better. Read the Original Green book while looking back at the blog posts that preceded it, and you'll see what I mean.</div><p /><div><span style="font-size: 14px;">Twitter</span></div><p /><div>I almost always tweet during "time chinks," which are those little bits of time in a bus, on a train, walking somewhere, waiting for someone, etc... short bits of time when you can't be doing anything else. And Twitter actually saves time in several ways. For example, if I have a problem, it's likely I can poll my Twitter followers and get an answer (or two or three) in minutes. Also,&nbsp;Twitterers I follow act as a legion of curators for me, posting links to things they find most useful with a bit of text to explain it. Follow good people if you want good curators. I'm always working on several new ideas, and I regularly parse out tweet-size bits of the ideas, which give me quick feedback as to whether they're resonant or not. Often, a bad response has saved me from spending tons of time going down a dead end.</div><p /><div><span style="font-size: 14px;">Website</span></div><p /><div>Once built I might go a few months without updating anything on a website except the blog, if there is one. Blog-free websites are naturally more static, requiring less regular attention, but they don't have all the engagement bonuses of Web 2.0, either... so that's the tradeoff. FWIW, I use iWeb to build my sites because iWeb makes it easy to put up good-looking stuff without knowing HTML. The last site I have that was built the "old normal" way, by hiring an HTML guru and having them work all their magic "behind the curtain" is the&nbsp;<a href="http://www.katrinacottages.com/index.html">Katrina Cottages site</a>. As you can see, it hasn't been updated in years. That's because my original HTML guru retired to have children, and everybody else I've hired since has spent a good bit of time (and money) just figuring out how the previous person set everything up. I've found that I actually spent more much time communicating what I wanted to the HTML guru to build it the "old normal" way than I did to just build the site myself in iWeb. And it costs over $80/month to host the site on earthlink, whereas I can host 5 sites on Apple's MobileMe (which is the default host for iWeb) for $150/year. That's $2.50 per site per month versus over $80 the old way. So building them myself in iWeb is a huge savings of time and money, and I can also modify whatever I want easily at any time (and no expense) because I can do it myself. I'm in the process of rebuilding the Katrina Cottages site in iWeb... I've spent one day on it so far. I'll let you know when I'm done how long it took.</div><p /><div><span style="font-size: 14px;">Speaking</span></div><p /><div>I now get paid for speaking, so it's not like time spent for free. Rather, it's an income-generating venture. I generally have 1-3 speaking engagements a week. Early on, however, you need to regard speaking as an investment. You're investing in your future income, of course, as you'll eventually get paid like I do. But more important than that, you're investing in the development of your ideas because the prospect of getting up and laying your ideas out to your colleagues ensures that you'll develop and organize them better. Warm fuzzies in your brain are fine, but warm fuzzies burbled out in front of a crowd are an embarrassment.</div><p /><div><span style="font-size: 14px;">Idea Cards</span></div><p /><div>Idea cards require no more time to design than business cards... just a different way of thinking when you design them. Granted, you should give thought beforehand to which of your ideas you want to put on your cards. But you should be thinking through these issues anyway, because how are you going to put forward your best ideas if you don't know what they are, or what's most important about them?</div><p /><div><span style="font-size: 14px;">Listservs</span></div><p /><div>I participate on listservs when I can. When I can't, I don't worry about it. They should be your servant, not your master. Don't feel obligated to read every thread if you don't have time. And if a thread doesn't appear to be useful to you, leave it alone. Just do what's useful.</div><p /><div><span style="font-size: 14px;">Email</span></div><p /><div>I'll blog later about the email rules of thumb, most of which are designed to save you time. The one thing that actually takes more time is&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/cd3Fy3">creating your signature with embedded chiclets</a>. But once it's created, it requires no time at all... it's just there, at the end of each of your emails.</div><p /><div><span style="font-size: 14px;">Mailing List</span></div><p /><div>I only do a mailing a few times per year... each one probably takes a couple hours to do. Don't do too many, or you'll tire your subscribers and they'll unsubscribe.</div><p /><div><span style="font-size: 14px;">Images</span></div><p /><div>All the stuff I do for my images I'd be doing anyway for my own use. Posting them to&nbsp;<a href="http://samouzon.zenfolio.com/">samouzon.zenfolio.com</a>&nbsp;takes just moments to set up each upload.</div><p /><div><span style="font-size: 14px;">Apps</span></div><p /><div>My&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/6JP1On">Original Green App</a>&nbsp;took a couple days to build and a few emails to promote, but has required no time since. Actually, it saves time because I can read my favorite bloggers (under the More... tab) all in one place during "chinking time" (see above.)</div><p /><div><span style="font-size: 14px;">LinkedIn &amp; Facebook</span></div><p /><div>I spend very little time on LinkedIn. I probably spend an hour a week posting stuff to facebook, and to my pages there (<span style="color: rgb(153, 153, 153);"><a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/the-Original-Green-Unlocking-the-Mystery-of-True-Sustainability/118798554800445" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; color: rgb(188, 113, 52); text-decoration: none;">the Original Green</a></span><span style="color: rgb(153, 153, 153);">,&nbsp;</span><span style="color: rgb(153, 153, 153);"><a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/A-Living-Tradition-Architecture-of-the-Bahamas/66917141296" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; color: rgb(188, 113, 52); text-decoration: none;">A Living Tradition [Architecture of the Bahamas]</a>, and&nbsp;</span><span style="color: rgb(153, 153, 153); font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/Mouzon-Design/194766633895956" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; color: rgb(188, 113, 52); text-decoration: none;">Mouzon Design</a>)</span></div><p /><div><span style="font-size: 14px;">YouTube</span></div><p /><div>I've just begun my&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/gywdw5">YouTube channel</a>. I'll report back when I have a better idea about the time requirements.</div></div> <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/what-about-time">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-1357611804667596075?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-44450967250655788442011-04-15T04:24:00.001-07:002011-04-15T04:24:40.798-07:00<div class='posterous_autopost'><div class='p_embed p_image_embed'> <a href="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/usefulstuff/AcRjWcAmMYr7rIfcGPIJz4hC2BpMhFAk4KZR1BHrUdNhG198smMBoGsBxDeH/26-network.jpg.scaled.1000.jpg"><img alt="26-network" height="375" src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/usefulstuff/clU8jafyQQtZedeCNBuAh4ickgVFeBzd1s0YhyEZ0nDC6G8CgmopZgFTpKoJ/26-network.jpg.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" /></a> </div> <p /><div>Thinking you have it figured out is really a bad idea with the New Media. I had two speaking engagements in Portland a couple weeks ago, and one of the attendees at the&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/gqZ0WQ">Cascadia CNU</a>&nbsp;Summit was Ruth Ann Barrett of&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/gfqEfD">EarthSayers.tv</a>, which is a site with lots of short videos by green leaders. Ruth Ann is one of the most plugged-in white-headed people I've ever met, which really impresses me, because she's helping shatter the notion that you have to be 17 to get it.</div><p /><div>It didn't take long for the conversation to turn to New Media. She asked what I was doing in town, and I told her about the series of lectures I'm doing at&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/fLXpYi">Pella's Pro Expos</a>&nbsp;in 15 cities around the country (including the one a couple days previously in Portland.) I speak twice at each Pro Expo; the second lecture is about&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/huPyF3">New Media for architects and other design types</a>.</div><p /><div>Ruth Ann asked "what's your presence on YouTube?" I told her&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/e6dBIX">I'd put up a few videos</a>, and that&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/eR56WO">a few other people had as well</a>. We were walking down the street to lunch at the time, and she stopped dead in her tracks, turned around and looked at me in disbelief. "Steve, YouTube is the second most-searched site on the internet! You really must have a serious presence there!" She had lots of great recommendations, ideas, and tips... and she was compelling enough that I've re-thought the entire Big O diagram above. YouTube now sits across from Twitter near the top, just below your blog. Facebook pages have been combined with all other things Facebook and LinkedIn, and all connections between nodes have been adjusted accordingly.</div><p /><div>I'll tell you all the great stuff Ruth Ann told me when we get to the YouTube posts in this series, of course... it's really good stuff. Thanks, Ruth Ann! And BTW, here's the&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/dJkDK5">really short video she shot of me</a>, just as I was about to dash off and catch my streetcar to the airport. And yes, expect to see a lot more videos soon on the&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/gywdw5">Original Green Channel</a>, and on&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/hN5Iqn">OGTV</a>!</div> <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/adding-youtube-to-the-big-o">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-4445096725065578844?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-51275268245610182342011-04-11T09:32:00.001-07:002011-04-11T09:32:28.621-07:00<div class='posterous_autopost'>RAGE made my day Saturday! Since its inception, iWeb's biggest drawback was the fact that "post-processing" a blog post would disable its comments.&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/huC0DL">RAGE Software</a>&nbsp;makes several tools for improving your visibility to search engines, especially their free&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/hMHTTZ">SEO Tool</a>. (SEO = Search Engine Optimization) But because it broke blog comments in iWeb (like all other SEO software,) I couldn't use it. Saturday, I started converting <a href="http://www.katrinacottages.com">www.katrinacottages.com</a> to iWeb, and redesigning the site (the new site isn't up yet, obviously.) Somewhere in the day, I thought I'd check with RAGE again... and they had a new version of the SEO Tool. Curious, I tried it out, and it seemed NOT to break the blog comments! Excited, I contacted the company, and they confirmed it... it does NOT break the comments!<p /><div>This is huge, because now I can set more Googlicious title tags for each page, add meta tags, and provide alternative text for images, making them much more searchable. I can do all of this for each blog post in a minute or less. I don't know how far I'll go back with old blog posts, but I'll definitely do it on every one in the future. More on this later, as I learn more about it...</div> <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/great-news-on-rages-seo-tool">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-5127526824561018234?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-52251973030336684912011-04-10T21:27:00.001-07:002011-04-10T21:27:53.816-07:00<div class='posterous_autopost'><div class='p_embed p_image_embed'> <a href="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/usefulstuff/Qe9ccVU5h57qpuIlfFxDEetObcur7Zt1LJgPhRQl7u0c3dod3my0MRC3aPV4/brands_vs._causes.jpg.scaled.1000.jpg"><img alt="Brands_vs" height="375" src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/usefulstuff/25tn59S2PfseCl6MUHWHEGdqqi5yiM9Gt00Qj0qeVQeLwTeqv5wpT21PvWTp/brands_vs._causes.jpg.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" /></a> </div> <p /><div>There's something out there today that's stronger than branding, and that could transform your practice completely. It did for me. Design types have been told for the past decade or two that we need to get good at "branding ourselves."&nbsp;For a chuckle, think about the painful implications&nbsp;that phrase would have carried&nbsp;a century ago! But because we do it with advertising and positioning rather than irons in the fire, branding ourselves has long been a profitable exercise.</div><p /><div><span style="font-size: 14px;">Branding</span></div><p /><div>Branding was perfectly suited to the Era of the Company for several reasons: A brand is owned by a single company, and protected ferociously. If someone infringes upon your brand, you call the lawyers and go to war with them. Everything in the company should ideally be dictated by the brand. But as effective as brands have been for so long, they have problems as well. They're usually very expensive to develop and to protect. Adherence to the brand has the ability to stifle creativity and innovation. And because the brand spreads only by selling, if you ever quit selling, your brand soon dies. So brands require a fairly constant exertion of effort (and money) to keep them going. And a brand is almost never anything more than a brand.</div><p /><div><span style="font-size: 14px;">Causes</span></div><p /><div>Causes are in many ways opposite to brand.&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/fba7OW">I wrote recently</a>&nbsp;that causes spring from the initial insights of one person. Causes, as opposed to brands, can molt into something greater if it's adopted by a larger culture: a movement. And movements, if persistent across generations, reach the highest level of ideas that spread, which is the living tradition. While brands are held by one company, causes are open-source and held by many. While brands spread by selling, causes spread by telling. Whereas brands are meant to enrich the brand owner, causes are usually viewed as standing on the higher ground of ideals.</div><p /><div><span style="font-size: 14px;">Branding and Being Remarkable</span></div><p /><div>We discussed&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/hOg4CA">the necessity of being remarkable</a>&nbsp;recently. Isn't that the same thing as branding? The two are similar in some ways. You might think of a brand as "high-cost remarkability with handcuffs." But you can also be remarkable without building a brand. Taking up a cause, in and of itself, creates a degree of remarkability because most design types don't. And the things you do to support the cause increase that remarkability. So clearly, a cause can make you remarkable in your hometown, and amongst colleagues of your region. But what about within the cause? Without a brand, aren't you just amongst the rank-and-file there? Not at all. Causes usually encompass many disciplines. The New Urbanism, for example, was started by architects and planners, but today it includes landscape architects, civil engineers, city officials, academics, and a host of other disciplines. So whatever your discipline, it's one of many minorities within the New Urbanism. But it doesn't stop there. Within almost any cause, so many things need to be done that you can usually take your pick of initiatives, and pitch in and get them done. This makes you seriously remarkable within the cause and beyond because you and the small band of colleagues working with you on the initiative quickly become known for that work.</div><p /><div>Bottom line: Remarkability achieved by traditional branding normally requires spending a lot of money on outside talent (unless you run a PR firm) to create your brand, and it requires hiring an attorney (unless you are one) to defend the brand. Remarkability achieved through a cause, on the other hand, simply involves doing work that matters. So branding delivers extrinsic remarkability that costs a lot of money, whereas causes deliver intrinsic remarkability that simply comes with the work you're doing. Which would you prefer?</div><p /><div>PS: This post is part of a bigger story outlined in&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/hXMq2t">New Media for Design Types</a>. The most&nbsp;recent piece of the story was&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/h42VWe">Old Virtues vs. New&nbsp;Virtues</a>. Lots more to follow!<br /></div> <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/brands-vs-causes">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-5225197303033668491?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-72076644396619559972011-04-09T06:28:00.001-07:002011-04-09T06:28:27.031-07:00<div class='posterous_autopost'> <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/google48d2351489d13ac8html">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-7207664439661955997?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-12512970717035941412011-04-07T11:39:00.001-07:002011-04-07T11:39:36.185-07:00<div class='posterous_autopost'><div class='p_embed p_image_embed'> <a href="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/usefulstuff/xaLUo4eYuyJv1S81YDvlLd4Yitnaqdlu4EIWcHW8z57LecJlDX9qD6saxaGP/photo.jpg.scaled.1000.jpg"><img alt="Photo" height="669" src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/usefulstuff/kgkSzlVTzX4J2G87gPYn9bssSxhcLniQIRLr9J2pg0b33cqfBzLJFbIbYMDg/photo.jpg.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" /></a> </div> <p>What does Panera Bread have against people who like to drink water? Other places have somewhat smaller & cheaper water cups, but this is ridiculous! This cup contains about three swallows, meaning I've gotta choose between repeatedly traipsing to the dispenser and inadequate hydration. Maybe Panera thinks that giving water-drinking customers such dinky cups will make them feel cheap, causing them to order a super-sized cup of some brand of carbonated sugar water instead. But I'm not drinking water mainly to be cheap, but mainly to be healthy. So doing this backfires, making Panera look cheap instead. I haven't eaten at a Panera in years, and this certainly isn't a good way to get me to come back!</p> <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/paneras-prejudice">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-1251297071703594141?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-88650779751248829092011-04-07T06:14:00.001-07:002011-04-07T06:14:28.375-07:00<div class='posterous_autopost'><p><div class='p_embed p_file_embed'> <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/old-virtues-vs-new-virtues"><img alt="" src="http://posterous.com/images/filetypes/pdf.png" /></a> <div class='p_embed_description'> <strong>PastedGraphic-1.pdf</strong> <a href="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/usefulstuff/g4gYEZeZzTDVDFXL5bN4a0PVqPrV6ctLnyKZ44yT2HIdejSVKeCTjcJ6LQGu/PastedGraphic-1.pdf">Download this file</a> </div> </div> </p><p></p><p /><div>The three business virtues of the Industrial Revolution are entirely incapable of transporting your business into this new age, but so long as you're using them as lenses to look at the world we're now living in, that world looks impossibly wasteful and terrifyingly alien. If you're a design type that wants to thrive in this new environment, you really must be guiding your operations by the three new virtues of our day.</div><p /><div><span style="font-size: 14px;">The Old Virtues</span></div><p /><div>The Industrial Revolution virtues of quality, speed, and economy (better, faster, cheaper) remained the measuring-sticks of all sorts of disciplines right up until the Meltdown. But now, and <i>especially</i> if you're involved in any aspect of place-making, they don't work anymore. Here's why: if you're an architect, there simply aren't enough jobs to go around&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/hU2WNQ">as we discussed</a>. So if your pitch simply is that you believe in high quality, or you'll do the work quickly, or you have competitive fees, that isn't good enough anymore, because that's what everyone else is saying as well. If you don't&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/hOg4CA">become remarkable</a>&nbsp;in some way, you're simply not likely to survive.</div><p /><div><span style="font-size: 14px;">The Death of Cheaper</span></div><p /><div>The first to fail will be those who have built their businesses on being the cheapest service (or product) in town. This is easy to understand, because when the firms that staked their claim on being better or faster start dropping their fees, then the cheaper firms aren't cheaper anymore. So the entire reason to hire them goes away... and their customers quickly find the door.</div><p /><div><span style="font-size: 14px;">The Death of Faster</span></div><p /><div>The next to close up shop will be those known for getting the work out more quickly than the other guys. For ages, there has been the possibility of serious economic benefit accruing from hiring people who can get your work out the door faster. But when those known for being better don't have so much work, they can be notably faster than normal. So the reason for hiring the faster firms goes away.</div><p /><div><span style="font-size: 14px;">The Death of Better</span></div><p /><div>Firms known for doing the highest quality of work have the best short-term prognosis, but they are already suffering as well. The high fees they commanded all those years weren't just for their names. Rather, those fees allowed them to buy capacity (better employees and better equipment) that allowed them to produce that better work. The first thing to go is the new equipment budget, but they can limp along for quite some time with equipment that's not being updated. The employees are tougher, because they're an expense every payday. They may take pay cuts for awhile, but eventually, they're likely to move on. The culture of excellence developed over the years in better firms will support them for quite some time, but after a better firm has done cheaper work long enough, even that culture of excellence begins to erode, and when that happens, they're not better anymore.</div><p /><div><span style="font-size: 14px;">The New Virtues</span></div><p /><div>The virtues of this new era are patience, generosity, and connectedness. They call for an entirely new set of business practices that, when viewed through the lenses of the old virtues, look like economic suicide. Who could possibly think about giving something away in this environment, for example? That's a strategy for flush times, isn't it? Not at all. Bear with me until the end of this series of posts, and I believe you'll see that the new strategies and practices, when viewed through the lenses of these new virtues, represents a robust pattern for thriving now.</div><p /><div><span style="font-size: 14px;">Patience</span></div><p /><div>None of the strategies we'll discuss later will succeed tomorrow. Or next week. Or next month. You'll have to persevere with them for quite some time before you see any success. It's like an old hand-pumped water well: you can pump and pump and pump with great vigor, and get no water for quite awhile. And if you quit pumping, the water goes all the way back to the bottom. But if you keep it up until the water comes, then all it takes is a good, easy stroke on the pump handle to get more water than you can possibly drink. Your followers will do exactly the same thing, following you early on in hardly a trickle. But when you hit the tipping point, you'll have more followers than you first dreamed of. People talk about being Googlicious, and the entire Search Engine Optimization (SEO) industry has sprung up as a result. I'm not saying SEO is worthless, but there's nothing out there that will make you more Googlicious than a steady stream of useful content.</div><p /><div><span style="font-size: 14px;">Generosity</span></div><p /><div>Don't confuse true generosity with teasers. A teaser today is treated with the same disdain as spam. Until you're willing to put something out there that's seriously useful on its own merits and that people can download and use for free with no further contact with you, you're not being generous. But once you are, and persist at it long enough, you'll get far more and better business than you ever would have gotten doing business the old way.</div><p /><div><span style="font-size: 14px;">Connectedness</span></div><p /><div>There are a range of ways of connecting with others, from simpler participation to more involved collaboration. The easiest form of participation is a tweet chat, like #letsblogoff, #aiachat, or #builtheritage. Listservs are a little more involved, but they reap greater benefits because they're populated with lots of really smart people interested in the same topics as you. You can also participate in a professional organization like&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/hDrPc3">AIA</a>, or an advocacy organization like&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/2Lr0bM">CNU</a>. Advocacy organizations have the moral high ground, because they are viewed as supporting ideals rather than just supporting a particular profession. Full disclosure: I'm a member of both the AIA and the CNU. Collaboration also has multiple degrees. Consortiums can be a temporary or less formal form of collaboration, but the best and strongest are guilds. The&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/3f9ZuZ">New Urban Guild</a>&nbsp;I founded, for example, has been able to host a number of initiatives (such as the&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/1z5fb2">Original Green</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/4mD2Z1">Project:SmartDwelling</a>) and support a number of causes (such as&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/e9CWz2">Katrina Cottages</a>) that no Guild member would have been able to do on their own.</div><p /><div>PS: This post is part of a bigger story outlined in&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/hXMq2t">New Media for Design Types</a>. The most recent piece of the story was&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/hOg4CA">Being Remarkable</a>. Lots more to follow!</div> <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/old-virtues-vs-new-virtues">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-8865077975124882909?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-91911893571058714242011-04-04T17:32:00.001-07:002011-04-04T17:32:12.588-07:00<div class='posterous_autopost'>Is it possible that story-telling might become a viable planning technique for today's cash-strapped cities?&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/hiDwSs">This story from a recent PFBE charrette for some of New Orleans' scrappier neighborhoods</a>&nbsp;suggests that this might be so. <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/story-telling-as-planning-technique">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-9191189357105871424?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-1061886634352708332011-03-31T06:30:00.001-07:002011-03-31T06:30:25.575-07:00<div class='posterous_autopost'><div class='p_embed p_image_embed'> <a href="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/usefulstuff/aFUknJeBS0ZOfViXHcPjiXLM6v27ZSeDQIiBjdhaMidtQRfwAVs74kbKzffJ/Mugdock_Castle_Mt._Pleasant_SC.jpg.scaled.1000.jpg"><img alt="Mugdock_castle_mt" height="375" src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/usefulstuff/JbjXnH1rErsLYC4KFqsNNjCp8sCkIiuLAbKhDG1GfXloJvKmDnHrdBhXMRIn/Mugdock_Castle_Mt._Pleasant_SC.jpg.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" /></a> </div> <p /><div>If your work isn't remarkable today, you may not make it. Seriously... your business just might not survive. The Era of the Company had three primary virtues: quality of work, speed of delivery, and economy of services. Better. Faster. Cheaper. Today, however, if you're a design type and all you have to offer is some combination of these virtues, you likely won't be around much longer. As discussed earlier,&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/hU2WNQ">there simply aren't enough jobs to go around</a>, nor are there likely to be enough in the foreseeable future because the carnage in the banking industry isn't over yet. So firms that are nothing but better, faster, and cheaper are a dime a dozen. Don't be one of them. Your work really must be remarkable in some way.</div><p /><div><span style="font-size: 14px;">Out of the Pit</span></div><p /><div>How can you climb out of the better, faster, cheaper pit? There are likely many ways, but here's my story: I was once a small-town architect fighting for the next small-town job, which likely was a pre-engineered metal buildings of some sort. For years, I had been a supporter of the principles of the New Urbanism. I wrote letters to the editor, and showed up at City Council meetings, all to little avail. Thirteen years after graduation, I had only influenced one single developer to build New Urbanism. To that point, I'd been nothing more than a cheerleader. It was time to get on the playing field.</div><p /><div><span style="font-size: 14px;">How Can I Help You?</span></div><p /><div>So I started going to New Urbanist workshops, and showing up at symposia. I went to design charrettes, asking simply "what can I do to help?" The New Urbanists don't turn down willing hands, so I found plenty of things to do. Really famous New Urbanists started inviting me on their charrettes, which was really cool... these people had been my heroes for years. But it's amazing how many heroes need a helping hand. So I joined the cause, and there has been no turning back. Stunningly great things have happened to me over and over again simply because I showed up and said "what can I do to help?" Find a cause you're passionate about, and join it. You won't look back.</div><p /><div><span style="font-size: 14px;">Finding a Need</span></div><p /><div>Once I started asking "what can I do to help," all sorts of needs cropped up. Some of them were initiatives others were already working on, such as the Transect, and they just needed more willing hands. So I helped where I could with those initiatives. But once you open your eyes to needs, you see them all around you. And many of them weren't being met. So about a dozen years ago, I said to myself "I'm going to start finding needs that aren't being met and filling them." In every single case, there were others who were far more qualified to meet that need, but all those people were busy doing other things. So even though my qualifications were very low, my willingness to meet those needs was high. And so, because somebody's gotta do it, I took my best shot. And time and again, things have worked out great as a result.</div> <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/being-remarkable">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-106188663435270833?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-85873770979808000692011-03-29T15:39:00.001-07:002011-03-29T15:39:53.196-07:00<div class='posterous_autopost'><p><div class='p_embed p_image_embed'> <a href="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/usefulstuff/k7tLHzkZyJSp8P6g2i2VyzfIbP9kvkvH2Bu31eH9Gn8tJKnIHbTLPX64o68a/Sloss_Furnace_08APR25_5789.jpg.scaled.1000.jpg"><img alt="Sloss_furnace_08apr25_5789" height="375" src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/usefulstuff/yTo6ogHRSUj6Fv17oBf2MMCQyYZWt8XtDDmCgbPhGKXXOACUdOuwr9M5Z4bi/Sloss_Furnace_08APR25_5789.jpg.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" /></a> </div> </p><p><p /> </p><div><span style="font-size: 14px;">Advertising... You Gotta Be Kidding Me!</span></div><div><br /><div>Advertising, as we know it, is dead. Actually, if you're a design type, it may have never been alive to begin with. Architects, for example, were forbidden from advertising for decades, which was only permitting it in their codes of ethics in recent decades in most places. We've just discussed&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/hU2WNQ">why conventional marketing methods for design types are broken</a>... but what are you gonna do... turn to print advertising? You've gotta be kidding... when is the last time you've heard of an architect getting a job from an ad they put in the newspaper?? C'mon... that simply doesn't happen!</div><p /><div>The only print advertising that can do you any good is in publications focused enough, and with a passionate enough following, that they'll actually figure that if you're savvy enough to advertise in their favorite niche publication, you're savvy enough for them.&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/esTqc0">Restore Media</a>&nbsp;is such a company; their&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/hyIeMQ">Traditional Building</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/fjZQA0">Period Homes</a>&nbsp;magazines have just such a following. But for general-audience print advertising, you can forget it.</div><p /><div>Radio is no better than general-audience print... does anyone even listen to the radio anymore? People are far more likely to have "time-shifted audio media." In other words, albums and audiobooks they can listen to at their convenience, and on their own schedule, with no commercial interruptions. TV is much the same... you can download your favorite shows to your iPhone or iPad, and watch them when you're ready, rather than when the networks say you should watch them.</div><p /><div><span style="font-size: 14px;">The Lowest Point</span></div><p /><div>The worst type of advertising you might contemplate is spam. If you advertise in the newspaper, on the radio, or on TV, people will simply ignore you... or never be there to hear you in the first place. But if you spam them, they'll detest you. Matter of fact, there's likely no better way to make sure that someone never does business with you than to spam them.</div><p /><div><span style="font-size: 14px;">The Spam Vaccination</span></div><p /><div>Spammers have created a huge unintended consequence that will change business for at least the next generation, if not forever: They have conditioned us to delete their unwanted interruptions to a degree nobody ever anticipated. Our delete keys have grown a hair trigger. If something even has the whiff of spam in the subject line (forget the body of the email) we hit Delete and it's gone. Don't waste our time! We won't tolerate it anymore!</div><p /><div>The spammers have so firmly conditioned us to reject them that a curious thing has happened: Nobody wants to hear about your business anymore. They won't tolerate talk about your company. They haven't the slightest interest in your mission statement, your vision statement, or your business plan. Just forget it... they're not listening. You might as well be talking to a brick wall. I call it the Spam Vaccination. (That's my term, but not my idea; the idea originated with&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/f5jagl">Seth Godin</a>... great guy... if you don't follow him and his books, you should.)</div><p /><div>So if conventional marketing doesn't work, and advertising doesn't work, either, what's a design type to do? There are actually many reasons for hope, and we'll discuss them in the next several posts. As a matter of fact, this&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/9vOOxz">oncoming age of great necessities</a>&nbsp;may be the best thing that ever happened to you. Just don't think that you're going to get there doing thing in the conventional way.</div></div><p /><div>PS: This post is part of a bigger story outlined in&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/hXMq2t">New Media for Design Types</a>. The most recent piece of the story was&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/hU2WNQ">Why Marketing Doesn't Work Anymore for Architecture</a>. Lots more to follow!</div> <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/the-death-of-advertising">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-8587377097980800069?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-1986480060135401452011-03-28T16:26:00.001-07:002011-03-28T16:26:33.266-07:00<div class='posterous_autopost'>Some may have heard me speak many times about building Smaller & Smarter, but what does that really mean? Here are some principles it may include: <p /> A. Radically smaller spaces: Go to a restaurant with tables and booths, and observe which fill up first... almost always, it's the booths. A dining room can seat 6 comfortably in about 180 SF. A booth can seat those same 6 people in about 36 SF. Why not give people what they'd rather have, and in 1/5 the space? <p /> B. Multi-Purpose instead of redundancy: McMansions have 3-5 places to eat, from the dining room to the nook to the bar to the eat-in kitchen to the "cafe" with the cute little awning over the espresso machine to the... you get the picture. But our ancestors had rooms that fulfilled many purposes... a true "keeping room" was where all the housekeeping was done, for example. SmartDwellings have single things that do many jobs, rather than many things that do a single job. <p /> C. Radical space utilization: Why waste the space in a wall? SmartDwellings often board one side of an interior wall (no sheetrock mold debacle here) and leave the other side open, with shelves, so that the entire wall becomes a shelving unit. And yes, we have figured out where to put the pipes, wires, and switches. <p /> D. Radical space utilization 2: Why waste bigger spaces, like the underside of the recycled bench or church pew that makes up the dining booth, or the space under a bed? SmartDwellings don't. These larger volumes that are normally lost typically become highly useful pull-out baskets and shelves. <p /> E. Kitchen base cabinets: In suburbia, base cabinets are a study in waste: one little 1x12 shelf in an entire base cabinet sets the stage for accumulations of never-used stuff. But not in SmartDwellings. We use every bit of base cabinets for pull-out shelves and drawers. <p /> F. Boarding: You thought we were done with boarding in item C, right? Guess again! Boarding all the walls results not only in the first step to the elusive sheetrock-free-house, but also allows attachment of pegs, racks, shelves, hanging items, cabinets, and even appliances anywhere on the wall, without having to hunt through the mush-like sheetrock for a stud. <p /> G. Authentic Attics: Upper levels of SmartDwellings often have insulated rooflines rather than insulating ceilings, with 160° air above in the summertime. Insulating the attic not only means that you can store heirlooms there without worrying about them frying, but pipes there won't freeze and burst, and ducts there won't be exposed to extremes of temperature. And you won't have to ventilate the attic, because it's semi-conditioned by virtue of the insulated roofline. There's another benefit as well: you can use LVL ceiling joists with T&G 2x floorboards, because the ceiling doesn't need to be insulated. So you get authentic exposed beams instead of the fake ones we've been building for years. And you save a bit on the budget as well. <p /> H. Outdoor Living Rooms: This could/should be at the top of the list, but I saved the best for last. If you entice people outdoors into great public or private realms, they will get acclimated to the local environment, and when they return indoors, they'll only need heating or cooling in the most extreme times of the year. So for many months, the equipment can stay off. And there's no piece of equipment so efficient as one that is off. There's another benefit as well: if people are acclimated to the local environment, they can actually use less-expensive outdoor space as living space for much of the year, reducing the need for interior space. And that smaller interior space needs less conditioning: a classic virtuous cycle. It's unlikely there's anything else one can do to be more sustainable than this. <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/smaller-smarter">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-198648006013540145?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-67457766958316522012011-03-26T16:33:00.001-07:002011-03-26T16:33:44.004-07:00<div class='posterous_autopost'><div class='p_embed p_image_embed'> <a href="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/usefulstuff/JJUTYKpDj07bWXoIAAhFjp0wDQCJdViMuWeG3PtDZzOcInvqHCTCSJcMCl8A/Air_Hawaii_09OCT28_4424.jpg.scaled.1000.jpg"><img alt="Air_hawaii_09oct28_4424" height="375" src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/usefulstuff/gefdZa0BTCN9Qbb59Hg0MCO3S6jhRC8DbxRfBRFb9GaxKdtCDOrTdGQJkxVw/Air_Hawaii_09OCT28_4424.jpg.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" /></a> </div> <p />The profession of architecture is lying in smoking ruins right now, and other place-making disciplines such as planning, interior design, construction and its trades, landscape architecture, and several engineering disciplines are having it very tough as well. But the worst thing you can do if you're a design type or a construction type is to keep hoping for 2006 to return. Doing so only delays your transition to a new ways of doing business... and delaying could cost you your business, because the old ways of doing things simply aren't working any longer for most of us.<p /><div>This is because business is changing in profound ways, the scale of which nobody alive today has ever seen. As a matter of fact, this change will likely be as large as the Industrial Revolution, making it the biggest change in how we do business in two centuries. The term "paradigm shift" gets thrown around loosely, but this is the real thing.</div><p /><div>Before the Industrial Revolution, the idea of "going to work" at a "job" didn't exist for most people. But the Industrial Revolution ushered in the Era of the Company, and companies have dominated our economic lives from that day until now. Generations of people in the industrialized countries fell in step with the&nbsp;<a href="http://amzn.to/fWjRIb">Organization Man</a>, and corporations, commuting, workweeks, and paychecks became trappings of modern life.</div><p /><div>Throughout the 19th century, the domination of the company often reached beyond our economic lives, imposing hardships on their workers' entire existence while the "robber barons" profited to an excess not previously seen outside the ranks of royalty. The folk song "I Owe My Soul to the Company Store" is a testament to this era. But the labor unions that struggled in the latter years of the 19th century gained traction, then power, around the turn of the century and work conditions and salaries spiked upward.</div><p /><div>Before the unions gained power, wages weren't usually high enough to relieve workers of most burdens, so most blue-collar and some white-collar workers raised their own food, made their own clothes, and often built their own homes. But as wages rose dramatically through the first couple decades of the 20th century, it became possible for the first time for working-class people to specialize in one thing (their job) and make enough money to purchase all the necessities of life from other specialists.</div><p /><div>This sea change had an unintended consequence that didn't become fully evident for almost a century. Specialists are experts in their field. You're not, if you don't work in their field. So you have no authority to tell a specialist "your work isn't broad enough," or good enough, or whatever. So the specialists did what specialists do, focusing on smaller and smaller parts of life. Some say that specialists know more and more about less and less until they know absolutely everything about only one thing. Others are less kind, saying the climax condition for specialists is to know absolutely everything about nothing at all. In either case, specialization was the death knell of holistic living. Transportation engineering specialists built streets that transported more cars faster, but were dreadful places to walk. Volume builders built unlovable ranchers very efficiently. Shopping center developers built some of the most unwalkable places the world had ever seen in very efficient fashion as well. Together, the specialists built some of the most barbaric public realms in human history.</div><p /><div>But the story doesn't end there... it gets worse... for awhile. Just a few years after the ascendency of the unions, the Great Depression struck, impaling almost all aspects of economic life for more than a decade. Most agree that FDR's massive top-down government programs such as the WPA were essential parts of pulling out of that grand morass. There's no doubt that WWII helped us pull out as well, but that war carried with it unforeseen baggage: never in American history had so many Americans been conditioned for so many years to obey orders from higher up the chain of command and control. The subservient attitudes of the 1950's should have come as no surprise.</div><p /><div>We gave up even larger portions of our lives to the specialists. Women submitted to "twilight birth," where they were sedated to within an inch of consciousness. We let doctors perform whatever surgeries they recommended, with no thought of a second opinion. And we bought whatever houses the volume builders built. This condition persisted from the end of WWII until the mid-1960's, when we began to painstakingly take back aspects of our life one at a time. My mother fought valiantly for a "natural childbirth" for my youngest sister&nbsp;<a href="http://www.placemakers.com/whoweare/hazel.htm">Hazel</a>&nbsp;in 1969. That didn't include my Dad in the delivery room; all she accomplished was her ability to give birth without being sedated. More recently, we've taken back out ability to medicate ourselves with vitamins and herbs. I haven't taken a prescribed drug in more than two decades... maybe three... I can't remember.</div><p /><div>Social media is working magic that was unimaginable a decade ago. Once, we read the daily newspaper, watched the evening news, and followed the American Top 40. But over the past decade, we've learned how to speak to ourselves again. If you haven't read it, the&nbsp;<a href="http://amzn.to/i77UJs">Cluetrain Manifesto</a>&nbsp;was simply prophetic of our day. And&nbsp;<a href="http://amzn.to/d6JAxX">Seth Godin's Linchpin</a>&nbsp;is essential reading a decade later. And so today, with as dreadful as conditions are in the place-making professions, I believe we're on the brink of a new Golden Age &nbsp;because of the invention this new age of great necessities will foster. What do you think?</div> <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/the-smoking-ruins-of-architecture">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-6745776695831652201?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-59621816065292719512011-03-23T19:08:00.001-07:002011-03-23T19:08:29.929-07:00<div class='posterous_autopost'>The conventional marketing methods that worked so well for so long in the design communities are now broken, and at a very critical time for most designers. This is the first in a series of posts that will describe a new system of engagement with your markets that is built for the future. This system was first designed for architects, but it now works for planners, landscape architects, interior designers, engineers, and others engaged in place-making disciplines. <p /> Place-making design professions are lying in smoking ruins in most places, and the worst thing you can do is to keep hoping for the return of 2006. We'll take a look at designers' historical marketing methods, and examine the reasons why they won't be working again anytime in the near future. Most professions disdained traditional advertising methods for years; some have only recently allowed their members to advertise at all. But advertising for design types is broken for a different set of reasons we'll examine in detail. <p /> But it isn't just that specific methods of marketing and advertising have lost their effectiveness. Rather, we have all been changed in ways we could not have anticipated a decade ago, and that change has created a twin phenomenon: For 200 years, companies have dominated economic life in industrialized and post-industrial nations. Today, the Era of the Company is ending, just as the Age of the Idea is beginning. This paradigm shift is larger than anything business has seen in the past two centuries, and it won't just affect how we do business, but it will also affect who we are. <p /> The Era of the Company was based on a set of virtues, including quality of work (quality of design for designers, of course,) economy of fees, timeliness of delivery, and quality of customer service. The Age of the Idea will be built on a very different set of virtues, including patience, generosity, participation, and collaboration. We'll look at the implication of each of these in detail, but it's worth noting here that they often run counter, and sometimes directly opposite, to the virtues of the Era of the Company. Patience, for example, can seem opposite to timeliness, as can generosity seem opposed to economy. This means you can't mix and match these virtues very well. Indeed, many of the ideas we'll talk about will seem like a recipe for sudden death in business... and they truly will be, if you try to add them piecemeal onto a business designed for the Era of the Company. But if you're willing to remake yourself, instead of just remaking your marketing, then these principles can be used to accomplish remarkable things for your design practice. <p /> This new system we'll examine is an ecosystem of a dozen New Media nodes. Some of these nodes will require time commitments beyond what you're currently doing, so you'll need to make some choices. I think those choices are easy: would you rather spend time marketing using tools of an era in its sunset years that no longer work, or would you prefer to spend your time with tools built for the age ahead of us? Most of these nodes, to be fair, simply ask you to do things you're already doing, but in a different way. <p /> We'll spend a lot of time on blogging, because it's a major linchpin of the entire ecosystem. We'll look at the overall structure of the blog, and also the structure of each blog post. Then we'll look at the things you need to do in order to promote each of your posts. Next, we'll look at pages you can add to your blog to make it more useful. We'll finish with ten rules of thumb for blogging. <p /> Twitter is next... we'll look at why to tweet, and how the whole thing works. There are ten rules of thumb for Twitter as well. You may feel you know your website, and what it should be. I believe people are looking for a new graphic image in the post-Meltdown world. If you're a design type, you should present your work to your colleagues at least once a month. We'll discuss the things that speaking engagements can do for you. Idea Cards are to the Age of the Idea what business cards were to the Era of the Company: essential. If participation becomes one of your virtues, then we'll look at reasons why you should participate with colleagues on various listservs. Email is a classic example of something you're already doing... but likely need to do it a little differently. <p /> Spamming is a cardinal sin of the age of the idea, so you'll need to communicate with people who give you permission to do so: those who subscribe to your mailing list(s.) Design types are visually-oriented. You take lots of pictures, don't you? Sure... we all do. So what do you do with them? We'll look at ways of making them useful to others, while benefitting you at the same time. Ever thought you might have your own app? Think again! Once, there were causes on facebook. Now, facebook has discovered they can make more money with "pages." We'll explore each. We'll also look at the basics of facebook pages for design types, and also LinkedIn. <p /> This ecosystem of nodes can be "Googlicious" all by itself, but it only gets better as you accumulate visitors and followers. We'll finish with some pretty cool possibilities of what you might do with such an ecosystem, and back it up with a set of resources I'm confident you'll find useful. As always, and especially now, let's discuss this stuff! What do you think? <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/new-media-for-design-types">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-5962181606529271951?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-50920898927131592622011-03-17T10:05:00.001-07:002011-03-17T10:05:34.079-07:00<div class='posterous_autopost'>A great city must do three things (in fairly equal importance): <p /> 1. It must set the stage for memorable human interactions to occur. This requires a network of pedestrian-friendly streets connecting great civic spaces such as plazas, squares, greens, and parks. Both the streets and the civic spaces should be enclosed as outdoor rooms by a fabric of buildings appropriate to the region in which they are built, and interspersed occasionally (especially at civic spaces) with memorable civic buildings. Central London, Paris, Rome, Manhattan, and Charleston qualify in spades. Orlando, Dallas, and many others do not. <p /> 2. It must provide a baseline of predictability. No matter how good the physical environment, visitors won't often come to a city where basic services don't work. Nor will they often come to a city where their personal safety is too much in doubt. When services and safety get bad enough for long enough, the residents will begin to move elsewhere. <p /> 3. It must provide a broad selection of opportunities to thrive and prosper. Once, financial opportunities dominated this discussion, but today, thriving is increasingly including the quality of life, not just the standard of living. In other words, the city's "cool factor" is growing in importance. <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/what-makes-a-city-great">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-5092089892713159262?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-4903153137597741792011-03-16T10:31:00.001-07:002011-03-16T10:31:30.110-07:00<div class='posterous_autopost'>Guy Kawasaki's hot-off-the-presses&nbsp;<i>Enchantment</i>&nbsp;started off weakly, or so I thought, because I didn't yet appreciate the full picture he was painting. Chapter 2, for example, is How to Achieve Likability, and includes sections like "Perfect Your Handshake"&nbsp;(complete with a mathematical formula for handshake excellence,) "Use the Right Words," "Accept Others," "Don't Impose Your Values," and "Create Win-Win Situations." C'mon... how Self-Help 101 can you get? Actually, this is Self-Help 001... the remedial&nbsp;course. But I greatly admire Guy's body of work, so I soldiered on... to the part where it says "don't use war analogies" so... umm... I guess I <i>plodded</i> on. And there were several other things that kept me going in the early chapters:<p />First, the book has a regular stream of very useful checklists, none of which I'd ever seen before, even though Guy credits others for some of them. The book is worth the read just for the checklists. I've been a fan of checklists for years, but especially after reading&nbsp;<i>The Checklist Manifesto</i>&nbsp;recently, but that's another review for another day.<p />Next, the book is full of useful quotes, most of which I hadn't seen, even though many were from some of my favorite quotable people. A good quote is what proverbs have been for ages, and what Twitter occasionally rises to today: the encapsulation of an&nbsp;important truth into a concise and sticky statement. We should all aspire to articulating things this way.<p />Guy also has some hilarious phrases peppered through the book. Things like "group-groping" (the work of a committee,) "helicopter parents" (hover around their kids,) "fiefdumbs," (like fiefdoms, and just as stupid as a fiefdom would be today) and the "Dopeler&nbsp;Effect" (stupid ideas that sound smarter when they come at you faster.) Granted, I'm a Phrase Freak, but I'm sure you'll also find many of them either useful, amusing, or both.<p />Chapter 3, How to Achieve Trustworthiness, sounds equally elementary to the previous chapter, but the sophistication of the material is warming up at this point, and Chapter 4, How to Prepare, is getting seriously useful. The “Qualities of Enchanting Causes”&nbsp;are very good, as is the checklist in “Make It Short, Simple, and Swallowable.” Have the discipline to do each exercise in the book; you’ll be glad you did. For example, Guy gives you one line to write your positioning statement. His is “Empower people.” Mine&nbsp;was much longer... until now.<p />Chapter 5, How to Launch, contains a highly instructive discussion of whether we should decrease choice or increase choice. At first, Guy sounds like he’s also illustrating high levels of cognitive dissonance, but if you read closely, he outlines conditions under&nbsp;which each approach can work. Chapter 6, How to Overcome Resistance, includes a parallel discussion of the virtues of ubiquity alongside the virtues of scarcity.<br />Guy really hits his stride in Chapter 7, How to Make Enchantment Endure. The discussion on building an ecosystem and the next on diversifying the team are worth the purchase price of the book, IMO. Full disclosure: I was sent a free review copy of the book.<p />Chapter 8, How to Use Push Technology, is chock-full of the stuff we expect Guy to know best, and he doesn’t disappoint. From the general principles at the beginning of the chapter, he takes us on a tour de force of the best ways to use the tech that’s out there&nbsp;to get a message out, from presentations to email to twitter. Here’s another chapter that’s worth the price of the book.<p />Chapter 9 is the counterpoint: How to Use Pull Technology, and it’s equally valuable. Repeatedly through the discussions on websites, blogs, facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube, I found myself saying “I hadn’t thought of that”... and I&nbsp;<i>really like</i>&nbsp;thinking about&nbsp;these things.<p />The book is a bit like a workout, beginning with a slow warm-up, building into a crescendo of usefulness in the middle chapters, and then easing into the cool-down of the latter chapters. But by the time I got to the final chapters, I was enchanted, and happily&nbsp;read through How to Enchant Your Employees, How to Enchant Your Boss, and How to Resist Enchantment (from those who use enchantment unscrupulously.) At the end, the wisdom of the early elementary chapters is obvious, because those things are a&nbsp;necessary part of the process of enchantment. Well worth the read... see for yourself... and make <i>sure</i> you read to the end. <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/reviewing-enchantment">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-490315313759774179?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-79708058943872944822011-03-15T05:08:00.001-07:002011-03-15T05:08:24.755-07:00<div class='posterous_autopost'>The best professional advice I've ever received came on a lunch hour in 1983, and it changed my life. I was in architecture school at the time, and we had a program called “Lunchline” where students would brown-bag lunch and gather around one of the original speaker phones (a big wooden contraption with protruding electronics) and have a conversation with a prominent architect. I was in my last year of school at the time, and the architect that day was Michael Graves. Late in the conversation, a freshman asked a typical freshman question: “Mr. Graves, what’s the secret of success in architecture?” I was afraid Graves would blow him off or make a fool of him, but, always the gentleman, he did not. Instead, he took him seriously, and responded with four words that changed my life: “Extraordinary singleness of purpose.” <p /> Had he said “great design talent,” "superb drawing ability," “wealthy parents,” “strong political connections,” or even “good looks,” I’d have been out of luck, because I had none of those. But “extraordinary singleness of purpose”... I could decide to have that!!! I could wake up every morning and choose to have extraordinary singleness of purpose, and then simply have the will to carry it out! By making the secret something we could choose rather than something we were born with, Graves empowered his listeners like nothing else he could have said. <p /> Years later, on New Year's Day of 2005, I believe, Andrés Duany called up and said "wanna go hang out with Michael Graves today?" Of course I did! Frank Martinez, a student of Graves many years ago and Miami architect and New Urban Guild member, picked us all up and we spent the entire day finding the latest cool stuff in Miami. Somewhere along the way, I told the story and asked Michael if by chance he might remember the conversation. His answer, in his typically humble and gentlemanly way, was "I can't imagine having said something so insightful." But he did. And it has changed so many things for me since that day. <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/extraordinary-singleness-of-purpose">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-7970805894387294482?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-47935537374019086992011-03-14T11:16:00.001-07:002011-03-14T11:16:42.269-07:00<div class='posterous_autopost'>I know very little about the three ancient virtues of praise, thankfulness, and blessing. Or at least the first and last... I was taught as a child to say "thank you." But let's consider all three and how they can work together: <p /> Praise is something you give to someone else because of things they have been or have done in the past. Put another way, it's recognition of a job well done or a life well lived. We frequently praise people once they've died, but not so predictably while they're still alive. Judging by the great praise/complaint imbalance, an alien might assume that humans have nearly as much of a problem praising someone as telling someone they love them. And they just might be right. <p /> Thankfulness is something you give to someone else in the present moment. It's the most well-understood of the three, IMO, and also the most common, as noted above. <p /> Blessing is something you give to someone in the interest of the future. It is, by contrast with thankfulness, something that we hardly understand at all anymore. Today, getting "blessed out" is slang for getting cursed out. Once, however, many cultures understood and practiced blessing. Blessing is stronger than "best wishes for the future." Instead, when you bless someone, you accompany the blessing with something like "... may this be so..." or "... let this be so..." It's telling a good truth for someone else in advance: exactly the opposite of a curse. <p /> One other thing to note... I have no idea what effect praise, thankfulness, and blessing might have on the receiver, but it clearly has a healing and empowering effect upon the giver. Try it out, if you don't already, and let's talk about what you discover. <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/praise-thankfulness-and-blessing">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-4793553737401908699?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-90392144677521659142011-03-08T11:01:00.001-08:002011-03-08T11:01:33.721-08:00<div class='posterous_autopost'>The financial consequences of sprawl are steep, and also broad, affecting budgets in places we might not often think of.&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/i2yRfB">This post is the first in a series that will examine the costs of sprawl</a>&nbsp;to cities, neighborhoods, and citizens. <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/costs-of-sprawl-part-1">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-9039214467752165914?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-55479862481519398712011-03-01T15:57:00.001-08:002011-03-01T15:57:48.279-08:00<div class='posterous_autopost'><a href="http://bit.ly/edaOeM">Automobile Poverty - Part 1 (Money)</a><br /> Where we live is a huge part of how well we live... especially whether we live in a place that forces us to drive everywhere. This post looks at the numbers, showing the massive financial benefits of&nbsp;walkability. For millions, it could be the difference between living in poverty... or not, especially as the price of gas goes up.<p /><div><a href="http://bit.ly/f0Rmp2">Automobile Poverty - Part 2 (Time and Health)</a></div><div>Driving everywhere in sprawl impoverishes us in more places than just our pocketbook. There are immense time costs that likely go beyond what you may realize. And the health costs of sprawl&nbsp;may be the most grievous of all.</div> <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/automobile-poverty">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-5547986248151939871?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-85344926854530263872011-03-01T12:24:00.001-08:002011-03-01T12:24:40.757-08:00<div class='posterous_autopost'>Actually, the title's a bit misleading, because this post is only about the parts of Michael Barranco's legacy which I've observed personally. Michael was a Renaissance man; an architect, artist, musician, and civic leader. The more than two and a half thousand people who packed the Performing Arts Center at Belhaven University in Jackson, Mississippi on Saturday for the celebration of Michael's life attested to how much he meant to so many in his community. But Michael's life and work also had a much broader impact, even though he never would have told you so himself.<p /><div>I first met Michael in Jackson, Mississippi, at DPZ's planning charrette for Lost Rabbit, a new town on the Ross Barnett reservoir near Madison, Mississippi. Mark Frascogna and Richard Ridgeway, the Town Founders of Lost Rabbit, had selected Michael to be the Town Architect. We had a lot to talk about from the very beginning, because I'd served as Town Architect in a number of new towns and neighborhoods for several years. I could go on for hours about the character, intensity, and basic decency of this man, but then, many others share those characteristics. Let's look instead at the events spawned as a result of those characteristics.</div><p /><div>Several months after the planning charrette, Michael started talking to me about an architectural charrette to develop home designs for Lost Rabbit. This is highly unusual, because most first-time Town Architects without a long-running history in the New Urbanism tend to use their position to secure as much work as possible for themselves. Michael, on the other hand, was doing the right (but highly unusual) thing of bringing in some of the best New Urbanist architects he could find. We selected Eric Moser, Julie Sanford, Lou Oliver, and Milton Grenfell from the ranks of the New Urban Guild and set the charrette for July, 2004. It would be the second official New Urban Guild charrette, after the one at Alys Beach that January.</div><p /><div>Michael was a major part of an extraordinary decision made on the first morning of the charrette to focus on a best architecture of the region. Previously, most developments picked a random handful of historical styles for their architectural "collection." This decision, made jointly but with Michael's urging, transformed so many things about the way we have worked in the years since. But that was only the beginning of transformations. A much bigger one was a couple days away.</div><p /><div>The charrette proceeded with palpable excitement over this different way of doing architecture; and the shadows of new insights hung strong in the air. &nbsp;Michael and Jene hosted dinner the night before the charrette ended; it was an evening of new bonds and new ideas. The final day came and went, as did the celebratory dinner. Later, as we stood in the parlor of our B&amp;B, the Millsaps-Buie house, came the most transformative moment of my career. We were still trying to get our minds wrapped around all the new implications of this way of working. I had been searching for years for what I called the "Transmission Device of Living Traditions," not sure quite what it was, but clear on the fact that it allowed ordinary people, for most of history, to build extraordinary places better than what the best planners and architects could do now. Late that evening, someone was describing an architectural element's function as "We do this because..." And then it hit me: "We do this because..." That's it!! That's the Transmission Device!!! If you put ever pattern of a language of architecture into these terms, then you open up the rationale of the patterns and allow architecture to live again! It isn't just some random collection of historical styles... it's what we do and why we do it! Had Michael not advocated so strongly on that first morning for taking this approach, for reasons none of us understood at the moment, the Transmission Device might not have been rediscovered that last night. And so many things might have remained locked up to us, even unto this day.</div><p /><div>Just over a year later, the Gulf Coast was irreparably and violently changed by Hurricane Katrina. I had been on the road for several days before and after the storm, and returned to Miami both physically and emotionally exhausted on September 2.&nbsp;My wife and business partner Wanda met me at the office door. She said "I've been on the phone with Michael Barranco; it's urgent. You need to call him tonight." I was exhausted and wanted&nbsp;to call him on Monday. Surely he'd be out of the office by this hour.&nbsp;</div><br />But Wanda persisted, and so I called. Michael was still there. He said "Steve, we're assembling a Governor's Commission, and we'd like to have you come and speak to them very soon about how to rebuild Mississippi according to the principles of the New Urbanism..." We talked for a good while longer about the particulars,&nbsp;and about the storm. Michael was still running his office by candlelight, as Jackson had taken a big hit from the storm, too, even though it is well over 100 miles inland.&nbsp;<p />I realized immediately that the job was too big for me. The rebuilding of the entire Gulf Coast deserved the very best, and deserved more than just a speech. I called Andrés Duany and arranged to come back in the morning to discuss this new&nbsp;development.&nbsp;Andrés, revered by many as the world's greatest rock star of planning, said "this is too big for me, too... let's call in the entire Congress for the New Urbanism." And so we did. And with this began a series of events that changed forever both the Gulf Coast and the New Urbanism.<br /><p /><div>Through the years that followed, Michael worked quietly at the highest levels to advance the right ideals of rebuilding. Without him, we were just a bunch of outsiders, but with him, we were far more effective. If you really pressed him, he would simply say that he was doing what any civic-minded person would do. But he's responsible for so much more than that. The Mississippi Renewal Forum was the largest planning event in human history, with nearly 200 planners working side-by-side in one cavernous room to re-plan the Mississippi Gulf Coast. It never would have happened without Michael. The Katrina Cottages initiative sprang out of the recovery work. Katrina Cottages would likely never have existed without Michael. So many careers, including my own, have been unalterably changed by the awful necessity of trying to stand up and do something to help those devastated states recover... and that first big move in Mississippi that opened so many doors thereafter would never have been possible without Michael. Even today, the New Urbanists are the most trusted people in recoveries in other places such as Haiti... and that all began with Michael. So this one man, humbly doing what he considered to be his civic duty, has seen the influences of that duty ripple outward far beyond what he ever would have imagined, around the country and across the seas.</div><p /><div>That civic duty now has ended. One week ago tonight, Michael died in a one-car accident in northern Mississippi returning from a meeting with clients. Those with great burdens of duty often carry exhaustion around with them wherever they go. The police say there were no skid marks... Michael had fallen asleep.</div><p /><div>But though his duty has ended, his legacy has only begun. We who knew him well mourn his loss deeply, but there is so much that will live on. How might we recover differently from future disasters, both at home and abroad, because of what Michael started? How might the Katrina Cottages become a part of the solution of affordable housing? And of multi-generational homesteads? And of working from home? How will architecture change, now that we understand the Transmission Device? Will we again see living traditions in architecture as a result? It may take a lifetime to discover answers to these and other questions about the legacy of Michael Barranco.</div><p /><div>-Steve Mouzon</div><p /><p /><div>I participate in a new blogosphere phenomenon known as #LetsBlogOff on Twitter, where word of each blog post is spread. Normally, I take the topic in a green direction and post it on the Original Green Blog, but I the subject this week is "What is Legacy," and I can't think of a more appropriate and timely story to tell than Michael's. Here are the other participants who have posted so far today:<br /></div><p /><div><table border="0" style="color: rgb(75, 75, 75); font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 20px;"><tr><td style="text-align: left; padding-top: 2px; padding-right: 2px; padding-bottom: 2px; padding-left: 2px;">Veronika Miller</td><td style="text-align: left; padding-top: 2px; padding-right: 2px; padding-bottom: 2px; padding-left: 2px;"><a href="http://twitter.com/modenus" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(75, 75, 75); text-decoration: none;">@modenus</a></td><td style="text-align: left; padding-top: 2px; padding-right: 2px; padding-bottom: 2px; padding-left: 2px;"><a href="http://www.modenus.com/blog/businessofdesign/lets-blog-off-legacy-maybe-were-creating-it-right-now" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(75, 75, 75); text-decoration: none;">Modenus Community</a></td></tr><tr><td style="text-align: left; padding-top: 2px; padding-right: 2px; padding-bottom: 2px; padding-left: 2px;">Richard Holschuh</td><td style="text-align: left; padding-top: 2px; padding-right: 2px; padding-bottom: 2px; padding-left: 2px;"><a href="http://twitter.com/concretedetail" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(75, 75, 75); text-decoration: none;">@concretedetail</a></td><td style="text-align: left; padding-top: 2px; padding-right: 2px; padding-bottom: 2px; padding-left: 2px;"><a href="http://concretedetailblog.com/a-note-sustained" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(75, 75, 75); text-decoration: none;">Concrete Detail</a></td></tr><tr><td style="text-align: left; padding-top: 2px; padding-right: 2px; padding-bottom: 2px; padding-left: 2px;">Mark Robertson</td><td style="text-align: left; padding-top: 2px; padding-right: 2px; padding-bottom: 2px; padding-left: 2px;"><a href="http://twitter.com/markosul" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(75, 75, 75); text-decoration: none;">@markosul</a></td><td style="text-align: left; padding-top: 2px; padding-right: 2px; padding-bottom: 2px; padding-left: 2px;"><a href="http://www.thepanamericans.net/2011/02/on-legacy-live-long-and-prospero.html" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(75, 75, 75); text-decoration: none;">The Pan-Americans</a></td></tr><tr><td style="text-align: left; padding-top: 2px; padding-right: 2px; padding-bottom: 2px; padding-left: 2px;">Saxon Henry.</td><td style="text-align: left; padding-top: 2px; padding-right: 2px; padding-bottom: 2px; padding-left: 2px;"><a href="http://twitter.com/saxonhenry" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(75, 75, 75); text-decoration: none;">@saxonhenry</a></td><td style="text-align: left; padding-top: 2px; padding-right: 2px; padding-bottom: 2px; padding-left: 2px;"><a href="http://theroadtopromise.com/water-pumps-and-troy-boys-a-legacy-for-letsbl" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(75, 75, 75); text-decoration: none;">The Road to Promise</a></td></tr><tr><td style="text-align: left; padding-top: 2px; padding-right: 2px; padding-bottom: 2px; padding-left: 2px;">Tourney Central</td><td style="text-align: left; padding-top: 2px; padding-right: 2px; padding-bottom: 2px; padding-left: 2px;"><a href="http://twitter.com/tourneycentral" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(75, 75, 75); text-decoration: none;">@tourneycentral</a></td><td style="text-align: left; padding-top: 2px; padding-right: 2px; padding-bottom: 2px; padding-left: 2px;"><a href="http://www.tourneycentral.com/soccer-tournament-legacy-a-letsblogoff-post.html" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(75, 75, 75); text-decoration: none;">TourneyCentral Touchline</a></td></tr><tr><td style="text-align: left; padding-top: 2px; padding-right: 2px; padding-bottom: 2px; padding-left: 2px;">Bruce Dahlquist</td><td style="text-align: left; padding-top: 2px; padding-right: 2px; padding-bottom: 2px; padding-left: 2px;"><a href="http://twitter.com/DLA_Architects" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(75, 75, 75); text-decoration: none;">@DLA_Architects</a></td><td style="text-align: left; padding-top: 2px; padding-right: 2px; padding-bottom: 2px; padding-left: 2px;"><a href="http://blog.dla-ltd.com/2011/03/brick-by-brick-it-all-adds-up-to-something/" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(75, 75, 75); text-decoration: none;">DLA Architects Blog</a></td></tr><tr><td style="text-align: left; padding-top: 2px; padding-right: 2px; padding-bottom: 2px; padding-left: 2px;">Bonnie Harris</td><td style="text-align: left; padding-top: 2px; padding-right: 2px; padding-bottom: 2px; padding-left: 2px;"><a href="http://twitter.com/waxgirl333" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(75, 75, 75); text-decoration: none;">@waxgirl333</a></td><td style="text-align: left; padding-top: 2px; padding-right: 2px; padding-bottom: 2px; padding-left: 2px;"><a href="http://blog.waxmarketing.com/2011/03/01/a-marketing-definition-of-legacy/" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(75, 75, 75); text-decoration: none;">Wax Marketing</a></td></tr><tr><td style="text-align: left; padding-top: 2px; padding-right: 2px; padding-bottom: 2px; padding-left: 2px;">Rufus Dogg</td><td style="text-align: left; padding-top: 2px; padding-right: 2px; padding-bottom: 2px; padding-left: 2px;"><a href="http://twitter.com/dogwalkblog" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(75, 75, 75); text-decoration: none;">@dogwalkblog</a></td><td style="text-align: left; padding-top: 2px; padding-right: 2px; padding-bottom: 2px; padding-left: 2px;"><a href="http://www.dogwalkblog.com/what-is-legacy-a-letsblogoff-post.html" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(75, 75, 75); text-decoration: none;">DogWalkBlog</a></td></tr><tr><td style="text-align: left; padding-top: 2px; padding-right: 2px; padding-bottom: 2px; padding-left: 2px;">Betsy De Maio</td><td style="text-align: left; padding-top: 2px; padding-right: 2px; padding-bottom: 2px; padding-left: 2px;"><a href="http://twitter.com/egrgirl" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(75, 75, 75); text-decoration: none;">@egrgirl</a></td><td style="text-align: left; padding-top: 2px; padding-right: 2px; padding-bottom: 2px; padding-left: 2px;"><a href="http://egrgirl.wordpress.com/2011/03/01/love-and-honor/" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(75, 75, 75); text-decoration: none;">Egrgirl's Blog</a></td></tr><tr><td style="text-align: left; padding-top: 2px; padding-right: 2px; padding-bottom: 2px; padding-left: 2px;">Paul Anater</td><td style="text-align: left; padding-top: 2px; padding-right: 2px; padding-bottom: 2px; padding-left: 2px;"><a href="http://twitter.com/paul_anater" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(75, 75, 75); text-decoration: none;">@paul_anater</a></td><td style="text-align: left; padding-top: 2px; padding-right: 2px; padding-bottom: 2px; padding-left: 2px;"><a href="http://www.kitchenandresidentialdesign.com/2011/02/what-is-legacy-blog-off-post.html" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(75, 75, 75); text-decoration: none;">Kitchen and Residential Design</a></td></tr><tr><td style="text-align: left; padding-top: 2px; padding-right: 2px; padding-bottom: 2px; padding-left: 2px;">Sean Lintow, Sr.</td><td style="text-align: left; padding-top: 2px; padding-right: 2px; padding-bottom: 2px; padding-left: 2px;"><a href="http://twitter.com/SLSconstruction" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(75, 75, 75); text-decoration: none;">@SLSconstruction</a></td><td style="text-align: left; padding-top: 2px; padding-right: 2px; padding-bottom: 2px; padding-left: 2px;"><a href="http://blog.sls-construction.com/2011/what-kind-of-legacy-will-you-leave" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(75, 75, 75); text-decoration: none;">SLS-Construction.com</a></td></tr><tr><td style="text-align: left; padding-top: 2px; padding-right: 2px; padding-bottom: 2px; padding-left: 2px;">Becky Shankle</td><td style="text-align: left; padding-top: 2px; padding-right: 2px; padding-bottom: 2px; padding-left: 2px;"><a href="http://twitter.com/ecomod" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(75, 75, 75); text-decoration: none;">@ecomod</a></td><td style="text-align: left; padding-top: 2px; padding-right: 2px; padding-bottom: 2px; padding-left: 2px;"><a href="http://www.eco-modernism.com/2011/03/legacy-letsblogoff/" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(75, 75, 75); text-decoration: none;">Eco-Modernism</a></td></tr><tr><td style="text-align: left; padding-top: 2px; padding-right: 2px; padding-bottom: 2px; padding-left: 2px;">Nick Lovelady</td><td style="text-align: left; padding-top: 2px; padding-right: 2px; padding-bottom: 2px; padding-left: 2px;"><a href="http://twitter.com/cupboards" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(75, 75, 75); text-decoration: none;">@cupboards</a></td><td style="text-align: left; padding-top: 2px; padding-right: 2px; padding-bottom: 2px; padding-left: 2px;"><a href="http://www.cupboardsonline.com/2011/03/letsblogoff-what-is-legacyor-what-it.html" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(75, 75, 75); text-decoration: none;">Cupboards Kitchen and Bath</a></td></tr><tr><td style="text-align: left; padding-top: 2px; padding-right: 2px; padding-bottom: 2px; padding-left: 2px;">Izzy Darlow</td><td style="text-align: left; padding-top: 2px; padding-right: 2px; padding-bottom: 2px; padding-left: 2px;"><a href="http://twitter.com/izzydarlow" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(75, 75, 75); text-decoration: none;">@izzydarlow</a></td><td style="text-align: left; padding-top: 2px; padding-right: 2px; padding-bottom: 2px; padding-left: 2px;"><a href="http://www.overlapstudio.net/RTV/Blog/Entries/2011/2/28_Legacy_is....html" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(75, 75, 75); text-decoration: none;">Robbing the Void</a></td></tr><tr><td style="text-align: left; padding-top: 2px; padding-right: 2px; padding-bottom: 2px; padding-left: 2px;">James Dibben</td><td style="text-align: left; padding-top: 2px; padding-right: 2px; padding-bottom: 2px; padding-left: 2px;"><a href="http://twitter.com/bluecollarcoach" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(75, 75, 75); text-decoration: none;">@bluecollarcoach</a></td><td style="text-align: left; padding-top: 2px; padding-right: 2px; padding-bottom: 2px; padding-left: 2px;"><a href="http://bluecollarcoaching.net/what-is-legacy-lets-blogoff" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(75, 75, 75); text-decoration: none;">Blue Collar Coaching</a></td></tr></table><p /></div> <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/the-legacy-of-michael-barranco">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-8534492685453026387?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-22897984913161329472011-02-10T06:21:00.001-08:002011-02-10T06:21:56.654-08:00<div class='posterous_autopost'>American Airlines should not only promote Arthur Richardson; it should make him the Director of Customer Relations. Earlier in the day, the flight attendant on the AA flight between Richmond and Miami nearly destroyed my faith in basic human decency in customer service because of her attitude about rule enforcement at the expense of the welfare of small animals. Arthur Richardson, working the Miami to Cleveland flight, restored that faith in spades with his personification of basic human decency and customer service. The other flight attendant was insistent upon enforcing rules we'd never heard of... and I fly enough to achieve the highest frequent flyer status on two airlines (American and Delta) most years. Arthur, on the other hand, made us both feel like treasured guests on his airplane. It's a world of difference... earlier tonight, I was within an eyelash of taking all my business to Delta, which would have been a loss of at least $20,000/year to American. Because of Arthur, American won't take the loss, and may very well benefit instead. Every company in America should be seeking out your Arthur Richardsons right now; they are essential to your survival. <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/arthur-richardson-a-restoration-of-faith-in-c">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-2289798491316132947?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-77586458471165098542011-02-01T02:53:00.001-08:002011-02-01T02:53:06.592-08:00<div class='posterous_autopost'>I made this really nifty graphic in Keynote illustrating the Classical-Vernacular Spectrum about a year ago:<p><a href='http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/usefulstuff/ibfV3u1SptkCqSY66HxNx9zsjUJX1maP3BYjUEVS1SH7FQa0iFVKEAgH053q/C-V_spectrum.jpg.scaled.1000.jpg'><img src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/usefulstuff/W2wbvEyHdNPnYNJaf6UKqR67Yqau27gudwWFpWRiHs8tyC7WBKTG3XfUIjuN/C-V_spectrum.jpg.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" height="375"/></a> </p><p>Today, I'm working on a presentation where I also need to be able to import little images with transparent backgrounds so that stuff behind them comes right up to the edge of the image. But try as I might, no amount of copying and pasting through PhotoShop would make it work. In every case, pasting from PhotoShop resulted in a rectangular image where everything outside the image I wanted was white. Imagine taking each of the images above, drawing a rectangle around it, and filling in with white. In any case, on a whim, I grabbed the PhotoShop file in the finder and dropped it into Keynote. Presto! That worked!</p> <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/graphics-without-backgrounds-in-keynote">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-7758645847116509854?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-84624531083450991512011-01-20T16:42:00.001-08:002011-01-20T16:42:22.499-08:00<div class='posterous_autopost'><div>You need a personal blog where you can write about wider-ranging stuff, in addition to your main blog. That's where you'd put topics further afield that don't really belong on the focused blog. I use posterous, which makes it insanely easy to post... you just send an email to <a href="mailto:post@posterous.com">post@posterous.com</a>, and it turns your email into a blog post. Here's a sample of my posts on Useful Stuff; as you can see, none of them would have really been appropriate on the&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/4zJgpq">Original Green Blog</a>&nbsp;or&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/evDiGw">3 Useful Minutes</a>:&nbsp;</div><p /><div><a href="http://bit.ly/fFXpsD">A Voice in the Wilderness</a>&nbsp;is an adaptation of an earlier offline thought on other matters.</div><div><a href="http://bit.ly/eZexVi">iContact's Big Blunder</a>&nbsp;actually got a response from a corporate guy at iContact, and now I'll be consulting with them on future design issues.</div><div><a href="http://bit.ly/gAnAqu">New Media Resources</a>&nbsp;is teeming with Amazon links to useful books, each potentially earning the Guild Foundation small referral fees... and it's closing in on 2,000 readers.</div><div><a href="http://bit.ly/eNFsz3">Chicago O'Hare Port of Entry???</a>&nbsp;is a straight-up customer service rant. Again, nearly 2,000 readers.</div><div><a href="http://bit.ly/eSkRyX">Note Refinement and the Worthy Notebook</a>&nbsp;contains links to several earlier posts. Most of the 2,000+ hits came from <a href="http://moleskine.com">moleskine.com</a>, where I cross-posted in their Hacks blog.</div><div><a href="http://bit.ly/dUxXzx">Windows for SketchUp - or - Solving Complexity One Bit at a Time</a>&nbsp;is both a technical CAD note and a metaphysical musing.</div><p /><div>I could go on, but you get the idea. We all talk about stuff broader than just our professions... that's a big part of what makes each of us interesting. So why does our blogging so often just focus on the professional stuff? Doing so strips us of the things that interest people most about us! That's why you really need a second blog.</div> <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/why-a-second-blog">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-8462453108345099151?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-46102240797317887922011-01-20T15:54:00.001-08:002011-01-20T15:54:05.899-08:00<div class='posterous_autopost'>I've noticed that many nice things happen when you give credit where it's due. This is no more evident than in the New Media, which is all about the conversation. It may seem paradoxical to give credit to someone who may have more followers than you since so many people know them and their ideas, but here's why it's a good idea: if they feel you're helping them, then they will reciprocate by promoting you to their larger audience. Even if they don't, then it's still the right thing to do. Have a look at my&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/fQFcMB">favorites timeline</a>... you can be fairly certain that if I haven't credited someone else, then it's actually my own quote/musing/rambling/whatever. Sometimes the idea may begin with someone else's, but it's only when I feel I've made significant modifications to the idea that I don't quote them.<p /><div>Similarly, if you're re-tweeting someone, ALWAYS begin their part with "RT @TheirUserName." There are two reasons for this: You want them to see it, and that's the only sure way because it makes the tweet show up in their mentions. And again, it credits them with the original idea. They may continue in a discussion with you for some time if you do this, and each time you're each getting exposure to the other's followers. Always try to have conversation frequently. Pronouncements are good, if the ideas are good, but conversations have benefits that pronouncements do not.</div><p /><div>Incidentally, you'll notice that almost all of the tweets I've favorited in my&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/fQFcMB">favorites timeline</a>&nbsp;are pronouncements... what's up with that? That's because a favorited tweet needs to stand on its own. Here's why: favorites reach further back in time than anything else you can do on twitter, and when you go so far back, it's impossible to find the rest of the tweets that were parts of the conversation (unless you favorite them all, which clutters your favorites timeline.) Favorited tweets, as noted, really should stand on their own, which is the essence of a pronouncement. So your favorites timeline likely won't closely reflect the character of your&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/dGbg95">full timeline</a>.</div><p /><div>Two more things on format: for non-twitter quotes I hear or read, I've done them in two ways in the past: 1. Begin with "@TheirUserName: " if they're on twitter or "Their Name: " if they're not. 2. End with "~@TheirUserName" if they're on twitter or "~Their Name" if they're not. Each method requires the same number of characters, as you're using a colon after the name on the first method or a "tilde" (or whatever the proper name is for that cool little squiggly dash) before the name. So there's no character burden either way. I now prefer the latter method, because if you're quoting someone several times (like you may do when they're speaking at an event of some sort) then it gets boring to keep leading with their name. Chip and Dan Heath, in their excellent book&nbsp;<a href="http://amzn.to/5xlYqE">Made to Stick</a>, have an entire chapter on "Don't Bury the Lead." It's an old news maxim going all the way back to the Civil War; the upshot is that you should always lead with your most important idea, and spend the rest of the article supporting it. That's why I now prefer to quote at the end rather than the beginning.</div> <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/proper-credit-on-twitter">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-4610224079731788792?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-40390115348979331462011-01-17T10:57:00.001-08:002011-01-17T10:57:24.442-08:00<div class='posterous_autopost'>I'm putting together a presentation for Pella Windows (Marketing for Architects in the New Economy.) I'll be doing it 15 times around the US over the next 4 months. I think it'll be quite useful for others of us as well. Here's the essence of the entire presentation boiled down into a single iconic image... the Big O of New Media Engagement:<p><a href='http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/usefulstuff/bocO3AAjAkBhaIKIFmf0MxPo4JotfWTUfwAVZwG8k8kfkqLk7BmPLRbaSSD0/2-network.jpg'><img src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/usefulstuff/4K5KTRAOMGt6Oipq0gqNUPtsjYC2KEPrhSv6ggQEBAxNUgm502OcCjR3Rqzm/2-network.jpg.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" height="462"/></a> </p> <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/the-big-o-of-new-media-engagement">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-4039011534897933146?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-33805089684723470302011-01-10T11:45:00.001-08:002011-01-10T11:45:49.824-08:00<div class='posterous_autopost'>I'm writing this because I made a big blunder I'm going to have to fix when I return home, and want to write it all down while it's fresh on my mind so I don't make the same mistake again. Hopefully, it might help someone else as well. <p /> I've had a long, good history with Macintosh hardware, so in the nearly 3 years that I've been backing up to Time Machine, I've never had to recover more than just a few files that had been lost due to my error. This weekend, however, I had a complete hard drive failure. I did everything I could think of, but it was beyond resuscitation. After many hours, I finally gulped and hit the Erase Disk button. <p /> Here's how it happened: I back up every computer in the office to a 6 TB LaCie RAID drive attached to my file server machine. Time Machine isn't supposed to be able to do that, but I found a little freeware utility that allows Time Machine to back up over a LAN to an external drive. Don't remember the utility name, but I'll post it as a comment when I can get to it again. But it's not the main story here... <p /> There were problems all along the way. The computer kept trying to do a safe reboot, but failed again and again. What next? I have a huge deadline on a very important job, so waiting until I could get to the Apple store simply isn't an option. Compound that with the fact that I had to board a train this morning and will do a lecture at Rollins College in Winter Park before returning home, and it's clear that it was essential to get the thing started before leaving. But how? <p /> I remembered something from years ago about starting a Mac from the system install DVD, so I hunted around the office until I finally found the DVD. But nothing was easy this weekend. I can't just eject the DVD that's already in the machine because it has to be started up for the eject button to work. And the new Macs no longer have the manual eject button where you can kick out the disc with a straightened-out paper clip. I went to the file server and did some Googling, and discovered that you can hold down the mouse key while restarting and it'll kick out the disc. But will it do it if the machine never fully starts up? It was worth a try, but it didn't work with my Bluetooth mouse, apparently because it never gets far enough into the startup process to enable Bluetooth. Panicking, I hunted around and found an old mouse with a tail and plugged it into my laptop. It worked. Out with the other disk, and in with the system disc. <p /> Another round of Googling reveals that if you want to start up from the DVD, you should hold down the C key while starting up until the apple appears on the grey screen. Matter of fact, this handy page that I found on the Apple site lists all the startup keys you can use. That works... It finally starts up! At least that means the motherboard isn't fried, which is a problem I couldn't do anything about. <p /> The install disk takes you right to the installer, naturally, but I didn't want to install a n system quite yet. I first wanted to figure out what was wrong. But there didn't seem to be the option of doing anything but reinstalling. Like I said, I have very little experience with major Mac failures, so I'm a novice at recovery. But eventually, I noticed that one of the menus in the menu bar is Utilities, so I clicked there and discovered that you can get to several things from there, including Disk Utility. Now we're cooking... Or so I thought. I tried first to repair the disk, but it said that it couldn't be repaired... so now, after all these hours, I at least know that it's a hard drive problem. <p /> When Repair didn't work, I decided to try Repair Disk Permissions. That failed, saying that the disk needed to be repaired first. But now Repair was greyed out, so the only thing I could do is Verify Disk. That failed, telling me the disk needed to be repaired. No kidding! But this time, the Repair button was working again, so I clicked it, wondering if some of the other steps might have changed something. No such luck. Apparently there was nothing left to do but wrasse the disk. <p /> But by now, I'm having some serious heartburn, because I'd never tried to recover a full hard drive with Time Machine before. What if it didn't get everything? What if my files were lost? Catastrophic data loss, more often than not, results in the failure of a small business in subsequent months, so this is serious stuff. I'd used the Mac's Target Disk mode before when migrating from one machine to another. To do it, you start the target machine up by holding down the T key during startup, then plug it up to the other machine with a FireWire cable for a high-speed connection. <p /> It started up, but when I plugged it into another machine, the only thing that came up on the desktop was the install DVD it had used for startup. Feeling really sick, I opened Disk Utility on the other machine. It could see my disk but it wasn't mounted. Would it mount??? It did! <p /> I could see the files, but were they good? I copied a few to the other machine and tried to open them, and they appeared to be OK. Huge sign of relief! So the first thing I did was copy the really important job and a couple other very important things. But the idea of erasing the rest of that stuff was just too terrifying. This was the last time I ever had assurances of seeing those files, if Time Machine didn't work as billed. At first I looked at copying all of my User folders, but that's over 300 gigs, so I dropped back and just copied the Documents folder within my primary User. Still around 100 gigs. <p /> During the time it took that to copy, I got to wondering what else essential I might be missing, and then it occurred to me: al of my dozens of gigs of email was inside my User's Library, and I had a lot of stuff on the Desktop as well. So I copied all of those to an external drive, since there's not enough room for all that on the other laptop. <p /> By this time, I'd despaired of getting my laptop running again before having to leave, so i decided to take the other laptop instead. But by the time all the copying was complete, I decided to give it a try... What's to lose, right? <p /> So I took the laptop over to the file server. Seems like I vaguely recall something about FireWire networking, and if that worked, that would be a much faster file transfer. More Googling revealed a somewhat complicated set of procedures, but that was for an earlier version of OS X. Wonder what would happen if I just plugged them up? In Mac-like fashion, it just worked! <p /> So I went back to Disk Utility on the install DVD, which had an option to restore the disk from a Time Machine backup. But try as I might, I couldn't get it to show either the source drive or the target drive in the right windows. Wonder if I might need to actually install the system on my hard drive first? Maybe it doesn't work from the install DVD? So I did the full system install, which took roughly a half-hour. At least there's no disk swapping anymore since everything is on a single DVD. <p /> After install, I went to Migration Assistant, because that's what you have to use to restore the disk after you have a system installed. I tried to install the disk, but it couldn't see the RAID source drive; only the file server's startup disk. Things got a little fuzzy here since I was clicking so many things here, trying to find a combination that worked, but I think it's here that I made my big mistake. Nothing worked, so I gave up and took my laptop back to my desk, resigned to restoring it over the LAN, finishing after I left on my trip. <p /> But back at my desk, I still couldn't see the RAID source; only the server disk. So I thought "wonder what happens if I mount the RAID drive directly on my laptop?" I did that, and a backup source appeared, but it still said "Server". Exasperated, I figured that this had to be the RAID drive since nothing else was mounted on my machine. Maybe it showed up this way because the RAID drive is normally hooked up to the server? So I set it up to restore, and finally hit the button that erased everything on my hard drive. <p /> It seemed to be working, but something wasn't right. There was a only about 250gigs of data to be restored. But i knew that I had about 450 gigs on my drive. What was wrong? What was it missing? No way to know now; all I could do was to let it run through and see what happened. <p /> Because I was backing up via high-speed FireWire, the restore actually finished before I had to leave. But it was obvious that something was seriously wrong aaa soon as I was able to look at what I had. Tons of stuff was missing. But strangely, there were old applications that I knew I didn't have on my disk, and some of the newer applications weren't there at all. Slowly, it dawned on me... what I was looking at was a mirror image of my file server's startup disk! <p /> But why? How had that happened? I'll never know for sure, but I noticed that the disk sparse image (whatever that means) of my disk on the RAID backup disk said MacBookSteve plus some gobbledygook. That's my computer's name, not my disk's name! Apparently, every disk I hook up to my laptop gets backed up to this one sparse image. But what was the name of my computer now, after the restore? <p /> Sure enough, it had inexplicably been renamed "Server". I'm sure I did it somehow, back during those fuzzy hours. Wonder what happens if I rename the computer? I went to the system preference for Network. Under one of the tabs, you can set the name of the machine. I renamed it MacBookSteve, then went back to the Migration Assistant. Finally, everything was there! All my Users, my settings, etc... All there! But there's no way I was going to have time to restore all 450 gigs before leaving, so I decided to limp along with my hard drive mirroring my server disk until Thursday. When I get back, here's what I'm going to do: <p /> A. Connect the RAID backup drive directly to my laptop. <p /> B. Boot the laptop with the system install DVD. <p /> C. Erase the disk (again!) <p /> D. Install the system Snow Leopard. <p /> E. Change the computer's name to MacBookSteve. <p /> F. As a precaution, I'm going to do all the system updates before doing anything else, so that Snow Leopard is completely up to date. <p /> G. From Migration Assistant, migrate everything from my backup. <p /> Hopefully, that should do it! I'll post any significant snags as comments to this post. Thoughts? What have I not considered? <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/recovering-from-a-mac-hard-drive-failure">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-3380508968472347030?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-73738658463219053722011-01-06T07:04:00.001-08:002011-01-06T07:04:42.764-08:00<div class='posterous_autopost'>There's an ancient passage that describes "a voice crying in the wilderness..." I've been wondering... why was the owner of the voice out in the wilderness if he was a trying to affect change? Why wasn't he in the city, where the people are? There may be several reasons, which can apply across a broad range of things that we do: <p /> A. There aren't many people saying things in the wilderness, so a voice is much more likely to be heard there than in the cacophony of the city. <p /> B. Someone walking in the wilderness has a left their normal support structures behind, so they're more vulnerable. When you're out there, something might fall on you or bite you, or it might even eat you. So you're far more attentive to the things that you see and hear. <p /> C. Someone walking in the wilderness has also left behind all their normal schedule of activities. No errands to run out there. So their attention isn't consumed with all the things of daily life. <p /> In the ancient passage, once the few sensitized listeners returned to the city, they told all their friends about the compelling message they had heard from the voice, and soon, multitudes of people were making the trek to the wilderness to hear the message. So it's likely that far more people heard the voice than would have ever heard in the city. <p /> What does all this have to do with us? The era of mass media is ending, splintering into countless shards, so not even the gazillionaires can buy enough ink or airtime to be heard by the masses now, because everyone is reading, watching, or listening to something different. <p /> But the social media that are replacing mass media are a roiling, never-ending cascade of voices... My twitter stream never sleeps; does yours? Speaking blindly into that maelstrom of sound could very well be useless. What to do? I'd suggest that following the pattern of the ancient voice in the wilderness is a really good idea: A. Speak in places where there aren't nearly so many voices. This means losing all pretense of a broadcast to the masses, and speaking directly to individuals. <p /> B. Speak to those who are vulnerable, meaning that they're in need of something. Don't try to feed someone who is stuffed. "But wait," you say, "we're all vulnerable and needy in some way or another." Exactly. So what do you have that's useful for someone? They don't care about what you have; they care about what they need. The ancient voice was offering something exceptionally powerful that everyone needed. Most of us have lesser things to offer... but it had better still be useful stuff for someone, otherwise you're nothing more than a huckster to that person. <p /> C. Speak to people outside their normal schedule of activities. Otherwise, you're nothing but an interruption, and therefore no better than a spammer. For years, this was exceptionally tough, because we had all grown so busy that our schedules consumed us. The Meltdown has changed that for many who are now unemployed or underemployed, and also less able to buy things to fill their time. I'm hopeful that the Meltdown may therefore lead to more listeners who are then able to find the things that are really useful to them. <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/a-voice-in-the-wilderness">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-7373865846321905372?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-58738604101928381952011-01-04T09:18:00.001-08:002011-01-04T09:18:12.312-08:00<div class='posterous_autopost'>How would you&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/fba7OW">write your own obituary</a>?&nbsp;Some people give up living long before they're buried,&nbsp;whereas others create ideas that live on after them.&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/fba7OW">This post</a>&nbsp;looks at how those ideas molt from one stage to another, possibly living on long after the person who had the original insight has passed on... or at least we can all hope for that, can't we? <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/writing-my-obituary">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-5873860410192838195?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-31860475691365565432010-12-29T14:08:00.001-08:002010-12-29T14:08:51.639-08:00<div class='posterous_autopost'>I've used&nbsp;<a href="http://www.icontact.com/">iContact</a>&nbsp;as my mailing list manager for about 2-1/2 years. They've recently made a huge strategic error: it's their new MessageBuilder. By being better than the old layout tool in some things and worse in others, it cripples the perception of both tools, and has me looking for alternatives to iContact.<br /> <p /><div>At first glance, MessageBuilder seems like a huge step forward because whereas the only real layout tool you had in their previous (2009 version) WYSIWYG editor was Tables, which are like spreadsheets. The weakness of Tables is that they can't be used to create a main content area and a sidebar, because everything on Row 2, for example, is forever tied to everything else on Row 2. If they'd let you put two tables side-by-side, that would solve the sidebar problem... but they don't.</div><p /><div>Enter MessageBuilder, where they've added Sections (headers, columns, footers, etc.) into which you can put Blocks into which you can put text and images. It's got a really nifty interface with a look and feel much nimbler than the 2009 WYSIWYG editor. It has only two problems, but they are glaring. What's the first thing you do when laying out a document that will be seen on the web? Often, you decide how wide it will be. What next? You decide how to subdivide that width. In other words, how wide will the columns be?</div><p /><div>MessageBuilder inexplicably doesn't let you make either of those choices. The overall message width is fixed at 600 pixels in the template I'm using. Today, that's pretty narrow on most modern displays. And the only choice you have on sidebar width is "normal," which appears to be about 1/3 of the page, and "thin," which is maybe half that wide. In short, they're jamming you into their preset designs, and you have no choice.</div><p /><div>Tech support confirms that there's no way to change these widths. I don't know much HTML, but I know enough to change something simple like page width, so I opened the HTML edit window and changed it. But now, I can't reopen it in MessageBuilder because once you leave MessageBuilder, it "slams the door behind you." Tech support confirmed this inability as well.</div><p /><div>So now I've wasted a day trying to create the Original Green Curator. iContact, you've shown me all the nifty new stuff in MessageBuilder that the 2009 WYSIWYG editor can't do, so you've made the 2009 editor look bad. But because MessageBuilder can't do even this basic thing that you can do in about 10 seconds with the 2009 editor, I can't use MessageBuilder. So you've soiled both of your tools, and now I'm taking a serious look at your competitors like ConstantContact to see what they can do.</div><p /><div>What to do? Without doubt, fix MessageBuilder so it has these basic capabilities... and do it tomorrow, if not sooner! Until then, you're bleeding from the wound where you shot yourselves in the foot. The moral of this story is: don't make a new tool that's better in some things and worse in other things than the previous tool. Either make it superior on all counts, or make it the "quick &amp; dirty" tool that can't do anything better than the full-feature version. But don't get it mixed up, like iContact has done.</div> <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/icontacts-big-blunder">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-3186047569136556543?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-62790887836780055312010-12-27T07:10:00.001-08:002010-12-27T07:10:12.069-08:00<div class='posterous_autopost'>Dr. Matthew Hardy of the Prince's Foundation for the Built Environment established the Original Green Discussion Group last week.&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/fk01Qn">Please join us</a>&nbsp;for what promises to be lively and provocative discourse! <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/original-green-discussion-group">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-6279088783678005531?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-73260762488719811412010-12-22T08:08:00.001-08:002010-12-22T08:08:03.928-08:00<div class='posterous_autopost'>Marketing as we've known it all our lives is dying before our eyes. Spam is the culprit, because it's conditioned us to hit "delete" so quickly, and with no compunction whatsoever. Today, nobody wants to hear about your company. The era of the company is ending, just as the age of the idea is dawning... by that, I mean that people will listen intensely if you have great or useful ideas who wouldn't give you a moment of their time if you were marketing your company to them. The term "paradigm shift" gets thrown around loosely, but many of the paradigms that are now shifting have been around since the beginnings of the industrial revolution... so this is the real deal.<p /><div>This requires a completely different approach, because nearly everything changes. A number of people have been thinking about what all this means for a decade or so now. There are some excellent books out there, including (alphabetically):</div><p /><div><a href="http://amzn.to/dvOlym">Free Agent Nation</a><br />Daniel H. Pink, Business Plus, 2002.<br />Pink lays out a new form of doing business that is overtaking the corporate model.<p /><a href="http://amzn.to/d6JAxX">Linchpin</a><br />Seth Godin, Portfolio Hardcover, 2010.<br />Greatest rant yet on the end of the Factory Era, where you show up, take orders, and do your job.<p /><a href="http://bit.ly/8Nvp7y"></a></div><div><a href="http://bit.ly/8Nvp7y">Long Tail, The</a><br />Chris Anderson, Hyperion, 2008.<br />Groundbreaking book laying out the mechanics of the new niche-based markets that toppled the long-running “greatest hits” system, and is radically changing both the publishing and music industries.<br /></div><div>For a picture of how wide-ranging this phenomenon is, here's a blog post describes&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/95Ul9a">the Long Tail of Housing Demand</a>.<p /></div><div><a href="http://amzn.to/938tIv">New Rules for the New Economy</a><br />Kevin Kelly, Penguin, 1998.<br />Considered obsolete by some because it was written before the dot-com bubble, it nonetheless contains a number of foundation ideas applicable to what we’re building today.<p /><a href="http://amzn.to/cPX4Re">Rise of the Creative Class, The</a><br />Richard Florida, Basic Books, 2002.<br />Florida’s classic work has been trashed a bit recently because places restructuring according to his principles took a beating in the Meltdown. So did everyone else, of course. The core ideas are still sound.<p /></div><div><div><a href="http://bit.ly/55RDQE">Twitter Power</a><br />Joel Comm, Wiley, 2009.<br />This is the best Web 2.0 how-to manual I have seen. Clear &amp; concise style, exhaustive content.</div><p /><div><a href="http://amzn.to/bDzrT5">Unleashing the Ideavirus</a><br />Seth Godin, Hyperion, 2001.<br />Godin’s classic lays out the operations of ideas that spread.<p /></div><div><a href="http://bit.ly/dB0IkV">Web&nbsp;2.0: A Stragegy Guide</a><br />Amy Shuen, O’Reilly, 2008.<br />This wide-ranging overview of the interactive web covers the bases that existed when it was written.<br /></div><p /><div><a href="http://bit.ly/boyKiV">What No One Ever Tells You About Blogging and Podcasting</a><br />Ted Demopoulos, Kaplan Publishing, 2007.<br />It’s 3 years old, which is a long time in Internet time, but it’s still got lots of highly useful stuff.<br /></div><p /><a href="http://bit.ly/cSGzYV">Whole New Mind, A</a><br />Daniel Pink, Riverhead Books, 2005.<br />Pink proposes that the era of left-brained dominance is giving way to an age when the scales tip to the right-brained creatives.<p /><a href="http://amzn.to/cRH8sT">Wisdom of Crowds, The</a><br />James Surowiecki, Anchor, 2005.<br />Great description of the new collaborative environment that is flourishing outside the walls of “Fort Business.”<p /></div><div>And then the book that nobody you know has ever read, but which appears to have been the touchstone text for nearly all these authors. I highly recommend it as essential reading for anyone who wants to really understand what's going on right now:</div><p /><div><a href="http://amzn.to/i77UJs">Cluetrain Manifesto, The</a><br />Christopher Locke, Rick Levine, Doc Searls, David Weinberger, Perseus Books, 2000.<br />The 95 theses in this book underlie much of the Web 2.0 thinking that has followed.<p />The following are some of my posts dealing with these issues:</div><p /><div><a href="http://bit.ly/g7yt6J">Top 10 Characteristics of New Media People</a>: sounds a lot like some New Urbanists, doesn't it?</div><div><a href="http://bit.ly/i3BCYO">First Ten Things for Web 2.0</a>: how to get started.</div><div><a href="http://bit.ly/afiNbF">The Importance of Blogging</a></div><div><a href="http://bit.ly/bOOoRK">What Should Students Do Now?</a>&nbsp;(actually applies to most of the rest of us as well)</div><div><a href="http://bit.ly/9gnL2n">Social Media and Living Traditions</a>&nbsp;(slightly off-topic, but could be of interest)</div><div><a href="http://bit.ly/cd3Fy3">Email Signatures</a></div><div><a href="http://bit.ly/bWfp6v">Becoming the Competition</a></div><div><a href="http://bit.ly/9nI5NL">NU Web 2.0 Done Right: Klinkenberg &amp; Hendrickson</a><br /><div><a href="http://bit.ly/9KG8hk">Thoughts on Social Media</a></div><div><a href="http://bit.ly/7pndLT">Idea Cards</a>&nbsp;(encapsulates these ideas maybe as well as I'm capable of doing in one post)</div><div><a href="http://bit.ly/4SFcrh">Twitter Observations</a></div><div><a href="http://bit.ly/5CERlu">Breakless Time</a>&nbsp;(seems off-topic as it's a graduation note to my son, but it applies in general)</div><a href="http://bit.ly/d0jjd8">Losing Earthlink</a>&nbsp;catalogues several way moving to the new web will save</div><div><a href="http://bit.ly/dXzsol">Gulps and Nibble</a></div><div><a href="http://bit.ly/gpKu7n">Website Paradigm</a>&nbsp;(from a couple years ago; Mouzon &amp; Guild sites have now been converted)</div> <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/new-media-resources">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-7326076248871981141?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-17624070041770839622010-12-20T09:06:00.001-08:002010-12-20T09:06:24.462-08:00<div class='posterous_autopost'>The places and the buildings that we build can affect our wellness in a number of ways, including wellness of the body, wellness of the mind, and even wellness of the spirit.&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/e4NEFJ">This post looks at several ways</a>&nbsp;we either make ourselves more well... or not... by the ways we build. <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/the-wellness-lenses-of-the-original-green">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-1762407004177083962?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-52722752803012177832010-12-18T09:07:00.001-08:002010-12-18T09:07:55.912-08:00<div class='posterous_autopost'>Here are the top 10 characteristics of people well-suited for the New Media: <p /> 10. They are not frightened by the new, but rather have their ear constantly to the ground in order to detect the next great thing. <p /> 9. They aren't afraid to solicit a large array of disparate interests for feedback. <p /> 8. They aren't afraid to try alternative approaches when the feedback they've solicited isn't what they expected. <p /> 7. They love to create networks of likeminded people in the interest of high-level discourse. <p /> 6. They sharpen their polemical tools in broad circles, and on a regular basis. <p /> 5. They like working in a collaborative fashion with colleagues and other interests as well. <p /> 4. Ideas are the coin of their realm. <p /> 3. They value causes over companies. They view companies as good and necessary platforms for doing business, but not their reason for doing what they're doing. Rather, the things that drive them are the causes they believe in. <p /> 2. They are generous to a fault with their intellectual property in the interest of supporting their causes. <p /> 1. They turn their causes into movements by engaging much larger circles of colleagues outside the company walls. <p /> Anyone can develop these characteristics over time, but those who possess them already are unusually well-suited for the New Media. How much time does it cost? Surprisingly little. You may already be generating much of the material... words and images... that you would use. What's the biggest impediment? Most firms won't be able to make the leap simply because they don't see the necessity of it until too late, or they mistake the New Media for a new type of advertising. We throw the term "paradigm shift" around loosely; this may be one of the biggest true paradigm shifts we've seen in the past two centuries, and paradigm shifts leave countless people behind. Don't be one of them. <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/top-10-characteristics-of-new-media-people">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-5272275280301217783?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-16155924184367763542010-12-15T09:11:00.001-08:002010-12-15T09:11:19.360-08:00<div class='posterous_autopost'>Here they are, in chronological order, rather than the normal Letterman 10-1 style of increasing importance:<p /><div>1.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>Join existing discussions. You really should know the character(s) of web 2.0 discussions before venturing out on your own. Find your colleagues that blog, visit their blogs, and comment on things that mean something to you. That's actually what people value now: those who speak about things they're passionate about. Let the discussions branch out from there... you'll find other commenters on their blogs that you don't know, but that sound interesting to you. Most people who comment on blogs leave their blog or website link embedded in their names, so that if you click on their names, you'll go there. Comment on their blog posts as well. Build relationships with the bloggers. Later, when you have your own blog, they're more likely join your discussion.</div><p /><div>2.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>Decide what to blog about. You might ask yourself "what subject matter am I expert upon?" Or with more audacity, you might ask "what movement was I born to lead?" If you're not expert upon something, then maybe you shouldn't be blogging. "Me, too" blogs add little to the discussion and won't be followed very often. But chances are, there's something in life about which you have more to offer than the average person on the street. That's likely what you should blog about.</div><p /><div>3.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>Start a blog. Where? I once recommended iWeb because it's the best combination of inexpensive and adaptable. But at its last opportunity, Apple didn't upgrade iWeb, and I now have serious concerns about its long-term survival. At this moment, I'd suggest that you start a&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/hnUREo">posterous</a>&nbsp;blog. It's the easiest possible way to blog, in that you only need to send an email to <a href="mailto:post@posterous.com">post@posterous.com</a> to do a new post. If you know email, you know posterous. Today, I have over a thousand readers of most of my posterous posts that have been out there for more than a couple weeks, so you'll definitely get a bigger audience there.</div><p /><div>4.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>Join Twitter. Some people join with funky usernames, but because transparency is highly valued today, I'd highly suggest joining with something that closely resembles your name. I'm&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/dGbg95">@stevemouzon</a>, FWIW. The @ in front of your username simply says that "this is a person." One problem with Twitter is the fact that it only allows limited info in your bio. For example, you can only have one actual hyperlink to your website or blog. So you need to create a background image for your Twitter account that has the other information as part of the image. I haven't updated mine yet for the new Twitter page design; today, you can't see all my info on the one side and the vertical <a href="http://originalgreen.org">originalgreen.org</a> on the other side at the same time. But I'll fix that.</div><p /><div>5.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>Decide what you're going to Tweet about. I generally Tweet about three things: 1. Links to other pages with my commentary, which may either be my own material or something else I've found interesting. 2. Ideas I'm floating. Don't be ashamed to float funky ideas. People may trash you for it, but they'll forget about it before long, in most cases, and you'll get an unbiased sense of the viability of the idea. 3. Conversation with other people. Why put this third? Because while it's important, if you're holding a conversation, others not a party to that conversation won't have any idea what you're talking about. You have a responsibility to your Twitter followers to put out interesting ideas, and if someone is out of the loop, you've failed at that. So have the conversations, but don't let that dominate your dialogue.</div><p /><div>6.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>Find appropriate "best of" lists and follow them on Twitter. I keep a "<a href="http://bit.ly/YMzeD">best Tweeters</a>" list on the Original Green website, under Resources.&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/gA35xK">Planetizen</a>&nbsp;has a good one. There are others as well. Follow a few dozen people whose ideas you admire or appreciate. Next, look into the lists of the people they follow and follow some of them whom you consider to be of particular value.</div><p /><div>7.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>Develop your following strategy. By now, people will be following you. Here's my strategy, FWIW: when anyone follows me, I look at the first page of their tweets. If I find something particularly useful to me, I follow them. If not, I don't. Occasionally, I'll make an exception for someone just getting started when I (1) know them, and (2) know that they'll be offering something of value in the future, even if they have very few tweets now. But there are a ton of dubious marketers out there who will follow everyone they can find, hoping those people will follow them out of courtesy and they'll develop a following that way to whom they can sell whatever it is they sell. They are a complete waste of time. Concentrate on people whose ideas are useful to you.</div><p /><div>8.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>Set up your support accounts, if you don't have them already. Mine include&nbsp;<a href="http://on.fb.me/fIq0sH">facebook</a>,&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/dJn2dC">Google</a>,&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/g9t5HG">delicious</a>,&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/fY5R1b">technorati</a>,&nbsp;<a href="http://linkd.in/hyqb2y">LinkedIn</a>,&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/hT1AcI">StumbleUpon</a>,&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/hJPVqd">gravee</a>, and my image account, which is at&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/19gknr">zenfolio</a>. You'll promote each blog post to each of your support accounts. You have no idea when someone else will see it there and spread what you've said. The idea is to inhabit a number of support networks, any of which could provide a huge exposure break at an unexpected moment. Each network will be different, with different people connected to you. I'm now set up where I can promote each blog post in about 10 minutes to all of my support accounts, although when you first get started, it'll take more like a half-hour or more until you get in a rhythm. The support accounts are useful for other stuff as well. For example, delicious generates the tag cloud of keywords that I use on the&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/9vOOxz">Original Green blog</a>.</div><p /><div>9.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>Explore Twitter hashtags and users, and engage people outside your normal circle. The Rule of 10 says that if you follow someone on Twitter who has more than 10x your followers, chances fade that they'll follow you and (more importantly) engage with you later. I focus on interesting people with less than 10x my number of followers, but who have engaging ideas. If they value my ideas as well, then they spread them to a much wider audience than my own. A classic example is&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/gaX6za">@urbanverse</a>, or Cindy Frewen Wuellner. She's an architect from Kansas City; I first found her because she wrote a&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/fwSzSC">hugely inspiring post</a>&nbsp;on what architects can do now that they're unemployed, to which I responded (joining the discussion, item 1.) It turned out that we have many (but not all) common interests. The benefits of engaging with her have been numerous: (1) she has exposed me to numerous networks I didn't previously know about, such as&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/iafUlZ">#letsblogoff</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/gHwtlw">#aiachat</a>, (2) she has great ideas that I would not have addressed had I not engaged her, (3) when she values something I say, she promotes it to thousands of people I'd never reach otherwise. We don't agree on everything, but if we did, that'd be boring.</div><p /><div>10.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style=""> </span>Promote your Twitter stream and your blog posts to your contacts regularly, and also to people you've just met.&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/c5QCl3">PlaceMakers</a>&nbsp;does an outstanding job of the former, sending out regular emails to thousands of people that follow them. I'm working on a strategy for the latter; for years, I wanted to do a re-introductory letter with all sorts of cool graphics, but what I've settled on is a format where everything in the email to new contacts is text-only with links. It has a far more human voice that way, rather than appearing to be "corporate-speak." In any case, this means that you need to be building your contact list. But don't just count on people that you know. Instead, every website you have should have a page where people can self-select to sign up for your list. You'll get countless people that you'd never have known otherwise. Your circle should include all the people that know you, not just the people that you know.</div><p /><div>Final thoughts: Don't get discouraged in the early days. Your first followers will likely be just a trickle. And your blog posts will be read and commented upon by very few people. But you must persevere, because building a web 2.0 presence is an act of endurance instead of a big initial flash. Regard your posts and your tweets to be tools of development of your own ideas. That way, any benefit that others get is a bonus; you need to be blogging and tweeting in any case for your own purposes. One other thing: don't even think about making your web 2.0 presence the slightest bit commercial. People sniff that out in a moment. And because spam has conditioned us to hitting the Delete key in nano-time, there's no chance that most people want to hear about your business anymore. But they DO want to hear about your ideas. Have an "<a href="http://bit.ly/7pndLT">Idea Card</a>" rather than a business card. Ideas are the new coin of the realm. Develop them and use them wisely.</div> <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/first-ten-things-for-web-20">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-1615592418436776354?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-32218972909306511512010-12-14T12:56:00.001-08:002010-12-14T12:56:42.738-08:00<div class='posterous_autopost'>I've just returned to the US through Chicago O'Hare, and it's been without doubt my worst re-entry experience ever. Usually, I'm coming back in through Miami, where re-entry is a piece of cake. Coming back from Cuba this spring, for example, I walked right up to the gate and when the officer asked where I'd been and I told him, he simply said "Welcome home!" 10 minutes after arriving at immigration from Havana, I was out of the airport. O'Hare was a completely different story. <p /> I've just blown one of my system-wide upgrades on American Airlines to fly back from London, but was there a priority immigrations lane like in Heathrow? No. I stood in line for at least twenty minutes before an immigrations officer who was a dead ringer for the Chicago cop who almost pulled the trigger on Harrison Ford in the US Marshals movie pulled a bunch of us out of line just as we were getting to the front. After walking what seemed like a football field, we arrived at another immigration station where... wait for it... we were put at the back of the line again. Another 20 minutes or so to the desk. <p /> After finally emerging from the grilling (no bathroom yet in sight) we were unceremoniously dumped back outside of security. Apparently there's no way of getting to domestic flights in Chicago without going through security again. Fine. But where to go? There were no signs. No idea where to get to American Airlines flights. Finally, I found some really old grumpy guy in a green jacket and an employee badge who told me, as if I were a complete idiot, that all AA flights went out of Terminal 3. OK, so I get on the train to Terminal 3 (no bathroom yet in sight.) <p /> Emerging at Terminal 3, there was a sign to gates F, G, H, and K, or something like that, but of course, my boarding pass from Heathrow didn't indicate the gate, being printed that long ago. I had to go halfway down the terminal, it seemed, before I could find someone to tell me where to go to find the information. Fine. I then found the priority access line (remember, I'd burned one of those prize system-wide upgrades)... and proceeded to wait for another 20 minutes or more. I finally spotted a bathroom, but it was far too late to get to it, as I'd have had to leave the security line. <p /> They sent me to the x-ray machine, but I'd rather not get cancer, so they sent me to the grope line. After waiting nearly 5 minutes, an agent showed up to grope me. That's the one part that didn't work out so badly... he was actually decent about it, which I appreciated. Finally, I collected my stuff that had been getting banged around on the conveyor the whole time and headed off... over two hours after landing at O'Hare. The exception to the rule here is that AA's Flagship Lounge is excellent... and yes, that's where I finally found a bathroom. <p /> Bottom line... if you have a choice of where to re-enter the US, don't do it at O'Hare! But if you're at O'Hare and can get to the Flagship Lounge, by all means, do so. They're really good. <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/chicago-ohare-port-of-entry">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-3221897290930651151?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-88547729149851010182010-12-12T13:45:00.001-08:002010-12-12T13:45:23.722-08:00<div class='posterous_autopost'>I wrote last year about how&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/adp5pd">napkin notes allow multiple trains of thought... on paper... at once</a>. Not bad, for those of us that are multi-tasking-challenged. Later, I&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/a2mSzW">elaborated on how they work for me</a>. But napkin notes, by themselves, have problems. They're really fragile, for example, and it's all too easy for someone to use one to wipe up a spill because... that's what you do with a napkin. They crumple up and literally disintegrate if you carry a wad of them around in your pocket for a few days. And they're easy to lose.<p /><div>Recently, I've been doing something else: a couple days after working on the napkins, once the ideas have had time to percolate, I've begun taking another pass at them, and moving all the ideas to a notebook worthy of ideas. Inevitably, the original ideas are really scattered, as ideas almost always are at birth. But restating them refines them, and also expands them.</div><p /><div>I believe this effect is magnified by the "worthy notebook." Here's why: when a notebook is good enough that you might keep it for a lifetime, then you're likely to give a little more effort to refining the idea as you translate it from the napkin notes. I just bought my first moleskine today at Heathrow, and it clearly has the "worthy notebook" effect. It's very important that moleskines aren't too pretty, however. Just a simple black leather cover, and plain near-white pages. Notebooks more elaborate might be an impediment to use, because you don't want anything within them not to be perfect. A moleskine, IMO, invites invention and creativity, but it's worthy enough to endure. Mixing living and lasting. Right on target, if you ask me.</div> <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/note-refinement-and-the-worthy-notebook">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-8854772914985101018?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-80108550524481861072010-12-10T22:18:00.001-08:002010-12-10T22:18:32.755-08:00<div class='posterous_autopost'>I'm building a library of windows, doors, and other building parts for Sketchup models for the New Urban Guild Collection of house plans. For every plan in the collection, we'll have a SketchUp model as well. And because we'd like to make those models available to New Urbanist planners for use in their town plans, they need to be consistent enough that they look good together on the same street. Hence the library of building parts that any Guild member can use. <p /> Some things are simple... there are only so many possible ways of doing a chamfered post, for example. But doors and windows are a problem. Let's look at the variables: <p /> Windows: <p /> Frame Walls: 2x4 & 2x6 <br />Masonry Walls: 8", 10", 12", each with casing setbacks of 2", 4" & 6" for 9 possibilities, for a total of 11 possibilities for walls. <p /> Window Type & Size: I'll start out with the New Urban Guild Proportional System, which matches proportions and lite patterns to the Classical/Vernacular Spectrum in order to radically reduce the number of combinations to just the ones that make sense and are well-proportioned. This system is tuned to warmer climate zones where window proportions need to be taller in order to get better ventilation by having a greater distance from the top of the window, where warm air leaves, and the bottom of the window, where cooler air enters in the early evening when you open up the house to ventilate. Some of these aren't standard sizes... yet... but we're working on getting a good manufacturer to make this series of sizes as the New Urban Guild Proportional System Collection. <p /> Double-Hung: Vernacular (2/2 lite pattern): (1:1 sash proportion) 32x64, 24x48, 20x40, 16x32 (5:4 sash proportion) 32x80, 24x60, 20x50, 16x40. Median (4/4, 4/1 square & side-by-side & 3/1 lite patterns): (5:4 sash proportion) 30x75, 24x60, 20x50, 16x40 (4:3 sash proportion) 30x80, 24x64, 20x54, 16x42. Classical (6/6, 6/1, 9/9, 9/1, 12/12, 12/1 lite patterns): (4:3 sash proportion) 30x80, 24x64, 20x54 (3:2 sash proportion) 30x90, 24x72, 20x60. <br />That's 76 different double-hung windows, if I count correctly. <p /> French Casement (double sash): Vernacular (3:2 pane proportion; all casement dimensions assume 1 3/4" stile and top rail, 2 3/4" bottom rail and 7/8" muntin): (2 lite sashes) 36x49, 30x40, 24x31 (3 lite sashes) 36x72, 30x58, 24x45. Median (4:3 pane proportions): (3 lite sashes) 36x64, 30x52, 24x40 (4 lite sashes) 36x85, 30x69, 24x53. Classical (1:1 pane proportions): (5 lite sashes) 36x81, 30x66, 24x51 (4 lite sashes) 36x66, 30x54, 24x42. <br />That's 18 French casement windows. <p /> Single-Sash Casement (all two panes wide): Vernacular (3:2 pane proportion): (2 lite sashes) 32x47, 28x41, 24x35 (3 lite sashes) 32x69, 28x60, 24x51. Median (4:3 pane proportion): (3 lite sashes) 32x61, 28x53, 24x45 (4 lite sashes) 32x81, 28x70, 24x60. Classical (1:1 pane proportions): (4 lite sashes) 32x63, 28x55, 24x47 (5 lite sashes) 32x78, 28x68, 24x58. <br />That's 18 single-sash casements. <p /> Awning: (4 lite sashes) 32x33, 28x29, 24x25. <p /> All told, the total of the type/size combinations is 115. <p /> Exterior Casings: <br />Jamb: 4" butt, 6" butt, 2" miter, 4" miter, 6" miter, for a total of 5 basic jamb conditions. <br />Head: 6" butt, 8" butt, 2" miter, 4" miter, 6" miter, for a total of 5 basic head conditions. <br />Combined, there are 7 rational combinations thereof. <p /> Head Casing Detail: <br />There are countless options here, but 10 come to mind without any real thought. <p /> Sill Detail: <br />There are 3 obvious options here, although there are many that could be added. <p /> The total combinations of exterior casings are therefore 7 x 10 x 3 = 210. Do the head/jamb connection as one combination at 70 and the sills at 3. <p /> Interior Casing: <br />Same story here. Call it 70 plus 3. <p /> Bottom line is this: 11 walls x 115 types/sizes x 70 exterior head/jambs x 3 exterior sills x 70 interior head/jambs x 3 interior sills = over 55 million possible combinations. Doors are a similar story. There's no way I'm drawing that many windows or doors. So what to do? <p /> I believe what I'll do is to draw the components noted above: 11 wall cuts, 115 type/size combinations, 70 exterior head/jambs, 3 exterior sills, 70 interior head/jambs, and 3 interior sills. That's still 272 drawings, but that's far fewer than 55 million or so. The architects can then choose what works best for their job and assemble their job-specific windows from the kit of parts. <p /> Does this make sense to you? <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/windows-for-sketchup-or-solving-complexity-on">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-8010855052448186107?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-63509068638503468992010-12-10T07:43:00.001-08:002010-12-10T07:43:37.549-08:00<div class='posterous_autopost'><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: lucida grande, tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Painting question: my parents had a couple paintings (prints, actually) hanging in our home when I was growing up, both by the same painter. One was a guy working at the door to a barn; the other was a blacksmith working at the door of his shop. Both were characterized by the verdant green of an enormous tree spreading overhead, and the striking red of the barn and the shop. I've seen prints of the paintings many times, especially in homes of people who grew up during the Depression. Any idea who the painter might be?</span> <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/painting-question">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-6350906863850346899?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-16147264909009565912010-12-09T22:47:00.001-08:002010-12-09T22:47:27.560-08:00<div class='posterous_autopost'>I posted this comment on&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/aNszDg">Kaid Benfield's blog</a>&nbsp;several months ago:<div><br />I've long promoted something I call the "Tourist Test," which is this: "Is your neighborhood so&nbsp;good that people from other places would give up their vacation days to spend time there?"<br />Most of the time, we don't aspire to creating places this good. Getting a first-home community&nbsp;developer to think in these terms is very tough in most cases. But Charleston, Paris, Rome,&nbsp;London, New York, and Washington all had residents first and tourists second. In other&nbsp;words, they were first-home communities that became good enough to want to visit.<p />The Seaside phenomenon is fairly recent by comparison: build a resort that some people&nbsp;later inhabit as their first-home community. In other words, Tourists first, residents later.<p />Either way, people wanting to vacation there is an indicator of a great place. Bottom line...&nbsp;getting people to say "I want to live there" is the lowest bar to clear. Much higher is the bar of&nbsp;getting people to say "I want to vacation there." The highest bar is getting people to say&nbsp;both... some say "it's good enough to live there," and ALSO others say "it's good enough to&nbsp;vacation there."</div> <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/the-tourist-test">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-1614726490900956591?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-66514899855332413572010-12-03T18:29:00.001-08:002010-12-03T18:29:28.602-08:00<div class='posterous_autopost'>Facebook has just come up with a new way of reporting application violations that may just be the death of facebook. Basically, they're saying that "we need to protect our apps," therefore we're going to make spamming harder to report. <p /> Remember what happened to AOL? It wasn't that AOL suddenly became impossible to navigate. Rather, it simply wasn't worth it. Facebook may be on the cusp of such an event. Get caught up in all the hype, and convinced of the billions that you think you're worth, and you just might lose it all. <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/the-death-of-facebook">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-6651489985533241357?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-23737448311702307812010-11-23T08:33:00.001-08:002010-11-23T08:33:12.178-08:00<div class='posterous_autopost'>The following is my side of an online exchange with a group of colleagues that consider themselves traditionalists: <p /> ************************ <p /> I'm not so interested in how dead architects thought of themselves as I am in useful ways of thinking of ourselves today. They thought of themselves the ways they did because of the conditions of the day. We should think of ourselves according to the conditions of our day, and how best to respond to them. Framing our work within the current context is essential. Otherwise, we might find ourselves fighting battles that were over long ago. <p /> With that having been said, one construct which I've found very useful is the Classical-Vernacular Spectrum, which is the spectrum of traditional architecture. Even the very highest of the classical has some of the vernacular embedded within it, and even the most lowly of the vernacular is informed by the classical in some way. So classical ideals and vernacular necessities can be found at pretty much any point on the Spectrum, just in varying degrees. There is also a cross-axis from the romantic to the austere. It is possible to place all traditional architecture on this matrix, and arguably, most Modernist work as well. <p /> But back to how we frame ourselves: There's the knowing of history, which can be entirely internal. In other words, just because we know something doesn't mean we have to demonstrate that fact to everyone. But the other issue is how we frame ourselves externally... my fear is that if we frame ourselves strongly with respect to history, then it's nothing for our adversaries to dismiss us with a verbal flick of the wrist: "they're just a bunch of relics, living in the past." The "nostalgia" charges stick as well, along with numerous other malcharacterizations. <p /> As for the issue of jargon, it can be useful if it self-communicates. "Gizmo Green," for example, self-communicates broadly, as do other similar terms. Coming up with terms that spread on their own is highly efficient, because it means you don't have to be there to explain it every time. And you can even retire or die, and because the term has taken on a life of its own, it can spread without you. Buzz-worthy terms do something else as well: they attract inquisitive attention because a new listener thinks "there must be something interesting here because of the buzz, so I'd better listen." Basing our identity primarily upon history has the opposite effect: for all except the history buffs, there's usually the underlying presumption that the potential listener either knows it already, or they can look it up in a history book someday if they're ever so inclined. <p /> Jargon can do the opposite, of course. Obscure jargon understood only by the adherents of the system that spawned it is completely opaque to everyone else. And in being opaque, it has the potential to make the adherents come off as being aloof, or even arrogant. In short, obscure jargon does nothing to advance a cause in most cases. <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/on-framing-jargon">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-2373744831170230781?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-49578551923358785652010-11-19T15:30:00.003-08:002010-11-19T15:30:26.442-08:00<div class='posterous_autopost'>#FF, or Follow Friday on Twitter is a time for people to tweet about who they most enjoy following, with the thought that others might want to follow them as well. Often, people send #FF tweets for a single category of people, like architects or planners. Frequently, many of these people know each other and likely already follow each other. Obviously, you pay a lot more attention to your mentions (when someone mentions you) than you do to random tweets in the stream, because someone has said something directly to you or about you. So a #FF tweet from someone else with your name in it gets your attention. Just now, I thought I'd try something a bit different... normally, I have so much going on that I don't participate in #FF, but a lot of people show me a lot of love on Twitter, and it seems like the decent thing to show some in return. So what I did was to select cross-sections of people I like, trying with each #FF tweet to mix it up so that most of the people in each tweet would be unlikely to know each other. I'm hoping that as a result, they'll check each other out and the #FF might be more effective than normal because of the cross-pollination. <p /> What do you think? <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/cross-pollinating-ff-on-twitter-0">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-4957855192335878565?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-40339540123604833522010-11-19T15:30:00.001-08:002010-11-19T15:30:16.914-08:00<div class='posterous_autopost'>#FF, or Follow Friday on Twitter is a time for people to tweet about who they most enjoy following, with the thought that others might want to follow them as well. Often, people send #FF tweets for a single category of people, like architects or planners. Frequently, many of these people know each other and likely already follow each other. Obviously, you pay a lot more attention to your mentions (when someone mentions you) than you do to random tweets in the stream, because someone has said something directly to you or about you. So a #FF tweet from someone else with your name in it gets your attention. Just now, I thought I'd try something a bit different... normally, I have so much going on that I don't participate in #FF, but a lot of people show me a lot of love on Twitter, and it seems like the decent thing to show some in return. So what I did was to select cross-sections of people I like, trying with each #FF tweet to mix it up so that most of the people in each tweet would be unlikely to know each other. I'm hoping that as a result, they'll check each other out and the #FF might be more effective than normal because of the cross-pollination. <p /> What do you think? <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/cross-pollinating-ff-on-twitter">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-4033954012360483352?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-82300010222498644782010-11-19T09:10:00.003-08:002010-11-19T09:10:16.619-08:00<div class='posterous_autopost'>Why shoot RAW images? Here's why: This is the unmodified image that was originally shot (click each image for a link to a higher-res file on my Zenfolio site.) If you're shooting jpg, this is what you'd get. As you can see, the sky is pretty much washed out and a lot of detail is lost in the shadow of the trees. With a jpg file, there's only so much you can do with a mediocre image like this.<p><a href='http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/usefulstuff/EWa9T5nAJlyKSjPgKNC7F472HAsNRrxYzh0jVzj0GnyoKDCTeVtjAyU3HSLX/New_York_City_09SEP26_0100_str.jpg'><img src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/usefulstuff/s49dHxsesgVAhyaVI5y2vUI2nfGxhGxbvJwVqOgBUTLoQEOaxzHxocMDYBHr/New_York_City_09SEP26_0100_str.jpg.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" height="332"/></a> </p><p>The images that follow represent only a tiny fraction of the things you can do with RAW images. For this first modification, I did an auto color balance and an auto exposure, and then bumped the clarity up 100 points and the vibrance 80 points. I bumped up the recovery, which recovers invisible detail from light areas. See all the detail it picks up in the sky that you couldn't see before? Also, if you look in the shadows under the trees, you can see where I was able to pick up some detail that was lost above. Click on the images to get a higher-res view.</p><p><a href='http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/usefulstuff/LVxJHRAid1PxTS2rouQuGaUh2bKTrRiCQNVW792bSW6FxNC9Dja3GVOgw0fJ/New_York_City_09SEP26_0100_cla.jpg'><img src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/usefulstuff/hmT90NTjw7hPjVMrzlmbVJ8HvBabcDQWK95FirTJ3w9eg0S6DqYFBl5d9rbZ/New_York_City_09SEP26_0100_cla.jpg.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" height="332"/></a> </p><p>This one is a cool effect that I use fairly often... here, I took the image above and just slid the clarity setting down to -80 rather than the +100 it was in the image above.</p><p><a href='http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/usefulstuff/Uo9HoH6CpNrcUzvnkmhy1pSiFy77ssIlJYmsKncggslzwubeEKyvTsFVRCnA/0New_York_City_09SEP26_0100_cla.jpg'><img src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/usefulstuff/jLX1BXJqUd6UZizxDMBLogBgsFuDolS8tRwbY2812dbuKMuqCC6skcZNy36c/0New_York_City_09SEP26_0100_cla.jpg.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" height="332"/></a> </p><p>Finally, you might occasionally find this useful. In this one, I just took the image above and changed the saturation to -69. Personally, I like the more colorful stuff most of the time, but sometimes this can be useful.</p><p><a href='http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/usefulstuff/eRAG1Oah87c7DxsVWOmwAUrY4OgGn3QHsmbd8j1BylTWMStOKYnqixR3j3ke/New_York_City_09SEP26_0100_sat.jpg'><img src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/usefulstuff/tuBYn0L2STh0weAcAcL6CScRSWv1fesx9mKFDFDkBwQR4MTdoEaxvjpvAZgV/New_York_City_09SEP26_0100_sat.jpg.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" height="332"/></a> </p><p>And like I said, these are only a few of countless things you can do with RAW images. Great photographers might have gotten a great image to start with, but with RAW, you have other options as well. Give it a try.</p> <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/raw-images-0">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-8230001022249864478?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-31714005897314854122010-11-19T09:10:00.001-08:002010-11-19T09:10:15.512-08:00<div class='posterous_autopost'>Why shoot RAW images? Here's why: This is the unmodified image that was originally shot (click each image for a link to a higher-res file on my Zenfolio site.) If you're shooting jpg, this is what you'd get. As you can see, the sky is pretty much washed out and a lot of detail is lost in the shadow of the trees. With a jpg file, there's only so much you can do with a mediocre image like this.<p><a href='http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/usefulstuff/YOnDWQWUy39W9VzbfrfE0R1gpdfZsbXNgBwTot3tHztpoVUUdjiMGKihZNGw/New_York_City_09SEP26_0100_str.jpg'><img src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/usefulstuff/aNb9v18QmTkxHePQrGsfTgWJc4L2nYocjOQKD9wW9xDltgCwkMEdX2c3zB1w/New_York_City_09SEP26_0100_str.jpg.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" height="332"/></a> </p><p>The images that follow represent only a tiny fraction of the things you can do with RAW images. For this first modification, I did an auto color balance and an auto exposure, and then bumped the clarity up 100 points and the vibrance 80 points. I bumped up the recovery, which recovers invisible detail from light areas. See all the detail it picks up in the sky that you couldn't see before? Also, if you look in the shadows under the trees, you can see where I was able to pick up some detail that was lost above. Click on the images to get a higher-res view.</p><p><a href='http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/usefulstuff/OsENK1KrzSGnb8XEOTaRlrrE1rOC4ZSeH0cbIU7mkZNYEfXhtZwL3NTMkKN0/New_York_City_09SEP26_0100_cla.jpg'><img src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/usefulstuff/USboqv9CKebaIpUS7PBR2SL6O9epSL28eCLhZTOql7tcoFLjNNtNw0q6rpr9/New_York_City_09SEP26_0100_cla.jpg.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" height="332"/></a> </p><p>This one is a cool effect that I use fairly often... here, I took the image above and just slid the clarity setting down to -80 rather than the +100 it was in the image above.</p><p><a href='http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/usefulstuff/ePNGtez5HXoS4kIXLShUHyA82uA6GZjPFdvp91GugN52lDykODjKmhajOGn6/0New_York_City_09SEP26_0100_cla.jpg'><img src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/usefulstuff/1mcXBefirqM3ITbIgSzIkwujypxSZRvIGcqZRzi2oDgK7VD9IGJTFbi1cnYG/0New_York_City_09SEP26_0100_cla.jpg.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" height="332"/></a> </p><p>Finally, you might occasionally find this useful. In this one, I just took the image above and changed the saturation to -69. Personally, I like the more colorful stuff most of the time, but sometimes this can be useful.</p><p><a href='http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/usefulstuff/6rj1g1aihXmEXEHCP703I3kQMOBXEHe2uBRht6717Czau4DDhBto3NQo9ltR/New_York_City_09SEP26_0100_sat.jpg'><img src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/usefulstuff/teUHxOVQqv8VF7Od9oqpL1u7WJOlDIJRUQxtUjGbgcGyPi5P0nnnnFzMRsvX/New_York_City_09SEP26_0100_sat.jpg.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" height="332"/></a> </p><p>And like I said, these are only a few of countless things you can do with RAW images. Great photographers might have gotten a great image to start with, but with RAW, you have other options as well. Give it a try.</p> <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/raw-images">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-3171400589731485412?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-35328325905173456272010-11-17T18:17:00.001-08:002010-11-17T18:17:30.578-08:00<div class='posterous_autopost'>I had the great pleasure of working with New Urban Guild members Julie Sanford and Eric Moser for Joel Embry on a mini-charrette that ended yesterday for the Clara White Mission in Jacksonville, Florida. The Mission is run by the ebullient Ju'Coby Pittman, who might remind you a bit of Oprah in her thinner days. <p /> The coolest thing about the charrette wasn't anything we did, but rather what the Mission is already doing: They feed roughly 500 people per day, and they make the assumption that if someone is homeless, they probably have employability issues for some reason or another. And so they've started a jobs training program. The janitorial program might come as no great surprise, but how about this: they also have... a culinary school! They figure that there are tons of jobs in kitchens all over Jacksonville, and until the recent downturn, nearly 80% of their graduates were hired by restaurants upon graduation. <p /> Here's how it works: any homeless person that they feed is eligible to apply for admission to the culinary school. Everyone on the street has issues of some sort, of course, but they need to make sure that the issues are manageable before handing them the knives. Once someone enters either school, they house them in the Mission's dormitory for the duration of the courses. And they train by cooking for those 500 people per day. They also cook for another venue "the cafe," if I recall correctly, located in a downtown church, where anyone can come on the weekends and buy a meal. And they're good at what they do: they provided most of the meals during the charrette, and they were delicious! The bottom line, of course, is that they're taking people that need to be fed and turning many of them into feeders. I find that exceptionally cool. <p /> Our project was to take a parcel of land they own a couple miles away from downtown and develop it into three things: a culinary school and restaurant open to the public, a community of cottages based on our Katrina Cottages work, and an urban farm. They're starting a farmer training program as well, and the food they produce will go first to the mission, then to the restaurant and the farmers' market. They're also starting a building arts school, and the students will build the cottages. By covering the bases of cleaning, cooking, farming, and building, they're providing the most often-demanded skills in our economy. Sheer brilliance, if you ask me. What do you think? <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/a-most-revolutionary-homeless-mission">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-3532832590517345627?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-62611334734669187622010-11-16T03:30:00.001-08:002010-11-16T03:30:46.117-08:00<div class='posterous_autopost'>What happens when you adopt a mystery rather than just leaving it where you found it? It might take years, but eventually, you'll probably unlock it.&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/b2d6Sq">The day after Thanksgiving marks the 30-year anniversary</a>&nbsp;of the adoption of a mystery&nbsp;that just might play a role in building our world sustainably. <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/30-years-after-adopting-a-mystery">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-6261133473466918762?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-39439148390311522492010-11-15T10:05:00.001-08:002010-11-15T10:05:16.594-08:00<div class='posterous_autopost'>Great image from Steve Coyle... is this what is happening to us?<p><a href='http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/usefulstuff/pu4xIXAXXQNuh0AuPVbgrKQRfKvDkETw656IYYHabJanMHNGfbcno9HRBNqg/american_evolution.jpg'><img src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/usefulstuff/pZGUDwkB0SPSUui0VhFHyrRtFR77SkwumB4LAsXXsnZWNyN22qw4CMgVXSJC/american_evolution.jpg.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" height="248"/></a> </p> <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/humans-past-and-future">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-3943914839031152249?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-63662675405312945022010-11-08T08:55:00.001-08:002010-11-08T08:55:57.904-08:00<div class='posterous_autopost'>Some may have done this for ages, but I've just figured out how to tether my iPhone to my MacBook Pro. I remember trying it before Snow Leopard and it was complicated... sort of felt like a hack or a patch. Now, it's all built into the system. Go to Setting>General>Network and turn Internet Tethering on. Then, just follow the instructions. You'll have to go to AT&T and change your plan; they charge an extra $15/month for tethering, but I'm now debating dropping Boingo and/or TMobile hotspots, as tethering likely will do the job. Plus, you can tether your laptop to the internet from anywhere you have phone access, not just at a hotspot. I'm going to test it for a month or so and see how it goes, but if I can actually drop the other services, then it'll save money. Thanks, Apple! <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/kudos-to-apple-on-iphone-tethering">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-6366267540531294502?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-83473356930322046932010-11-04T08:30:00.001-07:002010-11-04T08:30:13.753-07:00<div class='posterous_autopost'>The old interior design of Delta's CRJ70 regional jets had small overhead bins but ample space under the seats. The newly-redesigned interiors have even smaller overhead bins and much-reduced space under the seats. There's NO WAY I'm going to gate-check my gear bag, which contains my computer, hard drives, and camera, amongst many other important things. Today, flying on this mis-designed monster for the first time, I regrettably had to unpack a lot of less-fragile stuff like books and store it overhead so the bag would fit under the seat, with my seat-mate, who had to get up, unfortunately blocking the aisle the whole time. If Delta doesn't like that, then my other choice is to simply not fly Delta. My gear bag is that important! <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/bad-crj70-redesign-delta">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-8347335693032204693?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-61974706682401117052010-11-02T08:51:00.001-07:002010-11-02T08:51:24.964-07:00<div class='posterous_autopost'>I participate in a new blogosphere phenomenon known as #LetsBlogOff on Twitter, where word of each blog post is spread. Normally, I take the topic in a green direction and post it on the Original Green Blog, but I just can't find a way to do that with today's topic because laughing seems so far from me now. I thought I'd explain why on Useful Stuff instead, since it's my wider-ranging blog. <p /> Why can't I laugh now? Because my father was taken to the hospital in a coma on Friday, and while he's regained some confused consciousness, they still don't know what's happening to him. And this low-hanging cloud over the days that followed has left me with an aching consciousness of his mortality and that of my mother as well. So this post is dedicated to two highly extraordinary people to whom I owe so much. <p /> Dad, you taught me everything I know about craftsmanship and a care for detail, and also about a love for things and places that are beautiful. I remember helping you on jobsites as a child, as you built your cabinets, but you weren't just any cabinet-maker. I also remember when you were injured, and spent the next year in a back-brace and in bed; it's a wonder your back wasn't broken in the fall through a hole in the floor of a construction site someone had carelessly covered with tarpaper. It was during that year that Mother had to find a way to help pay the mounting bills; she started teaching sewing lessons, then became the first author in our family by writing a book on sewing. Years later, an old builder told me that you had been known all over north Alabama as the absolute best. He said "we didn't even call your father by his name; we simply called him "Mr. Perfect." We'd say "this is a job for Mr. Perfect," and everyone would know exactly who we meant." <p /> Dad & Mother, I clearly remember the years that followed. You had each spent your young years in the ministry, so there had been no college for either of you... not that there would have been money to pay for it, as you grew up as the son of a dirt farmer and a coal miner's daughter. And so after the injury, with debts mounting, you found that with no education, the clearest path to income was sales. I remember each time you got into another line of sales, working together, you would soon become the top salespeople in the company... but then the company would fail. That's why, in my mid-teen years you opened a health food store so you wouldn't suffer anymore from the incompetence of others. <p /> Dad, you supplemented income from the store by selling real estate. Mother, you found your real calling as a healer. Or rather, as a facilitator of healing. Most stores focus on the cash register. Yours focused on a circle of benches. Your customers would come in and spend hours sometimes, talking with each other and literally healing themselves. The healing that emanated from your store became so well known that several doctors in town would tell patients "I can't do anything with you, but go see Ruth, and she might be able t help you. Again and again, people would come in for the first time on crutches or in wheelchairs, walking out the door weeks or months later under their own power. Your healing effects grew legendary all across the region, to the point that tens of thousands know you today as "Huntsville's Mother Teresa." I remember wondering years ago how you might die, being such a healer of others. And then it occurred to me: barring an accident, whatever killed you would have to be something that takes your mind. And so you've been dying of Alzheimer's for ten years now. <p /> But things like this, Mr. Perfect and Huntsville's Mother Teresa, as singularly extraordinary as they are, do not begin to tell the story. They say the light in the night sky from the stars you can't see is actually several times brighter than the light from stars you can see because there are so many millions you can't see and only a couple thousand you can see. We are fortunate to have so many family and friends who revere the idea of living for others, but I have never seen anyone live it like you two. Because of this, like the light from the stars you can't see, the magnitude of the good you have done will never really be known. Because it's good done for others in thousands of little acts you've probably forgotten about... acts of healing, acts of encouragement, acts of pointing people in the right direction when they have begun to lose their way... or maybe entirely lost their way. I suspect that if the truth could ever be known, the net effect of 53 years of Fred & Ruth has been more good and more healing than almost any of the great people who made names for themselves in the world's history books... precisely because your greater passion wasn't your own fame, but was making others well and making others better, and then they went and spread the good far beyond what you could have done yourselves. <p /> To simply thank you for this kind of example would be a pitifully trite understatement, and I won't do that. This requires actions, not just words... "go, and do likewise." But none of us who have known you and watched you for years are that good... we're not nearly that good. But the real lesson from your years is the great lesson of life: spreading good like seeds by doing for others can have a far greater effect than any of us could have individually... because it can keep on spreading. And the rest of us can hope for that. <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/letsblogoff-things-that-make-me-laugh">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-6197470668240111705?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-32036286344539165032010-10-29T09:01:00.001-07:002010-10-29T09:01:10.581-07:00<div class='posterous_autopost'>Before the Meltdown was a time for building. Now is&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/9hMuYZ">a time for healing the mess of sprawl</a>, because it's the ultimate "too big to fail" proposition because millions of Americans have their biggest investments there: their homes.&nbsp;Fortunately, there are new resources for repairing sprawl. <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/a-time-for-healing">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-3203628634453916503?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-18814422710120646742010-10-22T04:46:00.001-07:002010-10-22T04:46:46.894-07:00<div class='posterous_autopost'>Before the Industrial Revolution, most things were made by local craftspeople and sold by local merchants. The railroads changed all that by making it easier to sell things further away. This allowed more efficient manufacturers to grow to great size and sell at great distance, putting many local craftspeople out of business. Trucks were introduced later and only amplified the effect. <br />These early manufacturers, by today’s standards, made fairly simple stuff. A window manufacturer, for example, might use the exact same knives to make the exact same window components as another window manufacturer; they would just do it more efficiently, and therefore win the business. In effect, they were manufacturing commodities. <br />Clever manufacturers began to realize that “getting commoditized,” or making something that someone else could duplicate was a death knell for all except the single most efficient company in the market, which would then drive the others out of business. And so the battle cry became “proprietize!” In other words, build a proprietary product that you could patent and that nobody else could make. If you did so, nobody could undercut you; your biggest challenge was to convince customers to buy your stuff. <br />Proprietary products, however, had an unintended consequence. Grocery stores that sold only commodities like black beans, rice, milk, tomatoes, bananas, etc., could be very small. There are several groceries within a couple blocks of my office that are less than 3,000 square feet each. But just as soon as groceries had to stock Cap’n Crunch, Count Chocula, Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes, and 60 other proprietary cereals, the stores necessarily ballooned. Today, a 40,000 square foot grocery is considered small in the grocery industry. <br />Mega-stores have an unintended consequence as well: they must attract customers from many miles around, rather than just a few blocks, because there aren’t enough customers within just a few blocks to keep them in business unless they’re in a very highly-populated urban setting. So when proprietary products proliferate, the neighborhood store becomes impossible. This condition requires sprawl. Let that sink in a moment: proprietary products can’t survive in neighborhood retail; they can only survive in sprawl, because they can’t get on the very limited shelf-space of the neighborhood stores. <br />Today, the likelihood of much higher gas prices due to the convergence of Peak Oil with the industrialization of the world’s most populous countries means that the core driver of big box retail in suburbia may be ending, and in its place, it’s not unreasonable to think we might see a resurgence of local craftspeople and local shops. But without the Great Convergence, local craftspeople and local shops would be nothing but a romantic memory of our culture in most places. <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/how-shopping-got-so-messed-up">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-1881442271012064674?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637385770676296447.post-14665207658800201912010-10-20T13:50:00.001-07:002010-10-20T13:50:52.874-07:00<div class='posterous_autopost'>Steve<p /><div>I've built my entire web presence on iWeb precisely because it was the only program I could&nbsp;use so cleanly without knowing any HTML. "Computers for the rest of us... and I don't do computers"... remember?&nbsp;I've been moving everything I do away from Microsoft (Word to Pages, Excel to&nbsp;Numbers, Powerpoint to Keynote, etc.) but if Apple abandons programs like iWeb, then I've&nbsp;gotta seriously reconsider moving to Apple software!<p /><div>Also, sometimes software drives hardware. If you drop iWeb, which is essential to me being able to manage my own web presence without having to hire HTML gurus, I won't upgrade to future Macs on&nbsp;which iWeb doesn't run! I run&nbsp;<a href="http://www.originalgreen.org/">www.originalgreen.org</a>,&nbsp;<a href="http://www.newurbanguild.com/">www.newurbanguild.com</a>, and&nbsp;<a href="http://www.mouzon.com/">www.mouzon.com</a>, all with iWeb. I'd have no web presence without it. iWeb is central to what I do.</div><p /><div>Because of the doors iWeb opened, I became the best kind of evangelist; one with a critical eye... because they have far more credibility than the cheerleaders. Check out my iWeb posts on my&nbsp;<a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/?sort=&amp;search=iWeb">Useful Stuff blog</a>. In particular, check out this one which details&nbsp;<a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/losing-earthlink">the financial savings of an iWeb-based web presence</a>.&nbsp;You REALLY need to reconsider iWeb...&nbsp;Please say it ain't so!!!</div><div><div><div><div><div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" />Thanks!</div><p /><div>Steve<br /></div></div></div></div></div></div> <p style="font-size: 10px;"> <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via email</a> from <a href="http://usefulstuff.posterous.com/an-open-letter-to-steve-jobs-on-iweb">Useful Stuff</a> </p> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4637385770676296447-1466520765880020191?l=stevemouzon.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Steve Mouzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15451372682705698059noreply@blogger.com0