September 2007 Archives

For the longest time I had a significant brain block that prevented me from figuring out a keyboard shortcut for searching within iTunes. Today that block finally subsided. When iTunes is the active window Command-Option-F (also known as Apple Key-Option-F for new to Macs people) will allow you to instantly type your search info. Huzzah.

I've started a new site called Correspondence Notes. The site is about written communication as well as the tools and materials that go along with it. It contains lots of fawning over and geeking out about stationery and note cards. Like all of my sites Correspondence Notes is powered by Movable Type.

Nearly every article for Correspondence Notes contains at least one image. I use Movable Type's built in upload feature to upload images and add them to entries. The process is fine except for one step. By default Movable Type will upload images to your Site Root. That's great except I like my images to go into a subdirectory I like to call...images. I can of course, with the file upload utility, tell Movable Type to put the images into the images subdirectory. The problem is that the utility will not remember this preference. Every time I upload an image I have to tell Movable Type again to put the new image in the images directory instead of the Site Root. Though it only takes a few key strokes to type "images" into the subdirectory field it's a silly time waster since I want every single image I upload to go into that folder.

Since there isn't an option within the Movable Type user interface to make the file upload utility remember that I want my images to always go into the images subdirectory I decided to go straight to the source and make it happen. Please remember that if these steps break your copy of Movable Type I'm not the least bit responsible.

Configuring the upload utility to upload to the same subdirectory by default is actually quite simple. It only requires editing a single line of a single .tmpl file. However, if monkeying with an application's source code makes you really nervous I've heard there is a great plugin for improving Movable Type's file upload utility that only costs $10.

The file to edit is called asset_upload.tmpl. Assuming you have your Movable Type files in your cgi-bin the path to this file looks something like cgi-bin/mt/tmpl/cms/dialog/asset_upload.tmpl.

1. Download asset_upload.tmpl (I highly recommend you save a backup copy of it before you edit it)

2. Open asset_upload.tmpl and look for the following:
/ <input name="extra_path" id="extra_path" value="<mt:var name="extra_path" escape="html">" />


3. Change
value="<mt:var name="extra_path" escape="html">"
to
value="images"
where "images" is whatever subdirectory name you want your images uploaded to by default.

So your final code should look like this

/ <input name="extra_path" id="extra_path" value="images" />


4. Save and upload asset_upload.tmpl

5. Upload an image

You'll notice that the subdirectory field is still completely editable. So while Movable Type will, by default, now upload my images to the images subdirectory, should I want to upload a particular image to a different directory all I have to do is type a different name into the subdirectory text box.

B bought me a MacBook for my birthday in July. It's my first Mac and I love it to bits. I was a Windows geek from way back. If there was something I needed to do with or to a Windows machine I could do it without much issue. I'd hardly ever used a Mac before I got one. Thus a learning curve was to be expected. Truth be told though I'm surprised at how small the learning curve has been. Save a few bumps it's been a pretty smooth and easy transition. A smooth transition yes, but transition nonetheless and I've had to learn some new ways of doing things, find some new software and figure out how to tweak my Mac to work how I want it to. There are a million sites and articles dedicated to setting up your first Mac, switching to Mac and learning how to use Macs. Sue me for creating a million and one. This is my list, culled from many other lists and trial and error of information and software that have made the marriage between my MacBook and I a very happy one.

1. Right Click Please
If you've played with a MacBook you know it only has one button beneath the trackpad instead of the two buttons that are standard with Windows machines. The lack of a second button takes away the right click for the contextual menu option but there are two different ways for accessing it with your MacBook. The first is ctrl + click. That is, holding down the ctrl key while clicking will bring up the "right click menu." The second, and infinitely better option in my opinion, is two finger clicking. Place two fingers on the trackpad, click and there's the "right click menu." Unfortunately the two finger method isn't enabled by default on MacBooks so you have to tell you want that option.

Go to System Preferences (click the blue apple), choose Keyboard and Mouse, click the check box beside "Place two fingers on trackpad and click button for secondary click."

2. Two Finger Scrolling
This one is turned on by default so you don't have to do anything but put two fingers on your trackpad and move them around. Move them up and down on this page is the equivalent of scolling with the scrollbar or your mouse and much handier.

3. WriteRoom
WriteRoom is billed as Distratction free writing and that it is. WriteRoom turns your entire screen into an old school word processing environment. By default the entire length and width of your screen becomes black with a blinking green cursor in the middle of it. Write until your heart is content on that black screen with your green text and nothing else on the screen to distract you.

4. Print Selection in Firefox
I loved Firefox for Windows and now I love Firefox for Mac. What I did not love was not being able to figure out how to print a selection in Firefox on my Mac. It took me a while to figure it out but I finally did. In the print dialogue box look for "Copies & Pages." Pull down that menu and select Firefox. This will give you access to Firefox specific printing options including printing a selection only.

5. Tabs in Safari
Love Firefox as I do I would have been remiss not to try out Safari Mac's very own browser. At first I was very perplexed because I'm so used to tabbed browsing it seemed really, really unnatural not to have tabs. Then I thought "there is no way THE Mac browser doesn't have tabbed browsing." A bit of looking around on the internets confirmed that fact. I felt dumb for a minute for not automatically knowing I had to turn on tabbed browsing in Safari but then I quickly moved on to feeling angry that I had to turn on tabbed browsing instead of it being turned on by default.

In any case Safari is very, very pretty and makes the internet very pretty. Sometimes I just stare lovingly at it. So I'm glad I chose Preferences in the Safari menu, selected the Tabs, um, tab, and clicked the box for "Enable Tabbed Browsing."

I've spent the last month or so with my head buried in a grant application. I've been working on a documentary photography project for the last several months and I've bootstrapped it the entire way. Meaning any cost associated with the project have come out of my pockets. No one is paying me to do the project, I'm doing it because I think it's a good project and the stories involved are worth being told.

I've learned a lot about myself and my project during the grant application process so I thought I'd write about a few tips/things I've learned because they might help another artist/writer struggling with the grant process.

1. Everyone has a first time.
No one comes out of the womb knowing how to write a grant proposal or application. The first few times you do it you're just going to have to muddle your way through it until you figure out what you're doing. You can ask people for help and they might give you good advice but it's still going to be you muddling through it. Don't let the fact that you don't know exactly what to do or you don't know exactly what the review committee wants to discourage. If you've made the commitment to apply for the grant then follow through. Even if you think your application doesn't have a chance of being accepted do the work to get the application completed. Having your first one done is going to make the second one much easier to complete.

2. It's a learning experience
I guarantee that you'll learn some things about yourself and your project during the process of writing the application. I learned about some of my insecurity triggers, learned that the vision I had for my project needed to be seriously tweaked, and that my work samples needed to be much stronger. Those were hard lessons to learn but I'm glad I learned them and I think they made my grant application stronger.

3. Writing is Easy
That's bullshit right? Yes but also no. While working on my grant application I found Scott Berkun's Writing Hacks Part 1. The first line is "Writing is easy, it's quality that's hard." True enough Scott, true enough. He goes on to say

Any idiot who knows 5 words can write a sentence (e.g. "Dufus big much Scott is"). It might be grammarless, broken, or inaccurate but it is writing. This means that when people can't start they're imagining the precision of the end, all polished and brilliant, a vision that makes the ugly clumsy junkyard that all beginnings are, impossible to accept. Good voice, tone, rhythm, ideas and grammar are essential to good writing, but they're never introduced all at once. I promise you, the first draft of Strunk and White didn't follow Strunk and White. The secret, if you can't start, is to begin without constraints. Deliberately write badly, but write.

For this reason writer's block is a sham. Anyone who wrote yesterday can write today, it's just a question of if they can do it to their own satisfaction. It's not the fear of writing that blocks people, it's its fear of not writing well; something quite different. Certainly every writer has moments of paralysis, but the way out is to properly frame what's going on, and writer's block, as commonly misunderstood, is a red herring.

Those two paragraphs really, really resonated with me and helped me conquer the much dreaded "description of activities" section of my grant application that had had me paralyzed. I had stared at blank page after blank page. I had started and deleted paragraphs time and again. I had been unable to move forward because I couldn't get the first paragraph right. Berkun's words were a kick in the pants that let me write the "shitty first draft" and move on.

So I very much encourage you to accept that every single thing you write needs a shitty first draft before it can be any good, including your grant applications or proposals. Don't try to hit it out of the park with the first swing. Just get a draft down on paper. 98% of it will probably suck but there will nuggets of good work in there that you'll be on with each successive draft.

4. Most of Us Won't Get the Grant But It's Worth Trying Anyway
I don't think I'm going to get the grant I applied for. My work samples were still a bit too work and my project not honed tightly enough toward the organization giving the grant. I don't regret any of the time I spent on the application though. I learned from the experience, sharpened some "writing about myself" skills, made necessary tweaks to my project and got my name and work in front of the review committee. These are all really positive developments.