Fashion vs. Sustainability

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

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

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

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

Posted via email from Useful Stuff

Setting Up Another Domain

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted via email from Useful Stuff

The Schooner Bay Miracle

New Town Takes Worst of Irene, Emerges Unscathed

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

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.

Full Story: The Schooner Bay Miracle

Posted via email from Useful Stuff

Original Green blog posts

As you might recall from this post, 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 Original Green blog posts like the one today. So here's the list:

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.

Planetizen - I'm starting to submit my best work to Planetizen. Their submissions web page is http://www.planetizen.com/news/submit.

New Urban Network - I have for some time been submitting my best work to the New Urban Network. I do this by emailing Rob Steuteville <rob@newurbannews.com>.

Grist - I'm hoping they pick up Original Green blog posts; I've submitted

Original Green Yahoo discussion group - I email to originalgreen@yahoogroups.com to post to this group.

Original Green Cause on Facebook: http://www.causes.com/causes/154766-the-original-green

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.

Listservs: I post to appropriate listservs like Pro-Urb, TradArch, NextGen, Urbanists, Transect, etc.

Interested Parties: I email people who might have a special interest in the post.

Link Targets: I email people I'm linking to in the post.

Posted via email from Useful Stuff