Rather than a blog, I like to think of this space as a personal notebook that is open and available for all to see. If I'm already keeping notes for my own various uses, why not share them publicly and hopefully provide value to others as well?

ReportPundit Review & Use Cases for Shopify Stores

The reporting features in Shopify are painfully lacking.

Part of me dislikes how resourceful we are as entrepreneurs, because that means we will find a way when Shopify is lacking features and solutions they should really have. I'm not excited to rely on / pay for a 3rd party app, especially when it seems like something Shopify should have built in. And most of all, I'm squeamish about giving my data to 3rd party apps, but Shopify is so useless in the reporting area that I have bitten the bullet.

Coursera Page Not Found Error: "We were not able to find the page you're looking for"

Coursera.org "We were not able to find the page you're looking for"

Are you encountering the following perplexing error when trying to visit Coursera.org or a Coursera course: "We were not able to find the page you're looking for"? This is what worked for us.

"%@" Notifications Pop-Up Prompt on Apple Mac OS

"%@" Notifications
Notifications may include alerts, sounds, and icon badgets"

If you've randomly been asked by MacOS if you'd like to "Allow" or "Don't Allow" notifications for "%@", you're not alone.

Canvas File Upload 400 Error: Request failed with status code 400

Canvas Error: Request failed with status code 400

I couldn't find anything online about this unhelpful error message in Canvas. BUT, we figured it out.

Screening & Taking Live Phone Calls on Zoom Live Streams - A D.I.Y. Budget-Friendly Guide to Talk-Show Style Phone Guests

To add interactivity to our Zoom live stream events at the Kelly Writers House at the University of Pennsylvania, we like to take phone calls from live viewers on the air, similar to a radio-talk show.

The way it works; A call comes in, I screen the call, alert the hosts and then we put the phone caller on the air live to make their comment or ask their question.

How to Record Zoom Gallery View instead of Active Speaker View

Zoom defaults to "Active Speaker" view when a meeting is recorded to the cloud. For smaller meetings and classes, you might instead want the "gallery view" so you have a better view of everyone in the meeting.

Good news! For cloud recordings, you can change the default recording view from "active speaker" to "gallery view". (Note: To my knowledge, this option is not available for "local recordings" but I have yet to test this fully).

Pick battles big enough to matter, small enough to win.

Germantown Ave, Chestnut Hill, in bloom, 3/29/2020.

Fortune Cookie: Pick battles big enough to matter, small enough to win.

I reacted negatively at first to this, like it was encouraging me to not take chances and be mediocre. Then I realized small victories lead to larger successes. Breaking down goals and aspirations into smaller, more manageable steps makes stepping a lot easier.

Photo: Germantown Ave, Chestnut Hill, in bloom today, 3/29/2020.

How to Add a Bookmark in BBEdit (for FTP/SFTP Connections)

Bookmarking your FTP/SFTP settings in BBEdit makes re-connecting to servers a lot easier, especially when you include the "Path", which means you will get dropped back into the same directory each time.

1. Start by opening BBEdit and clicking File->New FTP/SFTP Browser.

2. For the connection settings, enter your SFTP server, username and password. Optionally, add the "Path" -- that is, the directory on the server you'd like to immediately go to, if you want to and know it. Otherwise, you will be dropped into the default location on the server when you connect.

Keep being creative, creative people.

Down the shore in February, back when doing stuff was still a thing

To my creative friends:

I once heard advice to start every day by creating something — anything!

You’ll feel better knowing you created and be better able to take on the less creative, monotonous things you have to do throughout the day.

I’m sharing this now, because I feel like it is more true and necessary than ever.

______________________________

Photograph: Down the shore in February, back when doing stuff was still a thing

How to Save Space on your Mac by removing Messages and Photo Attachments - Text/SMS

If you send and receive a lot of text messags, especially ones with images and photographs, you may find that your Mac Messages application is taking up a LOT of precious space. Here are options for recovering storage space that is being used by your text messages and photo attachments:

Notebook / Blog