super-structure

Maggie, our overly-sensitive Airedale terrier, has some gnarly claws. I mean, she’s bread for digging up larger rodents and snapping their necks, so one can hardly blame her. It’s just what she is. Her claws are those black, really brittle type that are very tough to trim. The only way to do it that doesn’t leave her yelping in doggy hysterics is with a high-speed rotary tool and a mini sanding drum. However, even that can get nasty if she decides to struggle and ends up getting a sander to the knuckle (yeah, fur doesn’t really make that much less painful).

Which is exactly what is being sold as: a safe, easy way to file your pets claws. The product itself isn’t entirely useless, though our dogs now fear it because it does make just enough noise to freak them out (Maggie also doesn’t care for my electric toothbrush, though). So even though it hasn’t worked too well for our pooches, I’m sure that some folks probably swear by the thing.

My problem is with PediPaws – the company. When I bought this thing, we were told they were online or phone only. That is, “not available in stores! Order Now!” However, literally the next day after ordering I was in Bed, Bath, and Beyond and saw them at the check-out counter (“As seen on TV!”). I snapped a photo and sent it to Angela along with a couple of choice swear words. I got home and called their customer service number to cancel the order. They told me that it hadn’t shown up yet and that I couldn’t cancel; that I should call back in a couple of days. Of course, when I call back the order has already gone through and shipped. I gave up and figured it wouldn’t be so bad…

Now, I keep getting checks that sure look an awful lot like rebate checks. Of course, there was never any sort of rebate offered on these things. But, once you read a bit of fine print, it’s clear that this check has nothing to do with the PediPaws product. It’s a contract that if you cash the check you agree to let them charge $140 a year for some credit monitoring crap on the card you bought the PediPaws with.

Does this look shady to you, too?

Yikes!

So a company I already feel questionable about has my credit card and is trying somewhat shady things to get me to authorize more charges on it; plus they want to get to review all my other activity (or, possibly worse, pass my card information off to some third party). This is not cool and I sincerely regret ever having bought this thing at all and especially from PediPaws directly.

Someone call Consumerist.

This one is a pretty simple trick and, to be honest, one that a lot of folks probably figured out sooner than I did. With just a little bit of work, you can easily replace oft-used words or phrases in your Flare project with a variable. This is especially useful if you find yourself writing early on in the development process where some terminology of features or a product interface are subject to change.

Or, if you’re like me and you just don’t know what the hell such-and-such thing is called and the development team has yet to answer your e-mail asking because they’re too busy forwarding it to everyone else in the company who’ll get a good laugh out of the ridiculously silly question. Okay, that hasn’t actually happened (except for the part about me not knowing what something is actually called). At least not that I’m aware of.

So, here are the steps for finding all the instances of a term and replacing it with a variable:

1. Create a Variable in the MyVarables set.

   Note: It’s good practice to use camel notation when naming your variable. Keep it short, but make it something you can easily identify (variables don’t have dental records and teeth and such in the event of a serious accident). And be consistent in how you name things!

2. Launch the Find and Replace panel by selecting Edit > Find and Replace > Find and Replace from the menu bar, or just press Ctrl + F.
3. Enter the text you wish to substitute with a your new variable in the Find What field. Under the options section, select (whole project) for the Find In: field, Topics for File Types, and make sure the option for Find in source code is cleared (though we’ll use that option in a moment).
4. Click the Start button to locate the first instance of the text.
5. The searched-for text will be selected for you in the XML editor within a topic file. Click the topic’s tab along the editor window just to make that part of the program window active. Now, select Insert > Variable… from the menu bar to open the Variables dialog.
6. Select the MyVariables set and then the variable you’ll be using to replace this particular text with. Click the OK button.
7. Now, you need to get the actual markup for this variable. The fastest way I know to do so is click the Locate in Content Explorer button in the Standard toolbar. Then, with the topic file now selected, right click and select Open With > Internal Text Editor. Now, hunt around until you locate the variable tag. It looks like this:

   <MadCap:variable name="MyVariables.SuchAndSuch" />

   Select and copy this entire tag.

   Note: You can also use the Send To menu button, also located on the standard toolbar. It’s the one that looks like an envelope and that you probably thought was just for e-mailing a file. However, it will actually open up the current file in an external program, including your handy text editor (I use TextPad).

8. Now, back in the Find and Replace panel, this is what you’ll paste into the Replace with: field. But now you’re going to make sure that the Find in source code option is now selected.
9. Click the Start button again (you changed the options since you last did so). Use the Replace and Find Next buttons to swap out the text with the variable markup one by one.

A Note of Caution

You’re going to be replacing text in the source markup here so be careful. I strongly urge you to not use the Replace In All Files button. It’s fast but it’s also risky. You’ll replace any instance of the text; anywhere: keywords, etc. You might find yourself putting a variable tag where it really doesn’t belong. Fortunately, Flare will likely just give you a gentle scolding and ignore your silly little nonsense. But, you might just find a loophole you wish you hadn’t. It’s best to do this one-at-a-time, even if that takes a while.

Ideally, MadCap would add an option in the the Replace With field to just select one of your variables from there. This way, you don’t have to Find/Replace in source code and run the risk of doing something unintended (hopefully they’d handle all that under the hood). But until then, only replace what you are sure is content material and not anything else.

Extend This Trick

Now, you can also use this little trick for finding and replacing other code, so you could add a particular style to any instance of a phrase. Ex: replace "OK button" with "<strong>OK</strong> button". I’ve yet to find a limit to the number of characters available in the Find and Replace field, but I suspect it’s probably around 256 or so. I don’t think you’ll be replacing A Tale of Two Cities with War and Peace using this.

Further, you can use regular expression for — well — anything that you just about think of, I suppose. You can also use wildcards which though not as sexy as RegEx are still quite useful when just doing text search. If you’re just looking for any instance of noun — plural or singular; RegEx might be swatting flies with tanks.

I and about 400 other folks attended PodCamp Nashville this past Saturday. Perhaps the idea of a free, volunteer run conference kind of gave me some low expectations (I’d never been to a bar-style, un-conference before). But it was without need as the conference was time well spent.

I attended seven different sessions during the day:

• "From Prep to Post: The PodCasting Process" by Justin Davis (of the Davis on Draft podcast, produced here in lovely Franklin, TN). — This was a very well received presentation on the basic process of creating and distributing a podcast. Justin did an excellent job of describing good podcast practices and demonstrating the very low barrier to entry for creating a show of one’s own: From using inexpensive hardware, to open-source editing tools like Audacity, to free hosting & feed tools like FeedBurner. This was generally a very high-level view of the process, with a few practical tips thrown in to demonstrate just how simple this can be to get started.
  

  
  

• "Twitter Groups: The Real Conversation" by Paul Nicholson — This was really the background for and demo of a technology – ReTweetBot – for grouping related tweets to build more practicality into Twitter. Definitely something Twitter needs and this is a pretty good solution, though still not perfect (or very tested). However, the @pcnChat group seemed to work well throughout the day. Indeed, it seems to work better than tagging (which is not the same as grouping, regardless of the site).
  
• "Building Online Communities" by John Morgan — John presented excellent tips on how to begin and grow relationships with customers/clients/users. As someone who is trying to build up a community for Structural Engineers online, there was a lot of invaluable advice here. One of the biggest take-aways I have from this session is that I need to ask my community what they want from me¹ Lots of great ideas to be put into practice over at the BE Communities site.
  
• "Buisness PodCasting & Blogging: There IS a Secret Sauce" by Jerad Degnan — Another great presentation for mining ideas to put into practice over at BE Communities. My favorite: get people to answer the question "What makes you successful?" People love answering that and they also love hearing what others have to say in response.
  
• "Slice of the Cake: The Secret to PodCast Listener Loyalty" by Dave Delaney — Dave and his wife ran a very successful podcast on parenting and he shared some ideas on how to partner with related goods and services to generate contests, etc. The most important parts seemed to be choosing something that would have relevance to the audience and to keep the process simple. It was also fun to see he had partnered with Rockabye Baby music, something we’re big fans of here at the Franklin Branch Office.
  
• "WordPress & PodCasting: Like Digital PB & J" by Mitch Canter — This presentation would have been best placed immediately following Justin’s session on how to create PodCasts. One of Justin’s strong recommendations was to have a website for your podcast and Mitch’s presentation was on how to do just that. This was done at a more on-the-ground level and Mitch really walked the audience through the process of setting up a WordPress blog (using a full WP install and not WordPress.com — something I very glad he spent time differentiating). He also hit on how to make the most out of WP plug-ins geared specifically for hosting podcast content. My only complaint was that some complex concepts (like plug-ins) could have used a bit more expanding and much time was spent on walking through a WP install. However, given the wide audience that he presented to in 20 minutes, Mitch managed to cover a lot. I was very glad to see WP getting a little love at this PodCamp and hope to see even more next year².
  
• "Why I Love Guinness: A Introduction to Social Networks" by Dave Delaney — Having lived in Galway, Ireland, Dave is a big fan of pubs and stouts. Here, he makes comparisons of old-world pubs to some of the most popular social networks. He also includes some rather amazing stats on the rapid growth of these sites. I do wish he’d spent a bit more time of some of the different types of users and how to engage them, but it was also an intro session.
  

Unfortunately, due to a lot of small things going on, I wasn’t able to help out but I would certainly like to volunteer some for next year. I’d even like to present on screencasting, as that was no where represented though I do think it is a popular form of online video. Further, I’m generally excited to see such a large tech community here in the Nashville area. This means not only PodCamps, but BarCamps (this past year was the third BarCamp Nashville). Maybe even a WordCamp, as WordPress seemed to be a popular subject.

Hey! Maybe I should try and find a MadCap users group here in Central Tennessee. Or even start one if it doesn’t yet exist! The possibilities are wide open and that was the best thing about this past weekend: learning that there are so many people right here around me who are interested in and even creating new media. People who have a lot of the same geeky interests as me.

1. Sorry, that doesn’t apply to this site. Here, it’s just whatever I feel like posting.↵
2. Or if Mitch decides to get a WordCamp going here in Nashville, that’d be even better↵