2017.08.22: Free software! Inkscape, Fusion360 free for startups, & our first foray with Squarespace (no subdomains?)

Today I tackled a lot of disparate problems instead of moving down a single problem laden path.

Problem 1. Squarespace

Over the past weekend we setup a squarespace website and upgraded to a personal account which is roughly 15$/month. Not bad for the product. It's actually a better product than I thought it would be. I generally write a lot of my own code and was wary when stepping into a website builder because I figured it would remove a lot of control. That is certainly not the case. Squarespace is able to handle security, ecommerce and a bunch of other stuff that would've taken several days to implement. On top of that, anything a developer wants to do, can do (to some extent). There's a developer mode that lets you manipulate any html, css, or javascript. That said, 10/10 would recommend.

Specifically, however, the problem we tackled was that of making an icon, setting up a few bits of SEO and realizing that we can't make a subdomain.

That's right, you can't make a subdomain. I had the intention of making each Objective under Project Del on a separate subdomain, but we actually have to create an entirely separate squarespace account and website in order to do so. Squarespace only supports one website per domain per account. Pretty laaaaame, otherwise, it's a good product.

Problem 2. Google Domains and Google Search Console

I use google domains instead of squarespace as my domain name registrar because I was already using the Google Cloud Platform (GCP). We're using GCP because we're using the Android Things operating system for the coffee maker and there's Internet of Things (IoT) integration to be had! Squarespace is great for making our public facing website, but it is not an api builder or serve as some infrastructure for communicating with the coffee makers. As it's said, "pick the right tool for the job."

After we had all the google domain and squarespace website setup, we obviously wanted to drive traffic to the website. So we registered the domain on the Google Search Console which is a completely separate program from the GCP. It's just a small little webapp that lets you optimize the way google sees your website. I believe it's a must do for any website trying to rise the ranks.

Problem 3. Adobe Illustrator to Inkscape

Unfortunately I graduated college and no longer have student licenses to thousands of dollars worth of software. The adobe suite was one of those products. In favor of spending 50$/month or more on the suite, we opted for "Free" software such as GIMP and Inkscape. Inkscape turned out to be an excellent replacement for our go-to logo/icon creator, Adobe Illustrator. Turns out Inkscape can also import all our old illustrator files, it's truly excellent. In fact, the icon you see on the top of almost every page was made in Inkscape in about 2 hours. We placed a triangle and then two rectangles and then duplicated the shapes in a dark gray (gray with an a, not an e) to create a shadow effect. I'm extremely satisfied with the result and hope to make some t-shirts and stickers soon. Name drop, Christiana made the icon and she just got her wisdom teeth pulled so she's on pain killers for days and still managed to get a sweet logo together. Goes to show anyone can do anything if they put their mind to it! Even make a coffee maker!

Problem 4. Fusion360

Alright! It's the last portion of my day, I played a couple hours of Overwatch with my friends and then started some CAD. By the way, Fusion360 is free for startups! We've actually been 3d-modeling the coffee maker for the past month and a half. We should be done most the CAD by the end of August, but then again, I said that last month. It's surprising how many nooks and crannies have to be drawn before you get a fully automated coffee maker. For instance, do you have any idea what rpm motor we should be using to throwaway coffee grounds?! I sure don't! Which means we don't really know the dimensions of the motor we're using so we're just relying on the dimensions of the motor we're using for the grinder. Hopefully we can get away with a smaller motor for the grounds because we're quickly running out of space. That said, today was the first time I fully parameterized the sketch before 3d-modeling it. In other words, I defined the dimensions of my drawing before I even drew it. All this in hopes that we can revise any changes to these dimensions without having to redraw anything. We just change the dimension in the list of "User Parameters" in Fusion360. This means we have user parameters out the wazoooooo, but that beats having to modify a sketch in Fusion (which I dare say is impossible if you don't constrain the sketch properly).