Stuff!

After being a stalwart user of Thunderbird, and all (yes, all) its predecessors, I have finally had enough of the slow progress and flaky alphas that TB has been sporting for the last 6 or so months. I have now switched to Mail.app, and while I miss certain things in TB, the fact that I can reliably read attached documents drove me to the switch. Plus, QuickLook really rocks.

My main issue with switching is/was filtering. Mail.app’s filtering is OK, but it is missing the crucial (for me, anyway) ability to filter based on the ‘read’ status of a message. I like to read messages to some mailing lists as they arrive, and then move them to their folder after I’ve read them. Thunderbird lets you do this easily, by setting up a filter that moves messages for the mailing list (like subject contains ‘[Petunia Growers]’) where the message status is ‘read’. Run all filters for your inbox, and the messages you have read are squirreled away in your archive folder.

I semi-solved this issue using the Mail Act-on plugin for Mail.app. It allows you to set up filters that are only run when the user requests them to be run. So now I select all messages in my inbox (Cmd-A), then hit the backtick (`), and a letter corresponding to the types of messages I want to filter out. This moves all the messages that match (sadly disregarding the ‘read’ status of messages). So I can move messages away quickly, but it is still a blunt instrument compared to TB’s filtering.

If anyone at Apple reads this, please, please, please add the ‘read status’ as a filterable item. That would make me a total convert!

Secondly, I was annoyed to find that Mail.app only does top-posting in replies. Yuck! TB had a nice option to let you do either. Daring Fireball has an old posting that creates a fix for this deficiency. It does require you to use FastScript (a $15 utility that helps you manage AppleScripts). I suppose you could do the same thing with Automator, but I have never had the patience to learn how to use it. And that weird robot thing bugs me…

Filed by pthomsen at 2:58 pm under Technology
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The Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer automatically synchronises your bookmarks between two or more computers running Firefox. It’s available for Firefox 1.5 and higher on ALL platforms, and works like a charm!

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Filed by pthomsen at 9:46 pm under General
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New products were announced by Apple Computer on Tuesday 2005/01/12. The Mac Mini, a 6.5″ x 6.5″ x 2″ (16.5cm x 16.5cm x 5cm) full-fledged computer, and the iPod Shuffle, a Flash-based Music Player.

The Mac Mini comes in two varieties:

• A 1.25GHz G4 with 256MB of RAM and a 40G hard drive for $499.
• A 1.42GHz G4 with 256 MB of RAM and an 80G hard drive for $599.

Both versions are customizable, and you can add things like Bluetooth support, memory, keyboard and mouse to them. A ready-to-run machine with most necessities (keyboard/mouse, monitor, Bluetooth, more RAM) will set you back in the $900-1,200 range, in my opinion.

The iPod Shuffle also comes in two versions:

• A 512MB version for $99.
• A 1GB version for $149.

Most Flash-based players have tiny LCD displays and teeny buttons that make it very hard to find things on your player. Dealing with playlists, etc. is a bear on almost all of these small-form-factor players.

How did Apple deal with this, seemingly insurmountable, problem? They removed the display from the equation, and simply gave you 5 buttons:

• Play/Stop
• Next Song
• Previous Song
• Volume Up
• Volume Down

There is a also a sliding button on the back to control how the music is played: in playlist order, or, you guessed it, shuffled.

Of course, with no display, you can’t find a particular song or playlist. Apple is betting that for a Flash player, with a maximum of about 250 songs, people won’t want or need to do that. To me, this would seem to work great for working out, and things like that, where you can’t physically do that.

Also out yesterday: iLife ‘05, which has upgrades for iPhoto (more editing capabilities, and new smarter albums), iMovie (support for Hi-Def video), iDVD (more themes), and Garageband (Multi-track recording, and a notation creator (taken from Logic)).

iWork ‘05 is a new package of programs (also out yesterday), which include Keynote 2, and the new Pages word processor. No spreadsheet this time around.

Filed by pthomsen at 11:09 am under General, Technology
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We had a small birthday party for Sophia, a few days ago. Her cousins, Kaylee, Trace and Taryn came over. There was ice cream cake, and small ice cream cones, too: It was good!

Filed by admin at 1:03 pm under Baby Pictures
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I needed to get more space in my computer room (a small closet off my office), so I decided to retire my trusty old Linux firewall for a shiny new firewall ‘appliance’. After some searching, I settled on the D-Link DFL-700. It comes with support for a DMZ, as well as a LAN port, can serve DHCP on all ports, and supports SNMP (for MRTG bandwidth logging). Also, it uses syslog to log dropped packets, etc., so I can have my logging server pick up the logs for analysis. All this for around $400. Pretty good deal.

Setting up was relatively easy, once you understand the terminology. It’s a little different from iptables, and it’s all done in a web browser, but once I got the hang of it, it is pretty easy to use. I did not particularly like the default configuration for the LAN and DMZ ports, where ‘everything is allowed’. Maybe I’m just too anal, but I like to know what flows over the wire. It was easy to get rid of the offending rules, though.

I’ve been tinkering with a few minor things (like NFS), and I still have a few outstanding things to tweak, but things are working quite well. Getting SNMP and mrtg to play together was easy, although the naming of the unit, and things that make the mrtg pages look nice left a lot to be desired.

Overall, I’m very happy with the unit. It installed easily, and I have easy access to the logging and statistics of my firewall.

Filed by admin at 11:21 am under General, Technology
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I almost exclusively use the Firefox browser for doing stuff on the internet. It has all the features you need: Tabbed Browsing, pop-up blocker, RSS reading, etc. Now the folks at SpreadFirefox are working to create a splash for the launch of the 1.0 version. They want to put a Full-Page Ad in the New York Times.

Filed by pthomsen at 11:04 am under General, Technology
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Have you ever been annoyed that you missed your daily radio show fix? Be it “Morning Edition”, “BBC World News” or your favorite Political Talk show… Now you won’t have to miss them with the RadioShark. (more…)

Filed by pthomsen at 10:59 pm under General, Technology
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I’m buying a new phone in the next couple of months. The one I have is OK, but is outdated, and the coverage where I moved to is pretty bad. I’m looking at the Treo 650. A sweet phone with everything I need. (more…)

Filed by admin at 3:24 am under General
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If you’re looking to implement a robust, reliable and secure disk-to-disk backup system, I would suggest taking a look at BoxBackup by Ben Summers. More information can be found here.
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Filed by admin at 2:08 am under General
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I’ve been working on this Microsoft Access Project for about a month now, and while I have come to hate it less, I still think someone in Redmond should be held responsible (or is it ‘brought to Justice’?) for all the shortcomings in this product.
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Filed by pthomsen at 1:07 am under General
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