Peter's Blog 2004/6

Status Report

I feel the need for a status report on various stuff I've mentioned in this blog.

Palm Tungsten T2

I haven't used this so much recently, I only use it as a diary. This is partly because it is summer and I don't wear a coat with pockets to carry it around. It's too big for trouser pockets. I do my blogging with Python Desktop Server, I don't use DayNotez any more.

Dell Inspiron 500m

I love my notebook, I'm using it now, I'd say it was my primary PC. I sit on the sofa in front of the TV and go through RSS feeds. My main gripe with it is that sometimes when it comes out of hibernate it does not see the wireless network and I have to hibernate it and unhibernate it again to kick it into life. Oh, also the SVideo output is only black and white. The laptop is just nice, no noisy fans and it doesn't make my lap overheat. About 2 hours of battery life.

Desktop PC

Hasn't crashed recently but that may be because I don't use it very often. The only time I used it this week was as a print server. The drivers with the PC TV card might have fixed the PCI latency issues. There are a number of PCs at work, including the firewall PC, that use VIA chipsets and they randomly hang as well. I have no love for VIA.

Python Desktop Server

Use it most days. I use it at work for my engineering logs which are behind a firewall. I haven't got around to adding tools or anything, I mainly use it for RSS aggregation. Having the aggregation in the web browser makes it so convenient for following links: in firefox I middle-click and read in a new tab. As a blogging tool my main gripe is the lack of a preview facility: checking links and formatting before uploading. I have to set it to offline mode before I start composing.

Debian

My debian server is still whirring away (noisy fans this summer but it's in a room I don't go in much). It handles email and Python Desktop Server and is also useful as a squid proxy that I can access from work through an SSH tunnel. I can use this to check the work firewall, to make sure it is possible to get in through the firewall. I might change server to a desktop pc as the laptop is a bit slow (166MHz pentium). That would allow me to make it a headless X server.

Object Desktop

I got fed up with animated fish using my CPU time in DesktopX. I use windowsblinds on the laptop to make it a bit more interesting but I don't think it was worth buying.

Intellimail

Still using it at home but I am tempted to move to IMAP + thunderbird like I use at work. Awaiting a home server decision.

Thunderbird

It's ok if a bit utilitarian when compared to Intellimail. However it handles IMAP, if a little flakily (it sometimes displays Inbox(3) but doesn't show the new messages).

Firefox

Love it. I only use IE for broken websites.

ITunes

May register for it today. If I can buy just the tracks I want and blow them to an audio CD then I see no need to buy CD's that are 75% filler material.

Furl

I'm beginning to see Furl as a place to look for websites that other people find interesting. When I run out of RSS articles I now try, e.g. this.

Motorbike

Sold for the asking price to a dealer who was advertising for CBR600's.

Furl

Signed up for furl. It's a kind of online bookmark thing, it allows you to store interesting web pages, search them etc. The server is a bit sluggish but it might help me with my todo list of things to investigate. Being online I can use it at home and work.

Itunes

Itunes was released in the uk while I was away on holiday so now I've had my first try. The price looks good to me: 80p for just the tracks I want and I can listen to 30 second previews of any track to make sure I am not buying filler material.

It's kinda fun exploring the archive, seeing how comprehensive it is. It only has 'partial albums' of some old 70's stuff from my youth (Jeff Wayne's 'War of the Worlds'?), some are pretty much absent (Steeleye Span) but there are some comprehensive back catalogues (Queen, Tangerine Dream). I have never bought a Slipknot CD but I can dip into tracks like 'People = s**t'.

I don't have an IPod but apparently I can blow CD's so I am not tied to listening to music while sitting at a pc.

Looks good to me. It's also the first time I've ever used any Apple product.

Intellimail Spam Filter

Intellimail has added a spam filter to their email client. It's really a simple white list thing but it's better than nothing. My previous spam filtering solution was SpamBayes but I had to reboot my server and after that SpamBayes refused to start. I could figure out the problem but my inclination is to bin it.

There is an interesting claim in the Intellimail email newsletter (which normally I would regard as spam):

"We're proud to be the first email program in email history to integrate an anti-spam solution completely free of cost to its users."

This is for the version dated 2 June 2004, build 1488.

I think they should qualify this as a commercial email program as Thunderbird already has a much better spam filter. I still find Incredimail a more polished application than Thunderbird. At work I have problems with thunderbird occasionally telling me there are new message available but not listing them. I'd use Incredimail at work but:

• It does not support IMAP

• It add an adveret to every email I send: not very professional.

Thunderbird has also crashed on me a couple of times. I think this is ok when using IMAP and Maildir as I'm less likely to lose my email archives.

Object Desktop

In a weak moment I signed up for Stardock Object Desktop which is a set of various utilities for Windows. It's mostly a stupid toy but there are useful things in there.

Highlights:

Window Blinds

Flexible skinning for windows which I dabbled with before. I've found one theme that has readable colour schemes (not black text on dark blackground: 90% of theme designers appear to be Goths). The one I chose makes it hard to tell if a check box is checked.

SkinStudio

Skin editor. Very complex but it does mean I can create some bright cheerful themes to make people happy (or maybe I can't be bothered).

DesktopX

Put objects on the desktop. Have cute fish swim across the screen as you edit. Have a transparent clock 'always on top'. It is scriptable, it supports activescript but it only enables VBScript and JScript (MS version of JavaScript) not python, apperently because they could be bothered to support python syntax highlighting in the editor.

DriveScan

Incredibly useful tool to scan directory tree and show you where all those gigabytes have disappeared to. Shows pie charts, allows you to go into subfolders and delete stuff in place. Not a tool to use every day but good at what it does.

There is various other stuff to play with but I am wary of having too much crap installed.

One of the DesktopX toys was a text-to-speech thing using Microsoft SAM which I didn't realise existed in XP. I only have a male voice. I may try getting the desk top objects to say rude things as I move round the screen (what other use is text to speech?).

One nice thing about it is the licence: I can use it on as many computers as I like but only one at a time, like the old Borland Turbo Pascal paperback licence of the 80's.

IBM Woes

The IBM DeskStar hard disk I put in my Sky Plus box on Saturday has died (re: Sky Plus Repairs). It has gone into infinite recalibrate mode. I think this confirms the poor reputation of DeskStar hard disks and it does not surprise me that IBM got out of the hard disk market.

In my recollection I have bought three IBM products in my life:

• DeskStar hard disk

• A reconditioned ThinkPad (the butterfly keyboard kind) that spontaneously switches itself off (even when powered from the mains)

• A copy of OS/2. I found it slow and buggy and I went back to windows 3.1.

I'm sure this is just bad luck and many customers are happy with their fine products. I just hope they don't mess too much with linux.

IMAP mail

I've rearranged my work email again. I've gone for the following:

• Fetchmail to get email from pop accounts

• Exim still as MTA

• Courier IMAP

• Mozilla Thunderbird

This has some advantages over the previous setup:

• IMAP means my mail is stored on the linux box in simple Maildir format: each message is in a seperate file. No nasty proprietary databases to corrupt, I can use a nice fast search engine.

• I can change email clients very easily without having to migrate the email: Outlook, Outlook express and Thunderbird all work.

• It fits in with my plan to hyperlink project blog/wiki with email. I just knock up something to convert the email to html on the fly.

• I installed sqwebmail to give me remote access anywhere in the company (that side of the firewall). I don't think I can use that to serve up web pages to other people without opening up my email account. Sqwebmail works but it's not very pretty.

• Thunderbird has a built in spam filter so I don't need Spambayes. This is a nice simplification. Spambayes worked but it was very slow handling email with attachments.

PC Power Consumption

Currently I use an old laptop as a server. It is a Pentium 1, 166MHz, 80M ram with a 2G hard disk and a PCMCIA network adapter. I use it because:

• it is fairly quiet, some fan noise

• I assumed it would use less power than a desktop pc

I have a spare 333MHz Pentium II desktop system that I could also use. Thinking about power consumption, I decided to do some research. This article implies that there is not that much difference between a laptop and a desktop, given that the monitor is off (especially a laptop from that era: this Centrino laptop I am writing this on may be better). The article and this calculator tell me that it would cost about £60 a year to run a server 24/7 which seems expensive. I like having a server and if I'm going to have one I may as well have a powerful one.

Other random thoughts:

• Each hard disk consumes about 25W: only need 1

• Dedicated server pc should be stripped of audio, multiple video cards, USB peripherals and anything else that just burns watts.

• Signing up for online hosting isn't much more expensive. Don't get root login power and kudos though.

• Desktop systems are noisy. The server is an old AT motherboard, are quiet PSU's available for these? Hack quiet fans into the old case?