Squirrelmail was driving me crazy – incoming email filtering (via avelsieve) was broken in the old stuff, and the preview pane is broken in the new. Nothing seems to be very actively maintained. So I revisited Roundcube, and it looks good.

I’ll be keeping Squirrelmail around to manage my incoming email filtering – avelsieve is just really nice to work with – and I’ll be using Roundcube for my web client. And Thunderbird works great when no corporate firewall is in the way. Works for me…

The only changes I made during Roundcube setup were within [config/db.inc.php] (trivial) and [config/main.inc.php]:

// MDM I used this to install, then moved the installer directory to backup...
// $rcmail_config['enable_installer'] = true;

// MDM This prevents the silly "host" box on login.
// Don't use 'localhost' or outgoing email will fail!
$rcmail_config['default_host'] = 'myserver.com';

Roundcube

Thunderbird

Squirrelmail Avelsieve

My Forms for Portals project is a simple collection of forms to help you quickly access google, dictionary, wikipedia, imdb, maps, yellow pages, etc. from your own web pages. I’ve mentioned my portal before, hopefully the new article makes it all easily digestible (and yummy!). It’s a reaaally oldskool approach, yet still pretty useful IMHO.

And just so I’m eating my own dog food…

Trying out IE8 RC1, it’s listed as incompatible with URL’s like microsoft.com, including Windows Update. Meanwhile IE8 updates are only available through Windows Update. And the uninstall doesn’t work in XP SP3 – I don’t get a “remove” button at all. You can’t get rid of it, and you can’t patch it. Thanks for completely breaking Windows, Microsoft. Wow, the incompetence is staggering. Fortunately Windows is becoming more and more of a bad memory every day. The kind you can eventually completely black out, with any luck…

Meanwhile, FF3 continues as the champion workhorse, and running Google Chrome in XP is like taking a Ferrari for a spin… “soon available” on linux… and don’t miss the geeky-great chrome cartoon…

Our power flashed yesterday while we were out (I HATE it when that happens), and the Wii wouldn’t power on again. AT ALL. It seemed completely dead, and of course my first thought was that a spike smoked it to bits (even though it was plugged into a surge suppressor). My daughter remembered that her friend had the same problem (good job Wrenny!). Turns out Nintendo told them how to solve it – just UNPLUG it for 5 minutes! Sweet. It didn’t work to unplug the power cord from the back of the Wii, you have to unplug the transformer from the wall. And yes, you REALLY have to wait 5 minutes or more! Weird. Thanks Gary! Whew!

What do I want out of my linux desktop?

1. Full access to any KDE and Gnome applications I need
2. Ability to devote 100% of my real estate to what I’m working on
3. Keyboard shortcuts for every common task
4. Fast access to multiple workspaces
5. Quick access to system monitors, date and time (and perhaps rss, weather…)
6. Prettiness 😛

Fluxbox has delivered this functionality with great efficiency. That’s a mixed blessing – I haven’t had a need to shop around, so I’m not sure if there’s something I’m missing out on. Certainly compiz-fusion will be a blast to play with some day, albeit not (yet) necessary. A lot of my linux friends have defected to Macs, but that’s too rich for my blood. Go ahead and rant at me if you’re from another desktop planet. I’m eternally curious.

I’m using the following with fluxbox to keep me happy:

• YAX theme
• slit apps: gkrellm, wmsmixer, wmtop, wmweather+ (replace this!)
• a tricky fluxbox keyboard macro to allow me to pop up the “slit” sidebar – I believe you need fluxbox 1.1.1 or better to do this:

  # MDM Key to toggle autohide of slit.  Pop it!
  None F10 :ToggleCmd {MacroCmd {SetResourceValue session.screen0.slit.autoHide false} {Reconfigure}} {MacroCmd {SetResourceValue session.screen0.slit.autoHide true} {Reconfigure}}

• conky; really sweet looking, but sits on the desktop, which I hardly ever see; I keep it simple (date, time, machine name)
• and of course, a custom background and customized keys, menu and startup config files

UPDATE: I got Hua to play with compiz-fusion on his new laptop, so I could live vicariously. 3D cubes with windows hovered by z-order, cylinders, flipping windows stuck back-to-back… now I’m burning with desire. But it sounds like I won’t be able to use fluxbox with it, so I’ll have to save that project for a rainy day for now…