Shell-fu:

Shell-fu is a place for all those little command line goodies that you come across and then can never find again when you need them. Hopefully we’ll end up with a comprehensive and easily usable resource for anyone working with the shell.

http://www.shell-fu.org/

Having had a few false starts getting Mutt working with the new Gmail IMAP I thought I’d share my setup incase it is of any help.

Firstly to use Mutt in OSX you’ll need to install MacPorts if you don’t have it. Once that’s setup you can proceed to install Mutt:

$ sudo port install mutt-devel +headercache +imap +ssl

mutt-devel gives the latest version, +imap and +ssl are needed to use the IMAP service and +headercache stops Mutt needing to download the headers from the server every time it is run.

Having installed Mutt you’ll need to configure for using Gmail IMAP, this is done by adding the following to your ~/.muttrc

set imap_user = 'yourmail@gmail.com'
set imap_pass = 'yourpass'
set spoolfile = imaps://imap.gmail.com:993/INBOX
set folder = imaps://imap.gmail.com:993
set record="imaps://imap.gmail.com/[Google Mail]/Sent Mail"
set postponed="imaps://imap.gmail.com/[Google Mail]/Drafts"
set header_cache="~/.mutt/cache/headers"
set message_cachedir="~/.mutt/cache/bodies"
set certificate_file=~/.mutt/certificates 

Of course you’ll need to change the values in the top two lines. I’ve also used [Google Mail] here as I’m in the UK, but in most other places you’ll need to replace that with [Gmail]. If you’re not sure, don’t worry you can use either to start with and you’ll be able to see the correct value in the Mutt folder list.

You should now be able to run Mutt and see all your mail and folders.

Help the People of Burma — Post this Meme on Your Blog! Thanks to Nova Spivack for the info.

Note: This is a new kind of online protest that uses blogs to spread a petition globally. To participate, just add your blog by following the instructions in this blog post. This not an issue of partisan politics, this is an issue of basic human rights and democracy. Please help to prevent a human tragedy in Burma by adding your blog and asking others to do the same.

By passing this meme on through the blogosphere hopefully we can generate more awareness and avert a serious tragedy. As concerned world-citizens this something we bloggers can do to help.

How to participate:

1. Copy this entire post to your blog, including this special number: 1081081081234

2. After a few days, you can search Google for the number 1081081081234 to find all blogs that are participating in this protest and petition. Note: Google indexes blogs at different rates, so it could take longer for your blog to show up in the results.

3. If you know how to add tags to your blog posts, add the Technorati tag 1081081081234 to your post as well. This will make your post findable sooner in Technorati.

THE SITUATION IN BURMA AND WHY IT MATTERS TO ALL OF US

There is no press freedom in Burma and the government has started turning off the Internet and other means of communication, so it is difficult to get news out. Individuals on the ground have been sending their day-by-day reports to the BBC, and they are heartbreaking. I encourage you to read these accounts to see for yourself what is really going on in Burma. Please include this link in your own blog post.

I keep being drawn to the Wired artice on replacing Facebook functionality using open social tools. Despite the fact that I rarely get round to doing much with this site (other than an occasional re-design), I do prefer the idea of using my own page to the more restrictive options most social networks offer.

The main problem that people raise currently, is the lack of the social aspect if you go the do-it-yourself route, but surely that can’t be a hard problem to overcome. As the Wired article points out, a lot of functionality can be replicated using open tools and in fact far more can be added, with far more control, than Facebook and the like offer. The missing social piece cannot be that hard to overcome, all that would be needed is a service to track friends. Simply enter a friends URL and RSS URL and a network could be built up. The service could provide an aggregate RSS feed (something already doable with services like Yahoo pipes) and code to embed a friend list in your site.

Users of such a service could provide additional details allowing users to search for them and giving richer content for friend lists (profile picture etc) whilst still allowing the individual users full control over the content they have.

It would be relatively trivial for a service like this to work with any website, or to integrate with a platform like Wordpress, and would I think provide a very interesting alternative to current options. Hell, if I get the time, I may even do it myself!

This entry has been reposted from my old site. Please update any bookmarks.

There are two ways you can use the links. Either with SpreadFirefox, or with Google AdSense.

Both are good systems and you can benefit whichever you go for. SpreadFirefox track clicks from your site and you can appear in their rollcall which will give your traffic a BIG boost. Google AdSense on the other hand will pay you $1 for each person who downloads Firefox that way*. Whichever method you choose you’ll be doing your bit to help the Firefox community and yourself!

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While I was sorting some of my email at work today I came up with quite a useful idea for an Outlook based to-do list based on a search folder.

The setup:

1. Create a new search folder (File > New > Search Folder)
2. Scroll down to “Create a Custom Search folder”
3. Give it a name, and click “Criteria”
4. Got to the advanced tab, select Field > Frequently Used Fields > Follow up flag and set this to match “is not empty”
5. (Optional) You can also set other options here to narrow the list
6. With your search folder created open it and right click on the headings at the top of the message list, select “Field Chooser”
7. Select “All Mail Fields” > “Due By”
8. Click the due by heading to sort into date due

There you have it, a quick to-do list. To extend this a bit you could send yourself emails for other tasks and set the follow up date to when they need to be done by.

(I’ve only had chance to test this in Outlook 2003 (I think) as I use Thunderbird at home, but the same principal may hold for other versions).

I recently discovered some interesting GTD Workflow wallpapers at anabubula.com I played around with a couple of them, but what I really wanted was to use the wallpaper to organise my desktop and they wouldn’t really let me do that.

I decided rather than mess them up too much it would be quicker to make my own. It was a pretty quick job, but turned out okay. Feel free to grab a copy:

PNG: 1024×768 1280×800 1280×1024 1440×900

JPG: 1024×768 1280×800 1280×1024 1440×900

You can see a screenshot of the wallpaper in action here

If you’re using the wallpaper in Windows you may want to set your background to white and turn off align to grid for your icons.

(Icons courtesy of The Tango Desktop Project. GTD Workflow Copyright 2007, David Allen & Company, all rights reserved)

SocialList is a Wordpress plugin that adds a page to your admin area allowing you to view details on submissions of your pages to social bookmarking sites. Currently only del.icio.us and digg are supported, but I’m hoping to add more in a future version. So far it has only been tested on my installation, so there may be bugs. If you spot any problems or have any other comments please let me know below.

To install simply copy the “SocialList” folder into your plugins folder and activate in the control panel.

Download SocialList plugin

I’m very happy to announce the (re)release of my first icon set, titled “Microns”. The full set, which I released a preview selection for some time ago, comprises 72 high quality icons that have a vast range of uses, both online and in applications.

The icons are all 16×16 GIFs on a transparent background and are useful in a wide range of circumstances.

Enjoy (Microns free stock web icon set)

I’m in the process of adding a projects page to the site to give details on a few bits and pieces I’ve worked on in the past. In the meantime, I noticed that the Argumentation Research Group at Dundee University School of Computing have included my MSc project “MAgtALO” on their site.

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