Monthly Archives: October 2009

Email on several computers

Posted by on October 16, 2009 No comments | 3,204 views

Mozilla ThunderbirdSo, I was messing about with my Thunderbird email client today in an attempt to make it do exactly what it is I want. I have currently 3 computers accessing the same  email account, and I want to have the same emails, both inbox and sent items, on all of them. Now, same inbox is easy, sent items not so much. There is always IMAP, but I don’t want to use IMAP due to server side storage limitations. So here’s my solution.

Inbox:

This is simple, I designate one main computer, which is the main desktop PC at home. This is also the computer I am away from the longest when travelling. It is set up to download all emails, and leave a copy for 30 days before removing them from the server. My other two laptops are configured to just download and leave a copy. No deletion. All the necessary options are found in “Tools -> Account Settings -> Server Settings”.

Sent items:

Now this is the tricky one, although simple enough.

First you need to disable the automatic storage of a copy of your sent items. This is found under “Tools -> Account Settings -> Copies & Folders”. Instead what I use is an experimental Thunderbird addon (don’t worry, it works just fine) called Auto-CC, found here. The instructions how to set it up are on that page too, they are quite easy really. Basically you set up the client to email yourself your own email as a blind carbon-copy (BCC) each time you send out an email. This is done through “Tools -> Options -> Advanced -> Config Editor”.

Second step is setting up your client to recognize these copies and move them to your sent folder. You do this by entering “Tools -> Message Filters” and clicking “New”. I named my filter “Sent Items” (clever ain’t it?) and entered these settings:

Message Filter

Where the red-outed bit is your email address. I have a separate email-alias for this, if you don’t, you would probably want to just select “From” from the first dropdown list and have it grab all emails sent to you from you. The “X-Original-To” option is not in the list, but you are given the option to customize the list and can just add it yourself.

That’s it really … Now all my emails will be synchronized on all my computers, both inbox and sent items.

Open-mindedness

Posted by on October 9, 2009 No comments | 2,486 views

This excellent YouTube video takes care of the accusation we sceptics often has thrown after us that we need to be more open-minded. This always bugs me because my inquisitive mind is very open to new ideas. I’ve spent most of this year learning quantum physics for fucks sake. Being open-minded is however not the same as naivety…

Enjoy the video :)

The tension between science and religion

Posted by on October 6, 2009 No comments | 2,643 views

A talk by physicist Steven Weinberg. It is well worth the listen.

“Steven Weinberg, Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Texas at Austin, where he founded its Theory Group and holds the Josey Regental Chair of Science, was awarded the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics with colleagues Abdus Salam and Sheldon Glashow for combining electromagnetism and the weak force into electroweak force. He has written several popular books including the prize-winning The First Three Minutes, The Discovery of Subatomic Particles, and Dreams of a Final Theory.”

Stargate Universe

Posted by on October 4, 2009 No comments | 1,934 views

Yay, a new sci-fi show!

(May contain spoilers!)

Stargate UniverseI sat down yesterday and watched the first double episode of Stargate Universe. I have to say they made a pretty good first episode there. I also liked the first episode of Atlantis, but this one was much better told. They used the familiar story device of jumping between present and recent past in the introduction phase of the story (probably the whole first episode of the two, didn’t pay attention to when the story became linear). Although the self sacrifice scene towards the end was very very clishé, most of the story was quite well done. I also loved the scene where they were looking at the map and the path the ship had travelled over the millennia. They did a decent attempt to tie the show into the existing Stargate universe, and O’Neil’s “we’re gonna beam you up to our spaceship” comment at the start was hilarious Razz

Basically the story takes place on an ancient space ship that were sent from earth a few thousand years ago, and is travelling through the universe by itself. The first episode explains how these people ends up on the ship after discovering a specially designed stargate that leads there. I do dislike the whole ancient ascension bit. (“The Anscients” is the name of an old race who lived on earth, for those unfamiliar with the Stargate universe.) Too religious-ish for my taste, and it made the reason why the ship was abandoned in the first place a little cheesy. I like the concept of an ancient race who made all this technology, but I prefer the way the Asgard-race disappeared over the way the ancients did. However that’s a rant for another time.

Also, I doubt this show is going to turn into a BSG (Battlestar Galactica, i.e. a space soap) ripoff as some accuse it of. I didn’t really see much in this episode that reminded me of BSG besides a few details. The power struggle may be a part of the story, but in no way like in BSG I hope. This is more like the Atlantis power struggle that popped up now and then. In Stargate such story devices are short lived. Also, I doubt this show is going to be about on-board drama either (I truly hope not). I see people criticizing the show for its characters too, but character development is very important for a good show, and can be done without ending up as a soap like BSG tended to. Babylon 5 had a brilliant balance between character development and action.  In any case, Stargate is traditionally (after 15 season we can use the word traditional) a “us vs. evil alien villains” kinda show, and I doubt they’ll deviate from that path. They’ve already set the scene when introducing the secondary usage of the on-board stargate for resource gathering. I bet this will be a much used plot device. This will make it more a Voyager-like show than a BSG-like show. That is not necessarily bad, it is hard to invent a plot from scratch without using anything that has been used before. Atlantis did remarkably well in that respect though I think, so the creators certainly have the skill needed.

Looking forward to the next episode, and the eventual DVD releases!