Archive for the 'OS X' Category

My Mail Configuration

Published February 8th, 2007 in OS X and Productivity. 1 Comment

Okay, since I talked about it for long enough. I might as well let you know what I ended up with.

I now have four email accounts configured (many, many forwards are tied to these accounts):

  • School - IMAP with SSL for Inbound/Outbound
  • Personal - IMAP no SSL
  • Deprecated Personal. - IMAP no SSL
  • Penny Arcade - IMAP with SSL for Inbound/Outbound

I have the following Bundles and Rules installed. Thanks to the Mail.app plugin database.

  • MailTypeSelect - Navigate inboxes faster
  • MailActOn - Run specified actions on certain key strokes
    • Ctrl + A - Archive message (runs logic to put into appropriate folder)
    • Ctrl + D - Add to kGTD todo (runs logic to put into appropriate project)
  • Growl Mail AppleScript (local download) - Configured to pop up displays only for people in my address book.

I’m going to be giving MailTags a shot later in the week (tomorrow?), but for now I have to go do the student teacher thing.

Ten minutes of resolve

Published February 7th, 2007 in OS X. 0 Comments

Okay. I remember why I didn’t like Thunderbird. So after googling, I found a guy who was making builds of a Address Book friendly thunderbird. After getting it installed, it promptly disabled my plugins (which was not at all unexpected). I then had to dink around to get it to accept my IMAP settings.
The deal breaker for me was the SSL. I realize I am using an expired SSL certificate. Dreamhost runs the server (for the moment) so I’m stuck with it. Mail.app whines for exactly 7 clicks, and then goes back to its business, where as Thunderbird whines religiously. I realize it is possibly insecure and that a false sense of security is worse than no security,
but I don’t have a false sense of security. I have no delusions of trusting dreamhost, I keep the SSL turned on because I don’t want some idiot next to me at a coffee shop to run a sniffer and shanghai my password.

My other gripes with Thunderbird are mostly aesthetic. It doesn’t drag “smoothly” and motion is very blocky. The themes and UI are inconsistent. I think this wouldn’t be so bad on another OS but this stands out glaringly against all my other applications that are up to Apple UI guidelines.

So Mail.app has come out of the dog house, and for the moment I’ll be disabling SSL on my desktop and my laptop just keeps the inconvenience. I guess it’s time to go check out the Mail.app hackers blog. Oh, and I’d like to go on the record as saying that if Correo implements all the features they plan on, it will be one heck of a client.

UPDATE: Sweet fancy Moses! I have the start of goodness with this Mail.app type selection plugin. So long Thunderbird, I seriously hardly knew ye.

Email Sucks

Published February 7th, 2007 in OS X. 0 Comments

I realized this blog shouldn’t be written for others so much as it should be written for myself. I tend to have really cool ideas and then promptly forget them, so this blog should provide a semi-permanent backup.

As most of you know, I am a productivity nut. This is partially due to the fact that it makes me feel like I am getting things done. As all of you know that doesn’t happen, but I still get points for trying, right?

Today, I realized I live in a dark world of email. In the past two weeks I have collected no less than 3 new email addresses. Two from separate universities I am a student at, and one from a school district I am working with (think student teacher and technology geek in a job title). Given that they are all school related, they all forward to my wustl address, but nevertheless I have three times the student announcements I used to have, and three times the people I have to report to. Since I’m not a huge voicemail guy, I better get good at checking my email.

I started flirting with Thunderbird again due to a digg article. One plugin in particular caught my eye, Nostalgy. Basically it lets me do my “mouseless computing” thing. Thunderbird also has a lot of things going for it; it is cross platform, it runs off of a usb stick, it has great themes, it has themes, it has plugins, it has a good junk mail filter, and it doesn’t take my 7 clicks to start the application up (see below). Here is my problem with Thunderbird, it won’t use the built in address book application from Apple. Why is this important you ask? Simple. I use iSync to keep my phone, pda, and computer in sync (to be iPhone and computer - July 2007) and I don’t want to support two independent address books. This is a well documented problem, but despite the fact that the patch has been in use for two years the developer still refuses to commit it - so I am stuck having to compile my own copy of a working Thunderbird.

But at the same time, in the time it took me to write this post I have had Mail.app prompt me for a login twice and I have had it whine of IMAP problems once. If I stick with Mail.app, it will be tricked out using MailTags, ActOn, and this Growl script.
Until I can figure it out, I’m going to give Thunderbird a try for two weeks. I’m going to trick it out and then hide it away inside a usb stick using truecrypt. I’ll let you guys know how it turns out.

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