09.29.05
Posted in Software at 5:13 pm by Nicholas
Recently I decided to switch from a POP3 email setup to IMAP. Fortunately, most of the pieces were already in place: when setting up my server I followed the Gentoo Linux Virtual Mailhosting System with Postfix Guide, which includes both POP3 and IMAP servers, and I knew the IMAP server was working because SquirrelMail worked. What I wanted was for SquirrelMail to contain all of my old email, rather than just the new stuff. This was partly because I’m planning on upgrading to Tiger soon and want the transition to be as quick and easy as possible, and partly because every time I tell someone who’s using my server for email how to access the webmail client, I have to explain again that they won’t be able to access email they downloaded a month ago. Before I suggested that anyone else use IMAP, I had to try it myself.
For the most part, the switch was completely unremarkable. I set up a new account for the IMAP server in Apple Mail, using the same settings as the POP3 version, and then disabled the POP3 account. I also clicked a few boxes in the settings of the IMAP account to save Drafts, Sent Items, Junk Mail, and Trash on the server (and to delete the latter two categories after a week). I hit send and receive, and got no errors. I sent a test message to myself, and received it. I logged into SquirrelMail and saw the message. I deleted the message in Apple Mail, refreshed SquirrelMail, and saw that the message was gone. Next I dragged all my folders of archived mail on top of the IMAP server entry in the Apple Mail mailboxes drawer and watched Mail copy all my old messages to the server. I refreshed again in SquirrelMail and saw that all my folders were there, and the messages within them were accessible.
The only problem was that my sent test message wasn’t showing up in the Sent Messages folder of the IMAP account, and deleted messages weren’t showing up in the IMAP Trash. In fact, I couldn’t find them anywhere at all. A little digging revealed that once you’ve chosen to store these items on an IMAP server, you have to tell Mail where to store them — it won’t just use a pre-existing folder with a correct-sounding name. In the Mailboxes drawer, I selected each appropriate folder and chose the appropriate category from the Mailbox -> Use this mailbox for… menu. Now my Trash, Sent Items, Junk Mail, and even Drafts are saved on the server for me so I can use them from anywhere via webmail.
If you have an email account on my server, you can do the same — feel free to ask if you need help.
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09.23.05
Posted in General at 10:35 pm by Nicholas
An interview with David Grinspoon in Astrobiology Magazine posits acetylene-based life on Titan:
What’s really new in our paper is that we go into the question of energy sources. If there’s life there, what’s it going to eat? What kind of food is there? And it turns out there’s abundant food because of all this photochemistry in the upper atmosphere, where methane is being turned into other organic molecules. Some of those organic molecules are very energy-rich, and one that we consider in the paper is acetylene. We know it’s being made in the atmosphere, we know it’s raining down on the surface, and it’s been detected at the surface with the Huygens probe. We calculated that, if acetylene is reacting with the hydrogen gas to turn it back into methane, quite a bit of energy is being released. So that’s our basis for saying there is something to eat on Titan. We don’t know if there are any customers, but there’s something on the menu.
When we discover these gassy critters, I’m going to make a mint on this domain name.
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09.13.05
Posted in General at 6:15 am by Nicholas
In celebration of this year’s Harry Potter film adaptation, Cap Candy is set to release a new Potter-based confection next year modeled on our friend the cockroach. Each Cockroach Cluster measures two inches long by one inch wide and consists of a juicy gummy underbelly covered in a crunchy candy shell — “just like real cockroach wings.”
Some of my readers will no doubt remember my first encounter with Potter-inspired candy, Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans. I was doing fine with those — most were quite tasty, and the dirt and grass and whatnot were kind of fun — until I got to a vomit flavored one. That vile little bean was and remains the worst thing I have ever put in my mouth on purpose — and that includes childhood dares (a certain gummi worm and anchovy pizza comes to mind). The description of the cockroach clusters neglects the small matter of flavor, but maybe I’ll give it a go.
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09.12.05
Posted in General at 2:36 pm by Nicholas
365 Tomorrows is a blog providing a new short science fiction story every day for a year. They’ve been publishing since August first, so go catch up on the archives while you can still do so without having to dedicate an entire day to the task.
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09.03.05
Posted in General at 2:48 pm by Nicholas
… most of us picture people running off with TVs during a riot. We don’t think of an eighteen-year-old finding an abandoned bus, rounding up a hundred strangers, and driving them seven hours to shelter in the Astrodome. Jabbor Gibson “could find himself in a world of trouble for stealing the school bus,” according to the news report.
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