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November 23, 2003

Caller ID Project

I've hooked up a modem to my linux server, using the phone cable which had already been run across the house for when the Tivo used it -- Apparently, this phone cord had never been removed. Cool. :-)

So I hooked up the modem, wrote (hopefully) to flash the commands that needed to be there for the modem to write the CID info out to the serial port... I've written a short Perl script to capture the data and write it to a database.

The perl script works fine with my test data, captured earlier in the day when various people called.

I then tried calling the house. The cordless sees the caller id info, but the perl script does not. :-( I don't know why but I'm not going to deal with it now. Oh well. I'll spend some time tomorrow calling the house, checking what the script is doing and why. Right now it's time for sleep.

If you want the app (and database schema) it'll be available at some point. I'll have to figure out where to store the config data, whether to start it from rc scripts, etc. at some point.

Posted by aland at 12:19 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

November 21, 2003

Mozilla Thunderbird Extensions

I'm trying to use Mozilla Thunderbird, since it's available on all platforms I use (WinXP, OSX, Linux). Since I generally use IMAP, this seems like a reasonable cross-platform solution. The only problem I've seen so far is that I have to recreate the "View" message filters on each machine. I'm sure there's a file in my profile I could copy if I really cared though.

The only problem I have with this is that I want to disable the arbitrary loading of images from remote sites (easy enough) HOWEVER I also want to override this for a specific email message -- I want to click a button, or press some keys, or choose an option from the "View" menu, and say "View images for this message."


I'm not sure how this can be done. My current theory is that I -might- be able to set the preferences in memory, for a particular (currently open) message window. If that'll work, awesome (though I haven't yet gotten around to setting up an extension to touch preferences). If not, well, I'm hoping that someone who sees this knows someone {who knows someone}* who works on Mozilla or Thunderbird, and has either ideas on how I could implement it, or the desire to implement it themselves.....

Anyone^n ?


** Update 2:54pm:
* One of the problems I was running into is that my settings were to view the message body as "simple html" rather than "original html". Changing this was required for at least some of the messages in question (BMG emails)

* Even after setting the preference (normally) to not block images, I needed to switch it to "original html" - the 'simple' seems to block images or at least prevent the real preference from working.

* context menu (right click) -> View Image does not work when images are blocked, or when body is simple html. View Image opens up a new window at the top left of the screen, that doesn't work for anything... :-( "View Image" should IMHO load the image inline on the page.

* There does not seem to be a way (using menus or obvious keystrokes) to 'redraw'/reload the message window (to reflect the new preferences). I know there will be a way in the javascript, I'll just have to find it.

* I might end up having to toggle 'view message body' AND 'load images' to get the stuff to work. We'll see...

Posted by aland at 2:46 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

November 18, 2003

80s music test

I scored 82.5. A few obvious wrong answers, a few I just didn't know, and a few where I spelled the word wrong. Sigh.

As Jen said, she's not the only one with too much . . time on her hands...

Posted by aland at 11:17 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 14, 2003

Mandrake 9.2 MySQL problem

I'm installing Bugzilla on a linux server at work, and had issues with perl and DBD::mysql.

It turns out that for whatever reason, libmysql12-devel-4.0.15-1mdk.i586.rpm from Disk 3 had not been installed along with the client, server and common packages.

This meant that mysql_config wasn't available, which meant that the DBD package wouldn't install.

Much happier now. I put this out there in case anyone else has this problem.

Posted by aland at 10:58 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 5, 2003

Interview with Ira Glass

"Before I started watching reality television, I'd never believed that nice-looking people are stupider than the rest of us."

http://www.theonionavclub.com/3943/feature1.html

Posted by aland at 12:59 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack