Out of the Woods

Here’s a little Thunderbird tip. With the release of version 2, Mozilla turned off automatic image loading when displaying e-mails that contain HTML. When there are images blocked, there is a button you can click to load the images. There is also a link you can click that will tell Thunderbird to always load images for any message from that sender.

The way that latter option works is it checks your address book for the message sender, and if an option is selected in that address book entry, it will load images automatically. When you click the link to tell Thunderbird to always load images, it creates a new address book entry (if there isn’t already one) and checks the option to load images.

I started getting irritated, though, that my address book was getting cluttered with e-mail addresses of list servers and vendors, most of whom I’ll never send e-mail to, but do want to receive complete HTML messages from. Then I found a little trick in the Thunderbird documentation.

When Thunderbird checks to see if you have a sender in an address book, it checks all the address books. What that means is you can create a separate address book just for e-mails that may come in with HTML. As a result, you can have images automatically loaded on approved incoming e-mails without cluttering your primary address book.

One of my new favorite blogs is Photoshop Disasters. They specialize in drawing attention to botched Photoshop jobs, similar to the one where the Iranians tried to pull the wool over our eyes by transforming three missile launches into four. The picture here appeared on the TV Guide web site in a special section about Olympians to watch. You’ve got to wonder how, in the fraction of a second that swimmers pop their head out of the water for a gulp of air, Michael Phelps was able to move his goggles up off his eyes, open his eyes wide, get his chin in front of the water, and manage a smile, all for the camera. :o)

I wasn’t particularly saddened to see the closing of all CompUSA stores. I did enjoy walking around in them, checking out the latest technology. However, I never bought anything there. Everything was just too expensive. Even their fire-sale prices in the last days before closing their doors were higher than many sale prices at other stores.

I’d been on their e-mail  list and received regular e-mails about the current week’s sales flyer, and when they closed, I figured the e-mails would simply stop. I was pleasantly surprised when they didn’t, though. Pleasantly surprised because suddenly, without the overhead of brick-and-mortar stores, the all-new CompUSA has some killer prices. For example, the Jawbone wireless Bluetooth headset retails for around $130. You sometimes see it go on sale at brick-and-mortar stores for around $100. The cheapest I’ve been able to find on-line at any mainstream, non-auction site is $65. CompUSA’s latest sales e-mail lists it for $59.99. This clearly isn’t the old store.

Check out their site and subscribe. I received at most two e-mails a week, and they are never spammy.

I eat at Subway at least a few times per week, so it’s always fun when they run some kind of game or promotion. I end up winning the occasional free sub or cookie.

They just started a new Scrabble game that will be running into October. I was poking around their web site and happened to look at the FAQ entry for the odds of winning. Your odds of winning the $100,000 prize is a whopping 1 in 42,492,348,847! That’s right—billion…with a B! The odds of being killed by lightning are only 1 in 2,320,000. The only event with less likelihood of happening, according to this web site, is your house getting struck by a meteor.

So I guess it’s OK to run a promotion even when you have no intention of having to pay out. Very nice.

With the death of Google Browser Sync upon the release of Firefox 3, I went on a quest to find a replacement. I’d tried Foxmarks, but all it does is bookmarks, and I really didn’t like it. Browser Sync had let me coordinate not only bookmarks between multiple machines, but also cookies, saved passwords, and even open tabs. Enter Mozilla Weave.

Weave is a product of Mozilla Labs and is strictly experimental stuff. Even so, it’s exactly what I was looking for, and is in active development. Each release brings with it exciting new features.

However, since it, by default, relies on Mozilla servers to save browser information, the load on those servers determines how well it works, or if it even works at all. The program uses basic DAV to access the servers, and there is a configuration setting where the server address can be changed, so you can actually use any server that supports DAV access. There is a nice post in the Mozilla support forums that describes how to set up your own server, and there is more information in the Weave FAQ. I already had DAV working on my own server, so switching Weave to use it instead was a piece of cake. Now, syncs work every single time and are lightning fast, plus I don’t have to worry about the security of my information.

Since Mozilla is worried about stressing their servers too much, they’ve closed registration to new Weave users. However, if you use a different server, you can still get in on the fun. Set up your own server, or check out the forums for some free alternatives. Download the extension directly from here.

I really love eBay. I’ve been watching for months for a deal on Magellan’s MapSend DirectRoute software that would enable my SporTrak Pro GPS receiver to give turn-by-turn directions similar to those expensive dash-mounted GPS units that are all the rage these days. The software goes for well over $100 new, but I didn’t want to pay much more than $30 for it. Then last week, I found an auction for not just the DirectRoute software, but a complete SporTrak Color GPS receiver along with car power cable. The GPSr is worth over $350 new and the cable around $25, so the package when new was worth over $475. Granted, it’s a few years old now, but the description stated that the unit was barely used. I bid $62, not expecting it to last very long.

Imagine my surprise when, with just an hour to go, I still had the high bid at $52. I watched as it went up to $57, and the next thing I knew, it was over. I had just gotten $475 worth of stuff for $57! I’ve always wanted one of these units, and it’s going to get plenty of use. Persistence pays off.

Hmm. I saw this cartoon (click on it for a bigger version) last week, and it struck a nerve. It rang out so true that George Bush and his cronies have alienated so much of the world against the U.S. in the last eight years, and by starting to make amends, it cripples the war machine that GWB and, especially, Dick Cheney are so fond of. I was going to blog about the cartoon, but never got around to it. Then I came across this article, and the cartoon came charging back into the front of my mind, but for a different reason. Read it and see.

If you use any of the dynamic DNS services such as DynDNS or No-IP, or you use OpenDNS for your DNS server, you must check out DNS-O-Matic. Rather than having to run separate daemons for each of these services, you point DNS-O-Matic at all of them, then run a single daemon that updates DNS-O-Matic. It then takes care of updating all of the others for you. It works like a charm.

I am really liking this version of WordPress. Granted, I was one major version behind on Movable Type, but this software blows the doors off it. Tons of easily-applied themes available, drag and drop customization of the sidebar, tons of plugins available that just show up as soon as you copy them into the correct folder, the list just goes on. I was able to add a Flickr widget by copying a bit of HTML using the web-based administration tool, and I was able to add links to my Google Reader shared items by dropping a plugin in the right spot. If you’re a blogger, or are thinking of starting, and run your own server, give this stuff a try.

Wow. I’ve been thinking for a while now about switching to WordPress for this blog instead of Movable Type. I’ve been running an older version of MT that hasn’t completely worked right and was lacking many newer features. Every time I saw a neat feature or plugin on another blog, it was always specific to WordPress. So I downloaded WP, put it up on the server, and have been thoroughly impressed. I was able to configure it completely from my web browser (rather than editing configuration files on the server), and had all my old blog entries imported in no time. Now I’m having fun checking out various themes and plugins plus adding links and content that would have been difficult to do in my old MT installation. And, of course, Windows Live Writer had no trouble detecting the new software and adapting to it to make blog entries even easier to write.