EasyLinuxGuide Blog

It’s not finished yet and I am still working on some other options, but this blog page does look a lot nicer in its current form. The coding wasn’t really all that difficut, it’s just a matter of understanding the syntax. There is a really good site that will walk you through how to do this if you use Wordpress. Brad tipped me off to it while  I was in the ELG irc channel, its called HackingKubrick. They offer tutorials and videos that demonstrate how to change the code. They use css so once you understand how the language works and how the divisions are done, it is really a fair simple process. I will be looking more into adding special features to it later once i’ve finished watching more videos.

Hope everyone likes the new colors and layout!

I have been using Evolution as a mail client for probably more than a year now. Personally, I’ve never had much use for the calendar, notes or any other feature in the application other than mail account management. To some it may seem obvious that a switch to Thunderbird would be sensible but old habits die hard sometimes and with the hope of Evolution coming out with some new features, I stuck it out for a while longer. However; last night I decided to set Thunderbird up and take a look at it at the very least.

A brief glance turns into a project… As I opened up Thunderbird and looked at the interface and the built in wizards for importing, suddenly the prospect of switching looked very appealing. The immediate standout differences were the ability to change your theme, add extensions, manage rss feeds (was something I was really hoping Evolution would have added) and the option to customize the toolbar were all selling features on making the switch.

Importing and Exporting… After several google searches and attempts to use the built in tools for Evolution and Firefox I quickly discovered there would be no effective way to move all of my settings from Evolution to Thunderbird through either of their built in wizards. This is something that both applications could use some work on (I can understand slightly why a developer may not consider how to move to a different application a huge priority but at least make it easy for people to move *to* your application). I ended up manually creating all my accounts all over again (6 in total) and I will need to create all new rules for anything that was previously set up but I can live with that. I basically moved everything from my hidden evolution home directory /home/username/.evolution/mail/local/Inbox/ (keep in mind that Evolution creates 4 files for each account but you need only move one which is the generic one named with only the account username) into the /home/username/.thunderbird/ *tokenstrangenumber*.default/mail/Local Folders/Inbox.sbd/ After this is done, you need to close Thunderbird and then restart it. You will then see all of your folders containing mail from Evolution appear at the bottom left of your Thunderbird Folders section. I just used drag and drop to move all of the copied mail folders into their respective account locations. The whole process didn’t take that long, but it was well worth it in the end.

What I really wanted to be able to do was combine viewing RSS feeds with also catching up on my mail. Evolution is yet to offer this feature but Thunderbird supports RSS feeds. Thankfully Thunderbird does have an RSS account creator and allows you to import a feedlist file. I had been previously using Liferea which is a very nice application in its own right, but since I could combine both features in one application, I imported my feedlist.opml (typically located in /home/username/.liferea/) and it came in nicely although it did not place everything into nicely orgranized folders as I had done in Liferea. A bit of renaming of the feeds in Thunderbird fixed this issue.

I mentioned before that I didn’t have any use for the calendar in Evolution. Although this is true, I did want something that could remind me of important and upcoming dates or events. I found a very useful Thunderbird extension for this (this can be used for Firefox as well if you prefer). The extension is called Reminder Fox — here is a pic of how it works:

This appears as a string in the bottom right hand corner and you can add events to it by clicking on it. To see what events are approaching, you need only hold your mouse cursor over it. This extension is simple, works well and does exactly what it is designed to do. Just what I wanted. I didn’t need a massive calendar program like the one in Evolution. As much as I like Gnome and will continue to use it, Evolution could use some improvement (I’ll save that for a future entry)

Once I had this set up, modified my theme to my liking, I had everything in place. All that is left to do is create my rules which shouldn’t take too long. Overall, it was well worth the migration.  I’ve been using Firefox for a long time now and make use of a lot of the extra features in it. It’s no surprise that Thunderbird has accomplished a similar degree of customization and effectiveness in its design.

Alright, so here’s my take… My roommate decided that because she enjoyed this book so much that she would pass it on for me to read. So I started it and the first thing I noticed was the big writing and extremely short chapters. This book to me is an overall great marketing tool which adheres to the following rules:

1 – write a book that is easy enough for a 5 year old to understand so it reaches the largest audience possible

2 – include challenging steadfast religious principles because that will really get attention and grind some gears

3 – use big big writing so even the myopic can easily follow the story

4 – make a movie and a video game to cash in the 15 minutes of fame as much as possible

These are just the main categories that come to mind now. Anyway, apart from the juvenile style, I was willing to give this propaganda and water cooler time waster a fair shake so I kept reading. I found myself waiting and waiting until I cared about that was going on such as the plot, the characters, the religious challenges, the codes that none of the bumbling cretins (my french tribute) could uncover such as deciphering poorly written backwards handwriting or understanding that one of the codewords is a small variant of the name of arguablly the main character in the entire book – this ’secret’ I figured out about 100 pages before it was revealed and all this without a degree in cryptography! The other obvious puzzle was Teabing as the teacher – this book only has a limited number of characters and the idea of introducing someone new would surely have proven overwhelming for the minds for which this scholastic masterpiece was designed. Nonetheless, I dredged on. I’ll skip the mid section of 150 pages as they could have been condensced immensely. I will get right to the ending… Now, it’s one thing for me to get to the end and there to be a legitimate catharsis relating to art or religion, neither of which would have piqued my interest – I could have dealt with this, knowing it was simply the subject matter, however; to have the meandering climax gurgle to an ending akin a grade 7 story where “and it was all a dream!” was a moderately creative conclusion was what was more disappointing. To have an entire 450 page novel end on a wafer on an idea that what was pre-occupying many affluent members of different communities and regions was downright insulting. The consolation prize of Sophie being a direct descendent of Jesus Christ was such an afterthought at that point for 2 reasons: 1 – it was deemed as impossible only due to a different last name earlier on the book which is a dead givaway that it must be true (we all know how easy it is to change one’s name, hell, one guy changed his name to a symbol!) and 2 – the fixation on the Holy Grail took such precedence that anyone who was even interested in the other plot was pulled away from it so many times, they would dismiss its significance.
And yes, I will probably watch the movie – why? Naturally because Ian McKellen is in it of course!