jclark.org/weblog

Call me Coven

“…the public demands random nouns and middle initials, and will settle for nothing less.”

My Spammer Name is Coven L. Junior. What’s your spammer name? (via Kevan)

The Mail Dilemma

One of the side-effects of getting my new iMac G5 is that I now have two systems from which I want to read email. I currently use POP to retrieve my mail to the Powerbook. If I move my POP setup to the iMac, I can no longer check my mail from anywhere via the Powerbook. This is compounded by the fact that I currently have 7 POP accounts from which I fetch my mail.

Looking at the list of accounts, there are really only two that I need to access from anywhere. One is my jclark.org address which is published on this site, and is my primary address. The other is an email address provided by my broadband provider; it’s the address I use for all business transactions, including my domain registrations and hosting plan. That has to remain separate from my hosted email accounts, obviously.

So, even If I move all of the other accounts to the iMac as POP accounts, I still have to address which I’d like to be able to access from anywhere (defined as: from the iMac at home and from the Powerbook anywhere). I want to have my old mail available as well, not just new mail. I don’t like webmail; even GMail doesn’t really cut it for me.

So, I’m considering switching to IMAP. I don’t have any experience with IMAP, so I’m not sure how to judge it. The next issue is where to host it. My webhost offers IMAP, and they recently increased my storage limit, so that might be reasonable for my hosted email address. The other address is not hosted there, and I don’t know if there’s a way I could relay it. I’m aware of things like fetchmail, but I don’t know if I could have my host fetch mail from an external account and put it into an IMAP account.

There’s also the possibility of running my own mail server at home. The iMac could likely handle it, but I’ve also got an old box or two that could easily become a mailhost. The problem then becomes one of addressing, as I don’t have a fixed IP address. In reality however, my IP address almost never changes, and I’m sure I could setup a script on the mailhost to update a file on my webhost whenever it does.

The real dilemma here is that I don’t really know enough about the technologies to make an informed decision. I understand the basic differences between IMAP and POP, but I know little about IMAP or how to setup a server. Does IMAP use mbox files? I’m aware of unix-y tools like fetchmail and procmail, but I know little about them. Eventually I’m going to have to spend a bunch of time Googling and reading. Suggestions for a one-stop web (or book) resource covering all of this would be appreciated.

Site Browsing Stats, December 2004

Last month, I posted my [browser stats for November 2004][1]. It was so much fun I decided to do it again. No [fancy graphs][2] (yet), but maybe one of these days. :

Browser              Hits      %age
-------              ----    ------
FireFox             36593    40.1 %
Internet Explorer   28143    30.8 %
Safari               9464    10.3 %
Unknown              7236     7.9 %
Mozilla              3490     3.8 %
NetNewsWire          2453     2.6 %
Netscape             1106     1.2 %
Opera                 936     1.0 %
Konqueror             549     0.6 %
OmniWeb               462     0.5 %
Others                774     0.8 %

Of interest- while Firefox usage is up from 37.9% to 40.1%, IE usage is also (slightly) up, from 30.4% to 30.8%. Safari usage dropped just over 1%, and Camino disappeared. I guess Mac users just [get it][3]

. However Windows users are still 59% of my December stats. One caveat- while the above stats don’t include errors (like the 403’s I’m handing out to abusive bots and a few spamtastic IP addresses, they do include all the spam that isn’t IP banned- whether my comment filter catches it or not. Maybe I’ll work on that this month. [1]: http://jclark.org/weblog/Miscellany/About/stats200411.html [2]: http://tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2004/12/12/BMS [3]: http://getfirefox.com

Resolution Wrap-up: 2004

Last January 1st, I decided to break with tradition and make a few resolutions. Last night at midnight, time ran out. So how did I do? Let’s check the score. I’ll also give some thoughts for the upcoming year’s resolutions, but that will be a separate post, after I think it out a bit.

Personal

1. Spend a little extra time with my kids. I don’t think I do too badly at this now, but why not improve anyway?

   This one’s an unqualified success.

2. Have at least one weekend getaway with my wife… and no children. We’ve been planning this forever, and never seem to get it done.

   Another success. Sherri and I spent a weekend at a B&B near Lancaster, PA last winter. It was wonderful; we’re hoping to do it again this year.

3. Play more Chess (and hopefully improve).

   A qualified success. I definately played more in the first quarter of the year, and I think I was even starting to improve. Since that time, however I’ve played next to none.

4. Write some fiction.

   Utter failure… never found the time or inspiration. A good goal to keep for this year, however.

Professional

1. Finish every last piece of the Client Reporting project.

This turned out not to even be plausible, as business needs changed.  This was a poor choice of resolution, in the future I'll keep any professional resolutions project-nuetral.

2. Make the whole thing obsolete with a ground-up rewrite, using no VB (build directly in XML via Office 2003 native XML formats).

This turned out not to be possible because Micro$oft once again over-promised and under-delivered; this time promising a native XML format for Excel and delivering a crippled XML format with no support for graphs.

jclark.org

1. Add timestamps and notifications for comments.

[Success.][2]

2. New design. Something a bit less… understated.

Failure.  I began work on a new deisgn, but couldn't decide what I wanted to do.  I still want to redesign for this year.

3. Hit the 300 posts milestone.

70% success.  My first post of 2004 was number 100, so I needed to write 200 posts.  I managed to deliver 142- in spite of a lengthy blogging hiatus over the summer.  Big thanks to [dugh][4] for the [October Blogging Challenge][5] which helped get me back on track.

4. Re-organize the categories. Use permanent redirects for moved posts.

[Success][6].  For 2005, I want to think about restructuring the blog... moving away from strict categories, and using a 'tag' system like [del.icio.us][3] uses.  This may mean a move away from Blosxom.  Also, whatever I do can't break existing URIs.  Still some planning to do.

5. Add a second, topic specific blog. Potential topics are astronomy, chess, or writing.

I cancelled this one.  Having less time for any of my other interests, let alone less time to write for this blog, convinced me of that.  Instead, for 2005, I want to start writing some more personal, daily-summary/thoughts posts in addition to the more topical stuff I usually post.  More on that idea in another post.

All in all, not a terrible first attempt. Later today, or during the next few days, I’ll post my 2005 list.

Happy New Year!

A happy and healthy 2005 to you all.