Miklb's Mindless Ramblings

With the recent buzz around the ‘net about gmail adding IMAP, I was anxious to finally give it a go. I’ve read a bit about IMAP, but had never had the opportunity to try it out. My work requires almost constant monitoring of email, and since I employ Google Apps for your domain to manage my email account, and prefer to use Apple’s Mail, I’d all but stopped using my old, but reliable clamshell ibook. Thus the excitement of being able to monitor my email from my laptop, the Nokia e62, and the desktop computer.

After seeing post at Lifehacker about Thunderbird, I figured it would be worth checking out. I knew that Thunderbird had reecently been updated; I hadn’t tested it in over a year. Being a quasi Mac fanboy, after following the instructions for using TB with the gmail IMAP, I sought a more “Apple” type theme. The only two I found, were outdated, with a max verson of 1.6. A couple of failed attempts to change the version number, I went hunting the intarweb for another version. (I also was having problems connecting to addons.mozilla.org, lots of times outs. Not sure if it’s a latency issue, or what.) (update)seems to be resolved, not sure what the problem was

After a few failed links, I found one that works. Twister MC had a beta version that worked just fine. It’s not an exact replica of Apple Mail, but certainly a better feel (not that the default TB theme is as bad as the default FF theme). I’m still not sold on TB, as it doesn’t integrate with Address Book, and I haven’t found a good solution for importing mine into TB, but I certainly like it better on this older Mac than the Panther Mail. I’ll continue to use TB on the ibook, keeping my eye out for extensions and improvements. As soon as I can afford Leopard, I’m sure all bets will be off though on the desktop, as I’m anxious to give that a whirl. Any TB extensions I should look for? I read another post @ Lifehacker, but none of the ones mentioned got my fancy.

update: This MR Tech will allow you to override the max version check and install either of the more common Apple Mail-like themes.

I really, really, really love using TextMate, but I one feature I feel is missing, is the ability to set a project to open on launch. More often than not, I’m using TextMate in conjunction with Transmit, and have a project set up to keep temp files from Transmit collected together, using tabs, vs 12 open windows. I’d love for that project to be set to open on launch, vs the preference now of just being able to open a blank file.

The “blogosphere” has been abuzz the last few weeks with news of the latest release of Ubuntu, 7.10, Gutsy Gibbon, and curiosity got the best of me, and I decided to see if I could install it on my mac mini, since I didn’t have another machine to try it out on. I’m quite happy with Mac OS, but it never hurts to be familiar with other operating systems. So I thought aloud on the Habari IRC channel if I could use Virtual Box, which I use to run Windows XP, only so I can test websites in Internet Explorer 6. Survey said, “why not”, and I gave it a go.

First step was to download the installer disc from the Ubuntu site, which is in the .iso format. There are many ways to create an actual CD from this, or a .dmg file, however I didn’t want to bother with that step, so after another question to the IRC channel, my friend Christian said Virual Box should load from the .iso, and quickly found a Flickr image showing how to set the VM to load from the .iso. (After you’ve created the new VM, click the settings button, then for CD/DVD-ROM, check the mount CD/DVD-ROM, then check the ISO image, and find the file you downloaded.) I haven’t gone through the steps to setting up a new VM in Virtual Box as I just used their wizard for a new VM. I did give a bit more RAM for the VM than the default setting, as I’ve got 2GB, and won’t be using the VM that often, so figured I could spare some. I’m sure I did the same thing for the XP install as well.

Now that the VM is set to run off of the .iso, I started the VM, and Ubuntu quickly loaded, with a prompt to Install/Boot from disc (I think that’s what it said), hitting enter, Ubuntu booted up. You can run just off of the CD image, if your curiosity is small, however, you can actually run the installer from the icon on the desktop, to get the full experience.

Clicking on the installer walks you through the basic installer, not unlike installing Mac OS or Windows. The installer took just under an hour in the VM from the CD image, I’m not sure more RAM or an actual CD would have sped the process up or not. After the installer is done running, you will be prompted to restart, with a notice to eject the CD, so that you don’t run off of the CD. Since Virtual Box is set to use the ISO, you will need to shut down the VM, change the setting to use the host CD/DVD-ROM, and restart the Ubuntu VM. You should be prompted to enter your username and password that you set up during the installation process, and Ubuntu should now be running in your VM.

My initial reaction to Ubuntu 7.1 is that it’s a mix of Tiger and Windows XP in feel, maybe 75% Mac, 25% XP. I haven’t explored much more yet, but have looked a bit at a tutorial for the “perfect desktop”, and will certainly poke around. I think I’m more interested now in exploring virtual machines, and other operating systems than I am with playing with Ubuntu, however, I don’t see myself leaving Mac OS any time soon. Feel free to comment if you have any problems with Virtual Box, though I only have a basic understanding of it, but I’ll try to share my experience.

I’ve been quite lazy in posting to my blog(s), and am testing out ScribeFire. I spend so much time of my day in Firefox, it only seems logical to find a solution that would allow me to manage drafts and posts from within the browser.  Particularly for asides and tidbits.  We’ll see how this works out, and maybe, just maybe, I’ll actually blog, and not just work on them

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