Coredump

I love the command line. (It shows. Heh.) Coupled with `screen`, I also use `mutt` and `irssi` extensively. Only at home, though. At work, `screen` is more than enough.

I used to have `fetchmail`, too, but with the recent iteration of `mutt`, which fetches POP and IMAP (almost an MTA in itself now — my, my, look how it’s grown), I have fine-tuned my command-line experience, almost contrarian to the Unix philosophy of “doing one thing, and doing it well”. But, hey, I use whatever works.

Without further ado, here’s my very minimal .muttrc

# Gmail settings
set imap_user = "user@gmail.com"
set imap_pass = "password"
set smtp_url = "smtp://user@smtp.gmail.com:587/"
set smtp_pass = "password"
set from = "user@gmail.com"
set realname = "User Name"
set folder = "imaps://imap.gmail.com:993"
set spoolfile = "+INBOX"
set postponed="+[Gmail]/Drafts"
set header_cache=~/.mutt/cache/headers
set message_cachedir=~/.mutt/cache/bodies
set certificate_file=~/.mutt/certificates
set move = no
set sort = 'threads'
set sort_aux = 'last-date-received'
set imap_check_subscribed
 
# Some tweaks
set imap_keepalive = 300
set mail_check = 90
set timeout = 15
set charset = iso-8859-1
 
ignore *
unignore From Date Subject To Cc
hdr_order Date From To Cc

If your Gmail space is a bit cramped, it may take a while to download all the headers, so tweak imap_keepalive, timeout, and mail_check accordingly. I know, imap_keepalive should be left untouched in keeping with the RFC default of 30 minutes, but I’m not sure Gmail even follows that.

My work setup is like this: I have two monitors, one for a maximized Thunderbird window, and the other for a PuTTY window, Firefox, Outlook (minimized to tray, and only used for calendar reminders mostly), and IE. Well, I do open other windows, but I tend to use the above most often.

I use PuTTY extensively to manage remote Unix systems. I also like my desktop uncluttered, so instead of multiple PuTTY windows, I only use one. I log on to a “jump” host, fire up `screen`, and I’m all set.

At home, I have a similar setup. Below is my .screenrc:

# Default sessions
screen -t MISC 4
screen -t EVEY 4
screen -t INES 3
screen -t IANDEXTER_COM 2
screen -t IANDEXTER_NET 1
screen -t HOME 0
 
# Scrolling buffer
defscrollback 99999
altscreen on
 
# PuTTY fix
term xterm
termcapinfo xterm ti@:te@
 
# Status line
hardstatus alwayslastline
hardstatus string '%{= kG}%-Lw%{= bW}%50> %n %t %{= kG}%+Lw%< '
 
# Key bindings
bindkey -k k6 detach
bindkey -k k7 quit
bindkey -k k8 hardstatus alwayslastline
bindkey -k k9 hardstatus alwaysignore
 
# Other stuff
startup_message off
autodetach on
defutf8 on
crlf off
setenv LC_CTYPE en_US.UTF-8

The Default sessions section opens up windows for my other hosts (guess how I name my boxes ;)). I also have a pretty large scroll buffer — useful when tailing logs. The hardstatus lines show the sessions and highlights the active one. I got the (not-so) fancy-schmancy color codes from here. Lastly, I bind the F6 to F9 keys to, respectively, detach the screen session, quit screen, toggle off the status line, and put it back on.

My .screenrc at work is more or less the same, except for the sessions I open. I can also tellscreen to use a different shell (I’m an unabashedly Bash fan, heh) apart from what is default in the systems I manage.

Google recently unveiled GMail Labs, experimental features that Google engineers are working on out of their 20%.

The idea behind Labs is that any engineer can go to lunch, come up with a cool idea, code it up, and ship it as a Labs feature. To tens of millions of users. No design reviews, no product analysis, and to be honest, not that much testing. Some of the Labs features will occasionally break. (There’s an escape hatch.)

I’ve been testing a few features, and already I’m loving some of them.

Quick Links lets me add bookmarks to access searches, conversations, and even shortcuts to specific GMail settings.

Email Addict puts you offline for 15 minutes and renders your GTalk status invisible. Great for those who need to walk away from the computer once in a while. Problem is, reloading the page will undo the lock-out.

Those are my two picks. I’m not particularly hot about the other features so far: Superstars, Muzzle, “Old Snakey”.

One other feature caught my eye, though: Random Signature. Remember when you used fortune for your random sigs? Well, here’s the Web 2.0 version: the feature allows you to use a feed for the random signature. I plugged in my tumblog feed, and watched as “Compose Mail” generated a random feed entry — surreal and almost Zen-like.

GMail Labs is supposed to be also available for Google Apps, but like @JeromeGotangco, mine doesn’t seem to have the feature yet.

I’m currently playing with Devil’s Pie, a utility that matches windows and window events to a set of rules similar to Emacs’ (yikes! :P) S-expressions.

I installed Devil’s Pie on my work desktop (running FC6), thus:

$ sudo yum install devilspie

(I have previously organized my desktop with four workspaces: for browsing, remote SSH sessions, remote desktop sessions, and other tasks.) I then created a configuration file:

$ mkdir .devilspie && vi ~/.devilspie/workspaces.ds
   (debug)
   (if (is (application_name) "Firefox") (begin maximize (undecorate (set_workspace 1))))
   (if (is (application_name) "Terminal") (begin maximize (undecorate (set_workspace 2))))
   (if (matches (application_name) "^rdesktop.+") (begin center (maximize (set_workspace 3))))

and invoked Devil’s Pie: devilspie -d ~/.devilspie/workspaces.ds &. The (debug) line in the configuration is, heh, for debugging purposes so Devil’s Pie will print out events and other information, which I can then later use.

Seems pretty straightforward, though there isn’t much functionality that I can use. (Then again, my requirement is minimal: I just want to group apps to different workspaces to avoid clutter.) I can then drop Devil’s Pie in my X startup script, along with the other startup apps.

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