Shami’s Blog

Best use of an iPad, ever. Well, other than blending it, maybe

Found this today on the web and loved it

Interesting video, enjoy

Check out this commercial for Google Chrome, plain awesome

When Ubuntu 9.10 came out I was very eager to try it, but sadly I was very disappointed. So when I was downloading 10.04 I wasn’t really expecting anything. I’m glad I was wrong.

So far it appears the sound and flash issues have been fixed. Empathy seems to have gotten some improvements. Most noticeable are the fact it now saves the window position of the contact list, and gives you an indication when the person you’re chatting with on Google Talk is typing something on the keyboard.

If you hate the new window button placement, like I do, here’s how to fix it:

1. Open gconf-editor
2. Got to /apps/metacity/general
3. Change “button_layout” to “menu:minimize,maximize,close”

Here at the office, we host a few domains with Verio. Not my choice, and I’m not happy with it. We also host some mailboxes for one of those domains with Verio. I got a message from Verio support saying the mailboxes for that domain are occupying around 1GB of space, and that we need to delete some of them.

Turns out the mailboxes were neglected for months, and one of those mailboxes got around 55,000 messages.

Simple enough, I said, let’s log in to web mail, keep recent relevant messages and delete the rest. But the web mail interface kept timing out, and I couldn’t access any of the accounts. Seems they built their own web mail interface, which tries to load everything in your mailbox. This makes it time out when a mailbox has this huge number of messages.

After contacting Verio’s support they gave me an IP address to use as an IMAP server, which, surprisingly (well, not really, I expected it) wouldn’t connect. After a few days of deliberation the department in charge of the accounts decided to delete all messages in all accounts.

At first I configured Evolution to download all messages from POP3, which thankfully worked (Thanks Dovecot), but that took too long, and downloading 50K messages would overload our uplink. A simple solution would be as follows:

#!/usr/bin/python

import poplib

server = 'server'
user = 'user'
password = 'password'

whenToQuit = 500
loop = 0
totalMessages = 0 

while 1:
        M = poplib.POP3(server)
        M.user(user)
        M.pass_(password)
        numMessages = len(M.list()[1])
        if totalMessages == 0: totalMessages = numMessages
        i = 0
        for i in range(numMessages):
                print 'Deleted %d out of %d messages' % (loop * whenToQuit + i + 1, totalMessages)
                M.dele(i+1)
                if i == whenToQuit - 1:
                        M.quit()
                        loop = loop + 1
                        break

        if i != whenToQuit - 1:
                M.quit()
                break

Since the actual deletion of messages happens when a client “quit”s, I wrote this to do a quit after 500 message, this will enable you to quit the script after some time without having to lose all the progress.

Hope this helps.

My dear friend Bander offered me a great deal on his old Macbook Pro. I’ve been wanting to try out MacOS for ages and thought this would be the perfect chance for it.

After using the laptop for about a day now. I have to admit Leopard has very nice eye candy, but that’s it I’m afraid. It’s too mouse oriented, and I like to use the keyboard, a LOT. It seems I’m gonna stick with Linux for the time being, especially with Lucid Lynx being around the corner, but I’ll give Leopard a few more days and see if it grows on me.

Have a good day everybody

Ever wonder why browsing under Ubuntu is slower than Windows even on the same network? Well, it has to do with Ubuntu enabling IPv6 by default. This means Ubuntu will try IPv4 only after IPv6 times out. Also, Firefox comes built with Pango by default which makes it slower than it should be. I’ve fixed that on Karmic Koala, other versions should be similar. Here’s how to do it:

Disable IPv6 globally:

sudo vi /etc/default/grub

then find

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"

and replace it with

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=”ipv6.disable=1 quiet splash”

Then update grub from the command line

sudo update-grub

Tell Firefox not to load Pango:

vi ~/.bashrc

and add

MOZ_DISABLE_PANGO=1

at the end

Tweak Firefox’s about:config settings:

network.http.pipelining -> True
- network.http.pipelining.maxrequests -> 8 or 10
- network.http.proxy.pipelining -> True
- network.dns.disableIPv6 -> True

Enjoy

Hi guys, I saw this elevator and thought I had to take a picture. The residents put the elevator’s call button this high so children won’t play with it.

Enjoy

It’s really frustrating when your Xbox fails. Let’s say you were lucky enough to still have your console under warranty, or decide to buy a replacement. But what happens to all those arcade games you’ve spent a fortune on?

Microsoft’s licensing scheme for downloadable content is, IMHO, very good. Each game is linked to the gamertag and the console that first downloaded it. So if you download a game on your home console any account installed on that console can play it, and you can play that game on any console as long as you’re logged in with your gamertag.

Now lets say you got a new console and you’re using it with multiple gamertags (Family, friends, …etc). Your gamertag will play it fine but the other gamertags won’t. The solution is simple. Just head to https://live.xbox.com/signup/UIPStartPage.aspx?appid=ConsoleLicenseTransfer and migrate your licenses to the new console. This will enable all gamertags installed on that console to play those games.

Be warned though; The tool migrates ALL your licenses to the new console, so if you bought something for a friend on a different console he/she won’t be able to play it any more. And you won’t be able to migrate to a different console for at least a year.

Happy gaming everybody