Built w3m on Libretto and Cygwin

Yesterday I built w3m on my Libretto 50.

Today I built w3m on my Windows 2000 box in Cygwin.

I don’t remember the last time I built an app from source for one of these environments.

Libretto 50 back up

About a dillion years ago (ca. 2000 based on file dates) I succesfully installed RedHat [Gnu/]Linux on my Libretto 50 ultraportable notebook computer.

RedHat is no longer my distribution of choice… but it was a pain to get on there so it’s going to stay awhile.

Well, I took the L50 out of mothballs this weekend with the intention of getting it back into use. My plan was to put Damn Small Linux (DSL) on it but then I realized two things:

- RedHat 7.1 is okay. Why downgrade?

- DSL might not have mutt pre-installed and I might be on my own getting it built. Unacceptable.

So I decided to get RH7.1 another chance on this wonderful little notebook. The only problem remaining was that I never got a network card working in it.

So I tried my 3Com PCMCIA NIC. It worked on the first boot. Hmmm… maybe I only tried my Linksys WiFi card back in 2000.

Next thing: install FVWM. I was ready to install from source when I found an RPM. Worked great, with just a little taste of dependency hell. (I don’t miss RedHat but Gentoo is out of the question for this underpowered little darling–I refuse to put a source distro on it.)

FVWM… working!

Firefox… dependency hell… forget it for now.

mutt… already installed!

So today I brought the L50 to work. I didn’t get it to see the office network yet. Maybe later in the week.

Her digicam

Hell froze over! My lady got a digital camera! And I didn’t have to twist her arm; it was her idea.

She got a Nikon Coolpix 3200. I’m impressed. Its pictures are way better than the consistently fuzzy shots I got with the Coolpix 2100 which I returned as fast as I could. The 2100 was probably defective.

The 3200 takes crisp shots; holds 2 AA batteries; has 14MB of built-in memory; supports SD media; has a cute TV-output cable; and best of all it is cute small. She loves it. Nice package for $200.

Now I need to sell her Nikon N65 35mm SLR. No problem.

St Augustine

Spent the Thanksgiving holiday (Thursday and Friday) in St Augustine. Loaded up the Garmin III Plus GPS with maps of the appropriate counties, plotted a route for the first time and we got there on the first try.

Had an excellent two days. Saw my uncle’s boat for the first time. Took a few photos.

Self indulgence

I was just reading the titles of my most recent half-dozen blog entries and I must say: those titles really interest me! How self-indulgent.

School of Hard Rocks

We went to the Hard Rock Cafe casino on the indian reservation last night. Left around 11pm, got home around 3:30am today (Sunday). Just woke up.

Here’s the breakdown:

Went with $26

Got $100 cash on the way

Spent $60 (me); and

$30 (her).

At my peak, I was up $165 and change.

Then I lent Oscar $13 on my $165 ticket, which he lost.

Then I kept playing $15 bets until I was broke. Nice.

She left with $65 from her $30, so her net was $35.

I left with $13 so my net was -$50.

While we were there someone hit $4000 on a “Double Diamond” machine on a $15 bet. Fun.

No roulette. =(

No blackjack. =|

Nickel slots were really minimum 9 nickels ($0.45). Rip off. She played those all night and did great!

I’d like to check the odds on the various machines and decide which ones I want to play based on that.

Mutt, you’re changing my patterns!

I’m getting so used to navigating around with single-key shortcuts in mutt, it’s affecting my use of other applications I use! The other day, I caught myself trying unsuccessfully trying to close my ICQ client chat window by pressing ‘q’.

Oh, mutt, you’re changing my patterns!

CVS mboxes

I put my main mboxes into CVS today. Had what seem to be some line-ending problems, which I’ll document here for myself.

1. Cygwin set to “CR/LF” (DOS) line-endings.

2. Committed mboxes.

3. Checked mboxes back out. Differences only that the CR’s were gone (compared with the pre-commit backup mboxes I made).

4. I noticed a line between each header field in mutt. =(

5. So I set Cygwin to using “LF” (UNIX/Linux) line-endings.

6. I then deleted the mboxes in my CVS sandbox and checked them out from CVS again.

7. Now the empty lines were gone (yay!) but each header line had a visible ‘^M’ appended. =(

8. New messages don’t get those ^M’s. But did I double-check that by committing them, deleting the sandbox mbox[es] and then checking them out of CVS again? I’m not sure.

Maybe I’ll look for a sed one-liner to rip those ^M’s out.

So Win2000->Cygwin->CVS->mutt == good, but be sure Cygwin is set to use Linux-style line-endings (LF) from the get-go.

dotfiles.com

Discovered these guys today. Referred to them by a link on this page.

Specifically, check out the .muttrc examples they host.

~/.msmtprc

Thanks to the ample Gentoo documentation, I have replaced ssmtp (with no Authenticated SMTP support) with msmtp (at least as far as mutt is concerned), which worked on the first try. Good thing because Earthlink is phasing out the in-the-clear (non-authenticated) SMTP servers, according to the Support guy I spoke with on the weekend.

Here is the exact article that introduced me to msmtp and which provided all the information I needed to set it up.

iPod homedir

I moved my [Windows 2000] $HOME directory to my 4th generation 40GB iPod today. Ah, the freedom! But now I have to be good about backing it up, lest this bite me in the rear.

Mutt, oh Mutt

Boy, I’m lovin’ this thing called mutt! I continue to customize my mutt email client (MUA). I’m just tickled by the level of customization possible with it.

Here are just a few of tonight’s additions to my ~/.muttrc:

set quit=yes # quit without asking

###############################################################################

# COLOR

###############################################################################

#headers:

color header brightgreen black “^to: “

color header brightgreen black “^cc: “

color header brightcyan black “^date: “

color header brightred black “User-Agent:”

color header brightgreen black “^from: “

color header brightmagenta default “^subject: “

color body brightyellow default ” [;:\=]-*[)>(<|]” # etc…

# email addresses

color body brightblue default “[-a-z_0-9.%$]+@[-a-z_0-9.]+\\.[-a-z][-a-z]+”

# URLs

color body brightblue default “(http|ftp|news|telnet|finger)://[^ \"\t\r\n]*”

color body brightblue default “mailto:[-a-z_0-9.]+@[-a-z_0-9.]+”

color body brightblue default “(news|www|ftp)\.[^ \"\t\r\n]*”

#Two other approaches to hyperlink matching.

color body brightgreen default “((ftp|http|https)://|(file|mailto|news):|www\\.)[-a-z0-9_.:]*[a-z0-9](/[^][{} \t\n\r\"()]*[^][{} \t\n\r\"().,:!])?/?”

color body brightgreen default “[-a-z_0-9.+]+@[-a-z_0-9.]+”

###############################################################################

# FORMAT

###############################################################################

set folder_format=” %-8s %d %f”

set index_format = “%Z %2C %{%b %d} %-15.15F (%4l) %s”

Encryption primer

TechWorld has a small article with some nice definitions.

Soulfound tonight

We’re going to see Soulfound tonight at Boomerz. I’m going to take pictures. It promises to be a good show!

w3m

I just discovered the w3m text-based web browser. I intend to use it with mutt, though I don’t have all the quirks worked out yet.

It’s similar to lynx and links. However, so far I like the feel of it better.

I really should wash my car today and get my hair cut.

Mutt

I’ve been using the excellent mutt email client at work (via Cygwin from Windows 2000) and at home (in Gentoo) for a few weeks now. I’m surprised I didn’t write about it earlier.

I’ll publish my .muttrc one of these days.

I like it for its:

- automatic regular-expression-based colorization (in list view and message body view).

- single-key operations.

- customizability

- clean interface. Much less scary than pine!

- ability to read mbox files nicely and thus share message stores with Evolution (home) and Thunderbird (work). So I can jump back and forth between my GUI-based MUA and mutt.

What software?

What software would it really make me happy to write?

I get excited about writing an OSX outlining app, but it’s not likely to pay the bills.

I want it to be something that is really appreciated by the end-user. Could be business software or personal-use software. But I want the end user to WANT to use it.

What would *I* want to use myself?

Hub, Router, Switch — Which?

Got an hour of detailed training last night on IP networking. I’m not an expert and it’s not my field. However, I now have simple definitions for hub, switch and router. These are terms that I did not understand as a home networking product user, not to mention being exposed to them at the office.

I had tried to clear up the meanings (and differences) of these words in the past to no avail. Here’s my understanding as of last night (thanks, Brad):

Hub

A hub sends each packet to every node on the network. Traffic on hubs can easily get clogged if two machines are sharing large amounts of information with each other since every single packet goes to every single machine. As a rule of thumb (just a loose estimate that I requested of my trainer) once you’ve got five computers on a hub, you’ll notice a speedup when you move to a switch.

Switch

A switch is an upgrade (a big one) from a hub. According to my trainer, switches have come down so far in price it almost doesn’t make sense to waste your money and time on a hub. A switch routes from MAC address to MAC address on the network. It does not send each packet to every node. Switches are fast. But they’re not routers (and neither are hubs).

Router

A router connects two networks. For example, if you have a cable modem in your home and you share that internet connection with more than one computer via some Linksys|Netgear|DLink “box” that box should be a router. It connects your private [home] network to the external network — the internet.

Network-connection-sharing Routers

To understand how your router allows all your computers to use your single internet connection and its one IP address you should understand that:

- It is a router. It connects networks.

- When a computer sends a request packet to a website, it includes a request regarding which port (> 1024) to return the response on. The router then sends this request into the “real world” and gets a response on the same requested port that the client machine requested. With this >1024 (somewhat random) port number and the client’s private IP address, the router knows how to get each response packet back to the correct computer on the private network.

I hope I got that last part right.

The Incredibles

I saw The Incredibles with Kyle, Bart, Judah, Josie and their girls Saturday.

Judah said, “It was flawless.”

I said, “The only flaw was the kid on the tricycle saying, ‘… wicked.’” It didn’t give me the same chill that his previous two parts did.

What can I say–it exceeded my high expectations. In a word… really good.

Wednesday

The job didn’t work out for my brother.

So Jim came down to pick him up tonight. Had a great time. They even went to Home Depot and got me some custom-fitted fiberboard to make my bed more firm. It’s much improved now!

After using mine, Jim now wants a Virgin Mobile phone. He just had to use mine. I’ll try to pick him up one as I saw a special in the Sunday paper for $50 after rebates, plus the standard $10 in phonetime it comes with.

Kirk

I ran into Kirk Mossing unexpectedly last night. Good to see you, Kirk!

Camera + Mexico

I’m seriously considering taking my nice Olympus E-10 DSLR to Mexico this holiday. I’m concerned it will get nicked, but I’m torn: I want to take great pictures.

We’re going to pick up a point-and-shoot Nikon Coolpix 3200 (3.2MP) but it won’t provide the smoothness nor manual control of my Oly.

I’ll talk to some people who know. I want to check with the family at Saturday morning breakfast on:

- The camera (whether it’s likely to get me mugged, etc.)

- Clothes to wear

- What else?

Ringing in my ear

My “new” Virgin Mobile Kyocera cellular phone has a nice feature which I’ve disappointedly found missing in all the cellphones I’ve owned to date: Ringing through the headset/earbud.

Nice feature.

Parker pens, service

I picked up a Parker fountain pen in Saudi Arabia a couple years ago. Nice stainless steel model with an unusually thin barrel.

I clogged it with what I must assume was the wrong type of ink.

A nice girl at Crane’s stationery shop in International Plaza mall gave me a pre-addressed envelope and a service request card for Parker pens.

I mailed the pen off and soon received a replacement via FedEx! Plus, since I indicated on the service request card that my pen had sentimental value, they sent it back to me!

Included in the package from Parker was a good-faith (as in service-before-payment) invoice for $10. $10?!? No problem. I’ve never paid a bill so fast. I believe we wrote the check that night.

That, my friends, is service. Parker has impressed me.

Quink

I started carrying my Parker fountain pen a few weeks ago. I’m surprised it hasn’t needed an ink refill yet.

Zeagle Warranty cards

I can’t find the warranty cards for my Zeagle scuba gear. =(

Been a while

I haven’t blogged in a while. I’ll bring things up to date.

My brother came down last Friday, 30 October 2004 from Crystal River. He applied for and got a data entry job where I work.

He’s met a bunch of my friends and associates in the last 8 days.

We went to the excellent IAS 20th Anniversary event last night.

New Virgin Mobile phone a pleasant surprise

I recently broke the LCD on my Virgin Mobile Audiovox-brand flip-phone. So I was unable to navigate any phone menus. Most importantly:

- I was unable to see the prompts necessary to Top-Up my phone with a Virgin mobile retail Top-Up card; and

- I was unable to check my phone balance from the phone as the balance displays on the screen.

Darn.

Well, I still have my supposedly low-end Kyocera non-flip phone (see end of my June entry) that I can use.

I took it out of the closet, plugged it in, turned it on and started navigating the menus. Boy, was I impressed with the elegence of the user interface (menus)! But really impressed! My Audiovox phone was almost impossible to use. So bad in fact that I only had one phone number saved in it–and misfiled at that.

The interface on this Kyocera KE4233 is awesome! The phone even has a white LED flashlight accessible via the button.

I cannot believe how easy to navigate and understand the menus are. And how feature-rich this phone is. The only two things I miss from my Audiovox phone are:

- The Audiovox was smaller; it fit in my Audi’s ashtray (as I discovered after I cracked the LCD).

- The Audiovox had a speakerphone feature, a feature I think is very important on a cellphone, though I admit I never used it.

This Kyocera phone was really designed. Its interface was not an accident. Interfaces like this are the result of long consideration and testing with real people.

I heartily recommend the Kyocera KE433 phone from Virgin Mobile. I also still recommend the Virgin Mobile pre-paid cellular service. I have not been disappointed.

I’m going for a motorcycle ride now.

I’m going to see The Incredibles with Judah et al around 5pm today.

The Cooler

Watched The Cooler with William H. Macy, Alec Baldwin and others. Good movie. If you’re watching it and feel like ditching it halfway through, hang in there.

Dojo run with fries

We went to the dojo last Wednesday, Chris and I. They were training so we decided to come back another day (and call first).

Ran home, rented and watched Super Size Me. Excellent independent film! Excellent as a film, independence notwithstanding. Auri watched the first half. I recommend this film to anyone who cares about their health… and everyone else too.

Judah and Josie offered to lend me the same movie a day or two before, but I left it at their house. Oops.

In the DVD special features they put an order of McDonald’s french fries in an unsealed jar with a lid. They looked like brand new (no visible rot) for 10 weeks, until the film’s intern threw them out with other food that was also being rot-tested. Ten weeks!