I’ve been writing a primer on backups for a few people who have asked me and for my own reference when I go out and build my next backup system. Hidden behind the snip is the article itself (almost exactly correctly formatted) – some things don’t translate well from RTF format. I’ll share details of my next backup system when I’m ready.
Also available as a PDF if that sort of thing interests you.
True story.
While I was in college, I had, for a while, two computers, a phone and a home directory on a shared Sun server – all of which were able to access my IMAP email. During my second year at college, I discovered an annoying problem – I would write an email, saying “Sure, I have this file right here, let me know where you’d like me to send it” and I would continue on to the next thing to do. Naturally, this quickly became a problem, because chances were very good that by the time people responded to my email with a “Please send it to so-and-so”, I would be using a different computer, and I would have to think, where on earth is that file now? So for several weeks I kept a list of computers that I was on, and would scroll through the list to find the device I was using by matching the time and date stamp of the email with the list.
This, after a while, became horribly inefficient, and – much more annoyingly – required me to constantly keep the file up to date. So I hit upon a very elegant solution: tiny, otherwise not noticeable differences in signatures.
So, from my PC, I signed:
- – -
Varun Nangia
From my Mac, I signed
- -
Varun Nangia
From the phone, I signed,
- – - -
Varun Nangia
And from the Sun server, I signed,
- – - – -
Varun Nangia
So, depending on how many dashes were in the signature, I would have a very good idea of how which device the email came from, and so where I would have to go to find the requisite file I had set out to send (or, in some cases, which mail formatting mechanism had failed). I should note two things here. First, I don’t remember any longer, which device was assigned which number of dashes, so the description above could have been wrong. Second, I stopped using this system after a while because: (a) there were too many permutations of devices and mail programs; and, (b) because mail formatting – the other major problem which required me to identify which device/mail program sent a particular email – became standardized enough that any client could read anything else. But if you have email from me from, say, January 2004 to roughly January 2006, check to see how many dashes I had. I bet you it varied.
So congratulations if you noticed. The dashes were my non-intrusive way to tell devices apart. Sneaky, wasn’t it? And I think you would agree – it drew less attention than, say, a header that said “X-VARUN-INFO:toshiba-2400/OutlookXP”, right?
The big news in the blogosphere today is that Gmail is now supporting IMAP connections – or they will soon. This is a quick set of instructions to get Gmail working “right” with Thunderbird, because initially, Thunderbird and Gmail don’t quite gel like they should.
First, follow the instructions here. That should get basic IMAP functionality going. Then a few things you need to do:
One thing I’ve not managed to figure out is whether step #2 is necessary – I think it is, but it’s also possible Gmail automatically places a copy of everything you send through the Gmail SMTP server there. I’ll do some more sleuthing and figure that out when I get a chance. Gmail saves all mail you send through your SMTP server automatically to your sent mail folder, so you don’t need to get Thunderbird to place a copy there as well. In fact, you’ll end up with duplicates.
Good luck and hooray for Gmail IMAP.
