For OSX – dterm is a quick term, by no means is it a replacement for iterm or term.  But it’s starting to be one of those apps that one uses daily. I highly suggest giving it a try!  [ get it here ]

My favorite application on my mac is of course mail.app, but as you can see from prior threads, I’ve been having some issues!   Mail.app just gets, boggled down, my “Envelope Index” grows up to 20MB and mail.app starts to fall apart and SLOW down. 

So I recently found the All Mail folder on my gmail account, it had a crazy 30+ thousand messages.  Here is the quick fix! 

I’m going to link this to macosxhints.

A while ago I started having a lot of problems with one IMAP account I have configured in mail.app on my mac.
I took the standard approach to delete the account, re-create it, and so on. You can see from prior posts, I ran cli maintenance on the sqllite3 database that mail.app uses.

I got fed up and decided to try something, I would delete the Envelope Index file. The file was around 30mb in size, not huge, but decent size.
When I started mail.app back up, it had to understandably rebuild each of the mailboxes I have configured. When it finished, it is now only 10mb in size, you think there might have been some corruption?

I open an ssh tunnel all the time while I’m work.   I found this nifty little app a while back for my Mac that manages all my ssh tunnels.

I could open up a term, and  type ssh -N -p 22 -c 3des jhigley@XXX.dnsalias.com -L 6667:XXX.dnsalias.com:6667 each time I wanted to open up an ssh tunnel for IRC, but instead I open up STM and it auto connects each of my tunnels for me. 

 You can get it here.

MarcoPolo was a game we used to play in the pool.  The idea, was one person was it, and would close their eyes and yell “Marco!”  the other people in the pool would say “POLO” thus giving their location away.   The person yelling marco would have to hunt down someone until they tagged someone.  It’s a twist on the game of tag.

Recently I started consulting, I’m on the road a lot now.  Mostly between 4 different locations:  Home, Office1, Office2, Hotel.   This application, call MarcoPolo allows me to define a few location, by probability, i.e. the wifi ssid I connect to is “Hotel” then I’m probably at the location Hotel, or if my ssid is guest and I hook my USB drive up, I could be at office1.  After I define my locations and what happens at those locations comes the fun stuff, MarcoPolo kicks into gear, I can define rules, so I can say at office1,

• turn off iChat
• turn off sound
• open an SSH tunnel

Or when I get to the hotel, I wanna relax, 

• start itunes, and play x song
• load mail.app
• load irc and iChat

I recommend getting this app, it’s worth the download, best of all it’s free!

See more about it here.

My mail.app has been feeling a bit bloated lately, running a bit sluggish, wrong count numbers showing up, etc.   So I went on a the hunt to make it faster and less bloated. 

On your mac goto:  ~/Library/Mail/ and you should see a file called: Envelope Index, note the size of that file.

Now, exit mail.app (command-q)

open Terminal

go to “cd ~/Library/Mail”

and run “sqlite3 Envelope\ Index”

now inside of sqllite, type “vacuum subjects;”  this will vacuum the bloat out of your inbox, for 1 the size of Envelope Index should be a lot smaller, and for 2, your mail.app should be a lot faster!

For a while now I have been working on a desk with at least 2 computers (most of the time more).  Each computer runs a different OS.  (Linux / OSX / Windows)   While over the past few years I have upgraded my desk a few times, going from the door on saw horses to the long tables you get at Samsclub really cheap to a really nice desk, still a table top, but a bit nicer looking.   I’ve always preferred these type of desks because of what they can hold – monitors!     I learned a while back that having a keyboard on my desktop for each machine was a lot of clutter.   Enter an app I’ve grown to love over the past few years.  Synergy.   It’s over due worthy for a post.    Synergy allows me to take a number of computers and use 1 keyboard/mouse combo for them. 

Basically the setup is easy:  

Say I have 2 computers at my desk.   My work Mac Book Pro and my beloved linux box (in this case it’s running Ubuntu)   I really like my Apple hardware, the famous flat keyboard and the mighty mouse and I use my Mac Book Pro a majority of the time.   So I pick my MPB to be my “server” for synergy.  My linux box will be the client machine.   I setup the server with a quick configuration: 

mbprover-2:synergy-1.3.1 jhigley$ cat synergy.conf 

section: screens

       mbprover-2.local:

       jamesh-desktop:

    end

    section: links

       mbprover-2.local:

           right = jamesh-desktop

       jamesh-desktop:

           left = mbprover-2.local

    end

Now I run synergys (the server) on the MPB and on the linux box I run the client, you guessed it, I run synergyc and tell it to connect to the server.  There are a few tricks, be sure to use the “hostnames” of each box in the config.  You can customize the config all you want, I just wanted to show you how to get it up quick.  

Visit the synergy website for more info:  http://synergy2.sourceforge.net/

Price:  Free!!  (this is why opensource software is so cool.) 

I have to admit, I don’t have the 3G iPhone, but the title got your attention didn’t it?  I do actually have an iPhone, so this still applies.   Prior to iPhone OS version 2, I had my iPhone Jailbroken, it was then that the iPhone was truly the best mobile device out.   I had mobileterminal, a required application for me since I manage a bunch of linux servers. ( you can see my prior post with it here.)  

Fast forward now to version 2, with app store.  Apple has made some good improvements with the iPhone base package and software, no longer are your apps just bookmarks, but you can actually do stuff on your iPhone.  There is some really cool apps out.  (granted, when Jailbroken, most of those apps where free, or at least a try before buy)   Keeping true to Apples tight control over the products, Apple fans claim it’s for “quality control” reasons, I have yet to drink that koolaide, app store applications for iTunes has to be approved by Apple and of course they will not approve a terminal application on the iPhone, this would open the iPhone up beyond their control.   (please Apple, prove me wrong)

So I have been thinking of ways to go around this, it hit me, Leopard has VNC built in, the app store has Mocha VNC Lite, the two can mean you have a pretty “round about” terminal app.   It’s really a pain to use, but it does work if your in a mess and need it quickly. 

those are the famous last words I said, but then I found this app for the mac called GarageSale and it turns you into a fanatic.  ( if you call my 1 post a month a fanatic )

GarageSale is an app for helping you post stuff on Ebay.  It’s one of those things that Billy Mayes from OXY Clean should be selling, cause it feels so clean.   Included are tons of templates to make your auction get the respect it deserves.  They are bold and beautiful and screams “buy me, buy me!” to your fellow ebay browsers.

Quick features I though where cool: 

• image uploads – it let me choose ftp upload to my choice of server, (has built in options)
• templates – no more white background 2 pictures auctions, where professional now baby!
• speed – with a couple clicks, I had my auction going.

I spotted this sticker on the back of my vehicles.   Have I drank the cool-aide!  ;-)