Web design & FOSS

A simple tale of IMAP email and remote synchronisation in 3 parts.

Of late I have have been using two machines, my reliable steed the ThinkPad X60s and the cute n' cuddly Acer Aspire One, both running Ubuntu in some shape or flavour. The problem with running two machines (the netbook for train journeys and travelling, the Thinkpad as a desktop replacement for hefty processing grunt) is that of synchronising the data.

So I am tentatively putting my head into the Data Cloud by storing essential, everyday data online. This is Part I, an introduction to the main issues.

Synchronising my data falls into 3 broad categories:

1. Work.

2. Program settings (keyboard shortcuts, bookmarks, preferences etc).

3. Email.

There is, of course, some overlap (and below is a Venn Diagram for those people who believe in such things).

Work is straightforward, just a load of data files.

Program settings fall into two camps: firstly settings for programs such as the Geany text editor and the GIMP image editor (I've made a set of Photoshop-esque shortcuts which you can right-click to download and then replace the file in your .gimp settings folder). Secondly, extension-heavy programs such as the Firefox web browser.

Email is the final category. I use Thunderbird as my GUI email client, and there are many settings and files to be considered: the emails themselves, login details, folder organisation, extensions, address, filter rules, signatures, etc.

To synchronise my data files and settings, I will be using the Grsync application combined with my web host's Personal Backup service. The web host I use is Dreamhost, in my experience cheap as chips with a great control panel and fantastic support (though there were some serious downtime about a year ago). This will be the subject of Head in the Data Cloud Pt.II.

To synchronise my email, I have been a recent convert to IMAP email, and also to Google Apps (which means that Gmail handles all my email, even though I my hosting is with Dreamhost). IMAP is fantastic, because all your mail is stored online and you can download your email to work offline using Thunderbird. I'll go through setting this up in Pt.III of Head in the Data Cloud.

Until the next thriling instalment of Head in the Data Cloud!!

On my onward journey with learning GIMP, I wanted to do some batch image processing. I built a web site for the artist Ken Campbell many years ago, when tables were layout tools and transparent pixels were your friend. Now, it needs updating and to ease the pain I need a way of creating square thumbnails from rectangular images.

Enter Dave's Batch Processor! The screenshots says it can do exactly the job I want. All you need to do is extract the file in your plug-ins folder in the .gimp folder in your home directory, navigate there in the terminal, and then run the magic command make install.

But it didn't :(

I emailed the author, and he replied, which is very nice of him. Apparently I needed to install the package libgimp2.0-dev, which you can do via the Synaptic package manager. And which I did. And it works!

Thanks David :)

For my latest Joomla! site, I have set up a Windows XP Virtual Machine (VM), using the VirtualBox Open Source Edition. Trouble is, once I'd installed Internet Explorer 7, I couldn't get a standalone copy of Internet Explorer 6 working.

So, I created a new WinXP VM and then cloned it using these instructions from the VirtualBox forums. Now, I have standalone IE5.5 (from the browser archive at evolt.org) and IE6 on one VM, IE7 on another and IE8 on a third.

And I can test away to my heart's content for those poor unfortunates locked into a 'World with Windows but no way out'™ ;)

I was a bit bored with the sluggish performance of Ubuntu Netbook Remix on my small but perfectly formed Aspire One, so following on from oiio's personal experience, I've installed Xubuntu.

It was a bit tricky installing Xubuntu in the first instance -- I had to boot up my other laptop with a live Xubuntu CD, and then create a bootable USB flash drive using Live USB creator.

Using the Ubuntu documentation for the Aspire One, I've tweaked the wifi, the SSD card performance and other bits and pieces. I also copied over my application settings from my ThinkPad, so that I didn't have to manually install eg a whole new set of Firefox extensions.

One thing I have been missing is the Window Picker applet, because Xubuntu uses the Xfce window manager, and for the life of me I couldn't work out on how to configure Window Picker. However, I found a very easy workaround:

1. Delete the bottom panel - do this by right clicking on the panel, and clicking the 'minus' button to delete it.

2. Add New Item to top panel -- right-click, Add New Item, select Task List.

3. Configure Task List -- just move it to the left, uncheck Use flat buttons, uncheck Show application names.

And here's a handy little screengrab showing what it looks like (trouble was, I had to map the xfce4-screenshot command to the PrintScreen button using the Settings Manager > Keyboard!!):

I have been hard at work on a Joomla! site, and was stumped for a while about why an image wasn't showing up. I copied it backwards and forwards, made sure I had the right folder, swore at the image for a while. None of these things seemed to work.

And then it dawned on me, like the sun struggling through frosty winter fog: permissions. Now, *nix permissions are something I would love to master but never really seem to find the time to sit down and learn properly.

The crux of the problem is that anyone but the owner had no permissions at all for the image. Which is bad news if you want the world to see your lovely button graphic. So, I changed it to Read Only for Groups and Others, and we all lived happily ever after.