I used to use a Thunderbird addon to remove duplicate messages in Thunderbird. This is handy if your mail client becomes “de synced” from your mail server, whether it be an IMAP or POP3 connection. Also this can occur if you restore a backup or import mails and it creates duplicates.

However, after Thunderbird 2.0 was released, this old plugin was not compatible. Eyalroz re-released the plugin under GPL and with updates for Thunderbird 2.0. If you have a need to remove duplicate emails - this is the plugin you need! Get it:

The Opera team has announced that Opera 9.5 Alpha is now available.

I haven’t been an Opera user in the past. However, I’ve used their Mobile (Opera Mobile and Opera Mini) and their Wii browser and have been impressed. I’ve been missing out!

Opera 9.5 is nice - if you haven’t tried Opera lately I would give it a shot. I’ve heard other users rave about previous versions, but I always thought to myself: “It’s just another browser”.

9.5 has a ton of features but here are the highlights in my opinion:

• Fast Page Rendering Engine
• History Search
• Bittorrent Client Integrated
• Synchronize With My Opera
  - Synchronize Bookmarks, Speed Dial, and other Preferences
• Improved Skin - Apple Human Interface Guideline support
• Mail Client Built In

There is a slew of other changes in this release. I’ve found several pages which did not render properly or at all in this version - I know they are working on such things and there is a “report this page” button within the menu which helps you test their alpha stage release.

This Opera Browser definately gives me a “next gen” feeling and anyone who considers themselves an early adopter should give it a try!

I just read this in the Postfix Release Notes… and thought I had to share.

[Incompat 20060806] Postfix no longer announces its name in delivery
status notifications. Users believe that Wietse provides a free
help desk service that solves all their email problems.

Who said coders don’t have a sense of humor?

When you generate a key pair in SecureCRT, it generates it in this format:

—- BEGIN SSH2 PUBLIC KEY —-
Subject: dave
Comment: “something”
ModBitSize: 1024
AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAADAQABAAAAgQDQNXZosE8eAu6t9dsznpimQAXdaqkSmgKAgZ4+
gP9tW/j+wKtsEOBGasp4/AQu89Avscku+zp6lEuy9PCtBt03IdaQwls9GBl67EUzrKM
3NLNscuCt/LAsdjHfjvBL4q0Oh+MsHu0c6G6ltICqYmvAHYNAYBoPJv+0RMvxPdoNQ==
—- END SSH2 PUBLIC KEY —-

This key if fine, but if you run a linux server such as CentOS, RedHat, Fedora, or many others which use OpenSSH for it’s sshd; then this key does not work in ~/.ssh/authorized_keys. In order to convert this key to the one liner necessary for openssh, first upload it to the server. Either cutting and pasting into your text editor of choice, or uploading the file directly will work.

Then run the following command to add this key file to your authorized keys:

ssh-keygen -i -f /tmp/identity2.pub >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys

You can then log in using your private key.

Here is the switch we are using:

-i Convert IETF SECSH to OpenSSH key file.

In the course of my work for Bluetreehost I connect to dozens of machines a day. Whenever I need to transfer a file, I would fire up WinSCP, connect to the machine, and commence transfer. It worked but it was slow and a pain in the butt.

I just discovered the Zmodem function in SecureCRT. Why hasn’t anyone told me about this! Two clicks and I can transfer a file from my desktop to the directory I’m working on in the server.

So for anyone who reads this and hasn’t discovered Zmodem - give it a try! SecureCRT is the best SSH program I’ve used and this is just another reason why it is so great for me.

Awesome article on using vi/vim:

Do whatever you want. Don’t learn it if you feel it’s too much effort just for nothing. Learn emacs instead. Or stay in your IDE using a lousy editor. Whatever. But in any case, don’t ever claim again that those ‘vi guys are nutheads’ - I hope that I have succeeded in showing you why they (we) stick to it, and you should at least be able to understand its power, even if you prefer to stay away from it.

I first used vi around 1996 and it is still my preferred text editor while working with configuration files or even light coding. It sort of defied logic, but me, as well as unix geeks around the world, feel compelled to continue using it. This article is a great writeup for the advocacy of a great text editor.

If you use a windows ssh terminal client, or even macosx’s terminal.app, the functionality of your page up and page down key may not behave like you want it to. For example, in SecureCRT using pageup will actually page up your scroll buffer, and pagedown will scroll down your page buffer.

You’ll need to remap your keys to send the correct signal to your terminal. Change it from the default system function to “send string” and the following strings:

PageUp = \033[5~
PageDown = \033[6~

\033 is a shortcut for the ESCAPE key (esc) since in some programs you can’t type in the actualy escape key.

Here are some other codes as well in case you need to remap keys.

Pause = \032
Macro = \003 # Break (Shift-Pause)
Home = \033[1~
Insert = \033[2~
Remove = \033[3~ # Delete
End = \033[4~

In SecureCRT the area to remap your keys is Tools -> Keymap Editor.

This is especially handy if you use command line IRC clients such as Irssi or BitchX.

If you are looking for a great Java based IRC client, I would suggest PJIRC. It is really easy to integrate into your web pages; and includes the html code that you need to embed it onto a page. It is very flexible, for example you can tell it to automatically join a server that you specify, and have it automatically execute a command, such as joining a channel.

It’s a small download, and runs really quickly, which was always a downside of the other IRC Java applets I’ve tried. The GUI really isn’t too bad. It has tabs for different channels, a full scroll window, right click ability for whois, op, de-op, and more.

Download PJIRC

Check out Clicky web stats. After you register, you add a piece of code to the bottom of your page and start collecting your stats. It’s really easy to set up, and the stats you get in return are awesome. You can see your stats by visitor, search term, page, etc. It is very clearly shown, and not as hard to figure out as some of the other webstats programs which really bog you down in data that you don’t need. I hate to say it, but it looks a lot nicer than Google Analytics. It is currently free - although I don’t see how they turn a profit at this point (it is in beta still) so I would look for either a pay service in the future, or maybe ad supported.

Check it out and see what you think! This stats service is great for simple blogs and other sites which do not require complicated ad and click tracking.

If your Mozilla Thunderbird is slow to open the inbox, or any other folder for that matter, there are two things that you can do to try to fix this problem.

Step #1: The first thing is to try to compact the folder. This should help if you have a large inbox. If you can’t even get to this step, or if it is just too slow, try step #2.

Step #2: The .msf “index” file is corrupted. If this file gets corrupted, you could see a slow initial loading of your inbox, messages will not open, you can not delete messages, etc. You may also see a message in the status windows when you open Thunderbird that says something about rebuilting index. The solution to this is to first close out of Thunderbird, then delete the inbox.msf file. If this is for a different folder name, you will see “folder name.msf” file corresponding to that folder. This file is located in your profile directory. For me this was: “C:\Documents and Settings\Dave\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles\default\svxnp81c.slt\Mail\systembash.com”
But this varies because of the random profile string and your account profile name.
Delete this file. Make sure you leave the real inbox file alone - this is a file that is named “inbox” (or your folder name) without a file extension.

Re-open Thunderbird - the index will automatically be rebuilt and you should now have normal access to your inbox!