Archive for February, 2010
Dyson DC25
Posted by Rob in Home Improvement on Fri Feb 26, 2010
Dyson DC25
We sprang for a Dyson DC25 ($400) to replace our old Eureka 5843AZ Litespeed ($100 or so in 2003, now discontinued). The old Eureka was fine for the two rugs in our one-bedroom apartment, but it wasn’t up to the task of keeping those two rugs and two carpeted bedrooms clean enough for an active nearly-one-year-old crawler.
We purchased from Max-Vacuum because their prices were competitive with the big “A”, and because they have very easy-to-read buying guides and comparison charts to highlight the advantages and disadvantages of the various models.
Assembly was easy. It was no surprise (unfortunately) that the vacuum dust canister was nearly full after running it through the apartment, despite having just vacuumed a week ago.
The good:
- The vacuum is pretty quiet, as far as vacuum cleaners go.
- The cleaning head (with the brushbar turned “on”) is somehow able to go over our rug tassels without sucking them into the brushbar and stopping the vacuum. Nifty!
- Light weight. Carrying the thing around between rooms is an easy one-handed job.
- The “ball” really is more maneuverable (similar to using a swivel mop or a swivel-head “Swiffer”), although the marketing-speak for “turn at the flick of a wrist” would be an exaggeration.
The bad:
- There doesn’t seem to be a hook on the handle for holding the power cord up off the floor when the vacuum is in use; left on its own, the power cord just drags on the floor. For $400, there ought to be some kind of hook to hold the power cord up. Even the $100 Eureka has a hook for the power cord. I must be missing something, because this really is a design failure.
- The dust canister is small. The DC25 is smaller and lighter than the other Dyson models, but it was kind of surprising that it was already half-full after cleaning our small 2BR apartment (or maybe the apartment was just really dirty).
- The dust canister empties through the bottom. This means that after emptying, there will inevitably be little clumps of stuff clinging to the bottom of the canister, because they are made of nasty grimy dust, or because of static electricity. If the canister emptied from the top, these clumps would just fall back into the canister. Instead, these clumps just fall back onto the floor.
Only time will tell if this purchase is worth it. We lived with the $100 cheapie for 6.5 years, so Dyson will have to last us 26 years.
getmail, postfix, and Google Apps
In Dynamic DNS with 1&1, I wrote about how I host a site on a server with a dynamic IP address (such as a server on a typical home connection).
The shortcomings of the 1&1-based service:
- No IMAP access to e-mail. 1&1 only provides POP access (no SSL, either). POP is no good for multiple points of presence (checking mail from a phone would interfere on the “headless” downloading of mail at home).
- Very limited number of subdomains. Ridiculously, 1&1 only provides for 5 subdomains per 1&1 account (not per domain, per 1&1 account).
The above was written before Google Apps For Your Domain became widely available. 1&1′s $8.99 is still the cheapest registration out there – it gets you one year of registration with private WHOIS registration included. Other closely-priced offerings charge extra for the private WHOIS registration. With Google Apps, e-mail and DNS services can be separated from the low-cost 1&1 domain registration:
- MX records can be pointed to Google Apps
- DNS can then be delegated elsewhere to any of the numerous FreeDNS services (I will likely select http://freedns.afraid.org/, Namecheap, or maybe EveryDNS – recommendations are welcome).
Today we talk about configuring a home Linux system for use with Google Apps for e-mail in a way that still provides for web-based access to the same e-mail account (home download of e-mail shouldn’t cause mail to appear as “read” by the webmail client).
Getmail
I like getmail for mail download. It is an easy-to-configure alternative to fetchmail. Google provides the bare-bones “Configuring other mail clients”, but leaves it to you to figure out the exact configuration. Create a $HOME/.getmail/getmailrc:
[retriever]
type = SimpleIMAPSSLRetriever
server = imap.gmail.com
port = 993
username = username@gmail.com
password = #####
mailboxes = ('I',)
[destination]
...
[options]
read_all = False
delivered_to = False
delete = True
The interesting bits:
- I set up the Gmail account with a filter that adds the “I” label to all incoming e-mail (the e-mail I want to eventually download with getmail).
- getmail is configured to download mail from the “I” folder (Gmail labels are IMAP folders).
- getmail is configured to delete read mail. Gmail treats an IMAP delete as an “unlabel” operation (mail isn’t actually deleted unless it is moved to the “Trash” folder.
The result:
- getmail can download mail all day.
- The Gmail web interface can be used to read mail without confusing getmail about what has been seen and what has not been seen. Furthermore, normal Gmail filters can be used independently of getmail (as long as the magic “I” labeling is not interfered with).
- As a side-effect, the presence of the “I” labels is a visible indicator of getmail activity.
Postfix
For outbound mail (SMTP), most Linux (and Mac OS X) systems will use postfix. ISPs will direct you to use their SMTP servers. This is fine, but one loses the nicety that sent mail will not appear in the Gmail “Sent Mail” folder. Getting this kind of clean integrated “Sent Mail” behavior requires that outbound mail go through Google’s SMTP servers.
In /etc/postfix/main.cf:
relayhost = [smtp.gmail.com]:587 smtp_sasl_auth_enable = yes smtp_sasl_security_options = noanonymous smtp_sasl_password_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/sasl/sasl_password smtp_use_tls = yes smtp_tls_CAfile = /etc/ssl/certs/Thawte_Premium_Server_CA.pem
In /etc/postfix/sasl/sasl_password:
[smtp.gmail.com]:587 username@gmail.com:password
Update and restart postfix:
sudo postmap /etc/postfix/sasl/sasl_password sudo /etc/init.d/postfix restart
The next project is to get DNS set up somewhere to work around 1&1′s pesky 5-subdomain limit.
mutt and mu
I still use mutt for reading my e-mail. I’ve tried other stuff (Thunderbird, Entourage, Gmail), but the thing I can’t get over is the text editing. There are certainly things that aren’t as nice as graphical mail clients, but I do get by:
- PuTTY/iTerm and/or urlview/urlscan give me easy access to hyperlinks.
- Attachment viewing is a keystroke away.
- LDAP integration at work provides tab-completion on names and e-mail addresses.
In all other respects – mail filtering (procmail), editing, quick scanning, etc. – mutt wins hands down.
The one deficiency is a decent search facility (a la Gmail); mutt “out of the box” only supports folder-based search, and doesn’t provide a mechanism for searching all mail.
Enter mu – an indexing system for Maildir-based e-mail. Indexing itself is pretty fast: at home (AMD64 1.0GHz), it took about 8 minutes to index 109857 messages (1.1GB) going back to 1993. Being Maildir-based, mu can incrementally update itself with just the new messages simply by examining file mtimes.
The rub is that all my mail was stored in mbox-format (maildir wasn’t invented yet); I had to use mb2md to convert all the mboxes over to maildirs.
Maildir’s one-file-per-message scheme is nice for lots of things because applications can create a separate set of directories with links to the actual messages to implement features like search results (such as done with mu) and tagging (a.k.a. “virtual folders”).
The maildir format is bad for things like backup and other applications where it would be convenient to have fewer files to manipulate. Individually compressing many small files loses any benefit from compressing a large concatenated stream of files. Maildir filenames contain a ‘:’ character, which makes them un-copyable to a Windows machine (such as for backup).
Pause while laughter subsides.
Go2 Cola
The father-in-law, a lifelong Coca-Cola drinker, recently switched to generic colas (“a recent retiree’s gotta save his cash”) and contributed this generic Safeway “Go2″ stuff into my refrigerator during a visit (all images from flickr.com):
Go2
Coca-Cola
Pepsi
I normally don’t drink any soda, but curiosity got the better of me, and I had to investigate.
Ugh.
My conclusion is that if you’re going to drink cola (and you shouldn’t), you should just shell out the extra 30 cents per two-liter bottle and get the real thing (whether it’s Coke or Pepsi).
Recent Comments