The InkWells

Templates are pretty standard fare in the world of e-mail.  Or maybe that’s just the little bubble I live in.  Either way, creating and using templates in Outlook is remarkably and unnecessarily complicated.

In Thunderbird I have a templates folder among my mail folders.  I do a Save as… and save the message as a template.  From then on (until I delete it) that message is available in the templates folder where I can double-click it and begin composing from the template (including sender information, recipient information, text, &c.).  I can do this, both saving and using, from any location where I have IMAP access.

Outlook is less kind.

I have worked it out and here for your edification are the basics of the process.  I am writing this for Outlook 2007 but it will probably help you with slight modifications in older versions of Outlook.

To create a template you will first want to compose some basic message which will then act as your template.  You can alter your from and to lines, add some text, whatever.

Once you have crafted the template, you will want to choose Save As (which is now located under the Office orb in the upper left corner of your compose window).  When the Save As dialog opens, be sure to choose “Outlook Template (*.oft)” from the “Save-as type:” drop-down.  Choose a name for your template and note that Outlook saves this into a templates folder on your local hard drive–sorry, not my fault.

Being that it’s on your local drive there will be no accessing this template from other computers unless you copy the file over.  So it goes.  I’m sure for most uses this will be adequate.

Now, how about using that template later?  Gack!  Even more convoluted.

Start with clicking File –> New –> Choose Form… which will bring up a Choose Form dialog.  Now you must select “Use Templates in File System” from the “Look In:” drop-down.  This will reveal your templates folder as mention above where you will find the template you previously saved.  Click the “Open” button and you’re ready to roll.

(Don’t be fooled by your list of mail folders in the “Look In:” drop-down as you will not be able to open a message from them.)

Happy hunting.

Oh, and encourage your organization to switch to Thunderbird and relegate Outlook to enterprise calendar use until Sunbird/Lightning is fully prepared.  (Please note that Thunderbird will not interfere with Outlook’s calendar functionality as some other mail applications will.)

As is famous enough, I despise Outlook. It seems that with every release MS looks into my nightmares and extracts new methods of torment for me. In Office 2007 it’s the ribbon. Huge buttons and pretty pictures augment a total reordering of all the usual functionality. I guess the idea is that if you can’t come up with any feature improvements you should at least paint the barn.

Here is how to turn off the ribbon on your composing windows.

First, you’ll have to open a compose window (that is to say a new mail message or a reply/forward).

At the top you’ll see that new Office orb and to its right some small buttons (how trim and dainty they must seem). The buttons are in a sort of oval-shaped segment. To the right of this oval-shaped segment is a stylized drop-down menu. The very last item in that drop-down is Minimize the ribbon. It’s semi-permanent (meaning it won’t come back unless you uncheck that item in the drop-down later).

You may also want to add the From field and the BCC field.

You can do this by clicking on the Options thingy (button? ribbon?). Click both the Show BCC and Show From thingies (buttons?). They will change color to indicate they are active. You will see the fields appear in your message window.

Commas are on a mission to take over the page.  They must be stopped.

I recently read the first in the Lemony Snicket tales, A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Bad Beginning.  I found it quite an enjoyable tale woven with some skill by the good Mr. Snicket.  However, reading it filled me with annoyance over something that is wreaking havoc on pages all over the globe: the profusion of the superfluous comma.

Most of the additional commas present in this first tale are not meaning manglers.  The jist ought to come through relatively unscathed.  Nonetheless, in our own writing we must consider the superiority of the Gertrude Stein aproach over the I-want-a-pause-here approach.

For an interesting, fun, and informative analysis of comma usage take a look at Eats, Shoots & Leaves: Why, Commas Really Do Make a Difference!. (The title of which contains at least two critical comma-altered meanings.)

For the complete Gertrude Stein position on Commas I can highly recommend The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas.  Damned near required reading, that.  Or  you could sample some of this if you’re more for brevity and not so much interested in the lives of Toklas, Stein, Picasso, Matisse, and friends.

Why should I make such recommendations?  If we are to defeat the enemy, we must know the enemy.

What I have to say about commas is merely to keep them sparse.  If the comma is not required for meaning or clarity, then get rid of it.  We have come to the point where if a conjuction appears in a sentence we are near certain to see it preceded by a comma, like the Duchess’ cook in Alice cracking black flecks over our clean white pages.  Madness, I tell you.

Thank you for your indulgence.

I use a desktop manager called Virtual Dimension.  Great thing.  It allows me to have multiple desktops (Linux style) in Windows.  Once you get used to having multiple desktops there is no turning back.

I also use PuTTY for my job.  I recently ran into a problem with PuTTY where the close X would grey out and the Close option would disappear, seemingly at random, from the context menu.  If I wanted to close a PuTTY window I would have to kill the process (Task Manager –> End Process).  The trouble with that is of course that when I have more than one PuTTY window open I have to guess which PuTTY entry to kill.  Not a reasonable solution.

Well, after a bit of research and some testing I discovered that the X would grey out immediately upon my switching from one desktop to another.  Clearly this was a problem between these two applications.  If it came down to it, I would have to give up Virtual Dimension because I had to use PuTTY for my job.  Panic set in.

As fortune would have it, others more tallented than myself were also experiencing this trouble.  A fix was made to PuTTY to accomodate this interaction and merely moving to a newer revision of PuTTY solved the problem.

Now I have my cake and eat it too.

ADDENDUM

Turns out the newest version of putty (.60) doesn’t include support for GSSAPI which we need.  So I had to roll back to our bugged version, and I couldn’t find a version that had both the bug fixed and support for GSSAPI.  All hope is not lost though.  I did find that Alt-f4 will still close the defective windows thanks to a bug report for Virtual Dimension (tested and confirmed).

Best of luck.

Thanks again to Lifehacker for bringing to my attention another great utility.  It’s called Desktop Media and it gives Windows functionality which other operating systems have had for many years.

It will create, on the fly, a shortcut icon (soft link) or a symbolic link (hard link) on your desktop whenever you attach a drive-like device (removable storage and its cousins, including CD/DVD drives).

When you remove those same devices, this utility will then remove the icon.  Right-clicking also includes an eject option in the context menu.

With this utility installed you can happily disable the useless security risk and resource hog known as AutoPlay for all devices.  There is nothing more annoying than attaching your two TB external storage device and watching your system freeze up while Windows scans the entire contents of the drives.

Disabling AutoPlay is very easy:

1. Open the Group Policy editor (Windows-R or Run–> gpedit.msc).
2. Drill down until you get to Local Computer Policy –> Computer Configuration –> Administrative Templates –> System.
3. There you will find an entry for “Turn off Autoplay”. Right-click it and bring up Properties.
4. You must “Enable” it and select “All Drives” from the “Turn Off Autoplay on:” drop down menu.
(Could they have worded it more confusingly?)
5. Then OK your way out of this.

No more AutoPlay.  And you won’t miss it.

Desktop Media shows up in your system tray (where your clock hangs out) and if you right-click it and choose Options, you can have it create hard links instead of mere shortcuts.  They are less pretty than the shortcuts, perhaps, but then the link acts as a folder rather than a marker.  Many folks won’t notice a benefit from the hard links but I use it so I can drill into these folders from my Desktop toolbar (right-click the taskbar and choose Toolbars –> Desktop).

Happy hunting.

Those who know my photographic work know well that I concentrate on that all important button click.  I do not spend time in the darkroom, whether actual or virtual, time that I could better spend with my camera in-hand.  This shot is no exception.  There has been no fotomanipulation beyond the fancy border I created.

Ceci n'est pas un crabe

This photograph (1955) was shot in Seabreeze (restaurant) on 19 June 2007. The background is a crumpled bar napkin (take that, expensive backdrops).  This puts the size of the crab shell at about an inch and a half.

(Originally posted 2007 07 18.)

Thanks for taking a look.

A while back I read an article over at CNN:

Indian ‘witch’ tied to tree, beaten by mob

I know what you’re thinking: “Why were you at CNN and not The Drudge Report?”. Sometimes these things happen. I get to following a trail and like any good sleuth I follow it until it reaches the end. The end in this case was Dumaria (New Dehli, India).

What is shocking to me about this incident is not so much the mob violence nor the police inaction, which are about as predictable pop lyrics. No I am much more interested in the odd fact that witches should be of interest in 2008.

I believe it was Jesus who said “Let he who is without brain cast the first stone”.

Don’t get to thinking that I am pointing my fingers at the denizens of New Dehli alone.  Nowhere in the article do they deviate from one vital assumption: witches are a real category of being.

The facts they report include the notion that she is accused of using black magic as opposed to white magic.  Are their laws in India which regulate the use of magic?  Perhaps we ought to write laws here governing the boarding of unicorns or the fishing of mermaids.  What possible value is there in reporting the category of magic she was accused of using?

A couple of years ago I found a two volume set of essays:

A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom

This book was published more than a hundred years ago (1886 I believe). One of the many subjects the author (Andrew Dickson White) embarks upon is the subject of witchcraft. His essays are quite revealing of what happens when reason is set aside in matters of fact, and his assessments of the witchhunts in history are no exceptions.

The very idea that our reporters are granting validity through their reporting to the idea that witches are a category of being which may or may not require regulation and which may or may not be vicitimized by injustice is itself an injustice.  I certainly wouldn’t want to be known as the candidate who is soft on witches.

We may have sent all of our tech support to a country that beats witches, but we don’t deserve much better if we are going to work to protect witches as a class of being.  Protect humans equally under the law, but abide by reason and good sense.  It is no more possible that this woman from Dumaria is a witch or is capable of employing magic (whether black, white, or green) than it is possible that I am a merman or that the Easter Bunny lives in my back yard.

If you would like to feel a little pain at the impending revolt of the massively irrational check out this odd god site.

What Century do you live in?

I have had long hair off and on for more years than not.  My hair has long been part of my public image.  People identify with it.  It’s like having a baby or a bassett hound: people stop and admire it with a total disregard for that person who happens to be carrying it around.  I keep it healthy.  I don’t use chemical crap in it and I don’t blow dry it–ever.  I wash it with a nice gentle cleanser, I use a simple leave-in conditioner, and I comb it (when wet) and brush it (when dry) using good gear (I own a Mason Pearson brush).

It’s been really long. I’ve been cultivating it. I have decided to do something with all this hair. I am going to make the children happy. There is an organization called Locks of Love which takes donated hair and creates wigs for at-need children (for medical reasons). I have heard mixed reviews concerning the success of this whole donation thing. Some folks say that very little of the hair is actually used. Others are very adament about the goodness of such an act. I have not yet met or talked with anyone with firsthand experience of the donation and what happens afterwards.

I have taken all the precationary steps and followed the posted instructions in every detail, so I look forward to seeing what sort of response I get from these folks once I send my donation off to them.

(I will be including a letter and a self-addressed reply envelope asking for details concerning the fate of my hair.)

First, I washed my hair and allowed it to dry completely. It was a warm, sunny day but the drying still took hours due to the sheer volume of hair involved. Once it was thoroughly dry I tied three hair bands into strategic locations along the legnth of the hair.

Strategically Tied

The first band was put in place to mark the minimal line requried for me to tie my hair into a pony tail. This was important in deciding where to cut. The second band was tied maybe three or four inches below the first band. This was put in place to hold the volume of hair together once the cut was made–per their requirements. The third was rather superfluous but I tied it near the end of the hair just to keep it orderly while we worked with it and packaged it.

Maria and I went out into the back yard for a different brand of spectacle. We slipped the majority of the hair into the required plastic bag, holding it at an angle to prevent any of the cut hair particles from falling into the bag. Maria placed the hair scissors equadistant between the two top hair bands and hacked away at the thick mass of hair.

Hacking Away

It took several minutes of snicking away before the pony tail was finally severed from my head.

Success

Down into the plastic bag it went.

I was concerned that it would be difficult to manage the rope of hair, even tied, but it turned out to be no trouble at all.  I took a moment to measure the length of it.

Total Length

It measures a full twenty-five inches.

Twenty-Five Inches

I will mail the rope of hair in the plastic bag (where now it rests) and my letter once I finish this post.

The Final Product

In my letter I am asking questions concerning how much of the hair will actually be used (by them or by others) and an assessment of quality and suggestions for improvement.

I will post again as I get more information.

So, that’s it: my first adventure as a hair farmer.  We shall see what the future holds.

I love cooking with gas.  Next to some wicked orgy with myself and a dozen hotties, surely cooking with gas is life’s greatest pleasure.  But there is one significant problem with cooking with gas.  Here I spill my solution.

Gas has a great intense and direct heat.  It works for nearly any task and works well.  But if I were in a postion where I could build my own kitchen I would include one high-efficiency, low-capability electric burner in the mix.  Here is why.

The one great failing of gas is simmering.  Simmering with gas invariably leaves a thick crust at the bottom of the pot where the intense heat has glammed onto particles of your sauce and married them not with one another but with the very pot in which they stew.

This is no good.  Sure, for small things you can use a double boiler.  This really does the trick of calming the heat and making sure your creation is protected from the flames.  However, when you are making a couple gallons of marinara sauce, building a massive double boiler–though this sounds like a fun project–is really out of the question.

My solution is to invert a cast iron skillet over the burner and place the pot on top of it.

Invert your cast iron skillet.

The inverted skillet captures all the heat energy emitting form the burner, but it also acts to disperse it throughout its material.

Ensure a proper match.

This does reduce the efficiency of the burner, but if you didn’t build your own kitchen with one electric burner this is a viable substitute.  Most of the heat energy does pass into the bottom of the pot, but it passes into the entire bottom surface of the pot eliminated the aforementioned hotspots which would otherwise lead to crusting.

Using my burner on its lowest setting, my sauces will eventually come to a boil and of course crust–it probably takes a couple of hours before boiling occurs.  However, implementing this solution I am able to simmer without boiling or crusting indefinitely.  This weekend I cooked a red sauce for about 20 hours using this solution and the sauce, though hot, neither boiled nor crusted while the skillet was in play.

Happy hunting.

My new job sticks me with Outlook as a mail client again.  I can hear your groaning and know your tears are flowing copiously all around.

We also get boat loads of e-mail every day.  So, my buddy here helps me set up all these rules in Outlook to help manage this crazy tide of messages.  The only problem is that with all of these rules running I am seeing many duplicated messages–essentially messages created in response to the different rules where more than one rule might apply to a single message.

He hadn’t noticed it was happening (since most of what is filtered out is filtered out as non-important).  When I pointed this out to him, his solution was to create a host of exceptions for each rule which excluded the other rules.  This was too much for me.  I went to my other buddy: Google.

I found this wonderful gem which expounded an elegant and simple solution.  I like simple and elegant ain’t so bad.

Essentially, when you create any rule you will want to consider including among the actions that rule takes “stop processing more rules”.  I don’t have any rules I want processed alongside other rules so I added this action to all of my rules–and I put them in the order I want them processed.  You may have rules which are intended to act in conjunction with one another.  Those rules ought not to include this action.

I am of the opinion that the default for all rules should be “stop processing more rules” so that you would have to manually tell a rule to allow further processing, but that’s just me.