Peter's Blog

I'm back to using Outlook for two reasons:

• the journal feature may be useable as a desktop notetaking tool. Being integrated into the email program means fewer apps running and a leaner and meaner system (ha). It does look like a half decent note taking tool, entries can be formatted, pictures pasted in etc.
• was reading how hackers can carry packet sniffers on memory keys and became paranoid about my unencrypted password floating around the ether(net). I looked into setting up ssl authentication on the exchange server but it involves messing around setting up an ssl certificate server and I couldn't be bothered.

I've given up on using folders to categorise my email: I leave it all in the inbox and rely in searching to find stuff. I have google desktop search to speed this up but that still thinks I am still using thunderbird and tries using that to display messages. How to persuade it I have vaccilated back to the evil ones?

There are three ways to blog from a pocketpc that I have found:

1. open your blog in a web browser and edit it as normal. This doesn't work so well in practise unless your web page has been designed with a css style sheet that works nicely on a pda. I tried modifying my drupal theme accordingly and made it presentable but it's not up to data entry.
2. try using an application for posting to blogs. There are a couple of these about but those that I tried were buggy or had tiny little edit boxes.
3. write the article and submit by email. This is how I am posting this, I use phatnotes, a notetaking application that can send the notes via email. I don't use pocket outlook for the simple reason that it doesn't seem to save sent mail so I cannot edit the article and send it again to modify it. I use my old mailbot script on the server to capture posts and poke them into drupal.

So far this has worked ok and I can compose posts offline and upload them at my leisure.

Disadvantages:

• No preview unless I go online, hence I keep posts simple.
• cutting and pasting urls is fiddly and I cannot be bothered with it.
• my script adds tags by scanning the database for existing tags, searching the post for the tag words and adding the tags that it finds. This can give irrelevant tags and I cannot define new tags. I need a neat way to specify tags in the post.

Advantages:

• the convenience of whipping my pda out and having a quick blog. I don't have to go upstairs and get my laptop.
• can lay on settee and blog in comfort.

Servant Salamander: coming to rely on this. Pretty much destined to register it. Today I discovered that I can get it to calculate space used in subdirectorys and then send a report of directory names and sizes, sorted by size, to the clipboard. Try doing that with Windows Explorer. I've stopped using filezilla, Salamander is a useful sftp client. Things I do wish it could do:

• copy directly from one sftp site to another. Similarly, since you can browse straight into a zip or tgz file, it would be nice to be able to copy a file from within an archive on one window to other window showing an sftp site. The user interface spoils you, you start thinking these things are possible, you try them and are thwarted.
• create tar.gz files. I have actually learned the incantation for this, I am becoming such a command line junkie:

  tar cvfz blah *
  

  It can do zips and rars and stuff.
• It sometimes goes a bit crazy with the confirmation dialogs, sometimes giving two or three in a row. I don't have faith enough to disable them, combining them into one dialog would be nice (e.g. yes I want to copy, I want to copy it there, I want to overwrite everything).

Thunderbird: since I fixed the exchange server I have been using this instead of outlook and have not looked back. I use an IMAP connection to the Exchange server and it is working just fine. I used to have problems with it when my network connection was flakier (it kept asking me for my password) but since I installed XP on my pc the network has been ok (one of those software decay things on my old Win2k install). I think outlook was tainted by spambayes which was pretty lethargic in moving spam around (to get around outlook's flaky message filtering it does lots of sleeps to keep out of the way). So you go to look at a message and find that spambayes is still in the process of moving it to the junk folder. Thunderbirds integrated bayesian spam filter is working for me. Another thing I like about thunderbird, the flag thing that pops up and goes away again when new mail arrives. The outlook taskbar thing always used to get stuck on, even after deleting new messages, to the extent that I disabled it.

Someone at work got a phishing email. Looking through the html, I found this:

 <p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=black face=Verdana><span
  style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;color:black'><a
  href="http://www.paypal-3089740289dsdasdfedd.8800.org/navbar/34098.html"><span
  style='text-decoration:none'><img border=0 width=117 height=35
  id="_x0000_i1025" src="http://paypal.com/en_US/i/logo/paypal_logo.gif"
  onMouseOver="click('')"></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></font></p>

I'm no expert in javascript but it looks to me like just moving the mouse over an image is going to cause it to be clicked, taking you to a paypal clone site and filling your hard disk with spyware. Outlook XP disables javascript in emails, and just as well.

Been playing with The Brain some more:

• By linking a folder to a thought and creating virtual thoughts for all files in the folder, I can apply meta-data and define new relationships between files, beyond what a simple folder hierarchy can do. It's an interesting concept, but I need to think of a use for it. Maybe creating shortcuts to useful files, each shortcut having a note to remind me what the file does beyond it's name.
• The context menu for virtual thoughts gives some of the windows explorer options such as 'open', 'edit', 'edit with VIM' etc, it is not restricted to opening them. This is useful to me, giving me the option of running or editing python files.
• Similarly, brain promises it can spider a web site, building a map of all the pages, each thought linking to the corresponding page. Unfortunately this seems to be broken:
  1. it stopped with a weird access error half way through my test
  2. the links it did create didn't work, some problem with absolute vs relative urls.
• It has some nice keyboard shortcuts, it is possible to do extensive navigation and map buildng using just the keyboard.
• If I just start typing a word then by default this goes into the search box and does an incremental search. Very fast way of finding things.
• I don't think the virtual thoughts for files appeared in the search list.
• Dragging an email from outlook causes the corresponding .eml file to be stored in the brain and opened when the thought is clicked on: nice way to organise email.
• Since the RTF notes support OLE I can embed excel spreadsheets in them. Maybe RTF isn't so bad.
• Except the program create a 388 byte empty RTF file for every though, even when I don't put anything in them.
• Program was last modified in March 2004. It's not perfect so is it still under development?
• It is supposed to be version 3.0.2 but the tooltip in the task bar and at least one comment in the help file says version 2.0.
• Despite it's flash graphics it is nice and fast. I can imagine the new graphical UI coming out, based on Avalon and similar, providing gimmicky interfaces like this.

Conclusion: I still like it.

Next in my Outliner quest is TheBrain. This is a radical looking outliner:

Each node in the diagram is called a 'thought' and it can have multiple parents, children and peers (not siblings, they can have different parents). This allows incredibly complex mappings of relationships to be created. For an idea of what it is like to use, try the WebBrain which needs java enabled in your browser. The mappings form more of an amorphous blob than a tree and so can model all kinds of things. It is more of a brainstorming tool than an outliner.

Review:

• it is fun to use
• it is easy to get lost
• you can assign web pages, applications etc to thoughts, so they launch when you click on them
• I tried mapping mail addresses to people thoughts but the mailto link was broken by the time it reached outlook.
• A folder can be assigned to a thought, in which case 'virtual thoughts' representing the files in the folder appear in the map.
• can export data as XML, although I haven't tried that yet to see how complete it is.
• RTF notes can be assigned to thoughts. Unfortunately these cannot contain hyperlinks but they can contain OLE objects (remember OLE?).
• It is easy enought to search for items or assign keywords and types to them. Tell the difference between people and computers in your map.

TreePad seems more a way of organising articles that TheBrain, which is a way of arranging thoughts and pushing them around as a way to see new relationships. It is interesting putting a family tree or company organisation chart into it and examining it from all angles.

I'm having fun playing with it. I came across other Mind Mapping tools in my exploration but TheBrain's totally unique UI appeals to me.

Google have released their new non-beta desktop search. Since they have given me pagerank 0, here's some spiteful Microsoft Desktop Search Evangelism:

• New GDS has a plugin API. MDS already has installable filters for extra file types based on established technology: see here and here and especially here. Ok, IFilters are all based on deeply pretentious COM models so I wouldn't want to try writing them. Interesting to see that you can load filters through a win32 API called LoadIFilter. Wonder if this is of any use?
• MDS can index PDF files by downloading Adobes own plugin.
• MDS indexes my outlook messages, even though they are stored on an exchange server: can GDS do that?
• MDS doesn't take copies of the documents it indexes so saves lots of disk space.
• I do find MSN search useful, especially the taskbar thing. I like the way

  =regedit
  

  launches the registry editor without me having to open the 'run' box or a command prompt. Dunno if GDS can do this.

• I don't like the way GDS gives results in a web browser: it only gives you the option of opening files it finds: you cannot edit them, copy them or whatever. MDS results are presented in a file explorer, much more useful.

I was looking at the Microsoft Genuine Advantage Program as I wanted to try the Microsoft Antispyware beta. One of the goodies on offer was a 6 month trial version of Microsoft OneNote which is a program for taking notes and organising them. By the time a 6 month trial is finished I am either using something every day or I have not touched it for 5 months so I thought I would give it a try.

I am always interested in new ideas for organising notes. I've tried Wikis but web apps are a bit too slow and fiddly. I've tried blogging but I end up typing more than is necessary in order to be descriptive. I've tried outline editors but I never really get into the habit of using them. For notes I just want to bang in bare details, paste stuff in with a 3 word description.

OneNote gives you the following:

• A simple place to type in arbitrary text. You click anywhere on a page and type away, giving a box with a note in it.
• The notes are organised into a confusing multi-layer hierarchy of sections, folders and pages which map onto folders, subfolders and files in the physical file structure. Essentially there are multiple levels of tabs. However, once you have chosen a name for a section and folder, you don't really have to worry about giving your notes names or wonder where to save them.
• Can drag and drop file or folder locations from explorer to a link in a note and then annotate them. Later you can click on the link to open them. Ditto for urls in FireFox. Cool way to build annotated bookmarks or add metadata to your file system.
• Paste images into notes
• A cool 'screen snippet' facility that lets you mark an area of screen and capture a bitmap to poke into your note. This has a bug on my multi-monitor setup whereby the cursor does not appear on one of the monitors.
• Taskbar OneNote button for post-it functionality
• If you are one of the select few that have a tablet PC then you can scribble on the pages with a crayonpen. You can use the mouse if you want to write like a three year old.
• Spelling checker
• Search through notes for keywords
• Very basic automation interface that just about allows you to post new items. Here I use Python to poke in a new page:

     1  #
     2  # Poke an entry into OneNote
     3  #
     4  
     5  import win32com.client
     6  import pythoncom
     7  
     8  oOneNote = win32com.client.dynamic.Dispatch( 'OneNote.CSimpleImporter')
     9  
    10  strTemplate = """<?xml version="1.0"?>
    11  <Import xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/onenote/2004/import">
    12      <EnsurePage path="Postings\\Posts.one"
    13          guid="{10DA1EEF-6415-4ae8-AF79-9E099F3800A8}"
    14          title="Odours" />
    15      <PlaceObjects pagePath="Postings\\Posts.one"
    16                 pageGuid="{10DA1EEF-6415-4ae8-AF79-9E099F3800A8}">
    17          <Object guid="%(ItemGuid)s">
    18              <Position x="10" y="10"/>
    19              <Outline>
    20                  <Html>
    21                      <Data>
    22                          <![CDATA[
    23                              <html><body><p>Sample text here.</p></body></html>
    24                            ]]>
    25                      </Data>
    26                  </Html>
    27              </Outline>
    28          </Object>
    29      </PlaceObjects>
    30  </Import>
    31  """ % { 'ItemGuid': str(pythoncom.CreateGuid()) }
    32  
    33  oOneNote.Import(strTemplate)
  

  Notes on this:
  • You need to know the Guid of pages to add stuff to them and there is no way to inspect the guids of existing objects so you have to create guids for you own objects and remember what you called them.
  • It won't create guids automatically, you have to do it.
  • You have to specify the position (x,y) of an object on a page and there is no way of knowing if it will collide with another object. The interface was added as an afterthought in SP1 and it shows.
• Encrypt pages, save passwords etc

What it doesn't give you:

• No way to link from one note to another, in a different section for example. Hypertextual linking would take it to a new dimension.
• Can't drag and drop a note from one page to another, have to cut and paste.
• Integrate OneNote with Outlook or Word unless you have Office 2003.
• You can only export files in .mhtml format, a mime encoded html archive. Not total lockin but close. No way to extract data through automation interfaces.

I'm going to give it a try, to see if it will become indispensable to me. It seems very version 1 (which it is), there seems to be a lot they could have done with it. However, give Microsoft credit, this does not appear to be another 'me too' app designed to crush competitors but an actual attempt to create a new product.

Update:

This suddenly got more interesting:

• You can drag and drop an email message from outlook to onenote and the email message is stored in a '.msg' file and a link to the message goes into your notes. Something I have always wanted, the ability to thread emails with notes. This turns out to be a standard thing in Outlook (Xp version anyway), you can drag and drop messages into the desktop.
• You can scribble on notes with 'ink' and save it all to a .mht file which just about anyone can admire in internet explorer. Amaze your friends. This example may work in Explorer, FireFox may show the raw mime message, which is interesting in itself, eminently parseable.
• The 'research' feature is set of onlike books. You can look up words like 'plaintively' which aren't covered by google define.

MSN Desktop search is changing my way of working: now I can find .exe files I don't spend my time clicking around in Windows Explorer finding things, I just use the desktop search bar.

This has lead me back to Outlook as an email client so I can search email. I've done the following:

• set Outlook up to talk directly to the in-house exchange server.
• set it to leave messages on the server: why waste my disk space?
• installed SpamBayes, a glorious free spam filter written in python. It integrates very well.
• got Desktop Search to index my email.

Desktop Search was reluctant to index the email and I had to read the small print in the help file. Apart from setting Outlook as the default email client I had to delete the registry key:

HKCU\Software\Clients\Mail

like it says as that was set to thunderbird.

Now, why do I have to keep typing my password in whenever Outlook boots? It's the same as my domain password. Whatever happened to single login? Thanks Microsoft, I was in danger of having nothing to criticise you for.

Some of our email servers at work have ceased to be so I am having to send email via a Microsoft Exchange server, using Thunderbird as a client as I despise Outlook.

I was having problems sending mail outside the company: I'd get an error telling me that it couldn't relay messages. I fixed this by telling it to authenticate my login to the Exchange SMTP server.