Category: Random Observations

Archiving selected emails to a single file.

David Rostenne

I needed to gather about 50 emails into a single file so I could sift through them and pull out a variety of information. Going through them one at a time in Mail was going to take longer than I wanted, or was willing to do at once, so I decided to save them to a single file so I could do it later.

It turns out to be very simple: you select the relevant emails, in my case the result of a search, and do a “Save As..”. At this point you have a choice of how to save them, and I chose the default “Rich text Format”. I ended up with one file with all 58 emails in it.

Now I can open it in TextEdit and delete the parts I don’t want.

SCIFI’s Fiction Archive is going offline! WGET your copy today!

David Rostenne 1 Comment

To be honest, I did not do any research to figure out why the archive is going offline in 2 days. I took a quick look, decided there was tons of great content, and…

wget -m -np -p --include-directories=/scifiction/classics/,/scifiction/originals/ http://www.scifi.com/scifiction/archive.html

Which gave me about 13 Megabytes of files.. and since I know I don’t have time to read them now:

tar jcv www.scifi.com -f scifi.com_archive

And tossed the resulting 5.5 Mb file into *my* archive folder.

Thanks to Boing Boing for pointing it out!

Parenting 101

David Rostenne

Some of the things that made our lives easier after having our first, and second child;

A Sling to carry her in, which keeps her cuddled up against mom or dad and leaves us with our hands free.

“What to expect the first year“ something to read when baby is keeping you awake at odd hours of the night.

Night time feedings go a lot easier if you change the diaper *before* feeding the baby. We learned that the hard way!

Sleep when the baby sleeps. Nobody cares if you vacuumed, but they will notice that you look like a zombie.

When you read to your children, tell them the Title, Author and Illustrator of the book… it didn’t take long before he figured out he liked Jan Brett’s books!

Get a library card, and use the online system to reserve and remind you to return books. We take out several books every week, and have found some were so good that they were worth buying from our local independent bookstore!

Pelican Case Guarantee: unconditional? Not!

David Rostenne

A photographer friend of mine, in the midst of the “controlled chaos” of his daughter’s 3rd birthday party, somehow got on to the topic of Pelican cases. He has been using them, and abusing them, for many years, and will do so for many more. But, he warned us that even though they are guaranteed against almost anything they are not covered against damage from toddlers! Being curious I decided to check.. and lo and behold, kids under five are put into the same catergory as Bear attacks and Shark bites, which their guarantee also does not cover.

Pelicanâ„¢ Products Unconditional Lifetime Guarantee of Excellence

Let’s put it into perspective though! Go and read a few of the Survival Stories and then wonder just how destructive a toddler can be.

“Clipboard Contents: A New Sensory perception”

David Rostenne

It seems that Dan has hit upon a new form of sensory perception, particular to the computer age! He coined the term ‘Cliposeption’ for “the sense that there’s something on the clipboard.”

Maybe we can add on ‘Clipophobia’ to that? The fear that you just overwrote something important in the clipboard?

There is a related fear, which I get when I use Linux/UNIX, that of selecting something (usually the URL in the browser’s address bar) to delete it and paste in where I want to go, only to realize that I just over wrote my clipboard. ‘Selectoparanoia’?

I can add a phobia on to that as well: several of my clients refuse to remove Apple’s default items from their Dock. One person had been using their machine for almost 2 years, and when I showed them that those programs they never used could be removed (and replaced easily) so they could have a dozen fewer items in their Dock they got visibly upset.