Torsten Curdt’s weblog

For a while I have been trying to use Gmail as my primary email client. Online searching, no worries about the backup, tagging …but still it just doesn’t cut it – at least for me. I know people are happy with it – but I feel a bit stuck. No progress. The improvements they made so far just do not address the real problems IMO.

• You cannot filter on special headers like “Precedence” and “Delivered-To”
• You cannot filter on the virtual mailbox ([email protected])
• When sending mails from a different email address the header still contains the gmail address
• Tagging (aka labeling) and spam reporting does not work from your desktop email clients
• There is no IMAP support
• No offline mails …or what do you do on a plane or train?

Besides technical reasons why implementing e.g. IMAP on top of Gmail is probably not that easy I also suspect business reasons for not improving the desktop client experience of Gmail users. Who would see the ads then? The funny thing is – I would even pay for a proper email setup with IMAP and tagging and so on. The providers I found so far did not fill this gap for me.

So because all these things I decided to move my mail back to my laptop and only use Gmail for backup purposes. So first I had to get my current mails downloaded. …and I thought that would be an easy one. This post pointed me to mpop which seems to be perfectly suited for the job. Unfortunately it is not available through fink yet. But a simple standard install works fine.

./configure --prefix=/sw
make
sudo make install

The configuration is easy

# defaults
defaults
tls on

# gmail
account gmail
host pop.gmail.com
user myaccount
password myaccountpassword
keep on
only_new off
tls_starttls off
delivery mbox ~/Backup/[email protected]

# Set a default account
account default : gmail

Now if you start it up it works fine. Of course given that you have enable the pop3 access for all mails in the Gmail settings. For some reason Google hands out my 4000 mails in batches of 300-600 mails. So you have to run mpop over and over again. Unfortunately after re-running mpop a couple of times I always hit the following problem.

...
retrieving message 347 of 605 (4.69 KB): 100%
retrieving message 348 of 605 (3.48 MB): 100%
retrieving message 349 of 605 (7.60 MB): 100%
mpop: command RETR 350 failed
mpop: POP3 server message: -ERR [SYS/TEMP] Temporary system problem. Please try again later.
mpop: error during mail retrieval (account default from .mpop.conf)

I am not absolutely sure whether in the end it was really just a temporary problem or not (I have seen this over a couple of days). Maybe the too frequent logins were a problem – no idea. In the end looping with a delay did the trick for me

#!/bin/sh
while [ false ] ; do
  echo "retrieving..."
  mpop -C ~/.mpop.conf
  sleep 300
done

Now comes the really fishy part. My Gmail account lists around 4000 mails but the downloaded mbox file only contains about 3700 mails. WTF? Lock in alarm – no thanks!

FileMerge comes with the Apple’s Developer Tools. When I saw it for the first time I found it quite awkward to use. Still I think the GUI does need an overhaul. Especially I am missing some keyboard shortscuts. But it has been useful to me for a couple of times now. Basically you click on the difference and select whether you want the left or the right version in the merge. The result is being displayed at the bottom. With some wrapper scripts you can even use it directly from subversion. Nice!

So I got tagged by Brian, Bertrand and Andrea to reveal 5 things you probably did not know about me yet. Let’s see…

• After school I was torn apart whether I should study Computer Science or Architecture and Art. In the end I settled to go down the computer route. I do feel bad not having even the time for painting anymore though. Maybe I can at least get some old paintings up on flickr.
• I have a color disability. Not a big one …and this doesn’t affect me really much. But if you ask me whether something is neon green or neon yellow you might not get more than a shrug from me.
• I have to admit that I am not very tolerant when it comes down to music. I just cannot enjoy myself when I have to listen to music that I don’t like …which is why you rarely see me dance when I go out.
• For many years I have been chewing Big Red’s basically all the time. So there was always a sense of cinnamon smell around me. In the beginning I even had to get them from the US. But once I was able to buy them at every gas station it became boring and I quit.
• As a 4 year old me and my best mate were having a jumping competition on my parent’s bed. I won …but also hurt my head on the edge of the bed. The wound had to get stitched. Obviously the doc really sucked. That’s were I got my scar on the forehead from.

Tagging Marc, Marcus and Peter.

Just recently I noticed that my version of SSHKeychain wasn’t a universal binary. As it is a matter of trust I did not want to grab just a pre-compiled version from someone I don’t know. If you know …and trust me feel free to use my build. I do suggest to verify the md5 and the signature though.

Although I am very happy with my Canon 30D I am not with the crappy kit lens that came with it (Canon EF-S 18-55). But it’s just worth keeping for the wide angle ..and for the fact that selling it on ebay is like throwing it away. Too many people don’t want it – so no money you will get. But anyway!

I am especially happy with Canon EF 50/1.4 which is just my favorite lens at the moment. Although I tend to, a fix lens is not that well suited to have always on. So with the upcoming vacation (in Jan/Feb) and the increase of the sale tax next year it seems to be well worth thinking of getting a good day-to-day standard zoom as soon as possible. (Amazon for example seems to be increasing the prices already – hoping no one would notice. Just right for Christmas. Bastards!) So here is my pre-selection:

• Canon EF-L USM 2,8/24-70 CPS (ca. 1200 EUR)
• Sigma EX 24-70/2,8 DG Macro (ca. 409 EUR)
• Canon EF USM 3,5-5,6/28-135 IS (ca. 430 EUR)

Basically I was looking for something like the first two. 24-70 seems a good range. Especially with another 70-300 in the bag. But the 28-135 sounds like really good value, too. Some people gave that lens even really good reviews. When I tried it in Austin I found it to have a bit of a cheap touch though. The Sigma also sounds really good. And the Macro is a nice bonus. Just supposed to be a bit slower on the focus.

So before spending big bucks on a L-lens I thought it would be great to get some feedback from the lazy web first. So anyone owning these lenses? Suggestions and feedback very much welcome!!

Update:
Thanks for the feedback I got …via comments, via email or in person. Now I am a happy owner of the Canon 24-70L lens. Heavy – but feels fantastic.