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                    JOURNAL FOR MONDAY 27TH JANUARY, 2014
______________________________________________________________________________

SUBJECT: Havoc & Mayhem
   DATE: Mon 27 Jan 22:12:29 GMT 2014

Havoc & Mayhem. Sounds like two heavies come to do some damage doesn't it? It
may as well have been, guess I asked for it though...

Over the Christmas period I said to my self 'I really need to sort out my
email server'. When you run your own email server things are very archaic,
complex and fragile. It never starts off that way and you tell yourself you'll
keep a good tight hold and not let things get out of hand. It's like cables -
you leave them neat and tidy in coils and bundles but you know the next time
you see them they will be a tangled rat's nest.

I didn't get around to sorting out the email server.

So when a server died[1] it had to be the one running the email server. Like
it or not I was now forced to sort out email and other services.

I use email a lot. I get RSS feeds by email, status reports, current dynamic
ISP IP updates, notifications, CRON job reports, reminders via calendar and
anything else I can think of. For me email is a workflow. I even have a
really simple and crude todo script:


  #!/bin/bash
  if [ "$#" -gt "0" ]
  then
    body="$*"
  else
    body=`cat /dev/stdin`
  fi

  title=$body
  if [ "${#title}" -gt "40" ]
  then
    title=${title:0:40}
    title=${title% *}
    title="$title..."
  fi
  echo -n "$body" | par -w78 | mail -s "TODO: $title" diddymus


Typical usage would be:


  todo Need to write a journal article about server failure.


First 40 characters go into the email title and complete text is in the body.
You can also feed it input on stdin for the same effect. You can also reply to
yourself with updates to a todo if it's long running :)

Making heavy - and remote - usage of email means it has to be handled
efficiently. In my case I use Mutt, procmail, fetchmail, w3m, clamav and adhoc
scripts. The email also has to be text. If it hasn't got a text/plain part it
goes straight to spam unless pre-filtered - some companies only send HTML
email and that gets fed through w3m and converted to text automatically[2].

I do not want all of my internal email going out to an ISP just to come back
to me after they have possibly scanned, stored, copied, targeted advertising
and whatever else they do to it.

Needless to say it's taken a while to get everything settled again.

There was a WolfMUD Wednesday, it just wasn't very productive - distracted by
'stuff' e.g. servers - so I had nothing much to write home about :(

Didn't think I'd be writing an entry about email though!

--
Diddymus

  [1] See previous journal entry: A sad day 21.html

  [2] I hate it when people running mailing lists email me and say 'why aren't
      you reading any of our emails!?' I do, I just don't download your
      tracking images or whatever you are using ;)


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