Now call me old fashioned but I use Things for my GTD stuff and so don’t use todos or topics in Postbox.

“Not a problem really is it?” I hear you yell. Well no until you look at the amount of space the topic row of Message View takes up. Believe me on a small screen this matters:

postbox topics

Lucky Thunderbird (and therefore Postbox) has a way to edit the Chrome (or look and feel) using CSS.
Even better it’s done on a profile level, so you don’t have to worry about losing your changes when you upgrade.

1) Add a new folder and call it ‘chrome’ into your profile folder. On a mac you profile folder can be found in either systems Library/Application Support/ folder or your own user version of the Library/Application Support/

~/Library/Application Support/Postbox

2) Add a file into that folder called userChrome.css

3) Edit that file and add the following:

#tagsBox.mailheader {
	display:none;
}

4) Restart Postbox.

postbox no topics

Mac:
/Users/[username]/Library/Application Support/Postbox/Profiles

Vista:
Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming\Postbox

XP:
Documents and Settings\[username]\Application Data\Postbox

And copy the folders named xxxxxx.default to your backup location.
If you have created a new profile then your folder may also be called xxxxx.yourprofilename.

If you just want to backup your email and not your preferences or settings then go into your profile folders and backup the Imap, Mail and sometimes Local Mail folders

Close Postbox. That’s right, shut it down before you carry on.

Backup and then open your prefs.js profile file which can be found here:

Mac OS X: ~/Library/Application Support/Postbox
Vista: Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Postbox
WinXP: Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Postbox

You backed it up? No? Do it now and then carry on.

Now search for the string ‘mailnews.reply_header_type’. Found it? Edit it to the following. Not found it? Add the following…

// Change the reply header
// 0 - No Reply-Text
// 1 - "[Author] wrote:"
// 2 - "On [date] [author] wrote:"
// 3 - User-defined reply header. Use the prefs below in conjunction with this:
user_pref("mailnews.reply_header_type", 3);
 
// If you set 3 for the pref above then you may set the following prefs.
user_pref("mailnews.reply_header_authorwrote", "%s replied with");
user_pref("mailnews.reply_header_ondate", "On %s");
user_pref("mailnews.reply_header_separator", " ");
user_pref("mailnews.reply_header_colon", ":"); 
// The end result will be [authorwrote][separator][ondate][colon]

Now you can go crazy with funny reply header text whenever you feel the need.

So you can select to see what tracks, albums or artist you listen to most, or see what are the most popular with others.

As far as the tracks list goes, you can also play it. Choose ‘Tracks’ from the drop down menu on the left, and choose ‘everywhere’ from the drop down menu on the right. You now have a list of Spotify’s top tracks for the whole world. There is no simple ‘play’ button, but these steps aren’t too taxing…

1) Click the first track’s title
2) Hold down shift and click the last track’s title
3) Right click anywhere on the selected area and choose ‘play’

If you are already playing some tunes, you could choose to queue or even save it to a playlist for later.

The steps to creating a simple locally run php Coda plugin:

You must have php installed and running locally.
Start the plugin file with theses lines:

#!/usr/bin/php -q
<?php

(no space between < and ?php)

Where /use/bin/php is the path to you local php install

This is an example of replacing a text string with an imaginary tag ‘harry’ around it.

#!/usr/bin/php
<?php
 
/* a coda plugin */
 
$input = "";
 
$fp = fopen("php://stdin", "r");
while ( $line = fgets($fp, 1024) )
{
	$input .= $line;
}
 
fclose($fp);
 
 
// so now we have input text in $input
 
print '<harry>' . $input . '</harry>';
 
?>

For much more information:
http://www.panic.com/coda/developer/howto/plugins.php

Ok, so you can’t currently (June 2009) have Playlist Folders in Spotify, but this is the next best thing. I promise. I will also sprinkle sugar on it by showing you how to make the left column wider than the allowed maximum.

I use empty playlists as separators to create crude containers for my growing number of playlists. When Spotify does introduct playlist folders it will be simple to drag and drop across into the newly created folder.

I have several separators along the lines of:

---- Playlists ----

A selection of self created or discovered playlists that I like. Usually up to 10 of them.

---- To Try ----

Albums and playlists that I haven’t decided to keep yet. A place to put stuff on trial. I can then more it into a permanent place or delete it after a few plays.

---- New ----

Anything I only recently added and want to find easily

---- a ----

through to

---- z ----

A separator for each letter of the alphabet. Helps easy finding of artist / album

---- bucket ----

Always at the bottom, a place to quickly add new playlists that I will file later when I have a minute

Method

To set up your containers, just create a few new playlists using the +New playlist link at the bottom of Spotify’s left column. I always surround the containers text with 4 dashes to make it easy to spot when scrolling.

Once you have your basic containers set up you can quickly drag your existing playlists / albums into the gaps between the container names.

To quick create a playlist with the name Artist – Album, you can drag any link in Spotify over to the +New playlist link. It will be added to the bucket section ready for you to file.

Left column width

Ok. So if you have a screen wider than 13″ you will probably want to make the left column a little wider so you can see all your playlist names in full. You can do this (on a mac) with a little plain text file editing of /application support/spotify/users/yourusername-user/guistate

Just close Spotify, open the file above in a plain text editor, find the text side_bar_width: and change the number to whatever you like. When you start Spotify next time, the left column width should be whatever you set it to.

This change will likely be reset by Spotify when it updates, and will jump back to the set maximum if you try and make it larger or smaller with your mouse. You may have to do these steps every few weeks.

This method is also likely to work in Windows too, although you will have to find the appropriate file to edit yourself. It should contain the text side_bar_width however.

You can add bookmarks or tags to a file that will appear on Coda’s code navigator. Most of the time it’s as simple as an !

CSS:
/* !bookmark */

HTML:
<!-- !bookmark -->

Javascript:
/* !bookmark */ or // !bookmark

PHP:
/* !bookmark */ or // !bookmark

You can of course replace the word bookmark with anything you like.

For a full list:
http://www.panic.com/coda/developer/quicktip/5.php

Always backup your profile folder before trying anything with the files. You have been warned!

After looking around I found various mentions of this bug, but never a fix that worked for me. I had been poking around in my profile folder quite a lot and decided (after making a backup) that changing various files names and restarting might get me a solution. Well you never know what will happen do you!

There is a file called ‘formhistory.sqlite’ in your firefox profile folder. How to find your Firefox Profile Folder.

I quit Firefox, changed the file name to formhistory.sqlite.bak and started her back up. Everything worked fine, except I had obviously lost all my form suggestions. So I quit again, deleted the newly created formhistory.sqlite and renamed my backup to remove the .bak extension. After starting back up everything is now back to normal.

I guess Firefox just needed a quick shove. Phew.

I have also heard that a similar bug can be fixed by following very similar steps using the search.sqlite file.

There is no exporter built into Navicat version 6, so I was more than a little concerned that I was going to have to find all my details and plug all the connections settings back in. Luckily this wasn’t the case.

If you browse to /Users/yourusername/Library/Preferences/com.prect.Navicat.plist – remember to replace ‘yourusername’ with your actual username

Copy that file to the new machine. Install Navicat. Put that file in the same location on your new machine.

Or if you just want to back up your connections then put the file somewhere safe and you’re done.

Open navicat and cross your fingers. All the connections should appear as if by magic. Nice.

I was moving from a 10.4 machine to 10.5 and did so with the same copy version of navicat.

If you have a mac and you haven’t tried the Quicksilver application, I seriously suggest you put it on your list of things to do pretty soon. It is a great way of searching your document, music and application using one simple interface that is fast and doesn’t push it’s way to the front and annoy you.

Quicksilver also allows plugins to some of the software you already use everyday. You could email, ftp, create files or play music all with a few keystrokes and without ever touching your mouse.

Quicksilver also plays well with Applescript, so you can create actions which Quicksilver intergrates and waits for you to initiate.

Anyway, I digress. Coda Hale has come up with a simple script which allows you to tweet using only Quicksilver. Much faster than heading over to twitter.com everytime your cat / wife / baby does something funny.

Well after trying it out myself I have come up with a couple of improvements and I want to add the extra steps in that make this idiot proof.

Make sure you are running the latest copy of Quicksilver so I know your experience will match that of mine.

We are going to do this with a made up user ‘johnsmith’ and a made up password ‘mypass’. On with the show:

Open the Keychain Access application [ ~/Applications/Utilities/Keychain Access ] click [ + ] at the bottom and add a new Item with:

Name: tweetjohnsmith
Account Name: johnsmith
Password: mypass

To allow access from Quicksilver using an Applescript we need to change the Access Control too allow two items:
Quicksilver [ ~/Applications/Quicksilver ] and KeyChain Scription [ ~/System/Library/ScriptingAdditions ]
Open the new item and click the Access Control tab followed by add [ + ]

If you have more than one twitter account, add them in the same way, obviously changing the details to suit.

Next step is to create our Applescript to plug into Quicksilver. Open the Script Editor Application [ ~/Applications/AppleScript/Script Editor ] and paste the following code:

using terms from application "Quicksilver"
  on process text tweet
    tell application "Keychain Scripting"
      set twitter_key to first Internet key of current keychain whose name is "tweetjohnsmith"
      set twitter_login to quoted form of (account of twitter_key & ":" & password of twitter_key)
    end tell
    set twitter_status to quoted form of ("source=Quicksilver&status=" & tweet)
    set results to do shell script "curl --user " & twitter_login & " --data-binary " & twitter_status & " http://twitter.com/statuses/update.json"
    return nothing
  end process text
end using terms from

You need to make one change to the code above ‘tweetjohnsmith’ needs to be the keychain name you gave to your first account. Once you have made that change choose File -> Save As… from the menu and select to save as a script. For location browse to [ ~/Library/Application Support/Quicksilver/Actions ], if the Actions folder doesn’t exist then create it [ New Folder ] and save your file as Tweet johnsmith (changing johnsmith to your first username) and this is what will appear in Quicksilver during the next step.

Ok. Almost there. If Quicksilver is running, restart it or start it if not.

Hit the Quicksilver shortcut you set up. Defaults to Ctrl-Space. Hit period [ . ] and type your tweets text. Remember to limit it to 140 chars. Once you are happy with your tweet text hit tab and start typing ‘Tweet’. You should see your twitter account or accounts. Select which you want to tweet to and hit enter. All done.

If you got it all right above then you should be able to go to twitter and see your new tweet. @username can also be used as part of your tweet.

Updated

If you use growl, another application all mac users should install, you can also be informed of the success of your new tweet by adding a few additional lines to your script.

Replace:

	return nothing

with:

	tell application "GrowlHelperApp"
		register as application "Quicksilver" all notifications {"Tweeted"} default notifications {"Tweeted"} icon of application "Quicksilver"
		notify with name "Tweeted" title "Tweeted" description tweet application name "Quicksilver"
	end tell
	return nothing

Restart Quicksilver, and the next time you tweet you should get a growl message shortly after to show it’s been successfull.