Category: Waffle

Migrate from Thunderbird to Evolution on Linux

This post is going up not because it is particularly interesting, but because Google failed to be particularly helpful in solving this problem for me.
If you want to do things the other way around (Evolution to Thunderbird) then you won’t be short of resources.

Evolution has an import tool, nestling away under File > Import
Go on. Try that. It looks promising.

The thing opens up and assures you that it will guide you through the process of importing external files into Evolution. You follow its prompts and check the box to import data and settings from older problems. You discover it has less use than expected.
Apparently it searches for setting from Netscape, which is what Thunderbird is based on. What gives?

At this point I went ‘Gah!’ and turned to my good friend Google. Google! Why have you forsaken me?

What I should have done was turn to Evolution’s internal help files. They don’t look immediately useful either, but on closer inspection you will find a section on Migration from Outlook to Evolution.
Now this is sort of silly, but to migrate from Outlook to Evolution, you first need to import your data into Mozilla Mail (which is (kind of) Thunderbird)).
The reason is some drivel about the necessary library only being available on windows.
Come on Novell, you know that’s stupid. If you expect people to migrate from MS products to OSS, then you need to make it simpler than that. But I digress.

Your Thunderbird mbox files are hiding out here (well, mine are):
~/.mozilla-thunderbird/(random letters)/Mail/Local Folders/

They are the files without extensions, with names like Inbox, Sent, Drafts and so on.
If you’ve gone and made nested subfolders in your inbox (or any other folder for that matter), you’re in for a frustrating time because it is necessary to import each mbox file individually (unless you can write a script to do it, but if you could then you wouldn’t be reading this poorly explained effort).
If you have subfolders in Inbox, change directory to Inbox.sbd
One again the mbox files will have the same name as your folders. You’ll have to import each one, one at a time.
Welcome to the suck!

Here is how you import an mbox file now that you’ve found them:
Back to that largely useless import tool I mentioned earlier. It has an ‘import single file’ option. Guess what?
That’s right. Then browse to the folder and open it. If you’re lucky, the stupid importer will recognise that the file is indeed in mbox format. It might not. I found that sometimes it did, and other times it didn’t. Keep trying until it works, or alternatively, smack your computer with a sledge-hammer. Your call.

Assuming it works, click ‘Forward’ and then select the destination folder. Fortunately you are given the option to create a new folder, so that may bring a little relief in your world of pain.

Enjoy, you masochist you!

The Cycle of Life

Long the Waffle Group has existed, but where are the frigging waffles?
This problem is no more.

Last weekend Angie and I were invited over to Gaby’s place (where Quinn was hiding out) to partake in waffle creation and consumption.

Behold the waffle creation and consumption log.
We looked upon the waffles and saw that they were good.

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The Essence of Waffle

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Waffle Spawner at the Ready

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Freshly Spawned, Naked Waffles

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Clothed Waffle

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Waffle Entrails

Foolish wife

Because it will be unhelpful to shout at Angie, I’m going to shout at the internet instead.

Angie went out tonight to one of Wendy’s parties. I declined to attend.
Angie is on anti-biotics and I told her to watch the drinking. One glass of wine would probably be too much, but if she only drank one glass for the whole evening then things would be ok.

Then I went to bed.

At about 02h30 there is a knocking at the door. I go to answer it and Angie is standing there swaying slightly, and looking sheepish. Slightly further down the passage is a burly Indian dude who I have never met. My initial assumption is that the drinking was not constrained to a single glass and that this Indian dude was someone at the party that has driven Angie home. I can’t quite twig why a stranger has driven her home, since Angie knew people at the party. Also, I don’t think Wendy knows any Indians well enough to invite them to a party that she would be holding.
I went to sleep in underwear, so I’m kind of hiding myself behind the door and that isn’t helping me figure things out.

I come to an understanding that I need to go downstairs, so I excuse myself and go to put some pants on. To further complicate matters, the bloody dog runs off. Angie says, “You need to catch Bean, she’s running away.” I don’t honestly give a fuck about the dog at that point because the Indian dude is telling me bewildering stuff about cars spinning out of control and that I need to thank God. But in my half-dazed state I hear that I need to thank ‘the guard’ and I’m thinking that seems a little peculiar. Why do I need to thank the security complex’s guard? Did the car spin in the driveway? Or in the cul-de-sac outside the complex perhaps?
I get Angie inside, telling her to shut-up about the dog and that Bean won’t run very far. I follow the Indian dude downstairs and I see that he is not alone. He’s brought Al Qaida with him. Not really. This isn’t even something I think at the time. I only think it later. A cell of Al Qaida on a Jihad of Peace have arrived at my doorstep. They are a group of four Muslim men, some with the hectic beards, others without. And they are the nicest strangers I’ve ever come across.
They keep talking about how Angie spun her car on the highway and drove up an embankment, and how they fortunately were going slow enough to avoid her, and how they got out to help her because it didn’t look like she wanted to stop. It looked like she intended to drive over the embankment into the oncoming traffic on the other side of the highway. The Peugeot, not being a 4×4, was taking a while to achieve this aim, but Angie seemed determined.
I can’t understand how the Peugeot didn’t collide with anything. I ask about that, but it seems the embankment (and not a crash barrier) is the only thing that stopped her.

I start to express how utterly pissed-off I am at Angie at this point, but the guy that brought Angie upstairs chides me for it. He tells me not to be angry, but rather to be thankful that Angie was not harmed. That we are all human, and that sometimes humans drink a little too much. I mention the anti-biotics, and for a moment he falters in his mantra of tolerance conceding that drinking with anti-biotics is extra-foolish, but still human.
I realise that these nice guys have effectively saved Angie from doing further harm to herself and her car and I thank them profusely.
I am quite rattled by the whole thing in that I didn’t get their names or contact information in order to thank them properly, but I’m fairly certain that bringing Angie home safely was all they wanted out of the experience anyway.

They drive off and I feel a bit rattled. I feel an urge to go shout in an unreasonable fashion at Angie. But Bean has run off, so I need to find her first.

I walk around the grounds of the complex, from top to bottom and find her nowhere. My panic grows. I think stupid things like, “She got confused because it’s dark” and “She’s squeezed under the fence and run off to the dam and been eaten by a carnivorous goose.”
Dismayed, I return upstairs to my home to find her waiting for me at the door. At least I no longer feel angry at Angie. I feel relief at finding the infamous Satan’s Poodle.

I get back inside to find Angie passed out on the bed in that fully-clothed, splayed way that drunken people pass out on things. I feel the anger welling up inside me again. I also feel no desire to sleep.

I write this post.

There will be words in the morning, but I hope that I will keep them tempered.

[WaffleG] The ‘No, Waffle Group has not Died a Miserable Death’ Issue

#Waffle Group#
Official Waffleletter No.19
The ‘No, Waffle Group has not Died a Miserable Death’ IssueEditorial
Loyal Wafflings! How you have waited for another issue of the notorious Waffle Group. How you have been disappointed. Disappointment no more! In fact, this is so long you’ll wish I’d fallen off that frosty mountain-top I spoke of in the previous, oh-so-hideous issue.

Naturally, other things have happened since then, and if you’d been visiting the Home of Waffle on the Web you’d know about some of the things. Certain descriptions have been cryptic, but bad things have happened and basically, since nearly falling a mountain, things have continued to suck muchly.

Things that suck tend to lead one in a journey of self-discovery. Why does it suck? How can I stop the suck? If I can’t stop the suck, how do I live with the suck? Do waffles suck? And other deep questions.
So I stumbled upon Buddhism which seems to have a philosophy that fits in nicely with mine, and helps me to deal with the suck.

Things are looking up though, and in the spirit of improving mental health, I won’t be dwelling on the negative, and will rather relate the more frivolous events in my recent past. Basically you’ll be getting another account of my international travels. The latest destinations being England, Wales and France.

My life of luxury will soon come to an end as I search for gainful employment. Angie has hinted at being tired of making all the money, so I will have to change my ways from blood-sucking leach to life-giving elixir while simultaneously finishing off my masters. Sounds like fun.

The Suck
Adapting my suck analogy loosely to the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism gives us this:

1. Life sucks.
2. Expecting life not to suck makes life suck.
3. It is possible for life not to suck
4. To stop life from sucking, follow the Eight-fold anti-suck path

To be honest, the suck analogy doesn’t do a very good job of capturing the spirit of Buddhism. This might be because generally people say things like, ‘You suck!’ or ‘This sucks!’ which lacks subtlety and nuance. Buddhism is practically all subtlety and nuance.
For a better description see about.com’s Buddhism articles.

What I really enjoy is that Buddhism is a scientific philosophy. One doesn’t practise Buddhism with blind faith, but with a questioning attitude. Nothing is to be taken as scripture. The practitioner is encouraged to experiment with the teachings and make observations. After gathering results of one’s experiment, it is possible to devise new experiments, or re-run the experiments in order to gather more data.
It isn’t necessary to believe and implement everything that the Buddha said, just do what works or makes sense to you.
For the first time in my exploration of philosophy and religion, I’ve found an attitude towards life where almost everything makes sense. No-one is excluded. There are no threats of eternal damnation. You are responsible for your actions, and there’s no get out of bad karma free ticket. Asking for forgiveness doesn’t help — you need to act for forgiveness. Even then you don’t get forgiveness, you just balance the karmic accounts.
Possibly the theory of karma is a load of crap, but it explains why bad things happen to good people a hell of a lot better than anything else I’ve come across. God working in mysterious and inexplicable ways has never done it for me.

Here’s an argument against an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving god.

Let us now consider Mumphred, the plush toy. Let us assume that Mumphred has hopes and dreams, and does not want to suffer a horrible fate at the teeth and claws of Satan’s Poodle (aka Bean).
I fed Mumphred to Bean as something for her to play with, and she treats Mumphred quite roughly. Mumphred has had his heart ripped off (since he wore it on his sleeve), and his face mauled. From Mumphred’s perspective, these are bad things to have happened to him — perhaps even evil things.

If god is all-powerful and all-knowing, then he can’t be all-loving because he isn’t stopping evil, despite knowing about it and being powerful enough to stop it.
If god is all-powerful and all-loving, then he obviously doesn’t know what’s happening to Mumphred, because if he did he could and would want to stop the evil.
If god is all-knowing and all-loving, then he can’t be powerful enough to save Mumphred, because he must know about and want to stop the evil.

Why do I get into these theological debates with myself and email them to people? I think I subconsciously want to annoy Tammy. Sorry Tammy, it isn’t intentional.

The Travel Master
This is what it’s like to visit a small town in the south of France:

sdfh hj psdjfdsj l;kdfjgkj ;l ksd;flk ;lsdkofjsd;fkjsd ;klsjdf;lsdf lkdjdslfjhfdpb potposefoswdop pjd pojpojf oihj oihj pijsd pioj poj lkijdsiphjsdkj pij ijseoisd ih loihgthjyfsdo iohgufsdgoi opiisfadvjhj pi ygasdi uopiihyasgiy poixc ougrhasdiuc pou iohsdiy oijuouisdy ojsdoiudj iugsdpcxuip ihjsdohcviu jupfj

sdflkjsdlksdjsdflkj lkij lkgflk;lk lkjsdo ;ojk likisdkl ogbjpsdpoaspasdopvblo i piodfopdf i iofgopf iop ilhjg

sdfjkl dilj lkjsd l;oj lkisjdkidsfflfki odfjdsflksdfl iloksdjflkdsfjk lokijdfj kivjslkjf iogoiju ohiosdfki lokisdjvlihj kixckl lk ljkhx lokixdh klhdx klhxklxv lkhj lflk lk

As you can clearly see, there is no punctuation in small French towns.

London
We (being me and Angie, since we travelled together for a change) actually spent a few days in London with our friend Lisa before heading to France. Lisa was an excellent host, especially in the way she forgot the specifics of our arrival and was rowing on the Thames at the same time as we rang her doorbell. So we rang another doorbell next to hers and stirred a grumpy demon from her lair.
The miserable old wench hissed at us and told us to press whichever button we hadn’t pressed. She didn’t seem sympathetic when we explained that we’d pressed all of the buttons and had only her visage as a reward.

Lisa didn’t answer her cell, the landline just rang. The flatmates she told us she had were either her special invisible friends or dead. After almost booking into a B&B I managed to rouse one of the flatmates, from a slumber so deep it may have been a coma, by getting into a comfortable position and leaning on the doorbell button. Her name was also Lisa, which was a little creepy. Gloriously she was expecting us (although she didn’t know when exactly) and let us in, saving us from a slow, hypothermic death on the pavement — at least there were no mountains in sight.

To Lisa’s credit, once she came back from rowing she did an excellent job of taking care of us, showing us the sights and taking us to places of interest and just generally being excellent company. Thanks for everything, chick (as Angie would call you).

Onward to France
We spent a week in France near the base of the Pyrennees in a small town called Baynere, although I am not too certain about the name. It was French-sounding, and if the Americans don’t like the French, why should I bother?
We went there specifically to visit Angie’s aunt and uncle who have retired and moved there. Plus, they fed us for a week in über-expensive Euroland (which isn’t the same as EuroDisney). Bonus!

Technically, we could have made a skiing holiday of it, but when we went up the mountain to have a look at the ski-slopes, Angie had a bizarre panic attack and refused to go anywhere near the snow. It was a struggle to even coax her out of the car. She complained that there was too much snow, and everything was too white. She was also scared of falling on the snow and breaking her hip — a misinterpretation of a story Angie’s aunt had told us about an elderly lady who had slipped on icy concrete and broken her hip.

We did not ski. We did visit Lourdes. It’s a famous place. If you’re Catholic, you should know about it. If you’re not, you might know about it. If you don’t know about it, don’t trust what I tell you.
St. Benedine (or possibly she had a different name that sounds like Benedine, but definitely starts with a ‘B’) had visions of the Virgin Mary in a damp alcove up on a hill. The French Catholics were so excited about this that they built a fairly ornate and quite large church above the alcove.
Then some French entrepreneurs realised that devote catholics would flock to Lourdes to see this holy alcove, and they’d probably want souvenirs. Kitschy plastic Virgin Marys and gold-coloured medallions of the Pope and the like.
The people wanted it, and so it came to pass. Souvenir shops and vending machines were created, and God looked down upon all that the humans had made and saw that it was irreverent.

Angie insisted on buying a small plastic virgin. I frowned upon her.

A final note on France: The rumours about the food are true. French food is excellent. I didn’t eat a single bland, ordinary meal while in that country (not so for the UK). You may not know what it is that you are about to eat, but you know it will taste good.

Wales
The Welsh language sounds a lot like Klingon (this is a reference to Star Trek, for those who refuse to have anything to do with cult TV shows from the 60s that have spawned spin-offs in the fashion of a plague of locusts). Not that this was a problem: everyone spoke English, as is only right and proper. The more countries the USA and UK invade the better. I’ll be able to go on holidays to Iraq and Afghanistan and be understood, just before I’m shot to death.
But I digress.

Wales is a country we visited because Michael and Frances moved there. It was cold and overcast much of the time. There were very few Chinese people to be seen on the streets. I expected more considering that Wales is where all the Chinese people from Eastern Europe were sent after the cold war.

Still, all was not lost. There were many castles. We visited several. Frances likes castles very much. I think castles are okay. This difference in our views of the value of castles may have caused a little friction. Sorry about that Frans.

I would like to draw attention to the gay castle, which is more commonly known as Caste Coch. I don’t know what ‘Coch’ means, but if there is any just ice in this world, it should mean ‘Queer as a Bicycle with Seventy-Eight Wheels.’
Castle Queer is built on the ruins of a medieval castle, and the foundations and cellar/dungeon bits are very authentic looking. So Castle Queer isn’t Queer to its roots.
Then a bunch of pansy Victorian hoity-toities got hold of it and “restored” the castle, complete with fairy-tale pointy turrets. Externally, if you can get passed the pointy turrets, it looks like a real castle. Inside, it looks like a gay-Victorian-medieval-fantasy or more plainly, it looks like a joke. Everything is ostensibly medieval, but with Victorian flair thrown in.
Historically accurate restoration? I don’t think so. It just isn’t bleak enough.

That’s the whining out of the way.

I enjoyed Cardiff despite what I thought of Castle Queer. We caught up with our friends, went ice-skating outdoors (not something practical in South Africa), went to Indian restaurants (yes, Indian), crossed the bay in a water-bus (which is really just a boat. Angie said they might as well call it a water-train), visited pubs, drank liquid Brains, ran around screaming. You know, the usual.

It might interest you to know that Brains is a brand of Welsh beer. Those Welshmen are crazy.

While I was there, we got the women out of the way and Michael discussed the wedding proposal with me. Now I’m leaving Angie to marry Mike. Well, that’s what I was hoping for. Turns out he’s more interested in marrying Frances. Curses.

Perhaps I need to hang around the gay castle a bit more.

Anyway, thanks for putting up with us in your space for two weeks.

End of Laze
I’ve started earning money.
I have been looking for work, and found work on a kind of freelance basis with environmental consultancies. They get too much work to handle. I absorb the overflow and they pay me.
So far it looks like it will work out quite nicely.
Bizarrely, having to find money earning work has had the effect of making me work more effectively at my masters. An all-round good thing then.

My other entrepreneurial plan is to sell plastic Virgin Marys at traffic lights. If that doesn’t catch on, plan B is to stand there very still with a cardboard sign that reads “I think I am a haystack. Need money for therapy.” If that also fails, I’ll change the sign slightly to a more aggressive stance: “I make dead people. Give me money for therapy” and wave about a bloody baton.

--That's all. Any comments, suggestions, complaints, insults. Send them to me.

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DME Filing System

I visited the Department of Minerals and Energy (DME). I needed to
locate certain Environmental Management Programmes (EMPs) and extract
information from them. None of the EMPs are digitised.

They have a static self-organising filing system.
The “self-organising” bit means that the files are placed on the
shelves in random order, and one then waits for organisation to evolve
by itself. The “static” bit means that nothing changes.
Yes, a static self-organising system is oxymoronic.

I’m actually being unfair. The files aren’t on the shelf in random
order. Each file is actually numbered. It’s just that no-one working at
the DME could tell us how the file numbers linked up with any other
information regarding the mines we were interested in. Needless to say,
the newer files were not given any numbers.

Fun times!

400 ZAR for Obsolete Technology

I bought a new crappy external 56k modem because the old one lost the will to live. Or, at the very least, it lost the will to modulate and demodulate.
I imagine I will be bashing it with a hammer and posting pictures of its demise in the near future.

On an unrelated note: Why have the tenders for Satan’s Poodle web design not been pouring in? That site is going to be famous, and then you’ll be sorry you didn’t help me out.

Satan’s Poodle is Go

Good news! The long awaited Satan’s Poodle Blog has its first post.
You are invited to visit there now. I will attempt to regularly update my account of the trials and tribulations of Mumphred the Yellow Plush Toy.

The current colour scheme is not ideal (although the minimalist aspect feels right). You make me a better template and I’ll give you a thank you (and a mention on the page).
If you are keen to design the look and feel of satans-poodle.blogspot.com then drop me a line and I can supply you with high resolution images of the satanic poodle so that you may design a suitable logo or whatever. Oh, and also discuss your ideas with me.

I must sleep now.