Reworking Teh Email

Posted by Markus Langenfeld - 02/27/07 at 01:02:51 pm

I’ve been using Google’s Gmail as my primary means of email since early 2005. Overall I’ve been happy with Gmail, I mean, I think the interface could be a bit smoother such as Yahoo’s Beta mail or the AJAX based webmail (mt) mediatemple provides, and I was tempted to switch because of their easy-to-use Outlook-like interfaces. However, I realized that the great organization, search tools, speed, and reliability Google has to offer definitely makes up for it.

Today I decided to take my Gmail usage to the next level and have all of my work related messages forward into it. This project seems simple enough, however the challenge was forwarding the 200MB or so worth of stored work related emails to Gmail for storage. Before today I had used Mozilla Thunderbird for my work email. I’m glad I did use Thunderbird as it was required to utilize the solution I came across for moving all of my messages. By using Mark Lyon’s GML program and This Guide I was able to move all of the messages in just a few minutes and then quickly sort them into the correct Gmail labels.

I wanted to do this project because I’m a freak for synchronization and email should be no exception. I now have all six of my addresses forward to the same account, and by using Gmail’s great filtering and labeling features, all of my emails are automatically sorted into the correct places. The best part is that I’m able to send from multiple addresses within Gmail by using it’s multiple accounts feature.

Mmmmmmm Googley synchronization.

Paranoidly Paranoid

Posted by Markus Langenfeld - 02/21/07 at 04:02:37 pm

I believe that everyone has their own security standards. Whether it’s personal security, software security, home security… everyone has an idea of what measures should be taken. However today I’m referring to password security. Namely, passwords that are used around the Internet. What’s good enough? How many passwords should I maintain? How advanced should the password be?

My little project for the day was going through each website or service that I use and completely change the password(s). I do this about once a year, over 2006 I used a light algorithm where I would take the first word of the website or company’s name and follow it with a word and a single number. The problem is that not all of the passwords were changed over to this standard, and some had to be the first two words, or part of the first word and it was hard to remember them all.

Today I decided to go back to a small set of passwords to access most everything. I believe the risk of someone wanting to break into everything that is Mark Langenfeld is pretty low, and the passwords I have decided to use are secure enough to where it couldn’t be guessed, but for my own reasons I can easily memorize. However even if they’re secure, using just a couple keys like this seems risky, or is it?

I’m finding that many websites these days require the user to have a fairly secure login. In fact, it’s hard to not have a good password. My financial institution’s rewards program requires a password of a certain length, with a minimum of two numbers, two letters, and one uppercase letter. That’s not even the bank website, it’s just the rewards program.

I came across a great article on Wired.com today that takes a group of kids on Myspace for an example, and what they were using for a login. I could care less about Myspace but the results were surprising, I highly recommend reading it.

New Toy

Posted by Markus Langenfeld - 02/18/07 at 08:02:04 pm

Over the weekend I picked up a new notebook computer, an Acer Aspire 5610Z. I’ve been planning to use my federal tax refund to replace my ageing Dell Inspiron 5100, the refund is scheduled for deposit this week but I couldn’t pass up the deal I came across on this Acer. I bought the 2328 configuration which includes a 1.6Ghz Pentium Core Duo processor, 1GB 533mhz DDR2 ram, 120GB HDD, CD/DVD RW, 15.4″ WXGA WS display, and it’s pre-loaded with Windows Vista Home Premium.

I was surprised because the Dell Latitude I was eyeing had half the jazz and it cost quite a bit more. I mean this thing is fully loaded, it even has a built-in web cam and media card reader, all for under $800 at a local retailer. I normally give my machines a name when I buy or build them, mainly for network identification purposes. My desktop is “Riken”, file server is “Minibellum” and my Inspiron 5100 was named “DeepBlue”. The names are normally derived off names of famous super computers… However the new Aspire is so sexy I may just keep the name at just that ‘Aspire’.

I’ll look forward to making many posts from Aspire, check back soon for a more detailed review.

Easter is just 2 months away!

Posted by Markus Langenfeld - 02/14/07 at 11:02:16 am

I was at our local Wal-Mart Supercenter last night, doing my normal shopping thing and I came across a nearly empty isle in the grocery area, or ‘Food Center’ as they call it. This isle is the “Seasonal Grocery” section, where they normally have candy and food related to the upcoming holiday, or they have items that run along with the current season in general, such as chips and soda for the big game or whatever.

Now I know I’ve went on about retail stores and their ridiculous hyping and overselling of products for holidays by putting the products out super early, but I think what I witnessed last night took the cake. The reason I say this is because this isle was formally dedicated to Valentine’s Day items, it has been for months.

I took a photo with my phone quick so you could see the kicker here is that THE DAY BEFORE Valentine’s Day they take down the Valentine’s items and start stocking candy for Easter. Which I may remind you, happens on April 8th this year. So they take down the items for the holiday that is happening the next day, to stock items for a holiday that’s nearly 2 months away.

Anyway, Happy Valentine’s Day everyone! Or should I say Happy Easter :)

Version 21

Posted by Markus Langenfeld - 02/12/07 at 11:02:49 am

I may have gone over the Monday deadline a bit, but as you can see Version 21 is live. I haven’t put this much work into a new layout in a long time. It isn’t anything fancy really; I wanted a basic design that really concentrated on the weblog portion of the site. As you can see general navigation, numerical archive, and search functions are a thing of the past. I wanted to only include what readers really use and streamline the overall concept of the site.

The fat may have been cut off the layout itself, but the content really hasn’t changed. The about page includes my resume and contact information just like the later drafts of version 20, it’s just a bit less obvious. To get to the about page you just click the little yellow “blurb� as I call it at the top of the side bar. As for the rest of the content I have put heavy detail into the use of the categories, as I mentioned before I have gotten rid of numerical sorting of the archives. I really want the website to be all about the content I post, but I don’t as much of a generic blog feel to it.

I just have a few minor additions and changes to make, overall the website is finished. After tonight I will keep my end of The Agreement and try my hardest to not make any changes outside the header for 3 months. We will see how long I last.

Version 21 - Coming sooner then you think

Posted by Markus Langenfeld - 02/08/07 at 04:02:40 pm

I’m obsessed, and I realize this. What happens is I will create a brand new layout, I’ll like it for about a day and then I’ll start moving things around, adding pages, deleting them, adding buttons, moving them…Then I’ll get bored, or I’ll stop liking that particular design and what it has become and I’ll tear it down and do it all over again.

This time I’ll want to do it a little differently, and let me tell you why. A good friend of mine, Courtney who is the author of Travelingthoughts.com and I have made an agreement, or more like… a bet. The bet is that we both launch new versions of our websites, and we can’t make any major changes outside the graphical header for three months. That means no moving things around, no rewording my Colophon / About / Biography (or whatever I feel like I want to call it that week) page… No new pages, no pages being taken down or reworked. I can’t even change the colors of the site for three months.

The bet was originally going to be for 3 ½ weeks, but I shot myself in the foot, and made it the three months. However I’m glad I did, I have created a new challenge for myself. The challenge is not to create my vision of the ultimate website by changing things around constantly, but to create a new layout I’m happy with and stick with it and not get obsessed with improving it. If I lose, I have to do a paid advert post through PayPerPost and donate the earnings to charity, I would also lose any bragging rights for beating another blogger. I can’t let that happen. But can I constrain myself for that long? I’ve only had a couple layouts that have lasted me more then a couple months and even those I often heavily changed over time.

The real question is, can I plan and develop a layout that I’m happy enough with by Monday at midnight?

The Goodness That Is Vista

Posted by Markus Langenfeld - 02/04/07 at 12:02:48 am

So the Microsoft Windows Vista / Office 2007 / Exchange Server 2007 Launch was on Thursday. I would have posted about it sooner but it seems the last part of the week got real busy all of a sudden… The launch was great, it went pretty much as I expected. There was a ton of people there, I mean the auditorium was completely packed during the keynote and most of the breakout sessions, and it took up most of the convention center. If you’re from the Minneapolis area, or are familiar with the Mpls. Convention Center you know that MCC is HUGE, it’s actually the largest indoor, contiguous, convention center in the Midwest.

The keynote was great, Microsoft VP Chris Capossela is a great speaker and I’m beyond honored to have chased him down and shook his hand afterwards. The workshops or ‘Breakout Sessions’ we’re good too, very informational and detailed about the new products. The event also had a good number of vendors including Dell, HP, Symantec, Robert Half Technology, and IBM just to name a few. So I made out with bunch of free garb which really is the best part about these events.

Speaking of free stuff, I also received a free copy of Windows Vista RTM and Microsoft Office Professional 2007 which is killer; I’m actually writing this post in Word 07 right now. I have actually spent the whole day playing with my new software goodness. I didn’t really plan on taking on a project like this today but I guess I had nothing better to do. I formatted my main desktop and installed Windows Vista Ultimate RTM, along with Office 2007. I ran into a few issues with an older video card I was running to power my 3rd LCD display but I think I got most of the kinks worked out and it seems to be overall stable.

I haven’t had a ton of time to play with Vista itself; I spent most of the day installing all of my essential apps and getting drivers going and such. However my first impressions of Vista is just…wow. The visuals and new features of the OS are amazing, a lot of little fixes and things I’ve noticed so far that show some of the detailed work that has gone into it. I have to admit however that Vista is hella demanding. I mean I run a fairly powerful rig and some of the visuals nearly bring the computer to its knees. Right now I’m only running a couple programs and it’s using about 50% of the memory, so I think a ram upgrade is in order. I think I’m going to go ahead and reinstall XP and dual boot it alongside Vista. There are still a good amount of bugs when it comes to drivers and such, and I would like to still use XP for gaming and such.

Anyway, this post was supposed to be more about the launch then anything, I will do a future post with a more detailed review of Vista. In the meantime I took a handful of pictures at the launch in Minneapolis and I threw them up on Flickr, so be sure to take a look at my Microsoft Windows Vista Launch photoset by Clicking Here.

Copyright © 2008 Markus Langenfeld. Some Rights Reserved.
Version 26, Powered By WordPress & Professionally Hosted With A Small Orange.
Disclosure Policy | XML Sitemap