A tip on macosxhints shows people who use Mail and who have upgraded from Panther to Tiger how to save significant amounts of hard disk space by deleting files in their ~/Library/Mail/Mailfolders folder. These are files that Panther’s Mail app needed but Tiger’s does not.

It refers to an Apple tech note on the issue with further instructions. (Naturally it recommends backing up the folders first).

I did this yesterday and reduced my Mailfolders folder by 25%. It might save you some space too.

Technorati Tags: Apple Mac, Apple Mail

While I love Apple Mail, one thing in particular about it bugs me; it has a habit of breaking hyperlinks so that recipients of my emails can’t just click on them the way they should be able to. When I add “http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-threads.cfm?f=38” to an email, people using other mail clients often receive it as “http://forums.whirlpool. au/forum-threads.cfm?f=38″ and that’s frustrating for everyone. One PC-minded friend of mine has recently declared that he is “just going to give up” on anything I send!

It’s easy to see how this happens with Apple Mail. At least David Duff posting on MacInTouch has an answer:

Other posters correctly point out problems with sending url’s in mail…when sending, Mail.app uses a “Content-Type: text/plain;” with the option “format=flowed”, which seems to be fairly standard. It also uses the option “delsp=yes”. the semantics of the delsp option are that if delsp=yes, then the space at the end of the line should be removed when the lines are joined together into paragraphs.

When doing “normal” line wrapping between words, where the space should be present, Mail.app ends the line with two spaces. When wrapping a line with a URL, where the space should not be present, Mail.app uses a single space. Thus, it should be possible, in theory, to correctly reconstruct the URL.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t work. At least not when sending mail among the most popular two mail clients on the Mac platform (namely Mail.app and Microsoft entourage). the problem may be that the delsp option is a fairly new (added between RFC2646 and RFC3676) and not yet widely adopted.

That’s the explanation, but what’s the solution? Sometimes Apple can be too innovative, and here is a perfect example! While we are waiting around for the rest of the internet to catch up to the delsp option, there must be a way to fix this? Anyone know? Do you?broken hyperlinks, URLs, bug, delsp=yes, mail.app, apple mail, line wrapping, annoyance

Oh, Apple Mail, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways….

First, I love the look of it. You buy an Apple partly for the way that it makes doing your work easier and quicker, but also for its good looks. Apple Mail fits right in there with its clean, functional interface and its integration with other Apple apps like iCal, Address Book and iPhoto.

Secondly, I love the way Apple Mail places pictures from my Address Book into the emails I receive. It might seem like a minor point, but it has real value for me. I spend a lot of the day answering emails or shunting them from one place to another. It can be a dehumanising experience. With the pictures, it’s easier for me to remember that the posters are real people and that this is real interaction (even if it’s happening in the rather thin, ethereal realm of the internet). I finish the day with a better feeling of having dealt with real people with real problems. I love that.

Thirdly, I love the way that it just does mail. It doesn’t have the bloat of some other applications. Sure, it interacts well with other Apple apps, but it does not try to include them. It just does mail, and it does mail really well.

Fourthly, I love the many plug-ins and options that extend its functionality. Mail Act-on and MailUnreadStausBar are favourites. There are many more listed on Robin Benson’s Apple Mail Plug-ins and Tools web page and I have started a list of plug-ins and add-ons that I like.

Lastly, I love the way that a .Mac account lets me synchronise many of its settings between multiple Macs. I don’t have to frig around with the Mac at work and my Mac at home, trying manually to synchronise them. And moving my email to IMAP has made the co-ordination even more complete.

When I first switched to Apple Macs almost two years ago, I fell in love with Apple Mail at first sight. Like any relationship, we have our little spats, but the love is still going strong.mail.app, apple mail, email, windows, mac, plugins, syncing,

Inspired by a series of posts on TUAW (The Unofficial Apple Weblog), here is a short series on my three favourite Apple applications. First up, three system utilities that expand the functionality of Tiger.

Quicksilver is the most used app on my computer. It functions as a quick launch utility like Butler and Launchbar, but a swag of plug-ins allows it to be expanded to much, much more. Quicksilver currently provides my iTunes notifications, a base for web and dictionary searches, a shortcut to my contacts and more.

For example, it could notify me every time an email arrives, either through its own notification system, or by communicating with Growl. I tried this for a week, but it drove me made, so I turned it off. It could do even more no doubt if I took the trouble to work out all its features.

Like many Quicksilver users, I wondered if the arrival of Spotlight would make Quicksilver less useful. But it hasn’t. I find that while Spotlight helps to find things quicker and to find things like text embedded in PDFs that Quicksilver can’t, Quicksilver allows to do much more with the things that it finds. This richer list of actions that can be applied to objects makes Quicksilver my first stop still.
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Australians have a cultural habit known as the “Tall Poppy Syndrome”. In this country anyone who achieves great success in their career, in business or social service is exposed to constant and wide-spread ridicule. Sporting success is of course an exception to the general rule.

Some attribute this to the nation’s convict past and the resulting distrust of authority and of highflyers in general; others see here a tyranny of mediocrity brought about by Australia’s isolation from the mother country. Whatever the source, this “Tall Poppy Syndrome” makes it easy to understand the scorn heaped on Steve Jobs in some quarters for his graduation speech recently delivered at Stanford.

He is an easy figure to knock – incredibly wealthy, phenomenally successful (or “lucky” as his detractors say), vain, arrogant, grasping, and so on and so on.

But what he had to say in his speech to those students , heading out into the world, was very good. “Don’t be afraid to fail”. Excellent advice. “Stay foolish. Stay hungry.” Excellent advice. I don’t know if this is exactly what he had in mind, but anyone who fosters a daring approach to the world, who advocates “thinking outside the box” and who asks people to not get complacent, but who always hope for more, is OK in my books.

I wish that someone had said those things to me. I can’t remember any useful advice in the speeches I heard at the three graduations I have been to. Can you?steve jobs, life, tall poppies, graduation, valedictory, speech, Stanford

Adjectives, as everyone knows, are words which describe things, adding colour and tone to a piece of writing. But the overuse of adjectives can lead to writing which reads like sludge.

So it is quite a challenge, as an exercise in writing, to produce a piece of work without adjectives in it at all. You find that the mind has to work creatively, reaching after words that can otherwise waste away. Sentences need recasting as you search for the verbs and nouns that have to do the adjective’s work.

Perhaps the result of the reworking only serves to prove the value of adjectives, but it is still an exercise that deserves an outing from time to time. Setting yourself a topic first adds spice to the task. Aim for a hundred words at first. Then two hundred. Or perhaps you will settle for something in the middle.

My wife emailed this to me today. Quite good, I thought, and very topical (to me and, perhaps, to anyone who has anything to do with bureaucracy or university administration):

Berkeley just announced the discovery of the heaviest element yet known to science. The new element has been named “Governmentium”.
?Ǭ†
Governmentium has one neutron, 12 assistant neutrons, 75 deputy neutrons, and 224 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 312. These 312 particles are held together by forces called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called peons. ?Ǭ†

When catalyzed with money, Governmentium becomes Administratium, an element which radiates just as much energy, since it has half as many peons, but twice as many morons. ?Ǭ†

Since Governmentium has no electrons, it is inert. It can be detected, however, as it impedes every reaction with which it comes into contact. A reaction that normally takes one minute or less will require a week or more if contaminated by any Governmentium. ?Ǭ†

The half-life of Governmentium is 4 years. It does not, however, decay, but instead undergoes a reorganization in which a portion of the assistant neutrons and deputy neutron exchange places. In fact, Governmentium’s mass will actually increase over time, since each reorganization will cause more morons to become neutrons, forming isodopes. The characteristic of moron-promotion leads some scientists to believe that Governmentium is formed whenever morons reach a certain quantity in concentration. ?Ǭ†

This hypothetical quantity is called “Critical Morass”.

“Peons” and “Morons”. I like it.