RoboTastic

This image is here thanks to the miracles of RPC-XML. May its reign be long!

So there is nothing much to RPC-XML really. All it is really is sending a string of text out to a web server and getting a string back. The trick to it all is having the correct formating for the string. Had this all been more apparent to me, I would have saved a lot of time poking around.

The basic format is to pass the name of the Method you are calling and then pass the parameters for the Method. This is all encoded in XML. You can have String, Ints, Structs composed of both of these… and some other formats. You can even send binary files as a parameters. Haven’t tried that yet.

Any, it all seems pretty easy. I recommend checking out the MSDN site I referenced and giving it a try.

One of the best things about the Oral-B toothbrush, besides the fact that it gets you mouth squeaky clean, is that they have been nice and kept many parts interchangable. This means the update brush heads they just released work on my older toothbrush.

Oral-B also sells all of the parts for their system seperatly. You can buy a second charger or a newer power handle. I was able to buy a new Oral-B Sonic Complete handle and it the charger from my older Oral-B 3D.
So what does this all mean?

1. If you are already an Oral-B owner, it is really cheap to upgrade to a newer system. Since almost all of the handles use the same charger and brush heads you can simply buy a new handle. Instead of having to an entirly new setup you can simply upgrade the parts you need.
2. You can switch to a Sonic Complete style handel and still use the same charger. It is much cheaper to buy a sonic handle and bursh headsd (~$65) as opposed to $120 or so.
3. Another great thing is that they are always coming up with new brush heads that work with the older burshes. This is great, it allows you to use some of the latest technology without having to do any dramatic upgrades.

Oral-B fully supports this. You can buy all of their parts directly from them here:

http://www.theessentials.com

So I am looking at a better way to organize my email. Currently I am organizing my email into folders. It sucks for a number of reasons…

• it takes a while
• You can use nested folders but you are stuck in the heiarchy
• The email is stuck with just one folder

The solution is to organize emails using Outlook catagories and Saved Search Folders that pull out all of the emails with a praticular. All you have to do is catagorize the emails and then they appear in the Search Folder. Since you can have more than one catagory for an item, it can appear in more than one folder.

This post gives a good overview of the process:
http://www.timeatlas.com/mos/Email/Outlook/Organizing_with_Outlook_Categories/

I have decided to move back from Thunderbird to Outlook. I really like Thunderbird, but I need something with intergrated calander and todo list, I think this should fit a bit better. Plus I have a copy on each machine I use. Anyhow it took a little work to do it. It takes a while if you have your mail in lots of folders, you have to export and import each folder seperately. I did it using the IMAPsize program and following the instructions on there site:

Moving messages from Thunderbird to Outlook Express and Outlook
Even though Mozilla Thunderbird is a fantastic email client, there are people who (for one reason or another) need to switch back to Microsoft Outlook Express (OE) or Outlook. However, Thunderbird still doesn’t have an “Export” feature which would export mail archives in a format understandable by OE or Outlook. IMAPSize can be of great help in this process and this page explains how to perform the migration.

Mozilla Thunderbird stores emails in the mbox format. Outlook Express stores email messages in propriatory *.dbx files but understands *.eml, which are plain text files. MS Outlook stores messages in *.pst files which are binary propriatory (Microsoft) files. Here are the steps you have to take:

1. Compact your Thunderbird folders (optional)

Thunderbird keeps messages in mbox files even after they have been deleted. If you don’t want to include deleted messages in the conversion, you have to compact your folders in Thunderbird. Right click a folder and select “Compact This Folder”. This will completely remove deleted messages from the folders mbox file.

2. Locate mbox files in Thunderbird

Thunderbird stores messages in the Profile Folder, in the Mail and (if you use IMAP) ImapMail folders. Each mail folder (Inbox, Sent, etc.) is stored as two files — one with no extension (e.g. INBOX), which is the mail file itself (in “mbox” format), and one with an .msf extension (e.g. INBOX.msf), which is the index (Mail Summary File) to the mail file.

3. Convert mbox files to eml files

IMAPSize has a built-in mbox2eml tool that can seemlesly convert thousands and thousands of messages. Download, install and run IMAPSize (it’s free) and invoke the mbox2eml option from the Tools menu. Select the mbox file you wish to convert (you might need to set the “Files of type” option to “All Files” in the file selection dialog, since Thunderbird mbox files don’t have an extension) and select a location where generated eml files should be stored. Click “Convert” and IMAPSize will start converting the files.

All the attachments will also be converted and your original Thunderbird files will not be touched. Starting from version 0.2.0. you can convert multiple mbox files at once.

4. Import generated eml files into Outlook Express

Launch Outlook Express and select the local folder (or create a new one) into which you want to import your messages. Open Windows Explorer or your favourite file manager, locate the generated eml files, select them and drag and drop them into the OE application window. If Outlook Express is your email client of choice you don’t have to perform the next step.

5. Export files from OE to Outlook

Assuming you have Outlook installed on your system, open Outlook Express and from the File menu select Export/Messages. Once exported, the messages will appear in Outlook – if they were in your inbox in OE, they’ll be added to your Outlook inbox; if they were in a local subfolder in OE, a folder of the same name will be created under your Outlook inbox.

I have a the wireless Gyration mouse and keyboard. I love them, they work great… or at least used to. I started having trouble with connect between the keyboard, mouse and the reciever. I tried re-syncing them, but I couldn’t get it to work at all.

I called tech support, they walked me through resetting the keyboard and mouse…. didn’t. I was barely still under warranty but, I didn’t have the original receipt so I was out of luck. As a last ditch effort I took apart the reciever. Inside were a few adjustable potimeters. There were two tall silver things and a red micro potimeter. I tried giving the red one a quarter turn and that seemed to fix things.

The moral of the story is, try taking things apart before you give up and throw them away…

UPDATE: Now I have solved the problem. The tall silver things are actually tunable receivers… I think. Anyhow here is how to adjust your reciever and re-tune it. So first take it apart. Point the LEDs on top and have the cable coming out the back. The silver thing towards the left tunes the first device you try to tune. The right silver thing tune the second thing you try to tune.

1) Put the reciever into Learn mode.
2) Hit teach on the keyboard.
3) Adjust the Left silver thing until you can train the keyboard.
4) Once you can train the keyboard, hit the Learn button and exit the mode.
5) Now enter the training mode again, this time train the mouse first.
6) Now you are working on training the second device.
7) Adjust the right silver thing until you can train the Keyboard. Once that works exit the training mode, close everything up and you are good to go!

I am currently looking around to see if I can get Mozilla Thunderbird and Sunbird to sync with my Sony Ericsson s710a phone. Currently I can sync with Outlook, but I like Thunderbird a bit better. So far I have found two approachs:

1) MobileMaster: Lets you sync both you calendar and address book. The only problem is that it costs $29. That is not so bad I suppose, but still… http://www.mobile-master.com/index.html

2) Sync4j: An application framework that lets you sync a lot of different programs and devices together. It looks like it is just getting started, but I think it could be pretty interesting in the future: http://www.sync4j.org/

I think I am just going to use Outlook for a while longer until this is sorted out.

If you are a good computer user you should have a different password for each account, and should switch them frequently… which makes it pretty close to impossible to remember them. The KeePass program helps you remember them all and create better passwords, ie not your birthday. It secures them all using really strong encryption and all you have to remember is the Master Password for the program. You can keep it on a flash drive, that way you can simply plug it into a computer and go.

I am going to give a try and report back.

http://keepass.sourceforge.net/

I wanted to create a playlist of only songs that are part of an album. I am sort of lazy so I haven’t gotten around to making 20+ playlists yet. I thought it would be easier to simply have most of the songs grouped into albums and then I could just pick an album I wanted.

Anyhow it is really easy to make a playlist of only songs that are part of an album. First goto library and make sure the browser is turned on. It is that three pane thing on the top of the library that list songs by Genre, Artist and Album. Now make sure that Genre and Artist are set to All. Now click on the first album in the Album pane. Hit Ctrl+A to select all Albums and then drag that selection to a playlist… and there you go!