Compact this!

File | Compact Folders for imap accounts now compacts all imap folders in the account…. Previously, this command just compacted the selected folder. To compact just the selected folder, you should now use the folder context menu command Compact this Folder.

I’m a keyboard-shortcut user, and have gotten quite used to the buggy behaviour of hitting Alt–F–F to compact the current IMAP folder, so I’ve written my first Thunderbird extension to work around the new behaviour. (I’ve also entered bug 235153 to have the process changed so it’s more responsive to the user.) The extension adds a new item to the File menu called Compact This Folder with accesskey F; it also renames Compact Folders to Compact All Folders and changes its accesskey to A.

A disclaimer: the extension Works For Me in Thunderbird 0.5+, but Your Mileage May Vary. Please let me know if you have problems and I’ll try to fix them (but don’t hold your breath); similarly, if you have suggestions or improvements, please pass them along.

Version 0.2 now works in Thunderbird 0.7. The accesskey for Compact All Folders is now M because A was used for the Attachments submenu.

I’ve removed the Creative Commons license as it’s not designed for software. However, the removal is not retroactive: version 0.1 is still licensed under by-nc-sa. Version 0.2 is unlicensed for the time being.

It’s over

I guess I made it past Donna… not much point in staying up other than stubbornness since, surprising no one, Peter Jackson and crew pulled off a clean sweep. This may be heresy among my friends, but I’m kind of annoyed that it got everything; at the very least I’d hoped A Kiss at the End of the Rainbow or Belleville Rendez-vous might take best song, and the best adapted screenplay award was obviously given for the accomplishment of the trilogy as a whole rather than the individual film. (I still have my doubts as to whether any of the three screenplays, or the entire set, are actually the best of anything.) Of the non-Rings results tonight I’m most pleased that Sofia Coppola won for original screenplay and Denys Arcand won for best foreign-language film.

Happenstance

In a confluence of events made possible by a silly policy of the City of Toronto’s tourism department, I will not be in that city on March 7 before going to see Lenni Jabour at Cameron House on the 8th. This is quite fortunate, because this evening during the intermission of a Michael Kaeshammer concert at the Wolf Performance Hall I discovered that Claire Jenkins will be at The Ugly Mug Café on the 7th. Seeing as I’ve been a fan of Claire’s since I saw her open for Lenni a few months ago, and as I can claim at least partial responsibility for her being at the Mug, it’s great that I’ll actually be in London to see her!

You–yes, you, the usual suspects–should come out, and bring your friends!

Angel dead?

…we went to Joss [Whedon] to let him know that this would be the last year of [Angel] on The WB.

This looks bad. This looks really bad.

I wonder how much this has to do with the fact that the series for which Whedon is best known, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, was scooped from the WB by UPN. From what I understand of the entertainment world (which is, admittedly, very little) it’s possible Angel was included near the end of Buffy‘s WB run as a dealmaker; once Buffy left, WB had no reason to keep Angel going, and indeed they’ve been trying to cancel the series for a couple of years, ever since UPN’s coup.

As Donna and I were discussing earlier today, Angel has gone in a direction we’re not particularly fond of this season, moving away from longer-term story arcs and into one-shot episodes and mini-arcs. (Did network executives learn nothing from Babylon 5?) Even so, it’s fared much better in its new incarnation than the zombified corpse that NBC refers to as The West Wing, largely due to the excellent staff of writers.

With UPN close to cancelling Enterprise (thankfully) I hope they’re looking very closely at scooping the other Buffiverse show, if only as thanks to Joss for keeping them alive for a few more years than they’d have had otherwise. Does lightning ever strike twice in TeeVee Land?

Sinker swim

Shortly after hitting a high result of hit #10 for sirens, the Sirens website plummeted: first to hit #155, then to #376, and now out of the first 800 results. I’m at a loss to explain this: all of the pages on the site are still in the index (including some I specifically told Googlebot not to spider, but that’s another story) but Google refuses to show them in its search results. Could it be that the first rule of Google rankings is: you do not talk about Google rankings? A little research says no, but that leaves me with no cause for the broken search and nothing I can do about it.

This isn’t the only search I’ve seen behave similarly, but it’s the one closest to my heart. Fortunately, I’ve come across a tool that uses Google’s own algorithms to show that it’s an error on their side. Search Sinker returns Google searches to all their former Googly goodness. It seems that repeating words in a search string emphasizes them, so Sinker fills up the string with a term you deem most important: instead of sirens, it will look for sirens sirens sirens sirens sirens sirens sirens sirens sirens sirens. Using this technique, sirens3.com appears in a (rightful?) place of hit #12… not bad considering the last thirty pages updated on the site haven’t even been crawled. It doesn’t solve the problem that the general public will never find the Sirens’ site, but at least now I know it’s not because of anything I’ve done.

The so-called brandyupdate has put the Sirens back in a more reasonable place, at (appropriately for the date) #14.

Dear Kristin

Dear Kristin,

It was a pleasure to meet you briefly tonight, and doubly special that the occasion wasn’t the (deserved!) ass-kicking in a dark alley you promised after I posted this.

I’ve listened to Root, Heart & Crown quite a bit since July—as seems appropriate, it’s in the same rotation as Motel Darlene—but it’s not the same as actually seeing you perform live. I think that may have been the reason for my initial reaction… I wanted the disc to duplicate the festival experience (sans swords, of course). You’re a fantastic guitar player, yet somehow that doesn’t come across on the CD: there it’s just another part (albeit a good one), but at Home County and again this evening it’s Kristin Sweetland playing.

Missed you (and Darlene… can’t say enough good about her either) at the do afterwards… next time, huh?

Thanks again for putting on a great show.