Sephy’s Platzish

This will probably be a quick how-to guide for today, because what I’m going to show you is quite simple. One of the first things that you will do with Mozilla Thunderbird is to add a new email account.

The first thing that you will want to do is go to the Tools menu and then select Account Settings… This will bring up that window, which will look something like this -

Then, click the Add Account… button to start the New account wizard:

For the purposes of this tutorial, we’re going to be adding a regular email account, such as the one that you may get with your ISP account or with your own domain, so we’ll keep it on Email account, and click Next.

The next screen is the “Identity” screen - where you put your name and email address. I’m not going to be making an actual email address, so I’m just going to use the example values wherever possible

When you have everything filled in, click Next to proceed to the Server information screen.

Here, you need to fill in the mail server settings that you were given by your administrator. Generally, you’ll be connecting to mail.{domain}, or pop.{domain}. You also can set up an IMAP account which is like using Thunderbird as a mail viewer only.

The other option you have is to put the mails into the Global Inbox, or not. If you choose not to, then the new account will appear as a new folder in your list of folders at the left side of the window. Otherwise, all the mail from this account will go into the “Global Inbox”, which can be found in the “Local Folders” section of the folder list.

I prefer to have all accounts’ mail come into separate folders, but your preferences may vary. Also, there is a note about the default outgoing mail server being used. Generally, you will want to leave that alone, unless advised otherwise. Most ISPs today will block you from sending mail on the regular mail ports through servers other than their own.

After you’ve verified all the settings on this page, click Next to proceed to the user names section.

Here, you will need to either leave these bits alone, or change them slightly by adding “@{domain}” to the end of it. Most of the time you can leave it as just “user”. Your administrator will generally let you know what you need to do here. When you’re set on these options, click Next to proceed to the Account naming.

The Account Name is the name that is used within Thunderbird in the list of accounts, and if you have chosen to not use the Local Folders option, this will be what is displayed when the folders are collapsed in your folder list. Also, when you receive mail, the envelope in the corner will tell you that name of the account. When you’re set, click Next to confirm your settings.

Make sure that all the settings are correct, and you can click Finish to create your new account. If you need to make changes, click back to make the changes and then return here. There are a couple more things to mention in the mail settings for accounts. I’ll move over to my domain account to show you those.

All the settings that you’ll need to worry about are in the Server Settings panel in the server list. This is what it looks like -

The first parts are all from the information you gave to the wizard when you created the account - server name and user name. However, if you need to use a different port to the default one, you can change it there. Also, if your server is secure, there are options for the security settings there.

The Server settings that you have available vary the frequency of mail checking, downloading messages and message retention.

You can check messages on startup, and you can add the option to check messages every so many minutes.

The next setting, Automatically download new messages, is an important one to turn on - I didn’t, and was wondering why Thunderbird was saying there was a new message but there wasn’t anything in the folder - turns out I hadn’t turned that on!

Generally, if you download messages, you can leave fetch headers only off - it won’t really do much good anyway.

Leave messages on server - this is useful if you are in a position where you have to reply to emails via a webmail interface. That way, you can download the message to Thunderbird, and then you can reply to the message in your webmail, and maintain the conversation. You can set the length of time that you keep the messages on the server - I usually go for a range of anywhere from 1-30 days, depending on the account, however, there are some accounts where I will simply say to leave them on the server permanently (such as a Yahoo account or a Gmail account).

I hope that this guide helps you to get a new account set up in your Thunderbird so that you can improve your email communication.

You may have noticed that recently the size of my blog’s thumbnail images are now larger than they were in the past. Previously, they were at 128 pixels wide, or about the size of a stamp.

Recently, Snoskred had a post about how to upload an image to your WordPress blog, and in it I made a comment about that the small size of the thumbnails was a drawback to WordPress.

However, as I was making that comment, I did a search about if it’s possible, and, like almost everything else in WordPress, you can change the thumbnail to whatever size you would like. I found the original instructions here. In fact, the change is so simple, you don’t really need to deal with reuploading files to FTP. However, you might need to change some file permissions, which isn’t as painful as it sounds.

Going to the WordPress file editor

To edit the file, you don’t actually need any special software - all you need is your WordPress Admin panel. One of the hidden secrets of WordPress is the built-in file editor which allows you to edit any file that is in your WordPress installation.

To access the editor, go into your Admin Dashboard and click on Manage. Then click on Files. When you load the page, generally, the last file that was opened will load, which will generally be your theme’s style sheet.

At the bottom of the page, there is a section called “Other Files” which allows you to type in the name of a file and then edit that file. In the line that is there type this - wp-admin/includes/image.php and click Edit file »

The file will load into the editor, and if the file permissions are not set properly, this message will appear - If this file were writable you could edit it. In that case, you will need to go into your FTP program and change that file’s attributes to 666 - as is recommended by WordPress.

If your file permissions are correct from the outset, or after changing your file’s permissions and reloading the editor page, the message about the file being writable will be replaced with an Update File » button in the lower right of the screen.

Editing the file

With that, you’re now ready to make the necessary changes to your image.php file.

This will go a lot easier if you’re using Firefox 2.0 - which allows you to search inside of text boxes; older versions of Firefox and other browsers do not allow you to do the same thing.

What you will need to do is search for the following text -

if ( $max < 0 || $metadata['width'] * $metadata['height'] < $max ) {
$max_side = apply_filters( 'wp_thumbnail_max_side_length', 128, $attachment_id, $file );
$thumb = wp_create_thumbnail( $file, $max_side );

In this section of text, simply change the 128 that is currently there to the size of thumbnail that you want to use - I’ve gone with 256 (which is twice the size of the default, and a much better size to allow you to see details).

Once you have changed the number, simply click on Update File », and then you are done! Enjoy your new thumbnails!

Something that anyone who has their own webspace needs to know how to do from time to time is how to upload files to their server. If you are lucky enough to have a server where you have access to a piece of software called “cPanel X” or some other control panel software that has an included file upload manager, FTP can prove to be a useful backup.

However, most of the time, you don’t have access to something like this and have to rely upon a special type of program called FTP - which stands for File Transfer Protocol. There are a lot of programs out there - most of them free - which will allow you to use this protocol easily, and not have to worry about all of the technical details behind the scenes.

While you can use Internet Explorer’s built-in FTP features for your uploading and downloading needs, there is a much better solution out there, and it is absolutely free.

FileZilla is an open source client which has been around since early 2001, and has been available for just about every Operating System for the last year or two. It is available for download from the FileZilla Project homepage.

After you’ve downloaded and installed FileZilla, run the program and this is what you will see at first -

The quickest way to connect to a server is to use the toolbar that has the “Quickconnect” button on it. In this example, I’m going to be blanking a lot of stuff out, since I’m going to be logging into my own site’s ftp space, and I like to have my security you know.

All you need to do is type the host you’re connecting to (usually ftp.{yourdomain}, unless told differently by your system administrator or host), your username and your password into the lines and click Quickconnect. You will not need to worry about the Port slot unless you’re told to use a port different to 21, which is the default.

After you’ve connected, a couple of things will have changed - first, the top part of the window will have had a lot of text scrolling through - that is just simply FileZilla connecting to the server, sending your username and password and listing the directory of the home directory you’re starting from. Also, the file listing from that directory will be listed in the right hand panel. It will look something like this -

Almost all of the time, you’re going to be just uploading files to your server, and you need to make sure that you do it in the right place. If I were to upload a file to the home directory for my site, you would not be able to view it. Depending on the setup of the server you’re on, the directory you will need to upload your files into will vary. For some it is “public_html”, but for my site, it is contained in the httpdocs directory. To open it, simply double-click on that directory. Again, some text will flash by on the top screen, and the new directory will appear in the right pane again. You will also notice that above the file listing, the directory listing will change to reflect your new location on the server.

To actually upload a file, be sure that you are in the directory that you want to upload the file to. In this case, since I’m going to be uploading a picture, I’m going to put it in the /img/ directory. As you can see, there are the three WordPress directories there - wp-admin, wp-content, and wp-includes; that’s because I have my WordPress install in the root directory.

There are a couple of ways to upload a file to a server in FileZilla - the first is to use the built-in file explorer. There, just head to the folder on your computer where the file(s) you want to upload are located, and then double click on the file you want to transfer to the folder. You can also open up a Windows Explorer window in the folder where the file is located and then drag and drop the file into the server side of the FileZilla window.

During the transfer, the file(s) you’re uploading will be listed in the bottom panel of the window as queued transfers. The number that is in parentheses will tell you how many files are left to upload. If, for some reason, a transfer fails, it will go into the failed transfers. After transferring the file successfully, it will be listed in the Successful transfers tab, again, the number in parentheses indicates how many files have been successfully transferred during the session. If you click on the Successful transfers tab, it will look like this -

A couple of additional items that are good to know about FileZilla are file permissions and the Site Manager.

File Permissions

In FileZilla, they are called File Attributes, but it is the same thing - there are times when you’re working, say, with WordPress and it will ask you to change permissions on a file or folder. To do that, simply right-click on the file or folder and select File Attributes. This window will pop up -

When you’re asked to change permissions by WordPress, it will say, for example, to “chmod {file} to 777.” In order to do that, you can simply type in 777 in the numeric value box and it will change the checkboxes to the appropriate settings for that particular mode and then click OK to confirm the changes.

Site Manager

The Site Manager is useful if you have multiple sites you’re connecting to via FTP. While the Quickconnect bar will keep a history of the servers you’ve connected to (just click the down arrow next the the Quickconnect button to see that list), the Site Manager will save any and all sites you need to have access to. It also will make a quick list of sites to connect to from the toolbar - click the down arrow next to the first button on the toolbar to see the list of sites in the Site Manager.

To add a site to the Manager, go to File and then Site Manager. It will pop up in its default state - i.e. with nothing preloaded.

Click New Site and then enter your Host, change Logontype to either Normal or Ask For Password if you would prefer to not have your password stored with FileZilla. Again, unless told by your server admin, you will likely not need to worry about Port, or the other tabs of the Site Manager window.

By the way, if you’re curious, here’s the file that I uploaded - you’ll have to click to see it (in a new window).

If you have any questions about FTP, or about other FTP programs, feel free to leave a comment. Also, if you’d like me to post a walkthrough of something else on the net, feel free to get in touch

One of the things that I absolutely love about my computer is the fact that I can record the “mix” stream from the computer - in other words, I can rerecord audio streams for my personal use (or possibly sharing with one or two people).

It all started with recording calls that I and some of my fellow scambaiters would make to scammers - though the first calls I recorded were calls that I did myself, in an interesting process where I did a stereo recording and I had my microphone in one channel and the scammer in the other channel.  I didn’t post too many of my own calls to the web, but quite a bit of my recording work is out there for everyone to enjoy.

I’ve also used this method to record a couple of songs from MySpace (until a site with all the songs available for download in MP3 format was found), and to even record some radio programs.

However, the program that I use, Audacity, has added a new feature where you can actually schedule a recording. I’ve used this feature to great advantage to record the ABC cricket broadcasts which, since they’re in Australia, can go as late as (as was the case the other day for the Twenty20 match at the WACA) 6:30AM my time.  One day matches also have a tendency to run into the early morning hours when they’re day-night affairs (for example, the match at Adelaide today is starting just as I write this - for some reason the ABC stream is still in standby mode, but the Radio Sport stream is working, just with commercials - and will run until around 5:00 tomorrow morning).

I’ve also been doing the same thing with the test matches that were held a few weeks ago in Brisbane and Hobart against Sri Lanka. I’d set the timer to record from about 10 minutes before the start of a session and go for about 15 minutes after the session. If I wasn’t going to be around, I’d set the recording to go from the beginning of, say, the second session to the end of the day. I’d then go back and edit the file to remove (on weekdays) the lunch break and sometimes the tea break, and to chop off the end of the file after the day’s play had ended.

After recording a session, I export it to an mp3 file at 32kbps - which gives me a file size of around 30 MB for a full 2-hour session of test cricket.

Then, I will listen to it on my walks with my mp3 player (it’s actually an iPod nano - got it as a gift, and it will be leaving me for a week soon, as it will be on its intended itinerary). It’s something different to music and I like listening along and having a laugh with the commentators - I don’t know what it is, but if you want some good commentary, listen to cricket or baseball commentators on the radio, heck even football (gridiron) commentators get up to a good time. They even talk about the game from time to time.

At about an hour or so a day, and with some days where I’ll listen to the match on the computer as well, I got through the first test just in time for the second test to start. However, the second test took me quite a while to complete - I started it straight from the first day, but I didn’t get done with it until Monday afternoon, almost a full two weeks after the match had actually finished.

I’m almost done listening to the Twenty20; in fact, I’m listening to that right now, with the Black Caps on 8-79, with the end of the match coming quickly; I’ve managed to not see the result of the match - however, that doesn’t mean I can’t get spoilt for other things while listening to the cricket - I heard the results from some of the V8 action at Symmons Plains, and was getting mildly annoyed, but I could understand so it wasn’t a big deal. Anyway the actual racing was much better than just hearing the results.

By the way, if you want to do something like this, you just need to see if you can record the Mixer stream. It’s found in your sound control - in Windows, that’s at Start -> All Programs -> Accessories -> Entertainment -> Volume Control. This is what it will look like when you start the program; you’ll have different things in your control panel -

To access the recording settings, go to Options -> Properties, which will bring up this window -

Then, in the mixer device line, you will want to look for something like “Recording control” or, in my case Realtek HD Audio rear input, then click OK. The Master Volume window will change to the Recording Control window, which will look something like this (as with the Master Volume, I have the advanced settings option turned on) -

If you have something like “Stereo Mix” in your set of controls, then you can go ahead and do the same thing as I can, and possibly even have your own two-week-long test match.

Coming up tomorrow - how to upload these files to an FTP server (not really, but I will show you how to use an FTP program )

A while ago, I discussed how to get your pictures on the web and some tips for optimizing the images, including mentioning the simplest thing that you can do to make your images more convenient for posting to the web, which is to resize them. A common misconception is that you need a way-too-powerful program such as Photoshop, or Paint Shop Pro, or even the GIMP, to resize pictures decently.However, the fact is that there are many options out there for programs that do nothing but resize images. The first is one that I have been using for a long time, but is only available to users of Windows XP who have a US-English version of the operating system. The other is compatible with all recent versions of Windows.

Image Resizer

If you use Windows XP (Home or Professional) and it’s a US-English version, you can take advantage of Microsoft’s free Image Resizer PowerToy, available from Microsoft’s website. After downloading and installing it, using the program is quite literally dead simple.

When you’re viewing a picture in Windows Explorer, simply right click on it, and select Resize Pictures on the menu that comes up -

- This will open a new window that gives you a set of options for resizing the photo, specifically five sizes.

If you click on the Advanced button, you are presented with a couple of extra options - one to set a custom size for the resize, setting a restriction to make sure that pictures aren’t made larger, and one that will replace the original photo with the resized one (this is not recommended to use).

To resize the photo, simply select the size you want; (I’ll go with the Large size), and click OK. A couple of seconds later, the resized photo appears in the same folder as the original photo, named “picture name (selected size).extension“. All of the data that was coded in the photo (time and date, camera type, etc.) stays with the resized image, and it does a decent job of resizing the image, with some loss in quality.

The other option that is out there is one that is available for more versions of Windows than the PowerToy option, and it is - at my first glance - slightly more powerful than Image Resize.

Fast Image Resizer

Fast Image Resizer is a piece of free software that, like the PowerToy, simply resizes photos. You can download it from adionSoft’s website.

You can use this software if you use these versions of Windows - 2000, XP and Vista. Also, if you have the right equipment, you can run this software from any computer and have it maintain your custom settings.

After you download the program and install it, you will need to have two windows open - the program window and a Windows Explorer window which is on the folder that has the photo you want to resize. Before we resize a photo, let’s take a look at the software. This is the screen that you will see when you start it up. As you can see, it is very straightforward, with a Resolution selection box, an Options button and an exit button.

If you are ready to resize the photos using the default settings (or having just changed the resolution you want to change the picture to), simply drag the files you want to resize into the box where it says to Drop files here. When it is finished, it will say that it is done.

With the default settings, your resized image will be saved in a folder under the one where the image was stored to begin with called “resize”. The files will be named like this - “original name_horizontal x vertical.extension“. It is unlikely, but you can change the settings for the program in the Options window. This is what that looks like -

All of the options are straightforward. You can choose how the resized file is named, whether you want to rotate the picture, if you want to keep the data that was saved with the photo (date & time, etc. - also known as EXIF data) on the resized image, if you want to have the picture cut to make it fit the exact size of the resize (if you leave that turned off, the program will find a resolution close to the one you selected, but not exactly what you had).

When you’re done with resizing the photos you need to resize for the moment, simply click the Exit button or click the X in the upper right corner to exit.

To be honest, I didn’t even hear about Fast Image Resizer until when I was asked to put something together, and I have to say that it is definitely a program that, even after resizing only one photo, I would definitely recommend you try out.