Lotus Notes to Thunderbird

My problem: Moving jobs, need to convert my personal nsf emails to a universally format (read free, open source) that can run on my mac / pc without me spending a single penny. If you do have extra dollars to spare there are bunch of software readily available … and you are reading the wrong post.

Solution: Tech[niques] has a bunch of articles on exporting your email from Lotus Notes to Outlook Express Email Messages and then finally import it to Thunderbird.

Things to keep in mind:

• You need to create some scripts, so some technical background is required. Mostly copy / paste but it is possible you might need to debug
• Emails with embedded images will throw an exception, I simply ignored such emails
• It took roughly ~15 mins to archive ~1500 emails, 150MB in size - not bad!

KB goes Xpress with Nokia 5800

Recently bought Nokia 5800 Xpress aka the tube (India version)! I think there is enough already written about the phone, what works, what does not … In this post I am going to focus on the applications that I added to make this phone meet my messaging / communication needs.

Getting the latest firmware was the first thing that I did. Over the Air sync did not work, had to upgrade via NSU via on my PC. To get everything to work did a soft reset *#7370#. Keep following in mind:

• You lose all data - contacts, messages, configuration settings etc after the reset
• The 200 odd pre-loaded songs do not load anymore because the license files go missing - this is the sad part
• The upgrade is worth the effort - you can refer to this post to look at the additional features

Loading the applications! I intend to use my phone more for email / messaging, so time to get some useful stuff:

Apps that are part of the Nokia Download:
• Mail for exchange: I use mail2web for my contacts. I have been using Windows Mobile for a long time and all my contacts for the past 8 years have always been on some mail for exchange or the other. So this app was a must for me to get all my contacts
• WaveSecure: Neat app, enables the user to lock the phone remotely - pretty handy!
• QuickOffice: To open word, excel, ppt etc - a must
• Zip Manager: Most of the attachments in my email are zipped - must have!
• AccuWeather: No real utility - just adds to the “cool” factor … this turns out to be one of the most viewed apps when ppl like to get a “feel” of the phone
• Cricket Mobicast: very very critical! You can always tune in to 106.4FM for a live commentary - but this app is a must, live scores, stats etc - has it all

Other useful apps (you can check more here):
• Fring: recently launched a version for 5800, it works great - loaded all my skype, facebook and gtalk ids!
• Easy Reject: Block spam calls, messages. No more loan, credit card calls
• iSync: if you use a mac
• JoikuLight: Can convert your phone into a wifi hotspot. The free version is limited to http / https
• SymTorrent: how about downloading the torrent of the latest southpark episode in mp4 format and view it - all on your phone!
• Google Maps - The preloaded Nokia maps are good! … just so used to Google maps
• PhoneTorch - converts the flash into a torch. Delhi summer time … power cuts … you never know when you might need this
• The rotary dialer - nice interface for that nostalgic feeling … whoever has seen this app simply loved it … no real utility, since I typically use voice dialing to call people - works to show off the phone

LAMP stack on Amazon EC2

This post lists down the high level steps and useful links to get started with EC2

Tools:

• Elasticfox- Firefox Add-On, to manage your instance via Firefox.
• S3Fox- Firefox Add-On, to manage your S3 buckets, ACL and files via Firefox. Only issue is that I cannot set the expire time using S3Fox … you can go for BucketExplorer, costs $30. I use S3Fox to upload / download files from my desktop
• s3sync- Ruby based command line utility to manage your buckets, files etc. I have it installed on my instance, to sync up my datafiles etc to S3 on a daily / weekly basis
  To Sync the entire folder - use s3sync
  ./s3sync.rb -r /directory/to/sync bucket-name:directory/path
  To Upload one file - use s3cmd
  ./s3cmd.rb put bucket-name:path/to/file/file-name /path/to/source/
• Putty - to ssh or scp to the instance, if on windows. Refer to the amazon for details on setup

Setup:

• Create the credentials for Amazon for EC2, S3, EBS, Cloudfront
• Create the security group in EC2
• Launch the instance with the preferred AMI
• Setup EBS of desired size
• Configure MySQL, Apache to run from EBS
• setup s3sync

Excellent post on this topic: “Tutorial: Running a php/mySQL server on EC2 with EBS”

mysql backup on S3

I setup this script: automysqlbackup to backup my mysql databases on a daily basis. The script has pretty good instructions, just key in the details, add it to your cron and you are all set.

I sync up the backups with my S3 buckets using s3sync, go through the readme for details. In short you need to follow these steps:

• update the s3config.yml file, add your access key and secret key
• link the config file it to the etc folder
  ln -s /path/to/s3sync/s3config.yml /etc/s3conf/s3config.yml
• add the following command to the POSTBACKUP variable in automysqlbackup.sh script
  /path/to/s3sync/s3sync.rb -r /path/to/backups/ bucket-name:s3-folder-name

You will need to manually remove the old backups from your S3 account. An alternative is to update the bucket directly using s3cmd instead of storing your backups on EBS / EC2 instance

Configuration - Apache, MySQL, PHP for windows

Once installed make sure the following steps have been covered:

For Apache:

Update http.conf

• Load module mod_rewrite, required by WordPress for url rewriting. Uncomment the following line:

LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so

• Add index.php to DirectoryIndex, if you don’t do this - you will keep seeing directory listing or error pages

<IfModule dir_module>
DirectoryIndex index.php index.html
</IfModule>

• Setup Virtual hosts, uncomment the following line:

Include conf/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf

• Update httpd-vhosts.conf, change the ServerName and the DocumentRoot to your specific settings. I am setting up Wordpress Mu on my windows machine, this is how it looks:

<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName wpmublogs.localhost
DocumentRoot “C:/wpmu”
<Directory />
Options FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride All
</Directory>
<Directory “C:/wpmu”>
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>


For PHP:

• Get the mysql extension and save them to say “C:/ext”- mysql.dll for windows / mysql.so for unix

• Update php.ini, set the extension dir

extension_dir = "C:\ext\"
Add extensions, this is the name of the file
extension=php_mysql.dll

• Create an index.php page with phpinfo() and store it in documentroot, in this case “C:/wpmu” and point your browser to http://wpmublogs.localhost

<?php phpinfo() ?>

• If all went fine, you should see the dump of phpinfo(), check if mysql was loaded … (try rebooting your m/c once if mysql did not load) now you are ready to setup the wordpress blog …