The story of how I find cool stuff, inevitably break said cool stuff, and (hopefully) end up fixing whatever I did

Email clients suck, Mutt just sucks less (yes I did rip off their slogan).  There are tons of email clients out there, most of which really do suck badly.  I used the Gmail client for some time and it was OK, for a web client.  I could have used sane thread handling, actually showing email that got sent to myself, S/MIME or PGP support (preferably PGP), not having to fire up resource heavy firefox, etc etc.  Now let me preface this by saying that Mutt is not for everyone.  It is a terminal based client, making it great for ssh, and it has a very steep learning curve.  One mistake people commonly make is that they assume that, like most other email clients, Mutt handles receiving, sending and viewing email.  This is an incorrect assumption as mutt is solely a MUA (Mail User Agent).  The idea is that you piece together exactly how you want your email system to work.  This means that it requires a lot of work on the users end to configure the system, although it does afford the advantage of having an email setup that does exactly what you want it to do, exactly how you want it done.

With that being said, I will first explain in words what my setup is, how it works, and why it makes sense to do it this way…then I will include all relevant configuration files along the way.

So I have Mutt, and my massively customized .muttrc. It includes where my folders are located, how I want key bindings to behave, colors, PGP settings, key bindings hooks for sending from the appropriate addresses, how i want to edit and view my headers, that I want to use vim to edit email, how email threads should look, blah blah blah. Below is my muttrc in all of its glory. I have painstakingly commented all the relevant pieces so everything makes sense to the normal person (and to me when I forget what stuff does. I have excluded certain pieces to avoid getting spammed :p )

I use vim as my email composer and there are a few tricks to get vim to play well with mutt.  Here is a snippet from my vimrc that enables spellchecking for mutt files and a few key bindings to may my mail look pretty when I’m done slapping on my keyboard.

Pretty self explanatory if you’re familiar with vim.  Enables spellchecking for mutt composition and gives me F3 – F5 for nice paragraph formatting.

As far as the F key mappings and reply hooks go, this is how I send from multiple addresses in Mutt easily. Whenever I want to send as a certain address I just hit the corresponding F key from within mutt and then go on composing merrily. The reply hooks ensure that I always reply as the address the email was addressed to. Reply hooks essentially work the same as send-hooks except backwards. They are not very well documented in the Mutt manual, which is a shame because they are extremely useful in cases like this.  The F keys source profiles that I have in my .mutt folder, they all must identical (except for different values in the variables of course) since they are sourcing out the same information.  Here is a skeleton profile that I use:

As you can see, each profile contains a path to the correct signature for that profile, setting the “send from” variable, passing the correct arguments to msmtp (which will be covered later), and setting the status bar to show which profile I am actually using…in this case al3k is the profile.  The default profile sourced is set in my muttrc (see above) and I can switch them out at will by hitting F7 through F12 in Mutt.

Now this is how I view and compose mail, sending and receiving is a different story; I will begin with how I receive my email. Bottom line, offlineimap is awesome. I realize Mutt has built in imap support, but it is mega slow and I would rather have a local copy anyways. From the offlineimap project github site, “You get a current copy of your messages on each computer, and changes you make one place will be visible on all other systems. For instance, you can delete a message on your home computer, and it will appear deleted on your work computer as well. OfflineIMAP is also useful if you want to use a mail reader that does not have IMAP support, has poor IMAP support, or does not provide disconnected operation.” The one downside to this is that it’s tough to find a solution to store your passwords in a secure way. For now I just store them directly in the file as I have an encrypted disk. In the future I would like to whip up a simple python keyring to store these safely, gnome-keyring and kwallet are waaaay too bloated for me to feel worth using them. Here is my .offlineimaprc

Just insert your username and password where needed and chmod 0600 the file. The nametrans function just uses a regex to translate the goofy gmail virtual folders into names that actually make sense. Feel free to change the names of localrepository and whatever else, just my setup…doesn’t have to be yours.

The, I use this short script stolen from the Arch Linux wiki to quickly daemonize a program that i place in ~/build/start_daemon (offlineimap occasionally crashes and becomes a resource hog, this takes care of that problem):

And then set up a cron job to run this every five minutes:

Ta da! offlineimap is syncing your local copy of your inbox with gmail every 5 minutes, all changes made at any point will be reflected everywhere, plus you have an offline copy of your inbox to work with!

For sending mail, I use the lightweigh msmtp and it works awesomely for me.  You saw above that each profile sets the sendmail command, which is smtp followed by the argument -a and the name of the profile.  This makes it extremely easy to send from different smtp servers and email addresses at will.  Here is a skeleton .msmtprc that is similar to the one I use:

With that setup you can send from the different accounts via msmtp -a <accountname>, works pretty well for me.
As far as PGP signing/encrypting goes, it’s rather simple as well.  I borrowed a piece of configuration from another guy who was nice enough to write about his mutt setup and combined it with some gnupg configuration to get a very nice PGP + mutt combination.  As you can see above in my .muttrc I source a file called ~/.mutt/gpg which contains all of my gpg settings and looks like so…

I know that just looks to be a bunch of jibberish but I do promise that it does work.  The setup is generic and should work for anyone, I won’t bother explaining it since I feel it is well commented but the short version is that Mutt just needs to be spoonfed the commands it needs to perform PGP actions on email.  This, in conjunction with a few settings on your .gnupg/gpg.conf, will make Mutt a secure email machine.  Here’s the relevant pieces you will want:

Pretty simple, all this does it set what public keyserver you want to use, MIT is extremely popular and I’m pretty sure they all propagate to each other anyway, and will automatically retrieve public keys when you receive mail from someone who stores their key on the server(s) as well.  The last line will automatically sign all encrypted messages to yourself as well as the recipient so you don’t get encrypted out of your own sent email :p
Lastly is my coloring, but that is really just a matter of taste.  I use 256 color profiles as well so it may not be compatible with everyone’s setup.  I’ll go ahead and post my colorscheme here and a screenshot, but that pretty much makes covers everything I do in Mutt.  I have yet to work on getting a real good mailcap going so I don’t have anything worthwhile to post here, but I will check back in when I have something worth sharing.
Here’s my color setup:

And here’s a few screenshots of my Mutt in action. Excuse the crappy pictures, I was on my Mac (not by choice) at the time and I personally think the console looks cartoony as hell. I’ll get some better ones up later.

Here is how my full setup looks, in fancy gallery fashion.

Hope this helps out people looking to get a jump start on mutt, or those looking for some more advanced tweaks to make mutt more awesome than it already is.  Leave a comment if you have any questions, or really just anything to say.

So I was watching Office Space the other day and it occurred to me that movies like this are disillusioning people, mainly us college folk.  Don’ get me wrong, I love this movie and it’s probably in my top ten but I think that the premise behind Peter’s character and his philosophy on life aren’t realistic in today’s world.  We all have a friend or know someone who has the ability to do absolutely nothing, or at least very close to nothing, and still have incredible success.  He may be a math genius, got into med school, aces test, or is a computer genius but seems to put absolutely no effort into this at all, it just seems to come to him naturally.  We all want to be the next Bill Gates and sell something that we actually don’t have to IBM and then go on to make billions of dollars.  We also want to be that guy who basically gets to do whatever the hell he wants but no one questions him because he is the best at what he does.   This guy could come into work late and piss drunk but won’t get fired because he is the only one able to do what he does as well as he does it.  But yet, these people are usually exaggerated and the real ones are as common as winning the lottery.  Like  Matther Broderick in Wargames basically; he may fail classes, but he can change that by hacking into the school’s computer system and changing his grades.  We have all heard that story about how Einstein supposedly failed the third grade, or fourth grade math or something and all of us slacker hopefuls out there use these stories, or similar ones, in order to reassure ourselves that, even though they may be failing now, their slacker lifestyle will payoff handsomely in the future.  Well, unfortunately for us all, this is probably not the case anymore.  You probably won’t rise to be a CEO without your college degree, you probably aren’t going to invent the next google search engine, and you most likely aren’t going to build the next computer empire out of your garage.  The time has passed, mainly just due to the fact that you were born about 25 years too late.  I’m not saying that it won’t happen, I am just trying to say that it is very unlikely in these times.  I really wish it was the case that you could have a section on a resume that said “I succeed while doing absolutely nothing.”  If only that was the world we lived in.  Anymore, employers have this need to see the potential of a savior on paper.  They want your resume to scream, “I will turn your failing company into the next Wal-Mart.”  They essentially want your shit to smell like roses.  You can’t walk into an interview wearing jean shorts and smelling like an ashtray and them hire you based on your reputation as a supposed genius.  I hate to burst your bubble guys, just something that office space brought to my attention.

And now, for your viewing pleasure…..a scene from office space, so you can enjoy it as much as I did

So I read an article this morning on Slashdot about a new technology that would allow you to insert small flexible nanotubes underneath your skin, which would essentially create a display screen…..right on your body.  How awesome is that?!  You could text people right from the palm of your hand, literally.  Apprently Phillips has taken this idea to an artistic level and applied the technology into the realm of tattos, so you would be able to change a tattoo whenever you wanted or have the tattoo change based on your mood, or just have an animated tattoo.  If this stuff isn’t the coolest thing ever I don’t know what is.  It was also discussed in a similar article about how tiny wireless receivers could be implanted as well, essentially making you wireless.  Now I am fairly certain that this technology isn’t anywhere near the commercial level yet but nonetheless, I am so getting a digital tattoo whenever it does.  A display screen on my hand would be my dream come true.  I’ll post the video below so you can see just how awesome this is.  I realize the video is a year old but the article made it seem as if research companies were actually making some real headway on this, so apparently this could be reality in the next couple years.  I apologize however for Phillips need to use naked people in their ad, was that really necessary?  Its still pretty damn cool tho…enjoy.

Just recently I read an article detailing Time Warner Cable’s new pricing strategy and how they have begun test driving this new system in some select cities.  The brilliant idea they have devised this time is a system to charge their customers based on consumption.  The new pricing strategy will take effect as early as next year in some cities.  From what I can tell they are looking at using 4 different bandwidth tiers that include 5, 10, 20 and 40 GB a month.  Immediately you should begin to see a major problem with this.  Here’s the problem that first popped into my mind: A high definition movie streamed online from a service like Netflix can total up to 8 GB a pop.  So, by this weird logic, even with the highest bandwidth tier you could only watch about 5 movies a month and bam! No internet until next month.  While this seems extremely materialistic to say this given that HD streaming movies are by no means a necessity, I think this is really going to piss of people like Netflix and Hulu.  Let me give another example. Linux distributions can run at about half a gigabyte a piece….hmmmmm.  Now let’s even put aside large files.  I, all by myself, can probably rack up 500 gig a month of completely legal content EASILY.  Very easily as a matter of fact.  I work a lot with open source software that can sometimes be on the byte heavy side and I don’t have to worry about it given that I don’t have to be conscious of my bandwidth consumption.  I really don’t understand the need for the bandwidth caps at all to be honest.  From what I read on Businessweek and Arstechnica, their logic is completely misplaced and let me tell you why.  In the cities that they have test driven this new plan in, they have reported that not even 20% of their customers ever exceed their bandwidth limits and the average user only brings in as much as 6 GB a month.  Now let’s think about this for a second, if 86% of people never exceed their bandwidth cap, what the hell is the need for the cap!?  This came straight from TWC’s mouth, and if completely refutes the need for a limit.  I hear now and again that the overhead is expensive given the huge infrastructure of the network, but not once have I ever experienced a slowdown from excessive internet use in the area, and if I did it was the website itself’s problem and not a problem with the ISP.  I do remember back during the AOL age when it was impossible to log on from 5pm to 10pm at night but that was just the inherent nature of dial-up.  The broadband network is probably only at 50% capacity at any given time, if even that. So, if there is not problems with network congestion and most people never go over their limit, I want someone from Time Warner to explain to me how this makes any sense at all.  If you’re answer is that your new business model revolves around pissing off your customers even more than you already manage to do, you should give whoever came up with that idea a spot on your Board of Directors.  Now it may seem like this whole post is ragging on how shitty Time Warner’s customer relations are, which it sort of is I guess, what I am really trying to do is give Time Warner some advice.  Their service has a monopoly in certain areas so sometimes switching to a different ISP isn’t a valid choice, so my aim has become to throw some tough love onto these idiots.  I am just a lowly college student and I can tell you that this plan will ruin you if it comes to fruition.  The people you will anger are definitely the wrong people to mess with.  Most people will accept this new pricing strategy given their naivety, but the people who will come after you are the ones who will be affected most; the people in technology sector.  I am not threatening anything, I’m just warning you against the inevitable so I don’t have to read about you getting flamed buy your customers here in the coming years.  A valid point that I read in a comment on one of these sites is that Wifi hacking will explode, and I think this might just be true.  Wifi hacking is not hard by any means and any idiot who can type would most definitely be able to figure it out.   Think about it, what are those neighborhood kids going to do once they run their parents bandwidth limit out and there are 23 other wireless networks just waiting to be tapped into and their limit exhausted as well.  Flash games will suffer, content will be rationed, and all the richness of the web we know will disappear in the face of bandwidth limits.  While I don’t believe their is anything legal that can be done, nor is anything having to deal with net neutrality being violated, but I believe this course of action to be seriously flawed given the nature of our society today and the consequences for companies like TWC will be more than they realize.  If this ever does happen, I know exactly what I am going to do and I can explain it in one acronym.  FiOS. Beware of this Time Warner, I think you should give this some further thought before continuing with this plan.

I must apologize for the gap since my last post, I am severely disappointed in myself for letting this much time get by before I wrote on this bugger again.  The server has been moved to a bigger and better server since the last post.  We are now rockin’ a beast of an Alienware laptop that won’t slow down on the busy days this domain draws in every now and then.  Since the server also provides services besides this blog, hehehe, I needed the extra power that the original junker I set this up on did not provide.  Point being, it makes me happy whether you understand what I am talking about your not….which means you should be happy too   I have a few things I would like to talk about today such as the Pirate Bay trials, my Wifi hacking presentation, and  whatever else I come up with by the time I get to the fourth paragraph. Here it goes…

So in case you didn’t know,the masterminds behind one of the most infamous torrent trackers, The Pirate Bay, started their trial earlier this week.   Movies and record labels worldwide rejoiced as they thought they were about to sink a titanic player in the torrent industry, they were very wrong.  Not two days into the trial, prosecutors dropped the major charges of copyright infringement that would have nailed the Pirate Bay crew to the wall.  If at this point you don’t know what a torrent is, it basically is just another way to download things on the internet.  Think of a much more sophisticated limewire or Kazaa that is actually inteded to the dissemination of legal materials.  The defendents also have developed an ingenous “i-dunno” strategy in order to make their case in court.  According to two of the defendents, they don’t read the contracts they sign, proof the speeches they write, or have any idea what the law may say about anything illegal they may be doing.  Fredrik Neij, owner of thepiratebay.org, who claims to be dyslexic, backs his site fully saying that he was under the understanding that everything he was doing was legal.  Essentially, they guys made a mockery of the courtroom and further infuriated the media industry worldwide as they continue to evade any attempt at ending the pirate’s reign of the internet.  They also made a good point in the process, Youtube has a significantly more copyright infringing material that the pirate bay, and even many other torrent trackers that are out there.  According to s survey of 1000 torrents on the site, almost 80% of those included legally downloadable content.  All in all these guys are fighting the man half the world around.  You should follow their trial as they continue their awesome strategy of playing stupid and making judges and lawyers very, very angry.

On February 22nd at 7PM in Dreese 266 here at The Ohio State University, I will be giving a talk about how to hack most commercial Wifi networks’ encryption protocols at the Open Source Club meeting……you should come and watch this crazy shit and maybe learn a thing or two.  I will be covering WEP hacking, WPA hacking as well as going in depth on the protocols themselves in order to show their strength’s and then their weaknesses….mostly by cracking them open like a little binary walnut.  And, if there is time, I may even go into man-in-the-middle attacks and how they can be used to steal anything and everything you send over a network that has been cracked.  This, of course, is just a proof of concept talk and nothing I talk about or show you should be used except for testing purposes and fun   You should come so I can make you a wizard in cracking dumb peoples networks who make their passphrase something like “wireless” or “hackmeogodpleasehackme.”  Even if you are not computer literate you should still join b/c this stuff is cool and I will do my best to make it the best computer talk your eyes will ever witness.  If not, its cool, you read my blog so you’re still on my  A list.

Back in normal people world…..I would like to take this time to say that I hate people who have this idea that they have this God given right to drive in the left lane even though they are not passing anyone.  This idea is completely ludicrous.  I actually once saw a bumper sticker on a ladies truck (who was driving 50 in a 65 in the LEFT LANE) that said, “I can drive in the left lane if I want to.”  NOOOOOOO!!!!!  If i wasn’t traveling > 60 MPH at the time I would get out of my car and pound some sense into this idiots head.  I know that in Kentucky you can actually be ticketed for driving in the left lane if you are not passing anyone…..this rule should be established worldwide to keep idiots like the bumper sticker lady in the lane that they belong.  It drives me absolutely insane when I am in a hurry, or I just can’t stand being behind someone anymore, when I cannot pass a group of cars because one of these people who think it is their divine right to be in the left lane is in front of me.  I typically set my cruise at 75+, which is a good deal faster than most cars on the highway, so I spend a lot of my time passing people……BUT, once I pass them I get right back into the right lane so that if someone is going 90 they can get around me with ease, problem freaking solved.   This drives me insane and happened like 6 times on my way back from Dayton this morning so I had to get it off my chest.  I’m out for tonight, I have actual school work that I should be putting my thoughts into

And now, for your viewing pleasure……a really long but hilarious review of the NES game Back to the Future.  Watch it, it’s way worth it