Re: The most awesome personal organiser ever
From: "Scott Junner" <scott.junner@gmail.com>
Yeah. I started writing it because I realise I could wait for ever for someone else to build me the thing I want and make it work the way I want it to work.
Good luck! Let me know how you are faring. I am interested. BTW: Owncloud is interesting, as the central storage of files. And then a database.. A lot of stuff comes per e-mail. But I have a problem to link it in a database because it is lacking a URL, a unique ID and a way to access it via web browser. (E.g. "Project organizer, e-mail by Scott Junner -> read original e-mail") Well, there may be a way to fetch all your e-mail and store it in the database. But it seems to be so "disconnected" to the reading of e-mails (which can be everywhere, of course) so it feels rather clumsy. Any ideas to solve this in a elegant way? (reminder to myself.. may be solved in document management systems.. looking for ideas there) Regards Peter
On 09.12.14 20:38, Peter Ross wrote:
Well, there may be a way to fetch all your e-mail and store it in the database. But it seems to be so "disconnected" to the reading of e-mails (which can be everywhere, of course) so it feels rather clumsy.
Any ideas to solve this in a elegant way?
It may be that elegance lies in the eye of the beer holder, but I handle untold thousands of emails worth keeping in a very simple database. First procmail distributes them to a mailbox per list, plus one for family, and one default. Those which are not deleted are manually saved in e.g. one of 88 mailboxes for categories of Vim stuff, and one of 419 categories of LinuxCNC stuff, 1167 mailboxes in total, at time of posting. Reading a post is 99% of the sorting process. The cost of then dropping it into the right category mailbox is minimal. Mutt can throw up a list of filename-completion alternatives, or I use a simple shell function to list matches to filename (category) fragments I offer it. (Scrolling through 419 alternatives is a bit too GUI for my taste.) E.g. if I want to save a post relating to cnc offsets: $ mls 'cnc*offset' /home/erik/mail/cnc_linux_axis_angle_offset /home/erik/mail/cnc_linux_coordinate_offsets /home/erik/mail/cnc_linux_quick_temporary_offset /home/erik/mail/cnc_linux_tool_offsets Now filename completion offers quicker destination selection than does list scrolling, unless filename completion has narrowed the choice to just a few. And, later, when needing to find information on a subject, I can point mutt at the preferred tiny subset of umpty thousand posts, and only need to either visually scan a few hundred thread subjects, or perform a header or body search in mutt. If there's no related sorting category, then grep of e.g. cnc_linux* will throw up mailboxes worth a look in mutt. But I dislike seeking a needle in a haystack - sorted information is much more accessible. There are no new tools to learn - mutt, grep, procmail, and ls do it all. The filesystem is the database. Sorting the posts on receipt is the key to adding value to the information. And _really_ useful gems go into a (nearly) 400 page text file which folds to a brief TOC: UNIX USER ENVIRONMENT & TOOLS 59 P TEXT TOOLS & PRINTING 51 P LINUX SYSTEM ADMINISTRATION 141 P PROGRAMMING & EMBEDDED TOOLS 114 P LinuxCNC: EMC2: CNC: 6 P ATTIC: ~/misc/unix/Obsolete_Help OK, it'll take a few evenings to clear the backlog of 1867 posts which greeted me the night before last, after a week and a half away, but >90% will be deleted, some threads unread. Granted, a more databaserish approach allows attaching multiple keys to a post, so that it is retrievable multiple ways. I handle that by saving a multifaceted post in two or three mailboxes, if there is enough content value to warrant. In this instance there are only 58261 posts in the 1167 categories, even after quite a few years of collecting. The method is well suited to managing a distillation of a flood of posts, for ease of retrieving useful guff. Like with hashing, a large number of buckets increases the return on the categorisation process. It is perhaps no great recommendation to say that I have found nothing better, but I am so happy with it that I'm not looking. Erik -- I have long felt that most computers today do not use electricity. They instead seem to be powered by the "pumping" motion of the mouse! - William Shotts, Jr. on http://linuxcommand.org/learning_the_shell.ph
This will be the last email from me to LUV on this topic so as to de-clutter peoples in-boxes. Anyone interested in further conversation please feel free to suggest a way to do that. I'm thinking to just create an group within my contacts to keep people posted, but better suggestions welcome.
BTW: Owncloud is interesting, as the central storage of files.
Good tip thank you.
And then a database..
A lot of stuff comes per e-mail. But I have a problem to link it in a database because it is lacking a URL, a unique ID and a way to access it via web browser.
(E.g. "Project organizer, e-mail by Scott Junner -> read original e-mail")
Well, there may be a way to fetch all your e-mail and store it in the database. But it seems to be so "disconnected" to the reading of e-mails (which can be everywhere, of course) so it feels rather clumsy.
Any ideas to solve this in a elegant way?
I'm now berating myself for neglecting to see this one for myself. That is
so important. Thank you for expressing. I have worked with an enterprise level application (as a user) which linked to emails. Have made a note to contact the company I used to work for to get the name of that and see if it I can look deeper into how it was achieved. One thought is to make use of a number of pre existing online applications. Google calendar, tasks, contacts, gmail and perhaps evernote and dropbox. But that starts to smell a little too much like my own personal situation and not something which can be easily shared without forcing people to open accounts with services they don't want to. On the other hand it might be a great way to prevent a whole lotta work. There are so many things I don't know about here and that's kinda why I want to try, so I can get to know all the stuff I don't even know I don't know. Scott
On 09/12/14 23:21, Scott Junner wrote:
A lot of stuff comes per e-mail. But I have a problem to link it in a database because it is lacking a URL, a unique ID and a way to access it via web browser.
I'm now berating myself for neglecting to see this one for myself. That is so important. Thank you for expressing.
We use PHP MailMime and scan an IMAP folder (Inbox and Outbox typically). 1. Read the message headers 2. Lookup message Id in the imported_messages table 3. If its not there we parse the message and remove the attachments (saving them to disk and linking them to the contact record) 4. We save the body of the message as a note under the contact record There are a few other steps we do but that is the basic process to create a email aware contacts database. Cheers Piers
participants (4)
-
Erik Christiansen -
Peter Ross -
Piers Rowan -
Scott Junner