This is a follow-up to my [2006 post][1]. It’s a shame I’m not using Windows any more and I can’t figure this out for OS X, but the old post continues to get hits, so I thought I would neaten things up a bit!

I haven’t completely tested this system with more recent versions of Azureus/Vuze, but all the files seem to be much the same, so I’m guessing it will be OK. Please leave any comments with news to the contrary.

As before, I have taken much of my information from other places, but I feel put it together in an easier to follow manner. In particular, the bulk of ideas came from the [azureus wiki][3]

###Step 1: Install Azureus and enable Headless operation

1. Download the executable installer from [sourceforge][2]
2. Ensure that the installation directory contains the file Azureus2.jar
3. Download the files log4j.jar and commons-cli.jar from [here][4] and place into the Azureus directory. This will allow command-line (headless) operation.
4. To run, use command java -jar Azureus2-XXX.jar --ui=console

[1]: http://shayne.powerlot.net/2006/08/07/running-azureus-as-a-windows-service/
[2]: http://azureus.sourceforge.net
[3]: http://www.azureuswiki.com/index.php/RunAzureusAsAService
[4]: http://azureus.sourceforge.net/index_CVS.php

I have been toying with the idea of moving from my nice thunderbird email+feeds setup back to an all-online solution.

I have been using a gmail account with POP3 access, so that part was no-brainer.

The feed reader was a bit more of a problem. I have used Bloglines in the past and enjoyed it except for a few small problems. I wanted to try Google reader (in the hope that they will eventually integrate it properly with gmail), and yesterday had quite a long play with it, but was finding quite a few shortcomings.

So what happens today, when I log in?

I see this! – they have changed it, literally overnight!!

The good news of this is, despite my wasted time yesterday, is that most of what I considered shortcomings in the old version have been addressed.

So far so good, I might think about doing a proper review later…

This post has been superceded. Please check out [Running Azureus as a windows service revisited][1].

I am in the process of writing another howto.

Actually, all I am doing is documenting a process that I went through to get Azureus running as a windows service. I really wanted to be able to have (down+up)loads working even when the computer is in a logged out state, or logged in under another user.

There were plenty of tips around, but really nothing that spelled it out step-by-step.

This document is far from complete, but if you would like to see what has been done so far, download the first draft here (.odt document at the moment, so will need Openoffice or similar to read).

Please don’t hesitate to leave comments if you happen to find this and have something useful to add!

[1]: http://shayne.powerlot.net/2008/10/22/running-azureus-as-a-windows-service-revisited/

Please note, this is not about spam filtering. Filtering is like shutting the barn
door after the horse has bolted. Having said that, it is often necessary, but luckily can be
done when it is.

This document is about protecting your email address so that it does not get into the hands
of those who would abuse it. Now that is easier said than done. Consider all of these things
that you may do on the internet:

• Post to a publically viewable forum, mailing list or usenet group
• Sign up for a “special offer”
• Register for access to a site
• Put your contact details on a web page
• etc, etc …

Each of these things (and no doubt many more that I haven’t thought of) put your email
address within reach of friendly spammers. Once they have it, it has a tendency to multiply
as those helpful people share their information with each other!

… So prevention is much better than cure …

OK, online tip #1.

One of my great finds of the last year has been an online bookmarking service called “delicious”, which you will find at http://del.icio.us

Anyone familiar will this sort of thing will tell you that there are a number of similar services around, but this is the one I found first, and even after flirting with one of the others (spurl.net) I have come back to delicious.

When I first discovered delicious, I was using about 5 different computers (and perhaps more at certain times) every week. All of which I might take online, find something useful and want to come back to it. This creates a very difficult situation with respect to bookmarks.

I tried a couple of firefox extension which had the potential to act as synchronisers, but didn’t have much joy.

Then along came delicious.

You have to see it to realise what it can do. And then sign up and play with it to really have a good look!! It’s like a lot of things on the net, unless you have a play, you will miss out on most of the good features.

Go and have a look at my bookmarks

What you will hopefully see is a list of my most recent bookmarks. You will read the title, which will be in larger font and will be a hyperlink. Click on it if you want to see it… Underneath that there may or may not be a comment and underneath that, the “tags” that I have used to classify the link and a figure of how many other people have marked it too! (Oh, and the date)

Down on the right hand side you will see a (very) long list of all the tags that I use. You can click on any of these to see all of the links I have put that tag on to. Try it, click “computer”…

You will see that the link has taken you to http://del.icio.us/wynter/computer, I’m sure you can see the pattern. But wait, there is more! You will notice that there is now a second column of links to the left of the other one. These are the “related tags” and that means that these are all the tags that I have used ALONG WITH “computer”. If you click on one of them (don’t at this point) you will go to that list of links. But the better trick is to click on the plus-sign next to the tag. Try it, click on the one next to “esperance”.

You should now be at http://del.icio.us/wynter/computer+esperance – get it? These link(s) (there is only one at this stage – the google group home page) are all the ones that I have tagged with both “computer” and “esperance”.

Two quick tips before I go:

1. replace my user name (wynter) with the word “tag” to see all (ie everyone’s) links with those tags, eg http://del.icio.us/tag/computer+esperance – this shows the same stuff at the moment, but if any of you were to decide to bookmark any pages that might be of interest to the “Esperance+Computer” Club might be interested in, then they would show up here!

2. Do you understand RSS? If not, ignore this bit. If you do, have a look at the link that is under the orange icon with RSS on it. Copy the link and put it in your newsreader or whatever you use (I use one or both of Firefox and Thunderbird, depending on the type of link). Now, whenever a new link is posted, it will show up in your reader, a bit like an email….

OK, this was a long post, but I suggest you sign up (no email required, but necessary if you ever want to recover your password) and have a play. Make sure you read the help section but be warned, this is not all that easy to get your head around straight away.

Go and enjoy your delicious meal.

How to use External Javascripts to keep links etc the same over various pages in a web site

2005-04-12

Create Javascript with appropriate text

function bottom_links()
{
document.write('<p>');
document.write('<a href="#top">Top</a> ');
document.write('|  ');
}

Save the file as file.js

Import the JS file into your html file

Type the following into the <head> section of the html file:

<SCRIPT language="JavaScript" SRC="file.js"></SCRIPT>

Call the function somewhere in the html file and the text will be inserted as programmed

<SCRIPT language="JavaScript">bottom_links()</script>

You can now change the links as you like and all the pages where the java is used can show the updated text!!

Gmail is starting to look nice. Some problems, but otherwise looking pretty sweet. A quick summary:

Bad:

• I’m having a bit of trouble understanding the search syntax, and am a bit annoyed that you can’t use all of the options in your filters.
• I wish you could look at two folders at once, either AND or OR

Good:

• Is working nicely with my spamgourmet addresses, even my contacts have the correct reply-to address (that goes via spamgourmet in them)
• Looks good
• Fast. Loads itself automatically. No having to refresh to get mail. When you make a change (add or remove a lable, archive, delete or anything) it refreshes very fast. I have used lots of other webmails and seen nothing like this.
• Update:The way “coversations” are grouped together is great. It is more effective that it first looks. Even works for threads in mailing lists (though if the subjects get messed about with it doesn’t do so well)
• Update:The “show/hide quoted text” option is fantastic. Gets rid of the footers at the bottom of the above mentioned mailing list “conversations”

I’m really starting to think it could be a worthwhile “email anywhere” system. I have redirected most of my other email address to @gmail.com and am giving it a really good beta-test!

Oh, and I was given my first invitation to give away yesterday. Welcome to gmail Kish!

Went looking around today to see what I could do to get gmail working a bit more like yahoo (as I have suddenly discovered isn’t so bad)

Found this first of all: Spamgourmet which is quite a way to generate disposable email addresses on-the-fly. Quite handy.

Have only just started looking at it really, but I think it will do the job well (and seems to be a freely available, open-sourced program which is good too (and the service is free).

If you’d like to test it for me, email me here.

I found another similar program too (I forget the name now…) which looked better in some regards, but it specifically mentioned using it for keeping your flash new gmail address safe and the web page wasn’t complete (the ‘help’) page was unfinished for example), so it didn’t really evoke trust.

As to the POP access, there seem to be a couple of programs written that act like yahooPOPs, but for now I figure that is not so important. Downloading your gmail would sort of defeat the purpose of gmails added features anyway. And this is supposed to be beta – I am supposed to be testing it after all!

I actually logged in to blogger the other day, rather than just viewing
it (or even ignoring that I am supposed to be writing to it) and
lo-and-behold, what do I see but a gmail invitation?

Like I said in my April post, the only reason I started blogging (if you
can call it that) was to see if I could score an invite, but now that I
have got one it seems a little bit of an anticlimax.

Why?

I have one word for you: Yahoo!

I know that they (Yahoo) have only increased their mail limit to (try)
to match google’s, but I’m not terribly excited by large mailboxes
anyway. I delete my mail when I use a desktop client and don’t try to
keep it forever, so why would I want to using a web mail service?

No, it’s Yahoo!Mail’s other features that have got me hooked. Now, I
have not played with my yahoo account for ages, so I am not sure how new
these features are and whether they are added in to compete with google.
But they are good, at least to my needs, and google does not have them
yet. So what are they?

First of all, I can get POP access with yahoo. When I first joined yahoo
when they bought geocities, POP access was standard. Then they took it
off all us cheapstakes, and kept it only for their paying customers
(fair enough I suppose). Then I discovered YahooPOPs, a program that
runs as a daemon or service and acts as a type of POP-server itself
which downloads the messages from the web and serves them to the email
client. I just got that working nicely and then I checked Yahoo and if
you sign up for Yahoo Delivers and agree to accept some of their junk
mail (once or more a week, and related to subjects that you choose) then
you can have either POP access or mail forwarding. So I did.

Secondly, and perhaps more importantly is “Address Guard”. This is
basically a system whereby you can create unlimited numbers of
“disposable email addresses”. These are to be used for signing up for
special offers, newsgroups, mailing lists etc, or any number of things
where you don’t necessarily trust the holder of your email address or
are worried about who can see it publically. Your mail can then be
filtered by the address, and if you start getting spam to it, you (a)
know who to blame and (b) can delete the address and never see it again!

So besides the geek cool value, I don’t know how much use my gmail
account is going to get. But at least I have managed to get an account
with no numbers or extra long words in the user name (see here for more details). And knowing google, it won’t be long until the feature list improves.