Download Thunderbird emails as txt files

I’m still on holidays. Yes I am! Despite of the the tags of the post. But I can’t avoid thinking about what I need to do when I come back after my holidays. I’d love to have a law like the french right to disconnect but then, can I apply it if I’m not based in a certain place? And how can I disconnect my brain? Anyway, what I wanted to write down so I don’t forget it is how can I download as a txt file an email from my Thunderbird client.

The problem is the next. You have an email client for your corporative email address. That is already a supposition, since you may be a Microsoft Outlook person, or a gmail one. But let’s suppose you use Thunderbird. Then let’s suppose you have some kind of email quota (that we don’t have) or that you simply want to get the email content ordered by date on a specific folder, so you can copy them to a pendrive, or something like that. In my case, after managing doing what I want, I will try to build a database so I can order them by keywords, or by tags, and offer the result to a third person as a website. I may tell you about it after I’m back to work.

But I was saying…how can I nicely download the email as a real txt file? If you right click on a message, the contextual menu that appears is showing you a “Save as” option. If you continue, your message is saved as an eml file. An eml file is a nice thing to store, you can import it and read it with another email clients, and it comes with meta information. But it’s not nice to read. As it is said nowadays, it’s not human-readable. This is not exactly true, since if you do more over the downloaded file, you can somehow read it. And if you can read it, you can mine it.

So I went for an add-on. Ideally, I wanted an entry on the contextual menu offering me to download the whole folder as a text file, but I didn’t find it. I was fiddling around with several add-ons, but my solution was, at the end, ImportExportTools. With this add-on, you get even the option of downloading your email as PDF!

The procedure to install it is quite easy, but not standard. You download the add-on here, and then install it with the Add-on manager. Go to Menu –> Tools–> Add-ons, and look for the Extension section to the left. Since it’s raining heavily outside, I even did a screenshot for you:

 You see? Peanuts. Click on the wheel, and choose Install Add-on From File. Navigate to the place you downloaded ImportExportTools*.xpi and restart Thunderbird. Now, when you right-click on a message, after Save As, there is a new option called Save selected messages, that opens up a new menu with all the options you may need. The rest is up to your imagination. Or I could say, my imagination 😛

Have a nice holidays and enjoy your weather while you can 😀

Geography issues

It is hard to understand the geography of this new world. In principle, one can think it’s not so different, since people tend to stay around the area of the City they end up after falling, the inhabited clusters we call kernels. The most striking physical difference is, if we ignore the green moon with the tail and the space time inconsistency, the lack of our oceans. Despite of it, water seems to flow through a more extensive, world-wide and heavily packed, network of channels that we call in general the Rivers, and locally, only the river.

Some rivers seems to flow even against logic, upstream. Some of them are too straight to be natural, but the majority of them go through the path our rivers flow. So they are dubbed as the Earth ones, Thamesis, Donau, Ebro, Amazonas, and so on. Since we don’t have a reliable map of this earth, we can’t say all the Earth rivers are here, either that they follow the same route. Some people tried already to estimate the total amount of water, based on the number of rivers, the water speed, and so on. As far as I understood, our water is there, meaning this is still a Blue Planet, but it is distributed more evenly, instead of on big seas. There are small lakes, for example on the empty Mediterranean there is an agreement to call the water surface remaining close to Greece Thalassa,  Jadran to the equivalent Adriatic, Tyrren to the one around Corsica, and so on. I don’t know the names of the other lakes, but they exist all around. Then you have the oceanic trenches. The Mariana trench, Puerto Rico, and Cabo Verde were reported to be full with water, but some other trenches were missing. There were also new ones, like the Mid Atlantic one.

The other mystery (or not so mysterious if you think about it) is where are our trees, where are the forests. This dimension seems to be sun scorched earth, the yellow being the predominant color. The obvious answer seems to be on the Moon. The moon here is the green lung that on Earth is the Amazon, or the plankton of the seas. The accepted theory is that there is a flow of CO2 to the moon, and a flow of O2 back, through the green umbilical cord the transporters are using. Or something like that.

But to have an explanation to the problem of how we’re able to breath here is not meaning we understand it all. And the biggest question of all, the question that is our subject of research, is still unanswered. Who built the City and why?

Not so easy

Sorry guys but it looks like I can’t comfortably connect from here, so probably this blog will experience a holiday break. Besides, I’m in another time zone, which adds a plus to it if you are a man of costumes. Please keep in touch!

Kernel Seville

Right after we finished our onigiris the mecacar slowed down. From before, I know that a decrease of speed means the destination is close by or a change of path. Sometimes, you simply look like going in a straight direction, but in reality what you follow is a curve, and sometimes, these curves get extremely sharp, to the point that you can feel the centripetal force somehow drawing you to your left or to your right, like in an adult version of a merry-go-round.

I remember the Seville from Earth, of course. The area we are approaching has been populated mostly with the migrants from the original one. Amongst them of course you had the city lovers, those that were able to kill somebody for saying that they didn’t like their town. It’s true that Sevilla, the original one, not this kernel version, is a truly gorgeous architectonic pleasure, with the biggest gothic cathedral in the world in the very heart of the city. Oddly enough, kernel Seville has some kind of temple in the center also. Unfortunately for the deeply catholic lost inhabitants of the original one, it is not as gorgeous as the original. The style, that I studied already, is interesting enough: as other big temples of the Yellow Earth, it’s a multipurpose space, but this one, as a difference with the others, has a central high altar dedicated to the Sun. That one, of course, was the one brought down by the migrants fallen from Seville to build up its new Cathedral.

Actually, the image they now walk through the kernel in processions, from time to time, is not exent of some oddworld beauty. The tradition of parading our Lady of the Sun, a vaguely feminine figure dressed with gorgeous mantles from the original Seville, has now, as far as I know, 50 years of history and a loyal and growing group of devout followers. To the point that, despite of the ancient roman styled architecture predominant on this kernel, one could feel kernel Seville is simply a neighborhood of the Sevilla from Earth. I heard they’re even going to start their own Feria!

The road

“Doctor Wolfgang?” I never managed to convince Hiro that he can call me by my name, not by my title. Old habits die slowly.

“Yes?” The mecacar has been moving for a while in a straight line, speeding up through what it could have been a XX century highway or a II century roman road. I have no way to find out our speed, but I trust we will reach our destination as soon as possible. The landscape is boring: whoever built the area between the kernels didn’t do it paying attention to the beauty of it. Even so, I was able to appreciate some smoking chimneys here and there, so the terrain was not fully inhabited.

“Do you know if all the roads are built over minimal paths?”

“Good question. I can only speculate about it.” As usual, before speculating, I look at my student. It is not always the case he is expecting my explanation. “We don’t know yet how old is this City. Let’s assume is as old as mankind on Earth, or even older. You know it’s not uniform in architecture, so you can say it has not been homogeneously populated.” Hiro nods, but then he turns his face to the views from the window again. The steam engine cracks, the vehicle bumps. I look at the pressure of the boiler (I was said it should be monitored) and nothing is different, so I continue my monolog. Monologues are a powerful tool to clarify your thoughts, also. “We have remarkable examples of outstanding architectural achievements on our Earth before the Industrial Revolution. Take the Pyramids. Or the gothic cathedrals. How did they achieve that?” I love to leave the questions floating in the air, even knowing the answers can be easy, or that there is no answer. I simply love the power of it. “I will tell you, in most of the cases, even if not proven, by trial and error. By trial and error, in a new land, like here, you can find out that the animal you hunt has a lot of meat but its taste is horrible. Or viceversa, that the horrible animal is really tasty.” I don’t know why but at this moment the image of a big, fatty pork crosses my mind. When was the last time I saw one? Do they have porks here? They do have bacon, but it’s probably coming from our Earth…I continue. “So, how do we know what’s the best way to go from A to B on Earth if we have no maps? We ask the people about it. Someone needs to be first, then there will be a second, then somebody can think about making a road. Therefore, I could say we will find a road on the minimal route, if there is enough people flowing through it.”

“Then why we go by mecacar? We just need to hit the road.”

“Hiro, you can answer that question yourself, I think. Anyway, I will please you: we’re ourselves not sure the roads are stable. Our spacetime, the old we were considering before the fall, was expanding at a constant speed, after the Hubble constant. Don’t make me explain you that, I’m not the right person to speak about it. But it is not clear something similar is happening on this set of dimensions we’re now. What if , by mistake, we fall into a minimal path that is leading us, I don’t know, to a road that ends up in a land with zero time? ” Hiro looks at me. His face reads: please explain. “I mean, if nothing is constant, if the spacetime is some kind of chewing gum, there’s no reason to think we can end up surrounded by it, in a 3D bag, so to say, or worse things. A topological nightmare, somebody called the Universe we’re living now.” I look at Hiro, that is looking at me with the face I associate with an understanding. To no more questions. I don’t know if that is good, or bad, but I give a sip to my tea, as indicating the subject is over. We’re running steady. I have the feeling we’re going to reach Seville soon. “Does my talk answers your question?” Hiro nods to confirm my theories about his inscrutable face. “Very good. Then be a good boy and hand me another of these delicious onigiris you prepared in such a lovely way. Thank you so much! “

Packing up

It took us a couple of days to pack up our things. When you’re a field archaeologist, the problem is not to pack things but to actually leave the digging place. I find it quite annoying that, on the history of archaeology, nothing remains so long as virgin as when you found it. To the academic committee that visited us a week ago, I didn’t give information about the Watch, but about the strange alphabet that we were trying to decipher, I was forced to. It was too omnipresent to hide it, anyway, the interesting question was why was it not mentioned before. Was the System hiding us some information? Do they have another teams working on the same subject, somewhere else on the Yellow Earth? Time will say, but if this is the case, I want to be, we want to be, the first on being able to read it.

So two of our bags were filled with transcriptions and carbon copies of broken iron wheels and shattered marmor friezes and columns. If we manage to understand the language transcripted carefully and lovely by Hiro, we will have reading for a couple of months, and material for a couple of books. Not that somebody is publishing this kind of book at this side of the universe, but if they were. Our third bag was carrying lab equipment that we considered too rare to throw away or leave, like our optical microscope (analogic, by the way), our collection of precision scrapers, carefully cleaned and sharpened after the last use, the brushes, the cleaning liquids, the camera and the portable photo lab. Hiro was very curious about this aspect of my research method. The truth is, for some reason, in some circumstances, pictures taken by my Kodak from the XX century were revealing more than what meets the eye. I found out this phenomenon during my first days here, and since I didn’t find any reference to it (nobody was taking analog pictures here or what?) I dubbed it phantom aberrations.

Phantom aberrations pointed me out the place to dig to find the Watch. When I first arrived here, sent by the System, I took  a picture of the almost abandoned kernel from the top of one building.  Some white shadows appeared on it once I managed to get a positive B&W picture, and under the third one I chose to dig out we found it. The Watch. The other shadows were also having interesting remnants, but nothing like it. Anyway, to get to the Watch I think paid off already to carry an old analog camera with me, together with all the liquids.

I pressed the start button of our mecacar the morning of the third day, after having a last look to this kernel from the very top of the building I took my first picture. We were carrying 5 bags in total, and the mood was great. We were sure to get it. Whatever it was at the end of the road.

Install ionic on Cent OS 7

I want to develop an app. It was recommended to me to do it using ionic.  My system is Cent OS 7. This is the story of how I reached a healthy ionic framework. The Ampersand academy has a short how-to, that I tried without success. So what is wrong? When I try

curl --silent --location https://rpm.nodesource.com/setup_5.x 
| bash -

That results in this nice warning:

DEPRECATION WARNING
Node.js v5.x is no longer actively supported!

Anyway, I continue

yum install -y nodejs
 yum install -y gcc-c++ make
 npm version
1.4.21
 yum install git
 git --version
git version 1.8.3.1
npm install -g cordova ionic

Ends up with all kind of errors. Also if I run npm step by step. The errors look like:

 something: wanted: {"node":">=4.0"} 
(current: {"node":"0.10.30","npm":"1.4.21"})

So let’s fix node and try again. I don’t know why I didn’t try it before, but there is a nodejs package on the epel repository. I first remove what I just installed (that ended up on /usr/local/bin) and do as written:

yum install epel-releaseyum install nodejs
yum install npm

To be sure, I open a new shell and check the versions.

$ node --version
v6.10.3
$ npm --version
3.10.10

That’s much better. I go back to a root shell, and install cordova and ionic. This is my output:

# npm install -g cordova
npm WARN deprecated node-uuid@1.4.8: Use uuid module instead
/usr/bin/cordova -> /usr/lib/node_modules/cordova/bin/cordova
/usr/lib
└─┬ cordova@7.0.1 
 └─┬ cordova-lib@7.0.1
 └─┬ cordova-js@4.2.1
 └─┬ browserify@13.3.0
 └── crypto-browserify@3.11.1

# npm install -g ionic
/usr/bin/ionic -> /usr/lib/node_modules/ionic/bin/ionic
- has-ansi@2.0.0 node_modules/ionic/node_modules/has-ansi
...something here...
- strip-ansi@4.0.0 node_modules/ionic/node_modules/
string-width/node_modules/strip-ansi
/usr/lib
└─┬ ionic@3.5.0 
 ├─┬ @ionic/cli-utils@1.5.0 
 │ ├── ci-info@1.0.0 
 │ ├── slice-ansi@1.0.0 
 │ ├─┬ strip-ansi@4.0.0 
 │ │ └── ansi-regex@3.0.0 
 │ └─┬ wrap-ansi@2.1.0
 │ └─┬ strip-ansi@3.0.1 
 │ └── ansi-regex@2.1.1 
 └─┬ chalk@2.0.1 
 ├── ansi-styles@3.1.0 
 └── supports-color@4.2.0

Will it work? Time to test. I open a normal shell, and try as suggested to create a todo project. This is my output:

ionic start todo blank --type ionic1
✔ Creating directory ./todo - done!
[INFO] Fetching app base
 (https://github.com/ionic-team/ionic-app-base/
archive/master.tar.gz)
✔ Downloading - done!
[INFO] Fetching starter template blank
 (https://github.com/ionic-team/ionic-starter-blank/
archive/master.tar.gz)
✔ Downloading - done!
[INFO] Fetching resources
 (https://github.com/ionic-team/ionic-default-resources/
archive/master.tar.gz)
✔ Downloading - done!
✔ Updating package.json with app details - done!
✔ Creating configuration file ionic.config.json - done!
[INFO] Installing dependencies may take several minutes!
> npm install
✔ Running command - done!
> npm install --save-dev --save-exact 
@ionic/cli-plugin-ionic1@latest
✔ Running command - done!
> npm install --save-dev --save-exact 
@ionic/cli-plugin-gulp@latest
✔ Running command - done!
> git init
✔ Running command - done!
> git add -A
✔ Running command - done!
> git commit -m "Initial commit" --no-gpg-sign
✔ Running command - done!
♬ ♫ ♬ ♫ Your Ionic app is ready to go! ♬ ♫ ♬ ♫
Run your app in the browser (great for initial development):
 ionic serve
Run on a device or simulator:
 ionic cordova run ios
Test and share your app on a device with the Ionic View app:
 http://view.ionic.io 
? Link this app to your Ionic Dashboard 
to use tools like Ionic View? Yes

You will need to login in order to link this app. 
Please run the following commands to do so.
 ionic login - login first
 ionic link - then link your app

Go to your newly created project: cd ./todo

And I’m also able to see it on the browser.

cd todo/
$ ionic serve
[INFO] Starting server: --port=8100 --p=8100 
--livereload-port=35729 --r=35729
 --address=0.0.0.0 - Ctrl+C to cancel
[INFO] Development server running
 Local: http://localhost:8100

Everything seems to work. It’s time now to get serious and start coding ❤