Well, folks, it’s taken me a bazillion and eleventy years to finally decide my “killer” Mutt colour scheme, but here it is. Stick this in your .muttrc and bask in the glory.

color hdrdefault yellow black
color quoted brightred black
color signature magenta black
color indicator brightwhite red
color attachment black green
color error red black
color message white black
color search brightwhite magenta
color status brightyellow blue
color tree red black
color normal white black
color tilde green black
color bold brightyellow black
color markers red black
color header yellow black “.*:”
color header brightwhite black “^(From|Subject):”
mono header bold “^(From|Subject):”
color index brightblue black ~N
color index red black ~F
color index black green ~T
color index brightwhite black ~D
mono index bold ~N
mono index bold ~F
mono index bold ~T
mono index bold ~D

# Various smilies and the like
color body brightgreen black “<[Ee]?[Bb]?[Gg]>”
color body brightgreen black “<[Bb][Gg]>”
color body brightgreen black ” [;:]-*[)>(<|]”

# URLs
color body brightblue black “(http|ftp|news|telnet|finger)://[^ \"\t\r\n]*”
color body brightblue black “mailto:[-a-z_0-9.]+@[-a-z_0-9.]+”
mono body bold “(http|ftp|news|telnet|finger)://[^ \"\t\r\n]*”
mono body bold “mailto:[-a-z_0-9.]+@[-a-z_0-9.]+”

# email addresses
color body brightblue black “[-a-z_0-9.%$]+@[-a-z_0-9.]+\\.[-a-z][-a-z]+”
mono body bold “[-a-z_0-9.%$]+@[-a-z_0-9.]+\\.[-a-z][-a-z]+”

j.daniels: 15 minute job to move disks and filesystems? That’s impressive. What’s your secret?
j.dow: no, fifteen minute job to shut down box, add disks, and bring box back up
j.daniels: Ahh.
j.dow: the rest of it can be done hot. This is the cunning nature of sysadmins.
j.daniels: Sadly, not cunning enough to dodge your bed?
j.dow: it’s the exhaustion brought on by having such a highly powered intellect.
j.daniels: Or the crash after eating too much sugar.
j.dow: both are possible.

It doesn’t do this, by default, unless you’re syncing your whole music collection automatically. Which is a bit rubbish if, like me, you have an 8Gb iPod Touch and a 60Gb music library.

See, what I tend to do, to make sure I actually rotate my music and listen to more than one album (:-)) is have a smart playlist which contains 25 unrated songs selected randomly. But what I want to do is rate them on the ipod as they play and have their rating in iTunes updated on my next sync. Well, I’ve worked out it CAN be done, albeit in a slightly roundabout way.

1. Create your smart playlist: Mine matches the rule Rating is: (no stars), limit to 25 items, match only checked items, live updating.
2. I have another smart playlist which is my highest rated songs (this is one of the defaults you get) and another that I just drop random stuff I want to listen to in.
3. Connect your iPod. In the summary screen, make sure “Sync only checked songs and videos” is checked. In the Music tab you want to check “Sync Music” and “Selected playlists”.
4. Now select your playlists – I have me “Random Stuff” playlist, my “Top Rated” one and, of course, my “Unrated Songs” one.
5. Sync your ipod. Listen to songs. Rate them. Sync it again and POOF! iTunes updates!

This all sounds horribly obvious, you cry – why bother writing about it? It’s the “Summary” tab that’s the stumbling point. By default, you wouldn’t check “Sync on checked…” because that would be silly. But if you don’t, it doesn’t sync back. Go figure.

Ok, so there I was standing in my kitchen and gazing with a little horror and a touch of disgust at my fruit bowl. It had, as memory serves, contained a couple of bananas, a chinese pear, and a solitary wizened looking apple.

Imagine my shock to discover a small colony of unexpected grapes lying on the top!

I have several theories about how this came to be, described (in no particular order) below.

1. Spontaneous manifestation. In all fairness, I only considered this possibility for the briefest of moments. I believe spontaneous manifestation is tied either to a particularly strong will to live or to a strong sense of will to return originating from a hive mind. As I am not part of a hive mind, and as fruit (to the best of my knowledge) are not sentient, this possibility was dismissed brusquely, with a sound swat on the bottom.
2. Quantum Superpositioning. This is a very real possibility. I had spent rather a long time in the fruit section in Asda during the morning and, while I didn’t actually buy any grapes (that I can remember), spent a significant amount of time eyeing up the juicy goodies. My hypothesis here is that the intensity of my gaze, coupled with a healthy dose of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle,  generated enough high-energy activity at a quantum level to cause the fruit in question to immediately superposition, resulting in it existing simultaneously in Asda and in my fruit bowl. When the inevitable shiny distraction caused me to change the focus of my attention, the field was broken and the grapes were left stranded. This is a sound theory. I feel further research is needed; in particular using women’s undergarments as the experimental media.
3. Pixies. The Swamp Pixie, who has been spending an increasing amount of time stalking around my living room in the dead of night, posits that I may have a colony of wild male pixies living in my back garden. It may well be that the grapes have been left by one or other of these annoying little people as some form of primitive gift. Either way, tough luck! They’ve already been nommed.

It has been suggested to me that I may simply have bought the grapes and then forgotten about it and then forgotten that I’d forgotten. Not true. I’d remember if I’d forgotten I’d forgotten about something I’d boughten. I’m clearly perfect, and I don’t take kindly to people casting aspersions on my heroic intellect.

(15:19:21) j.dow/Home: Matey – can I schedule a two hour outage some evening to take a cold backup of live?
(15:19:41) Dave: aye
(15:19:54) j.dow/Home: or morning would work just as well (and be quieter)
(15:20:01) Dave: get a date in mind and then i’ll pass to Simon to notify the clients
(15:20:13) Dave: Morning may indeed be better if you can handle it
(15:20:16) j.dow/Home: wednesday, 5am?
(15:20:25) j.dow/Home: I’ll script it
(15:20:31) j.dow/Home: then get up to check it’s back up
(15:21:08) Dave: I think what you mean is you’ll “fandazzle it”
(15:21:30) Dave: that way the schnoozing should be positivly Christmaster
(15:21:31) j.dow/Home: exactly
(15:21:56) j.dow/Home: and I can ping you a spofnigator to congogulate the reticulated splines.
(15:22:22) Dave: absolcisely