[LINK] My communications setup, email, Web, phone - not RSS, IM, Twitter etc.

[Robin Whittle]

Prompted by the "online straw poll (dedicated s/w web/rss/mail)"
thread, here is a longish account of my communications setup, going
beyond the immediate question to show how I organise email and use my
web browser.  I use email a lot.

I use a Windows XP desktop machine (Core 2 Duo) with:

  Firefox       Web browsing.

  Thunderbird   Email, to my own IMAP server here.

I don't use RSS.  I currently have one Google news alert which sends
me emails.

I am on about two dozen active mailing lists for all sorts of things.
   This is largely how I keep "in touch".

Instead of using email-client based mail filtering, I have a
specially modified Courier Maildrop mail filtering system which sorts
the mailing list messages into their own IMAP mailboxes, but can
leave a copy of them in the Inbox, but tagged for deletion.  This
means I can see all my messages, including all mailing list messages,
in the Inbox, and then use Imap Expunge (File > Compact folders) to
get rid of the mailing list messages from my Inbox.  I sometimes
"undelete" them (reversing the tagged for deletion flag) before doing
so, if I want to keep a mailing list message in my Inbox.

  http://www.firstpr.com.au/web-mail/mta-integration-01/
  http://www.firstpr.com.au/web-mail/Maildrop-mods-filtering/

The mail filtering system uses SpamAssassin to catch most spam.  Some
is put in a Spam-marginal mailbox and most goes into an ordinary Spam
mailbox.  The Spam-marginal one is best reviewed manually to see if
any legitimate mail was accidentally classified as spam.  Still,
dozens of spams get through a day.  About 400 a day are caught by
SpamAssassin and never appear in my Inbox.  There are about 260
mailing list messages a day.

Also, if my email address is used as the sender address of a spam, I
get dozens to hundreds of backscatter messages which make it past
SpamAssassin (which is not really meant to catch them, though it has
the option) into my Inbox.

I have a mailbox of the pre-filter messages, so I can easily look for
something which should have arrived recently but which might have
been classified as spam, or which I might have accidentally deleted
from the Inbox.

I occasionally send "notes to self" emails so I retain this
information indefinitely.  My Inbox and Sent mailboxes are usually
the last 6 to 12 months.  I have two larger mailboxes for all these
messages in previous years, going back ten years.  I keep some
mailboxes of mailing lists indefinitely since it is so easy to search
them.  The nightly gzip of all mailboxes to another Linux machine is
about 2.7GB.

My own mailserver system is not yet set up properly to avoid
generating backscatter.  This is the Centos 5.1 machine on the DSL
line and another Centos 5.1 server I rent in the USA as a secondary
MTA and DNS server.  Both use the Postfix MTA.  I need to implement
SPF and or some other methods:

  http://spamlinks.net/prevent-secure-backscatter.htm

on both these servers to stop them generating backscatter directed at
accounts on other servers.  The exact reasons for this backscatter
are complex and I need to look into it in detail.

I run Squirrel Mail web-mail on my server at home, so I can access my
email from anywhere.  It accesses the Courier IMAP server on the same
machine.  This was easy to get going and seems to work really well.

When away from home, I direct the mailing list messages to a separate
mailbox, and not into my Inbox.  This way I don't have so much stuff
in the Inbox and don't have to compact the Inbox to get rid of it.

I use my Telstra landline phone for local calls and my Telstra GSM
phone (Nokia 7110, 9 years old, still working fine on the original
battery) for calls to cellphones.  For long distance and
international calls I use Internode's Nodephone (I am on Internode
DSL) via an Open812L adaptor box.

I sometimes listen to audio or video things via the Net, but I don't
downloads heaps of stuff, run Itunes or have an iPod.

I do not:

  Give my cellphone number to people in general - they can
  best call me at home.  It would be different if I was
  frequently away from home.

  Send SMS text messages or encourage people to send them to me.

    (Crappy little things intended initially for telling GSM
     users they have a voice-mail waiting.  Now a multibillion
     dollar industry - and I recognise why some people like it.
     Also, I have reliable reports that some people use the
     one-way SMS as an alternative to talking to the person and
     telling them something awkward.)

  Use Skype or web-cam video calls etc.  (My wife and I may
  do this to keep in touch with friends and relatives OS.

  Use VoIP except for outgoing calls to long distance and
  international numbers.

  Use any kind of IM or chat program.  I really hate them.  If
  it is real-time, I much prefer to talk by phone.

  Use RSS, "Live bookmarks" etc.

  Use Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Digg, Reddit etc. etc. & etc.

  Run a peer-to-peer filesharing system, except very occasionally
  to find something specific.

  Look at slashdot, arstechnica etc. though no doubt there is
  interesting stuff there.

Life is complicated enough as it is.  I am a 1955 model.  I have a
bunch of research projects, paying work and other things going on,
but I don't want any real-time distractions or too many types of
communication system.  I tend to work best when it is quiet, whereas
a a few decades ago I would be much more likely to listen to music.
I do listen to music sometimes, but never with vocals if I am trying
to read or write.

I keep my incoming communications to snailmail, email and phone
calls.  Email is by far the most frequent source of incoming
communication.

I read the physical copy of The Age, listen to Radio National
occasionally - and sometimes look at news on abc.net.au, bbc.co.uk or
cnn.com .

I probably use Google search 50 to 100 times a day on average.

I bookmark anything of interest and have almost no organisation to
the bookmark system.  I keep frequently used ones at the top and then
the list just grows.  Every few years I chop out some old things
after searching them for things I want to keep.  Currently I have
9225 items.   In the last year, I added about 2000 bookmarks.

The searchability of bookmarks is very important.  The best way is
via the Bookmarks > Organise Bookmarks menu.  There, I can see the
date of things which match the search.  From that I can see what else
I bookmarked around that time.  I back up the bookmarks file regularly.

I was keeping my browsing history for 90 days.  Now it is set to 200.
 Since I don't always bookmark everything I later want to find,
searching the history is really valuable.  24k web pages in 90 months
 = 266 a day = one every 5 minutes averaged over 24 hours a day.

I have a P4 Debian desktop machine too, but its mouse - Logitech
thumb-operated trackball really - acceleration doesn't work, as I
think is the case on most X-windows machines.  I think this is a
significant but under-recognised barrier to adoption of Linux for
desktop computers.  I looked at the code a few years ago it was a mess.

Both desktop computers use big IBM P275 CRT monitors - one day I will
get an LCD monitor, but I want one with very wide viewing range, so I
can edit photos without having to fuss with the exact viewing angle.

I need to use Windows for some things at least (printed circuit
design, PIC microcontroller programming, Intel FORTRAN compiler
etc.), and I find the copy and paste arrangements helpful.  I use
PuTTY to SSH to my Linux machines.

I use GNU gFTP on the Linux machine to transfer files to and from the
US server via SSH2.  I also run Firefox on this machine and keep a
few Weather Bureau pages open.  Best not keep the weather radar pages
open, since I found it chewing bandwidth by loading images
repetitively.  I leave both machines running.  The Linux desktop
machine is the overnight backup for the mail-server, DSL gateway
machine.

The mail server, DSL gateway etc. machine runs Centos 5.1 with
X-windows, but I hardly ever touch it.  It sits on a milk crate with
a small, cheap, UPS wired up to a car battery so it can run for
hours.  It is an 800MHz PIII and runs nice and cool, with two 80G
Seagate drives using software RAID 1:

  http://www.firstpr.com.au/web-mail/CentOS-5.1-RAID-1/

  - Robin