Webmail auto-refresh

For the next week, I'm working off someone else's PC so I'm using a webmail site (which uses the Squirrelmail system) to check email rather than set up Thunderbird. The problem with some webmail systems is that you have to keep refreshing the web page to see new emails. Some may have options to change this but I found a useful Firefox extension this morning called ReloadEvery which solved my problem quickly. You'll need the Firefox browser for this.

To set it up:

1. Download the extension and install (If Firefox pops up a message saying that it prevented the installation, click on Edit Options on the right of the message, click on Allow to add addons.mozilla.org to the allowed sites list, and try again)
   
2. Close and reopen Firefox
3. Now when you open your inbox page on webmail, right-click on the page, select Reload Every->1m (or whatever you want).
4. Again, right-click on the page and select Reload->Enable. The web page will now refresh every minute

There is a downside - if you're reading/writing an email and the screen refreshes then you could drop back to the main page so make sure to turn off the refresh (right-click, Reload->Enable) when you're using the system.

Of course, there are other good uses for this extension. You can use it to auto-refresh a news page. If your web connection goes down, you can set it up to auto-refreshing any webpage so you can tell when the connection comes back up (like leaving the lights on during a power cut :-) ). This can all be done with some scripting as well but this extension saves you that hassle.

Recovering the iTunes library

Presently, I see myself clearer
Why time I visualize
I spy device in the mirror
Checkmate watch machine die
-- from 'Never The Machine Forever' by Kim Thayil

Okay, the song is not about computers but (besides finding an excuse to introduce some Soundgarden into the blog) the struggle described therein is a good metaphor. And it segues into my first post which is about an iTunes problem I had this morning.

There I am. Up early of a Sunday, ready to do some work. I make some coffee, turn on the PC, load up iTunes for some motivational... motivation (I had not drunk the coffee yet). And... nothing. Empty library, no playlists, nothing. My painstakingly compiled lists of emo-friendly, industrial cyberjazz were lost to the world. A senseless tragedy.

After the initial panic, I did the obligatory Google. There seem to be a few reasons why this happens. I had not upgraded iTunes, installed any new programs in the last month, or renamed my MP3 folder so I am in the clear. After some Googling, I found out that iTunes sometimes creates temporary copies of your library files when updating its information and then commits the changes. My guess is that during this operation, iTunes dropped the ball mid-change or else some other process interfered with it.

Anyway, it was a simple fix once I realised that the iTunes library files are stored with the .itl extension. My "iTunes Library.itl" file was 29KB in size which was way too small but luckily the temporary .itl files were still present. If you have this problem in Windows, try the following:

1. Close iTunes
   
2. Go to your iTunes folder (My Documents\My Music\iTunes)
3. Make a backup of the contents just in case
4. Find the most recent .itl file - it might be iT.tmp
5. Rename "iTunes Library.itl" to "iTunes Library.itl.old"
6. Rename iT.tmp (or whatever) to "iTunes Library.itl"
7. Restart iTunes

I hope this helps someone.

The Digital Phage

Computers have revolutionized our lives; instead of spending eight hours a day accomplishing a simple task, we can now do it in an hour... however, the other seven hours can usually be spent battling with buggy software, viruses and malware, spam, software configuration, and all sorts of information management tasks.

My posts in this blog will try to concentrate on solutions to common problems. Hopefully they'll be of use to someone else. I don't intend to post regularly and take no responsibility for any adverse side effects (may include loss of appetite, chronic diarrhea, mild discomfort, and death).