eamonnsullivan (u/eamonnsullivan)

eamonnsullivan commented on Putting email in its place with Emacs and Mu4e eamonnsullivan.co.uk/post... · Posted by u/eamonnsullivan

CreRecombinase · 3 days ago

Have you tried this yet? Looks like it uses the ms graph API https://github.com/jgunthorpe/cloud_mdir_sync

eamonnsullivan · 3 days ago

I got briefly excited about this one, but I've run into the same issue of needing the IT department to explicitly permit me:

https://github.com/jgunthorpe/cloud_mdir_sync/issues/25

eamonnsullivan commented on Putting email in its place with Emacs and Mu4e eamonnsullivan.co.uk/post... · Posted by u/eamonnsullivan

kkylin · 3 days ago

I have been using mu4e for years, and am generally happy with it, and yet... I've never recommended it to anyone else. Unlike, say, org-mode or magit, which I'd happily evangelize.

The pain points are what other commenters have said:

- I don't find the default config a good fit for me, and run it heavily customized. As someone said everything in Emacs turns into a project...

- Performance can be an issue, especially indexing new mail (and especially if you like to lug around a copy of most of your emails locally as I do). On a laptop while traveling this used to be more of a problem, but newer versions are notieably quicker and newer laptops have better battery life.

- HTML rendering isn't great. Thankfully I don't get too many important messages that isn't just plain text. This might be a reasonable use case for xwidget-webkit though I'd imagine there are security/privacy issues to work out. (Another Emacs project -- yay!)

When I started I thought it would be an efficient way to get through lots of emails, and it has been for the most part. I'm just not sure I've saved time overall unless one counts the hours configuring it as "entertainment / hobby" rather than "work".

eamonnsullivan · 3 days ago

I too am a bit surprised this made it on the front page. Mu4e is definitely niche, and I wouldn't crow about it like I do org or magit. I've only been using it for less than a month and it will be a while before I know whether it is a net win.

Also, the real test would have been my much more voluminous work email!

The HTML rendering isn't great, as you said, but you are two keystrokes from opening that email in a browser, if you have to.

And I have tweaked the config several times now, but I think that's mostly because I'm changing my (and the charity's) email, which involves a lot of shuffling about. Again, in six months, I'll have another look and decide whether it _really_ helped.

eamonnsullivan commented on Putting email in its place with Emacs and Mu4e eamonnsullivan.co.uk/post... · Posted by u/eamonnsullivan

abbefaria27 · 4 days ago

I tried setting up mu4e once. It wasn’t worth it. It took me literally a few hours of reading random blog posts to figure out the configuration, and that was only to download email. Never got around to setting up sending them, which is a totally separate process. Even then, there were lots of issues. First, it’s slow. Loading an email had a noticeable pause and was slower than GMail. Also, you can’t avoid HTML email nowadays. There’s a very basic render, but expect all the formatting to be wrong. I also ran into rate limits from Google because we get way too much email at work. That’s not mu4e’s fault, but just another obstacle. Can’t really have my inbox be one hour behind real time.

eamonnsullivan · 3 days ago

This was my second attempt to get email working on Emacs and I gave up the first time, too. I persisted this time and I _think_ it will pay off. There is the obvious danger of this becoming another "project", but I'll make a note to check-in again in six months. It's an experiment!

I've not seen the other things you mentioned. I only check for email every 10 minutes, but opening and (especially) searching for emails seem much faster than doing it in Gmail. Plus, I can do searches across email accounts, like all unreads across all three accounts. That was definitely slower in the online clients.

Finally, there's a quick ('a' then 'v') way to just open a message in a browser if the HTML is too thick.

eamonnsullivan commented on Putting email in its place with Emacs and Mu4e eamonnsullivan.co.uk/post... · Posted by u/eamonnsullivan

mickeyp · 4 days ago

Have you tried using the hardcoded Thunderbird (or similar) oauth credentials to authenticate to Google et al? You can also use davmail to proxy your requests to Office 365 / Exchange and it handles oauth also.

eamonnsullivan · 4 days ago

I tried both. The error from davmail suggests it was specifically blocked/prohibit and I failed using actual Thunderbird.

eamonnsullivan commented on A One-Minute ADHD Test psychotechnology.substack... · Posted by u/eatitraw

teekert · 20 days ago

Sounds familiar. I've been quite successful professionally, I have accomplished many nice things. But always in the final days/hours and under extreme pressure (ie 2 nights of no sleep to finish PhD thesis in time for print for defense, etc, very difficult for people around me also. I'm currently working on our old house. Also not nice for me, and people around me. The results are pretty nice and technically fully correct though.)

I've had the same comment about being chaotic, and not being able to see the bigger picture during performance reviews my whole life. But I've always felt unable to see the bigger picture if not understanding the details. Although recently I've gotten better at letting go, trusting my mental models etc, but also at finding great, structured project leads (or assistants if I'm in the lead). Such people are invaluable to me, although I must say that I also start to find it easier and easier to just copy their behaviour (ie things like "Start project with timeline, not important if it's 100% accurate, its more about the order of things" - etc... At least you will appear very structured which radiates confidence!).

I've also had a manager at one point in my career that said: We really just want you to start many things, you are in research not in development. It's great that you start with so much enthusiasm, let de development people determine the fit for product later... (But perhaps a bit more "eye on the market" would be nice!)

That was somewhat of an eye opener, at 35 (42 now).

eamonnsullivan · 20 days ago

This is an important point that I missed and didn't mention: My work and school life were really hard and chaotic. This is so intrinsically part of me that I didn't even notice, but has generated a lot of stress on me and my family. I guess getting treatment would have saved me a lot of that. I wonder if it is worth it, as a 62-year-old and probably within 5/6-ish years of retirement?

eamonnsullivan commented on A One-Minute ADHD Test psychotechnology.substack... · Posted by u/eatitraw

eamonnsullivan · 20 days ago

I worry about all of this labelling that we apply to various ends of the "normal" spectrum. Where does it lead us? Is it actually helping?

I easily score as ADHD, but I'm in my 60s now and have never been diagnosed or treated. I have muddled through all my life. Yes, I often self-medicated unhealthily (cigarettes, various over-the-counter uppers), but also relatively healthily (I've been practicing meditation for decades). I managed to have two, long, fruitful careers (20 years of journalism, coming up to 20 years of software engineering) that (I'm betting) was at least partly attributable to me being on the outer edges of normal.

I think that's OK. I'm not looking to be "treated" because I'm a bit different.

eamonnsullivan commented on IDEmacs: A Visual Studio Code clone for Emacs codeberg.org/IDEmacs/IDEm... · Posted by u/nogajun

eamonnsullivan · a month ago

I love these packages (like this, Spacemacs, Doom, etc.), even though I've used Emacs for over 30 years. I don't use them directly, but they give me ideas and alert me to packages I haven't heard of (eat?). And that gives me an excuse to go on another round of config-tweaking, which any Emacs user loves.

eamonnsullivan commented on UK backing down on Apple encryption backdoor after pressure from US arstechnica.com/tech-poli... · Posted by u/azalemeth

DrBazza · 5 months ago

Sadly, UK Parliament is made up of political careerists and art students, which is probably similar to most Western democracies. There's a saying 'those who can do, those who can't teach', it probably needs a final 'and those that can't teach, go into politics'.

Every time ukgov tries to make some sort of tech policy, it's embarassingly wrong, or naive, or both.

This comes from a country that effectively gave away ARM.

https://studee.com/media/mps-and-their-degrees-media

The most popular subjects for MPs who won seats in the Dec 2019 election

    Politics - 20%

    History - 13%

    Law -12%

    Economics - 10%

    Philosophy - 6%

    English - 4%

eamonnsullivan · 5 months ago

I'm a principal software engineer with a degree in history. You don't need a science degree to understand most of these issues sufficiently to legislate them. But you need humility and a willingness to learn. That, sadly, is lacking in too many governments and civil services.

Also, the people pushing for these measure (e.g., the U.K's equivalent of the NSA, GCHQ and most national-level police departments) understand these issues perfectly well.

eamonnsullivan commented on The Ghosts of Gaelic historytoday.com/archive/... · Posted by u/apollinaire

JetSetWilly · 8 months ago

Why? It’s not about ireland - it’s about scotland. Article makes complete sense in a scottish context.

eamonnsullivan · 8 months ago

I absolutely understand that, but it seems concerned with the same things (preserving a minority language) and there are lots of initiatives in this area all over the U.K. Literally, right next door.