VACUUMing your mail.app with SQLite
Via BoingBoing and Cory Doctorow (who switched to Ubuntu from Mac OS X), a speedup tip for mail.app – pretty easy and fast.
- Close mail.app
- Backup your mail
- Open a terminal window
- Go to your mail directory with cd ~/Library/Mail
- Start SQLite (which is installed by default) with sqlite3 Envelope\ Index
- Clean up your mail DB with vacuum subjects;
- Wait for the sqlite prompt to reappear
- Exit SQLite with ctrl-D
- Open mail.app again and enjoy the improved speed!
Lego Mindstorms
Fulfilling a long time dream, last week I ordered a Lego Mindstorms NXT kit. It’s a great way to get my lets-build-things neurons working again, and to return a little into programming, with the difference that your “programs” roam around your living room! 
Here are the results of this first week, this is my second robot “designed” by me (if you call “lets see where this is going while I’m building it” approach anything resembling the act of designing something), and the software I “wrote” in NXT-G. The program is basically:
- make the robot go forward until it stops if
- the distance as measured by the ultrasonic sensor in front is less than a certain distance
- backs the robot up a bit
- turns the sensor platform 90º to the right
- captures the distance into variable R90
- turns the sensor platform 180º to the left
- captures the distance into variable L90
- turns the sensor platform 90º to the right (to reposition it forward)
- compares the distances stored on variables L90 and R90
- makes the robot turn 90º left or right depending on which side has the furthest distance available
- loop to the beginning
The robot: 
The program: 
The robot in action – Windows Media or Quicktime
