How to recover emails from .emlx files in Mail

The other day I was transferring some emails from one IMAP account to another (in Mail) and suddenly when a error occurred I noticed that, not only the emails did not transferred to the destination IMAP account, the original emails disappeared from the original source IMAP account.

My first thought was (right after the cursing): "well, I can use Time Machine to recover the emails by restoring the corresponding folder in the Mail archive folder". And so I did. But for my surprise, that only restored a bunch of .emlx files (one for each email) and when I opened Mail again, the folder was still empty. I guess it tries to consult the server version first and since it is now empty, it won't show you any emails.

So I'm stuck with these .emlx and have no idea how to put the emails back on Mail. However, using some Google-fu, I was again able to find this very useful blog post that perfectly explains how one can use .emlx files to import emails back to Mail. Enjoy

Well, this is just embarassing

Really, it is. I just noticed that my iTunes was no longer allowing me to use half-star ratings and then I remembered that the upgrade to Snow Leopard must have screwed that up. So, I did a quick Google search for "activate half-star ratings" to try to fix it again.

And guess what was the first result. That's right: this one.

Installing Snow Leopard (on a Mac OS X Tiger machine)

So, as you may know (and probably getting tired of knowing by now) I upgraded to Snow Leopard. The process was very simple and there's really no point in doing a thorough analysis of it, so I'll just leave some photos that I took while waiting.

Just before that, a few tips for those of you that want to upgrade as well:

• Backup your old data before upgrading
  
• Have you backup everything? No, go ahead... I'll wait
• And when you think you've backup everything just make a final check :-)
• Then insert the disc and install Mac OS X 10.6 a.k.a. Snow Leopard

Chances are that everything will go smoothly and no problems will arise from installing the new operating system. But since uncle Murphy is always looking waiting for the right moment to appear, you might as well be prepared with all your data safe somewhere.

Another quick note: this post is about my experience which consisted on upgrading from Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) to 10.6. So, this post is not really helpful to those of you upgrading from Leopard.

I bought the Mac Box Set (which includes Mac OS X 10.6, iLife'09 and iWork'09). Yeah, I know I could have just bought the $29 update package that can also do the upgrade from Tiger, but didn't so for two reasons:

1. I would be in violation of Apple's license agreement
2. I wouldn't have iLife'09 and iWork'09

So, with the package on my desk, it was quite easy to see what I should do:

(I like these little messages that Apple pust on the packages with "slight" hints of what to do)

After inserting the DVD, one clear difference from the Leopard upgrading process was that installing it from Tiger, requires restarting the machine right from the beginning of the installation process:


After a quick restart, the installation process asks which language you want to use:


And then, you're ready to start the installation. In my case, I decided to wipe clean the hard disk with the Disk Utility to make sure that all the accumulated garbage I had on the previous version of Mac OS X (yes, I backup everything before. Did you?)


After cleaning up the hard disk, it was time to start the real installation:



Obviously, the "time remaining" part of the installation process is never accurate and it more or less bounced from 30 minutes to 28, back to 29 and then to 26 (for a really long time), then 23 and then going on normally until 11 minutes and then suddenly it finishes. So, in total it took about 26 minutes to finish this part. At this point, I decided to read the manual that comes with the disc and get myself acquainted with the novelties in 10.6.


After copying all the files and restarting "again", the new OS boots with the usual flying "welcome" messages in several different languages:


And then after just setting up the usual stuff (language and keyboard preferences, user accounts, etc...)...


... I was ready to use my new Mac OS X:


So, from start to finish, I took exactly 48 minutes to upgrade. Not bad for a clean install.
After that, I just inserted the iLife'09 DVD, installed it and then the same for the iWork'09. More or less 10 minutes for each.

Loving the new Operating System

Yes, it's fast... and I mean really fast. Clicking on folders and files seems to open these a lot faster and navigation is usually more fluid. The new features (remember that I was coming from Tiger) like Spaces, Time Machine and Stacks are really cool.

Recovering my data was quite straightforward and I didn't face any major problems (except one that I'll mention bellow) so in a couple of hours I had my machine up and running almost like the previous version.

Now for the boring part

The boring part was in fact checking compatibilities for applications. I backup my previously installed applications so that I could use them now. Most of them worked without any problems, but some of them required installing new versions. And not so amusing, some of them are only available for Snow Leopard in beta versions. Which means that bugs may surface. But so far, it has been quite peaceful.

The only app that I'm having a hard time is QuickSilver. Because I use it all the time and some of its plugins are not yet available in the 10.6 version, in some ways it is more or less useless for me right now.

I also had some problems with a few of my calendars. I have 5 calendars that I used in the previous version of iCal (in Tiger). I backed up everything but when it was time to import them to the new iCal, only 2 of them imported successfully. I don't know why, but for some reason those other 3 calendars were being very stubborn.

Since I heard that Snow Leopard now had built-in support for Google Calendar integration with iCal, I decided to try the following:

1. Create new calendars on Google Calendar
2. Import the information of the 3 non-working calendars to Google Calendar
3. Synchronize with iCal

Guess what? It worked perfectly. Now, I have GCalendar <-> iCal dual integration working perfectly.
Why didn't the calendars import on iCal and did so on Google Calendar, I'll never know. But it's good to know that Google is always here to help :-) By the way, the same built-in integration between Google Contacts (and Yahoo Contacts) and Address Book is also available, provided that you use iSync for the synchronization process.

So, in the end I'm quite pleased with this process and it was a lot less painful than I thought it would be. I fully recommend upgrading to Snow Leopard but bare in mind that some of the applications may not work in Snow Leopard. So, do your homework, and check the compatibilities beforehand.

Google Quick Search Box vs Quicksilver

Sure, Google Quick Search Box looks cool, but can it do this?

Retro-blogging: best posts of June 2008

Previously, on "The Mac Newbie":

• How to open a terminal path in Finder
• How to see High-Definition Trailers on FrontRow
• How to open PDFs on Firefox 3
• How to download musics from MySpace using Safari and "wget"
• How to make your Mac sing to you
  

Tweeting from Terminal

I still prefer the Twitter+Quicksilver integration tip, but if you're a Terminal geek addict, then this tip is for you.

Mac Highlights of 2008

The UsingMac blog has made an impressive post with the highlights of the Mac world of 2008. From apps to tips, tricks, tweaks, plugins, wallpapers and tutorials, you'll find everything there. Have a look.

1 year of Mac: Quicksilver, the best Mac application...ever

I already included Quicksilver in my list of essential applications for Mac OS X but due to the impact that this application has had on my productivity, I decided to make a special post to show how powerful this application is.

Basically, Quicksilver is an application that waits on the background for the user to call it (using a particular keystroke - I use Alt (Option) + Space) and then invoke a specific command by writing just a few letters (usually the initials of the command). So, let's have a look at the kind of commands we can use:

The basic functionality of this application is to work as an app launcher:


But it can also be used to open individual files (to use a group of files, you just have to insert a comma ',' to separate the several files):



There's a bunch of options to be used with files. For example, I can rename them, get more info, copy/move them to specific folders or simply delete them by moving them to the Trash:




And for when you have the Trash full, you can use Quicksilver to empty it:



Quicksilver can also be used as a calculator. After invoking Quicksilver, just insert '=' and automatically the app will interpret this as new math function:



Using a set of Apple Scripts, you can also use Quicksilver to control iTunes playback by skipping to the next or previous song or playing/pausing/stopping:


You can also browse your iTunes library using simple browsing/searching commands:


Quicksilver can provide access to your contacts and allows editing the contact's info and even create mail messages:


In fact, you can use Quicksilver to send a specific file (or group of files) by e-mail for a bunch of your contacts without even opening Mail.app:


If you need to Zip a folder, just select it and invoke the Compress command.


Then you can use the result to store the file somewhere in your computer or simply e-mail to a contact of your choice:


One of the most amazing commands that you can use on Quicksilver is image manipulation. For example, you can automatically scale an image using the "Scale Image..." command and providing the scale ratio (in percentage or pixels):


One useless command (but always funny) is the "Speak Text" command. Basically it can make your Mac speak any text that you input on Quicksilver (only in text mode, which is accessible by entering '.' as a command):


Since Quicksilver also monitors Safari and Firefox's bookmarks, you can take advantage of a special feature of the application. Whenever a bookmark URL contains '***', Quicksilver interprets that as input text. So, you can create your very own custom search engine directly from Quicksilver. For example, to search on Wikipedia, create the following bookmark on Safari: "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=***". Then rescan Quicksilver's catalog and invoke the bookmark and insert the input text:


For searching Google, use the following Bookmark URL: "http://www.google.com/search=q=***":


And finally, a tip for Twitter fans. If you like to post constant updates on Twitter but don't like to have to access the website just to enter your new status, you'll be glad to know that there's a way to integrate this functionality directly into Quicksilver, thus turning it into the simplest Twitter client that ever existed:


Some of these commands are not accessible in the default installation of Quicksilver. To make these commands available, you may have to install the correct plugins, but that's easily done through the application's preferences.

I hope you find this post useful and hopefully it will trigger your curiosity into testing this great application. I know it may take some time to get used to it, but once you do, you won't regret it.

Enjoy!

1 year of Mac: Windows/Mac interoperability

One of the things that worried me the most when I decided to switch to Mac OS X, is the interoperability with Windows. Because I have to collaborate with some work colleagues that use Windows, namely in writing papers, reports, presentations and other documents, I had to make sure that switching to Mac wasn't going to jeopardize these collaboration activities.


The first step was to ensure that I could do the same things in Mac OS X that I was able to do in Windows. And to that end, the switcher's application guide and the how-to switch to Mac guide from the Tao of Mac were really helpful. For example, the application guide allowed me to discover that the Mac OS X's equivalent to Nero was Burn, a nice and simple CD\DVD burning application. And the switching guide is excellent to learn those small differences between the Windows environment and Mac OS X environment. Other guides were also useful.

The second step was to ensure that it was possible to maintain a fair level of interoperability between the two operating systems so as to make sure that I could still do my work once I switched. And to my surprise, the interoperability between the two systems is quite efficient and peaceful: whether it's for network file sharing (whether is PC-to-Mac or Mac-to-PC), playing media files between the two systems (for example, playing WMV files on a Mac), printer sharing (again PC-to-Mac or Mac-to-PC), Microsoft Office documents sharing (there's also a MS Office version for Mac) or instant messaging (just install Adium).

And if everything else fails, you can always just run Windows on your Mac, using virtualization software or simply by double-partitioning your hard disk with the two operating systems.

To this date I haven't had any problems working with colleagues that use Windows. In fact, I think that those with which I work remotely haven't even realized that I've switched to Mac :-)

No Google Chrome for Mac? Don't worry, Firefox will do just fine

At first I was somewhat sad that Google didn't release a Mac OS X version of their new open ultra-mega-super-sweet browser, Chrome. Well, why shouldn't I? They even published a nice comic book that explains how they came up with it.

But then everything went back to normal when this Lifehacker's post reminded me why it's so great to have extensions in Firefox. :-)


Anyway, this won't stop me from trying the Mac OS X version of Google Chrome as soon as it's released. I'm actually looking forward to it. Well, let's wait and see...

Speed up your Mac

Mac Tips and Tricks has posted a great list of tips for speeding up your Mac. Check it out here.

Don't like that Ubuntu look? Try turning it into a Mac

I've posted before on making your Linux distribution look like Mac OS X, but the end result was not that perfect.


However, this new tutorial that I just found is specifically directed at Ubuntu Hardy Heron users that want to turn your desktop into Mac OS X Leopard...well, not really! But at least, the look and feel will be enough to fool your fellow PC users. Check out the tutorial here.

Twitter + Quicksilver = WOW!

Twitter may just be a new trend on the Internet, but you can't deny that this "micro-blogging" is sometimes useful. Whether I want to follow Imogen Heap's third album recording and production progress or the Nasa's MarsPhoenix ice-seeking activities on Mars, this little web service really comes in handy. And most naturally I decided to join in too.

You can update your Twitter status in many different ways (SMS, Web or IM), but the one that I most often use, Instant Messaging, is almost always down. And it's quite boring to have to have Adium logged in just to update the status. Visiting the website is also quite slow and not that handy.

Since I use Quicksilver for several different tasks on my Mac, I decided to give Google a try with the magic words: Twitter + Quicksilver.


And the first result was exactly what I wanted: a way to use Quicksilver to update my Twitter status. It does need some fiddling around with Script Editor and Keychain Access, but the tutorial is quite simple and direct and you'll have this working in no time.

How to convert an image into another format using Terminal

If you need to change the image format of your screencasts, all you have to do is some tweaking on Terminal. But sometimes, we just want to change the format of a single picture and taking a screenshot of the picture after doing that tweaking, is just too much work. Loading up a CPU-heavy application is also not a good choice if all you want to do is just convert a PNG to a BMP or JPEG.

So, what's the solution? Terminal! That's right, you can use Terminal to do those convertions. For example, to convert an image file input.png into output.bmp use the following command:

sips -s format bmp input.png --out output.bmp

You can also use an option “-z” after the file type specified. This is a resize option. For example the following command:

sips -s format bmp -z 20 20 input.png --out output.bmp

Will convert the image to bmp and then resize it to 20px x 20px.

Check other options here.

Source: Mac Tricks and Tips

When Safari and Firefox work together...

A few days ago I posted a nice tip on how to download musics from MySpace using Safari and wget in Mac OS X. In that tutorial, I showed how to use wget to download the music because in Safari I was unable to use the "save as..." function to actually save the MP3 file on the computer. I also explained why this tip didn't work with Firefox (because it doesn't have an Activity window such as Safari's).

But then I discovered that I can paste the "secret" MP3 URL in the Firefox Address Bar and then use the "Save Page as..." to actually save the file.

So, since Safari and Firefox can do some team work, you no longer need to install wget on your Mac to download musics from MySpace.

Source: The Tech In Me

How to download musics from MySpace using Safari and "wget"

DISCLAIMER: even though the instructions provided in this post may be (mis)used to download copyrighted material, this blog or its author do not support any piracy activities and cannot be held responsible for what others do with the knowledge acquired here. The author disseminates this knowledge with the sole purpose of allowing users to backup musics that MySpace's publishing artists already allow users to download, which is the case in the given example.

MySpace is a great social website that has specialized in providing access to a lot of musical material from musicians around the world. Some of those musicians publish their musics in their profile and even allow downloading them (as you can see in the figure below that shows the music box for Ani DiFranco), but for doing that you have to be logged in to your MySpace account.


But what if you don't have (or don't want to create) a MySpace account? Well, that's what I'm going to show you:

1. First of all, let me remind you that this can only be done using version 3 of the Safari web browser and a small Unix utility called wget. To install wget in Mac OS X, check here (I tried using Firefox 3 but the Page Info's Media tab (Tools -> Page Info) does not show the necessary files)
2. So, let's start. On the music box on the musician's profile (in this example, I'll be using Ani DiFranco's profile) click on the music you want to download and let it load entirely (you'll see it loading if the blue thin line is growing in the progress bar of the music player)
   
3. Open the Activity window in Safari (Go to Window->Activity)
   



4. Search for the file (or files, in case you've already load several songs) with a larger size (around 3 MB - may vary depending on the duration of the song) or you can search for the file with the address having some sort of combination of the words "cache" and "music". Then, double-click it.
   



5. Safari will open a new window and will start playing the music that you just selected. If you take a look at the address bar, you'll notice that the URL points out to a complex address of an MP3 file. This is MySpace's cache file for the song you selected and can be downloaded directly.
   



6. However, this cannot be done in Safari. If you try using the File->Save Page as... option, you'll notice that it's not enabled. That's where "wget" gets into play.
7. After installing "wget", the command with the same name will be available on Terminal's prompt. Just copy the URL (until the "mp3" part, as shown in the figure above) and paste it after the command at the Terminal, as you see in the following figure:
   



8. This will download the file and will place it in the current directory (In the figure, you can see that I did this in ~/Desktop)
9. Then, just use the MP3 player of your choice and enjoy! :-)

Final remarks: the cached MP3 file is often of lower quality, so don't expect perfect CD quality whilst listening. Also, the downloaded MP3 file comes with no tagging information, so you'll have to fill in everything on the MP3 management application that you choose.

Video Tutorials for Mac Newbies

My First Mac has posted a great list of video tutorials for Mac Newbies: 195 Free Mac Video Tutorials - Part 1 and Part 2. It's a great resource for all switchers out there. You can use it to learn (almost) everything about Mac OS X and/or native applications.

Using QuickTime to create stop-motion animated movies

While exploring the "Open Image Sequence" feature on Quicktime to create a simple Slideshow of images, I noticed that the combo box presented some values that were odd for someone trying to create a slideshow of pictures:

Although values like "3 seconds per frame" may seem acceptable for showing a slideshow of photos (each photo would be displayed for 3 seconds), "15 frames per second" seems to be just a little bit too fast to see all your photos (it means that 15 photos would be displayed in a second, which basically means that you wouldn't be appreciating any of them).

This got me thinking: "Why would you need to go through a slideshow in such a rush?". And then the geeky part of the brain kicked in and I remembered that this is how stop-motion animation movies work.

The idea of stop-motion is as old as cinema since the whole concept of films/movies is based on a stop-motion technique. Basically a camera is a mechanism that captures photos at a very fast rate (usually 24 frames per second). When we reproduce the captured images at the same rate, our brain fills in the gaps between the images, producing the illusion of movement.

Stop-motion works in that exact way: we capture some still images and then while reproducing them at a very fast rate, the images will perceive as having movement between them. To get a clear idea of how this is made, check out the Wikipedia page on this subject.

Excited with the idea of creating a stop-motion animation movie (basically because the movie "Nightmare Before Christmas" is one of my favourite movies of all time - well, at least my favourite animated musical) after discovering how easy it would be to put it all together on Quicktime, I decided to give it a try.

So, I mounted my camera (Canon Digital IXUS 400) on a tripod and took some sequenced photos of my USB Pen being disconnected from the USB hub. After putting it together on Quicktime, this is the result (reproduced at different speeds):

• 6 frames per second:

• 10 frames per second:

• 15 frames per second:

Looks nice, eh? You can also apply this same concept to time lapse movies (that will be my next try).

How to make your Linux look like Mac OS X

If you're planning to use Linux on your Mac, but you're still looking for that Mac feel, check out this great tutorial on how to turn your Linux desktop into something very similar to Mac OS X.

 There's a simpler tutorial specifically directed at Ubuntu users.

How to force Safari to open a new window on a tab

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While I was making a face-off between Safari and Firefox, one of the things that I didn't like about Safari was the default behaviour of opening '_blank' links on new windows. Even though I posted a solution for this before, this required the installation of a specific plugin in Safari.

Now, with the new 3.1 version of Safari, a more elegant solution is available. In order to change this default behaviour and force Safari to open new windows on new tabs, just execute the following command on Mac OS X's Terminal (located in Applications/Utilities):

defaults write com.apple.Safari TargetedClicksCreateTabs -bool true

To return to the default setting just execute the same command but with false on the end:

defaults write com.apple.Safari TargetedClicksCreateTabs -bool false

Source: Mac OS X Tips