The Empire Weblog

Importing mails from Eudora to Opera's M2 is still a bit tricky at the moment. There are two main problems, which makes the import to M2 quite difficult or messy, respectively.
The first one is, that Eudora stores all attachments in a separate directory, however, M2 uses the "traditional" MBOX format. Due to this, all attachments have to copied back into the mailbox files. The second problem is, that Eudora uses particular tags formatting the mail's body. These tags cannot bet interpreted by M2.

This short tutorial deals about how to steer clear theses obstacles. See for yourself!

1.) Make a copy of your current Eudora mail directory, subsequently referred to as 'MAIL', and also make a new shortcut for Eudora with this new directory as mail storage: Start Eudora with this shortcut. Eudora works now on that mail storage directory for that shortcut. An example for the target of the shortcut could be:

'C:\Programme\Qualcomm\Eudora6\Eudora.exe C:\Mail'

Tip:

Switch off the checking or receiving of new mails. This prevents receipt of new mails during the entire migration process and saves a possible loss of some mails.

2.) If there are no other sent mails in any mailbox except the 'Out' mailbox, then continue with 3., else continue here:

2a) Create a mailbox called 'out-tmp' and move all your mails from the 'Out' mailbox to here.

2b) With the help of the search dialogue look for all mails which have the status 'sent'.

2c) Move all the found mails from 2b) to the mailbox 'out-tmp', too.

2d) If there other mails still exist you have sent one day but the mails no longer have the status 'sent', move them all to the 'out-tmp' mailbox, too.

2e) Close Eudora and change to the MAIL directory.

2f) Delete all with Out.*, this should usually be only 'Out.mbx' and 'Out.toc'.

2g) Rename 'out-tmp.mbx' to 'Out.mbx' and delete 'out-tmp.toc'.

2h) Restart Eudora with the help of the corresponding shortcut, created in 1. Eudora might warn you, that it has to rebuild the index files for the Out-Mailbox. Confirm this with 'Yes' and close the following dialogue with 'OK'.

2i) Make sure, that all your mails are visible in the 'Out' mailbox again. All those mails do not have the status 'sent' anymore, but this will be corrected later.

3.) Make sure that none of your mailbox's or folder's name contains / (Slash) or #. If this is the case, please rename them. It is also recommended to do this, if the name contains non standard English letters like the German umlauts: Ä, Ö, Ü.

4.) Install and start the tool "Emailchemy" - registration required, otherwise Emailchemy will replace all Subject and From headers with the hint that you should register.

5.) Change under 'Edit --> Preferences' at 'Nested Output' the mailbox extension from .mailbox to .mbx. (without the last dot )

6.) Close with 'Save' and start the 'Conversion Wizard'.

7.) Now, choose in the list 'Eudora for Windows' and confirm with 'Next'.

8.) Select the MAIL directory (created in 1.) via the 'Browse' button.

9.) Confirm the possible warning with 'YES'.

10.) A dialogue is opened now where you have to type in the folder's name, where the converted mailboxes shall be stored. For example, enter 'mail-rfc', subsequently referred to as 'MAIL-RFC'. Remember to choose the correct file type 'Standard Mailboxes (RFC-822 mbox) - Nested'. Close the dialogue with 'Save'. EMailchemy starts to convert your mailboxes now. This can take some time depending on the speed of your computer, how many mails you have and how large the attachements are.

11.) Once Emailchemy has finished converting the mails, there are still the so called MIME-Types of the attachment to be corrected. Emailchemy sets the MIME-Type of each attachment to "application/octed-stream" by default. However, this prevents by Opera's M2 recognizing, for example, an attachment as a picture and showing it in the mail correctly. Furthermore, M2 wouldn't be able to show mails in the right filters for pictures, videos, documents, etc. if the MIME-Type is not set excactly. To fix this, you can use the little tool I have written: 'MimeTypeConverter'.

You need to use it as follows (requires installed Java >= 1.3):

a) Download the file 'mime-type-converter.jar' by the link given above and save the file to MAIL-RFC.

b) Start with 'java -jar mime-type-converter.jar MAIL-RFC', where MAIL-RFC points to your directory containing the converted mailboxes, for example:

'java -jar mime-type-converter.jar c:\mail-rf'

c) Repeat this step under b) for each sub-folder of MAIL-RFC so that each of your mailboxes will be fixed.

12.) Create now another shortcut as described under 1., however, this time with MAIL-RFC instead of MAIL.

13.) Change to the directory MAIL-RFC and rename all sub-folders by appending '.fol' to each of them (if any exist), e.g. rename 'Info' to 'Info.fol'.

14.) Start Eudora now with the shortcut created under 12. Now, Eudora rebuilds the index files for the 'In' and 'Out' mailboxes at first. Furthermore, it opens a wizard window, which asks you to create a new mail account. Please do this right here now. You can choose dummy information to enter, e.g. enter 'mail' in each text field, that's enough. However, it is important to create an account or the import into M2 cannot take place later.

15.) Now, open ALL of your mailboxes, one after another thus Eudora starts to create a new index file for each of your mailboxes. Don't worry that your mails look a bit shifted.

16.) Close Eudora.

17.) Start MBXTools.exe with MAIL-RFC as the argument, e.g. 'C:\>MBXTools.exe c:\mail-rfc'. Make sure, that behind each mailbox you can see the number of mails contained in this mailbox. If this is not the case, then Eudora has not created the index file for that mailbox properly.

18.) Select the Out mailbox and click on the button 'Mark All Sent' at the top. Thus, all mails are marked as sent now and will be imported into M2 correctly and shown in the 'Sent' folder as well.

Well, now importing to M2:

19.) Start M2 and create a new email account unless you haven't previously done this already.

20.) Now, choose 'Mail --> New account... --> Import Mails --> Import from Eudora".

21.) Select with 'Browse' the directory MAIL-RFC.

22.) Select at 'Import into' that account, where you want to import your mails into. This has influence on M2's filter behavior when using the 'Account-Selector' to show mails belonging to a specific account only.

23.) At 'Import items' choose the right one(s) you want to import. Usually this will be all your mailboxes, thus just select the item .

24.) Start the import by clicking on 'Import'.

25.) Have a lot of fun with M2 and enjoy its new pretty nice features!

In December 2003, on my night tour through London to see a couple of the illuminated landmarks during Brightening up London, there are now also some other pictures of London by Night.

Amongst others, these pictures show the Houses of Parliament, St. Stephan's Clock Tower housing the world-famous bell "Big Ben", different views of the City of London over the river Thames.

To see the photos, just click here.

Throughout December 2003 Ten Alps and Orange has been producing 'Brightening Up London,' which had seen nine major buildings lit up with multiple projections of images created by celebrities such as artist Damien Hirst. The event was fully funded by mobile phone company Orange, and the budget is of a material level to Ten Alps events company.

Brightening Up London had seen Nigella Lawson, photographer David Bailey and designer Stella McCartney creating their own images for projection onto some of London’s most famous landmarks including Wellington Arch, National Gallery, National Theatre, Tate Britain and Imperial War Museum.

More photos can be seen here.

Today, we spent a visit to one of the Queens of Scotts, Queen Mary, castles in Stirling. Arrived there after a short trip by train, we started the way up to the castle. Passing a few nice old houses and gardens, we reached at the top of the castle's hill.

From there you have a wonderfull view over the Causeway around the castle. Amongst the nice views to the countryside you also can see the remarkable Sherriffmuir, where the Wallace Monument proudly stands. The monument commemorates William Wallace leading the Scots to victory over the invading English at the Battle of Bannockburn. From the castle ramparts, you can also see the old Stirling Bridge where yet another battle against the English took place.
After visiting the castle itself and a lunch snack in one of Stirling's pubs, we went back to Glasgow. However, from then on, a boring afternoon started. We couldn't really go somewhere else due to it being Good Friday and almost all points of interest to visit are far outside of Glasgow. On the one hand, still much time to go for the flight back and on the other hand too short for another trip out to Scotland's Highlands. So, we just took a bus to go to the airport, where I have enough time writing this entry. Hopefully, the flight will be on time and another quick and easy one. ;-) Asking easyJet (mostly also known as cheesyJet by the British) to change to an earlier flight resulted in a high fare answer: 190 GBP for the flight (one way) + 15 GBP transfer charge, all per person, of course! So it was quite an easy decision to Jet by our original booked flight. This was 75 GBP return for two persons.

After a beautiful day in Edinburgh yesterday, today was quite a bad day out in Scotland.
To start, we unfortunately missed booking a Highland tour to Loch Lomond, Trossachs and Stirling Castle. So we had to try to overcome this and went out to Balloch by ScotRail Railways. Balloch is at the very south of Loch Lomond and hosts also the National Park Gateway.

After a first orientation trip to find the information centre, we were faced with the fact that almost nothing is going on there right now. There were only two options: either going on an one hour cruising boat trip or going by bus to Luss. As we have seen the timetables for the local bus services there, we decided to go on the cruise. What a bad mistake! The cruise only went as far as the first large island of the Loch. Furthermore, the captain tried to make it interesting by telling some historical facts about all the larger houses along the banks of Loch Lomond. Well, all the new information we now know is, that a few houses had been built by rich people and have been converted to either luxurious hotels and/or appartments. By the way, Sir Sean Connery and also Governator Arnold Schwarzenegger stayed in one of the hotels. I think, that has been the breaking news of the day so far. When we reached the "harbour" again, we wanted to go back to Glasgow with the next train. Well, however, there was one thing we haven't reckoned with: The train we wanted to go back with, had just been cancelled. To add insult to injury, after waiting over fourty mintues in the cold somewhere in nowhere, the next train arrived albeit also delayed!.
Back in Glasgow, we had our lunch at Wetherspoon. This was the only bright spot of the day. The house where Wetherspoon is in is a quite old but nice pub directly located on St. Georges Square.Not such a bright spot since one meal was frozen and having narrowly escaped food poisoning, a refund was given.
Concluding that horrible day, we decided to go to a Chinese restaurant (The Dynasty, West Nile Street). What a bad mistake again ;-( One main course was almost everything excepting what we had ordered. My course was also rather worse than good. At least, we could get the total bad course be cancelled. However, the bill was still 20 GBP for that crap.
Now I am sitting in the hotel (Langs Hotel, Glasgow) and writing this blog entry!

Edinburgh was our destination for today. I think it is quite famous for it's beautiful old town, the castle and also for the University. People who are saying it's a bit similar to Prague, have a point!

Arrived by train there, we took the bus straight away to the famous Forth Rail Bridge. I assume, most poeple know it from pictures. If you are not sure, just have a look here. It was great to see this master piece of engineering work in real. It's just ginormous! However, the twin bridge, the Forth Road Bridge, is also great to see! It looks a bit like the Scottish version of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Fransisco ;-). There is also a small island near the bridges. At the first glance you might think it is another Scottish adaption of a famous landmark from the bay of San Fransisco: Alcatraz. Surely, it's not ;-)
Back in the city, we walked up to the castle where you have a very nice and great view over the entire city as well as the bay. There you also can find a shop selling tradional Scottish goods like the very well-known kilts. Anyway, you might get there almost every kind of clothes made of the traditional tartan.

Back in Glasgow by the late afternoon, we went out for dinner to a very good Italian restaurant called 'The Italian Kitchen' on 64, Ingram street. If you ever come to Glasgow, you should go there! However, be prepared to wait for a table or just book one in advance!

In September 2003, from the 18th to the 19th, the annual Database Days of Prof. Küsperts Chair for Databases and Information Systems took place at the Berghotel Stutenhaus in the beautiful Thuringia Forest (it's also known as the Green Heart of Germany).

The entire programm can be found here.

I almost spent all of Saturday working on my diploma thesis. This can become quite fuzzy over time, so I decided to have break from it and we went to Kew Gardens (London, Richmond) today.

Public transport in London is not the best on a Sunday. So it took over 45 minutes to get there by a direct link. Well, if you ever go this route, you can understand why it takes so long. Silverlink Trains, the operator of this route, runs such badly rundown trains. You never would believe! Furthermore, the tracks are in a diabolical state. I think, this route, from Hackney Central to Kew Gardens is a very good example of the poor situation of British railnetwork. For more information, just have a look in the category 'Railway', where I have posted and am going to post a few entries about my experiences with British railway companies. ;-)

Finally arrived a Kew Gardesn stations, it is just a five minute walk to the Victoria Gate entrance of the gardens itself. The admission fee is quite expensive (Adults: 8.50 GBP, Concession: 6.00 GBP), but it is worth it.
At this time of the season, there is not so much to see outside. However, the glass houses offer you a beautiful trip into the Tropical Forrest or other nices places of the world. The Temperate House is quite pretty and you should see it! We had the luck to see the the flower 'Bird of the Paradise' blooming. Just look here to see this beautiful flower.

However, as nice as the gardens and the glass houses are, you unfortunately cannot find true silence there to relax. It's a shame, that the gardens are directly located in the flight path of Heathrow Airport. Frequently, every 25 seconds, you can see and hear an aeroplane going straight down to Heathrow. The planes must have an altitude of less then 300 meters. I think, now you can imagine, what noise, for example, a Jumbo Jet causes crossing you at this altitude.

As everyone of us know, there exists a very popular word in the English language. It has the character of a multi-purpose word and can be used almost in every situation. However, you still should think of the proper usage! :-)

There exists a quite good animated illustration of the wide range of possibilities of the use of this word. I am sure, you will enjoy it. However, I don't take responsibility for the consequences this animation could cause you.

After I had read the article 'Church of Our Lady' and 'Congress Centre' attracts Low Fare Airlines (in German) on DNN Online (Dresdner Neuste Nachrichten), I wrote a e-mail to DNN online with my point of view of Low Fare Airlines and Dresden Airport. Answer is still pending ;-/

Now, since I have started blogging, I think it might be a good thing to publish these thoughts on here.

On the one hand, it's nice to hear that Dresden Airport at last starts thinking of becoming more attractive and more interesting, for foreign visitors in particular. On the other hand, it is quite disappointing to hear of the prejudices Dresden Airports speaks out against Ryanair.

I myself have been flying regularly with Ryanair the route Berlin - London for now over one year and I cannot complain in any way. The price/performance ratio is quite good: I cannot really remember one flight I took which was delayed. On the contrary, almost each flight is between ten and fifteen minutes ahead of scheduled time. As a matter of fact, my last flight from Erfurt (last Saturday, 03/27/2004) was even thirty minutes earlier.

It's not necessary to offer the best service on board for flights of such a short duration (about 90 minutes to less than three hours) which Ryanair usually services. However, Ryanair's passenger's main concern is to travel from A to B in a quick and safe way. For this, Ryanair economize a few things which are not absolutely necessary for such a shuttle service. Amongst other things, this is one of many reasons why Ryanair can offer their customers such low ticket fares that they are famous for.
Thus, it is quite natural that Ryanair demands lower airport charges. After all, Ryanair uses only a split of the airport's service offer which other airlines often completely use. That's why there also has to be a difference in the charges the airlines have to pay. If AIR Berlin claim, that Ryanair wants to get payed 4,50 EUR for each passenger in Frankfurt/Hahn, then it is formulated quite unfair. All that Ryaniar wants is to pay 4,50 EUR less per passenger. Rightly!

Moreover, the comparision with London Heathrow which is mentioned in article is only an attempt to change the subject of the original topic. I don't really believe that there is or will be any Low Fare Airline which flies to London Heathrow. For this, other London airports have specialized for Low Fare Airlines, e.g. London Stansted or London Luton.

For me personally, it is quite frustrating to see with which blindness Dresden Airports acts. Business methods which have proven themselves elsewhere are ignored by pure pride and extreme short-sightedness. Synergies which propably would arise through the increasing number of passengers are just ignored. It seems to me, that Dresden Airport's main concern is making profit as much as possible. Offering good service and attractive routes for local as well as for foreign customers is obviously not on their agenda!

So, I will keep travelling from Berlin or Erfurt because it's still much cheaper in spite of the additional cost of the train tickets.

Dresden Airport is and stays unattractive for many commuters. It is regrettably almost a pure holiday airport.
Moreover, customer service is not the best as you would expect.
Two inquiries (at the service desk and on the phone) for possible new direct routes to London with Low Fare Airlines have been refused. In both cases I didn't mention Ryanair, but each of the women pointed to the supposed "bad" business methods of Ryanair. In the case of my call, the woman just hung up after she recommended that I write to the management.

For me there is still the unanswered question: why Ryanair is NOT taken into account for further negotiations about new routes from/to Dresden. Statements like "Ryanair is flimsy" shouldn't be accepted.

Ryanair have been operating now for over fifteen years. Much longer than Dresden Airport exists in the today's known form. I don't think there is any discussion which of these businesses are currently experiencing more financial problems. That's why sweeping statements as the one from Mr. Huppe are not acceptable nor tolerable.

I will stay tuned and watch the ongoing story. I still have a small hope, Dresden Airport will become sensible and realistic!

Check out this press release of Dresden Airport from 2002: Negotiations with Low Cost Carriers

What an arrogance already in those days!

After I have seen so many sites with a blog, I thought this must be the new trend in the wonderful ubiquitous world of computing. So, I decided to catch up with this and installed this blogging system on my site, too.

And now I am also [we]blogging.

Let's see how long I can keep track of this trend...