Displaying useful information in your GNU screen
My working desktop setup used XMonad as a window manager and a terminal using GNU screen. In XMonad, I was using dzen as a small panel in the top corner for displaying useful information (mail, clock, battery status, etc). Dzen just display a text string. This can also be printed by a program. I wrote myself a simple python script, for doing that part like the example shows below:
gocept:INBOX(1) private: -- | Friday, 19.12.2008 10:44:15 (AUS 20:44, CAN 3:44)
Now I switched to use XMonad in GNOME. Dzen is gone and I was looking for an alternative to display the information printed by my script. After a bit of googling, I found a very nice howto about GNU screen. Screen offers a harstatus and a caption line to display information. I tweaked my screenrc to use the python script in the caption line.
Have a look at my simple python script or my screenrc. Use it on your own risk of course 
A plan for spam, perhaps?
I’m currently trying the Tagged Message Delivery Agent (TMDA) (Homepage).
Thanks to Markus Leist!
It’s an MDA, written in python with a filtering mechanism using white lists (the e-mail addresses you trust), blacklists (the spammer mail addresses). Additionally, e-mails use a tagging mechanism like time-dependant addresses or for a certain kind of communication. The cool thing though, e-mail addresses which are neither in the white- nor in the blacklist need to be confirmed by the sender. I’m actually a bit curious how this will work.
If you’re bombed with spam each day, you may want to have a look at TMDA. Though you should know how to setup your mail queue, it’s not as easy as installing Mozilla Thunderbird on your system.
, photo by David Trattnig
