motidu day 6 - alpine and mutt

tldr:

stopped using the 'mail' command

started using 'mutt'

considering 'alpine'

still using vim

phetch gopher client

using w3c for web stuff

internet radio and music players

still learning haskell

well, i'm almost a full week into the "month of things i don't use", and i'm starting to understand stuff better, and i'm starting to feel a bit more comf with my current configuration! nice nice.

mail stuff

i *think* i have the absolute comfiest mail setup as possible outside of rmail! my trio for mail management is as follows:

movemail

msmtp

mutt

i used to use the 'mail' program that came with mailutils, which was nearly perfect, except that, when you started composing / replying to a mail, you're forced into a half-baked text editor that comes built into 'mail', instead of using whatever is in your $EDITOR environment variable. if it's possible to use a preferrd text editor in 'mail', please hit me up with the answer!

in fact, if you have a mail configuration that you're proud of, feel free to talk to me about it (or better yet, post about it here on gemini, and i can add a link to it)!

mutt

particularly, i've always had a rough time with mutt. there are too many spiky things, and everything always looks different on every config example online.

of course, with movemail and msmtp taking care of the "getting/sending" part of my mail system, all mutt has to do is:

read mbox files

organize mbox files

compose mail using vim

and yes, this teensy config allows me to do that just fine!

by default, mutt looks in the standard spoolfile '/var/mail/emily', and looks at the $EDITOR environment variable for composing. that's much more simple than a lot of online tutorials like to make you believe!

alpine

alpine is a really sweet mail client. there's a lot going on in it, but it has features i just adore, like the list of commands at the bottom of the screen, like "there are a zillion keyboard commands, but here's like 6 that you're probably gonna want to use right now", which is good cause i have an awful memory.

what's nice is that alpine has a super advanced configuration system, but it's designed to be usable by any old idiot (like me)!

i might just use alpine instead of mutt, cause it's fun and quirky and cute, and i like that!

here's my alpine config:

thankfully, when you run alpine for the first time, it generates a config file for you to mess with, and the example config file contains every variable *and* documentation! that's nuts! there is *so* much stuff i want to play around with in alpine, but it's nice to know i can get it working nicely with just these few variables!

by default, alpine looks in the default unix spoolfile, and sorts messages in the ~/mail directory. i'll definitely write a full post about it some other time!

gopher 'n webstuff

i like to hang on gopher sometimes. i have a little hole on sdf where i write short stories and vent about other, dryer things. i've had that hole for a while and once in a blue moon people still email me about it, and that feels nice (wink wink, nudge nudge, send me an email, gosh dangit!)

anyway though, i came across a little gopher client called "phetch", which is super cute! it was written in rust, but thankfully it didn't take too long to install! the only thing that's sort of bugging me is the fact that the keybindings are like, "hardcodded" into the client, like, i'm not allowed to change them to suit my needs! i might have to fiddle with it and send a patch to the maintainer about that, cause i use amfora for gemini, and i want to be able to use the same keybindings for phetch, so that i don't have to change the way i think to browse gopher!

speaking of clients and such, i'm trying to use w3c instead of lynx, but it's... hard. i like w3c, and it's super cute, but i've used lynx for so long that i have the "lynx mindset" sort of hammered into my brain. that's kind of what this month is all about, though: unhammering myself a bit!

music players

i usually use cmus and mpv to play music. i've been listening to a lot of internet radio lately, using the command:

mpv http://anonradio.net:8000/anonradio

but what else is even /out/ there for other audio players? the hard thing is, unlike email clients, i need an audio player that is new / currently maintained, cause i like the opus format.

i don't want to do too much work, what with compiling my own music player, cause they always have a few more dependencies (cause they need to support many formats)! unfortunately, i couldn't find too many in the alpine package manager (by "alpine", i'm referring to "alpine linux", not the alpine mail client i mentioned earlier... uh, yeah).

i was able to find:

magikcube

namp

ncmcpp

i didn't want anything that's format-specific, like mpg123, so it sort of limited my selection. thankfully ncmcpp was available for alpine! the only thing is, when running it, i got an error. i'll be sure to fix it when the mood hits me.

haskell

haskell is so cute, heck. i just /wish/ it was easier to learn! i'm not saying that it's hard to learn the language. the syntax is generally intuitive and it's totally fine, but i feel like it's hard to find learning resources for it anywhere. i'm really hoping to be able to learn at least a few more things in it, so that i can post a tutorial here on gemini!

speaking of programming tutorials, maybe i should write some for stuff like scheme, ada, or c. it's been 3 years since i wrote anything like that, and it might be fun to try again, now that i'm a bit wiser...

anyway, that's all! i know my motidu posts are like, the least interesting, but they're more for myself to be able to look back and see some sort of timeline at the end of the month!

i'm going to sleep. it's 23:30 already!

march 14, 2021