dot unplanned

More or less, anyhow.

Some things I’ve learned this weekend as I’ve rassled with mutt on a remote host:

Printing mail from mutt is super easy, even over the Internet. If you’ve got CUPS running on your system (Macs do, Linux boxes do), all you need is a working copy of muttprint configured to print to a local printer.

To print back from Dreamhost to the printer sitting under my desk, the .muttrc line looked like this:

  set print_command="ssh user@examplehost.net muttprint"

Unfortunately, muttprint in its various versions is all busted up on OS X, so I’m sending the print jobs to my Linux server, which has a connection to my desktop printer via CUPS, which “just worked,” and on Debian. Freaky.

Another thing I learned is that fetchmail has a use: You can use it to solve the problem of server-side spam training for SpamAssassin’s Bayes learner, as detailed here.

Chatting with Charlie about that issue on Friday, we both agreed that we’ve heard of the risk of overtraining a bayes filter. I’ve heard others mention, and believe I’ve observed a sort of “bayes rot” in Apple’s junk filter. I haven’t seen that effect in a couple of years of steady SpamSieve use. Anyhow, the SpamAssassin people say it’s unpossible somewhere on their wiki. Anyone else heard anything interesting in that regard?