onfocus

I finally have SpamAssassin working on my Windows server. It's actually really good at catching spam. Once in a while one slips through, but for the most part it's made my email more useful. I thought I'd share the solution in case anyone else wants to do it.

Here's what you need to mirror my setup:

• Windows Server
• XMail Mail Server
• Outlook SpamAssassin plugin
• A WSH script and batch file to call SpamAssassin
  (I wrote this part.)

You just install the Outlook plugin—even if you don't have Outlook on the server. And then add an entry that calls the WSH script to any tab file in the Xmail filters folder. I have more detailed instructions in the WSH file. Just want to share the spam-filtering goodness!

The Short Font Story

I made this font browser thing that shows all of your installed fonts (along with a sentence in the face) on a web page. (screenshot) If you're on Windows 2000 or XP and you want a quick look at your fonts, check it out:

Font Browser
(right-click, "Save Target As...", then double click the icon.)

The Long Font Story

The other day I needed to choose a font and I couldn't find a good way to browse all of the fonts on my system at once. I could only look at them one at a time with Microsoft's Font Viewer. That was time consuming, but it worked. (I know there are probably programs out there to help me out, but what I want to do is very simple and I shouldn't need to install a big program just to browse fonts.) I decided WSH (Windows Scripting Host) could be my answer.

Windows has this fine scripting API, but they don't make it simple to use. The standard FileSystem object and the standard Registry functions were no help in reading font names so I delved into the world of WMI (Windows Management Instrumentation). It's a dark murky land where commands are cryptic and documentation is lacking. It did the trick, though. And along the way I learned that I can check the temperature of my processor and manually fire up the fan. And other neat tricks.

The Font Disclaimer

There's nothing out of the ordinary happening in the script, but it's always a good idea to take a look at the source before you run it. I tried to note what each function does in the code.