Tag: email
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I noticed that automated emails from Steam weren't doing alt-text very well. Some image links had no or inadequate alt-text. (Note that Steam don't support opting for plain text rather than HTML emails.)
I'm fortunate enough to depend upon alt-text never-to-rarely. But I prefer not to load remote images, so I still benefit from alt-text.
I filled out a support request to Steam layout out the specific examples I'd found of where they weren't doing very well, and stressing why it's (morally, legally, etc.) important to do better.
And you know what: they quietly fixed it. When I received an email today telling me that something on my wishlist is on sale, it had reasonably-good alt-text throughout. Neat.
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On Wednesday, Vodafone announced that they'd made the first ever satellite video call from a stock mobile phone in an area with no terrestrial signal. They used a mountain in Wales for their experiment.
It reminded me of an experiment of my own, way back in around 1999, which I probably should have made a bigger deal of. I believe that I was the first person to ever send an email from the top of Yr Wyddfa/Snowdon.
Nowadays, that's an easy thing to do. You pull your phone out and send it. But back then, I needed to use a Psion 5mx palmtop, communicating over an infared link using a custom driver (if you ever wondered why I know my AT-commands by heart... well, this isn't exactly why, but it's a better story than the truth) to a Nokia 7110 (fortunately it was cloudy enough to not interfere with the 9,600 baud IrDA connection while I positioned the devices atop the trig point), which engaged a GSM 2G connection, over which I was able to send an email to myself, cc:'d to a few friends.
It's not an exciting story. It's not even much of a claim to fame. But there you have it: I was (probably) the first person to send an email from the summit of Yr Wyddfa. (If you beat me to it, let me know!)
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Even when it's technical, not all of my International Volunteer Day work for Three Rings has been spent using our key technologies (LNMR [Linux, Nginx, MariaDB, Ruby] stacks).
Today, I wrote some extra PHP for our WordPress-powered contact form to notify our Support Team volunteers via Slack when messages are sent. We already aim to respond to every message within 24 hours, 365 days a year, and are often faster than that... but this might help us to be even more-responsive to the needs of the charities who we help look after.
Alt
A filled contact form alongside a Slack message and a resulting ticketing system message.
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✅ Inbox Zero
✅ Slack Notification Zero
✅ Assigned PR Reviews Zero
✅ Owned PRs... one, but it's approved and just waiting for the right moment to mergeThat's got the be the first time in... literally years... that I've ended a workday so "clean". Feels amazing.
There'll be a mess again tomorrow, but hopefully only of a manageable size because I'm particularly clean to finish this week at "Work Zero".
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What if Emails were Multilingual?
Wouldn't it be nice if there were a standard for multilingual emails? Oh wait, there is! Let's see how it works, and whether it's (ever going to be) ready for mainstream use...
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Permanent Record
I spent my school years being told that things would go on my permanent record. But it looks like that's not so-permanent as I was lead to believe.
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Shared Email Addresses
I've long mocked people who've opted to use email addresses that they share with their partner, or email addresses that are tied to their geographic location... but it turns out that I've been doing the same thing for years, albeit only with aliases.
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Somewhat-Effective Spam Filters
I've tried a variety of unusual anti-spam solutions. Here's how they worked out for me.
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5 Cool Apps for your Unraid NAS
Some suggested starting apps for your Unraid NAS, inspired by a conversation this week with a teammate who's an aspiring Unraider. Selfhosting FTW!
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Pen Pals Wanted
Please will you be my pen pal for one month in 2024?
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Debian + DKIM for Dummies
I migrated my email subscription list from Gandi's SMTP server to my own... for which I first needed to teach myself OpenDKIM. Here's what I learned.
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Installing Listmonk on Unraid
Frustrated that nobody on the Internet has solved my problem for me, here's my guide to configuring Listmonk on an Unraid server.
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Email newsletters via RSS
No, I won't subscribe to your newsletter... except by using my RSS reader (and a clever feature of OpenTrashMail)!
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Email Tracking and Paperless Banking
Dan's paperless baking gets taken away when he doesn't consent to them tracking when and where he reads their emails.
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Displaying ProtonMail Encryption Status in Thunderbird
Dan releases his first Thunderbird plugin, for improving integration with ProtonMail Bridge.