Have you ever received a slew of messages on your BlackBerry, none of which you want or need? One of my BIS accounts receives a moderate amount of spam, all of which is flagged by SpamAssassin with [SPAM] in the subject line. I've tried setting filters at BIS, but they never seem to work. Fortunately there's an easy way to quickly delete all of the offending messages at once.
Step 1 – Searching
From the Mail window open the menu and choose Search. Enter parameters that will find all of the messages you want to delete, and only the messages you want to delete. In my case it's anything with [SPAM] in the subject.
Step 2 – Search Results
Review the search results and make sure they don't contain any messages you do not want to delete. If the results do contain messages you don't want to delete you will need to refine the search parameters to exclude them.
Step 3 – Delete Prior
This is where the magic happens. Select a date heading, open the menu and choose Delete Prior. If a message is highlighted and not a date heading you will not have a Delete Prior option.
In the context of search results, Delete Prior will only delete messages that were found by the search, not everything prior to the date of the first result.
Wait, what about BES users?
No guts, no glory. Go ahead and try it.
If you're more timid, Delete Prior only removes messages from the handheld, not the desktop. I've never tested this with any of the bi-directional sync BIS email options like GMail or Yahoo, so if you're using one of those services you should test first.
Confirm that you want to delete the messages and after a moment you'll see that all of the messages have been deleted and you're free of spam, printer notices or emails from Wiskus. Let's see your iPhone do this!
Lately I've been working a few days a week downtown using my MacBook Pro running Leopard and VMware Fusion. The MBP is off to the right on an iFold stand, and Fusion is full-screen in front of me on a 30" monitor. For input devices I'm using a generic HP USB keyboard and a Logitech MX900 mouse.
By default VMware emulates a generic PS/2 mouse with two buttons and a wheel, which meant that the mouse software I'm using in OS X, ControllerMate, was essentially useless in Fusion.
Luckily there is a hidden setting available for VMware Fusion version 1.1.2 and newer that will enable a virtual USB mouse that passes through up to 6 buttons. The same setting works with VMware Workstation 6, but I'm not sure about older versions. According to VMware this device will be preferred over the PS/2 mouse by the VM.
Edit your Virtual Machine Config
Before making any changes, shut down the virtual machine and quit VMware Fusion. Virtual Machines may be stored in ~/Documents/Virtual Machines.
Command Line
- Open a new terminal (Finder, Go menu, Utilities, Terminal)
- Change directories to ~/Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/Virtual Machines
cd ~/Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/Virtual Machines
- Begin editing the .vmx file. With my Boot Camp configuration this is inside of Boot Camp/%2Fdev%2Fdisk0/Boot Camp partition.vmwarevm
nano Boot Camp/%2Fdev%2Fdisk0/Boot Camp partition.vmwarevm/Boot\ Camp\ partition.vmx
- Add the following line anywhere in the file
mouse.vusb.enable = "TRUE"
- Save and exit nano
CTRL+o, Enter, CTRL+x, Enter
- Restart the VM
From the Finder
- Browse to your Virtual Machine folder
<your home directory>/Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/Virtual Machines
- Open the folder for your VM and drill down through folders until you see a single file (in my case it's called Boot Camp Partition)
- Right click on the file and choose Show Package Contents.
- Right click on the .vmx file and choose Open With, and then Other.
- Select TextEdit to open the file.
- Add the following line anywhere in the file
mouse.vusb.enable = "TRUE"
- Save and close the file
- Restart the VM
Given the ubiquitousness of Flash video players this isn't a tip that you'll be able to use too often, but when you're watching a video with miserably low audio it's a lifesaver If you're watching a QuickTime movie press and hold the Shift key and then click on the volume control.
Normal Volume Control
Volume Control with shift key depressed
Periodically I forget how to do this, so this is a self-gratifying post to save myself time in the future. I've been using SugarSync to keep files in sync across my various computers, and I've got a c:\cfg-bin\ on Windows that I use. I've got most of the Sysinternals utilities, and other goodies like fport, junction, and depends.
On Vista I use Frameworkx's Vista Shortcut Manager to change the overlaid shortcut icon to be something less obtrusive.
Anyways it's a very simple command:
msiexec /a <path to MSI file> /qb TARGETDIR=<path to destination folder>
So to extract FxVisor32.msi to C:\cfg-bin\Vista Shortcut Manager you'd run:
msiexec /a FxVisor32.msi /qb TARGETDIR="C:\cfg-bin\Vista Shortcut Manager"
