June 25th, 2008
Matti Mattila wrote for us A musician story. He is back with a new article, this time a technology topic that I’m sure will interest many of you.
Exporting Outlook mail messages
I ran into a whole new problem a week ago when my six years old computer stopped working. The “Old Faithful” had served me for years, but now she finally wanted to get retired. Well, that was something she certainly had deserved after all these precious moments. I now look her sadly kicking her heels on the floor and waiting for a new life as spare parts somewhere else. The new and energetic beauty hums silently and dignified on my desk at the very same place the Old Lady was sitting before only a few days ago.
She runs on Windows Vista, which is quite a beauty but not a beast. The old wrinkly ran Windows XP, but already showed exhaustion under the too heavy workload. Now everything is changed, even my mail application turned from Outlook 2000 into a brand new Windows Mail.
Shifting from XP to Vista raised a bunch of new and unpredictable problems to solve. First of all was my new mail client. It works like a charm and that’s why I wanted to move my six-years-old email message archive from Outlook to this new client, but everything didn’t go as planned. Windows Mail could not interact with Outlook 2000 despite I set Outlook as my default mail client. This path came to its dead-end and I needed completely new approach.
My programming background was a relief as I understood that I can write a small VBA script to rescue my old messages. After thorough investigation I decided to individually save each mail message as an eml file. This format is widely understood by many different mail clients, so it was an excellent choice.
Unfortunately native Outlook 2000 lacks ability to export in eml format. Actually the format follows strictly RFC 822 specification, so writing such a script wouldn’t be too complicated. But I waited a second before rushing to code.
A quick search with my favorite search engine gave me pain relief. I found an Outlook Redemption library on the net, which would answer all my questions exporting messages from Outlook PST storage as single files. Redemption object library gives new functions thus expanding the basic Outlook object model. One of these important functions is saving a message as RFC 822 format. This is exactly what I was looking for, so writing a short script was merely whistling and wheeling.
First we need to download the Redemption object library. It’s free for development purposes and this would be enough for our sample. The second stage is unpacking the zipped file. After that the installation is just registering the library in the command prompt as follows:
regsvr32.exe C:[full path]redemption.dll
The example above assumes that you unzip the package on your hard disk in a folder you specify replacing [full path] placeholder. Finally, we need to make a reference to this library in Outlook Visual Basic editor. To do so, select Tools / References and tick the checkbox next to Redemption Outlook Library. All the objects will be exposed to the project as soon as you click OK. The following code snippet shows the basic idea on how to save the first message in Inbox as test.eml file.
Dim o As Redemption.SafeMailItem
dim i As Outlook.Explorer
Set i = ThisOutlookSession.Explorers.Item(1).Explorer
Set o = CreateObject(”Redemption.SafeMailItem”)
o.Item = i.CurrentFolder.Items.Item(1)
o.SaveAs “test.eml”, Redemption.rdoSaveAsType.olRFC822
Set o = Nothing
Set i = Nothing
Knitting the rest of the code should be relatively easy. A loop would do the most of the task while it recursively loops through the messages in Outlook folders. Each mail item is saved with unique name on the disk. Restoring these messages to Windows Mail is just dragging and dropping the files into the appropriate folders. So, thanks to Redemption for giving me these great tools to export my Outlook mail message into Windows Mail.
Posted in Ideas, Technology | No Comments »
November 9th, 2007
Jeremy White wrote this article exclusively for us. Jeremy is currently in the throngs of several projects and sub projects in digital art (2d here, 3d there), computer programming, and some hobby-level music production. Actually, all of it is hobby level, but… who cares? I consider Jeremy a real artist, read the article and you’ll know why.
A passion for Digital Painting
Hello! I’ve been doing digital painting for a surprisingly short amount of time, but thought that since I’ve got around two years under my belt, I might as well voice some thoughts on the subject. I’m only a hobbyist, but I’ve graduated to CS3 recently and have had a Wacom tablet for some time and it appears that’s the standard layout for most people.
I started art when I was very young in the sense that I enjoyed writing short stories and loved to try to draw Ren & Stimpy characters. Sadly, I let that die away when I reached high school and never really cared again for art until things came to college. I found myself so bored in calculus and other studies that I’d draw in my notebook. At some point, I got very addicted to drawing my dreams and yet I couldn’t get color because I didn’t really want to mess with paint in a dorm room. Anyone who’s been there knows that they don’t take lightly to anyone getting paint all over the furniture and I just knew that’s the kind of person I am. That’s right… my first impulse was that digital art was pretty clean. And I’m no neat-freak in any capacity. My room vacillates from messy to sterile several times a month.
So, going in to digital painting, my inspirations were people who did a lot of concept art and also landscapes. One especially prominent fellow comes to mind whom you can look at over here. An example of his 2d digital painting style is here. Some artists avoid stroke work and try to be purely realistic but I especially think the joy comes out when you can blend things fairly well. I’m trying to get there, but sometimes I veer off like in the art work of paper XI. A good tutorial of his method can be found here (I love this method too… forgive my bias here).Someone once told me “Wow… it’s like painting with pen-pricks of light”. I especially enjoy the feeling of wielding millions of little variable colored flashlights. It’s an entirely different thing when you print your work out, but I prefer to keep it all digital when possible. I guess it feels cool to throw out something you did with no real cost on how many copies you make. I know that people steal digital media left and right, too. I don’t so much care about ‘pirates’, but when I say “steal”, I speak of those who claim they did a piece of work when in fact it was based on someone else’s effort or maybe entirely just a copy. It’s a very tragic side effect.
Still, it’s amazingly fun to look back from digital painting and smile and say to a traditionalist “Hey, does your oil paint have an Undo? My media does.” But sadly, when I go back to drawing on paper, I find myself searching for Ctrl-Z all the time and looking like a goofball.
Posted in Arts, Culture, People | 5 Comments »
October 20th, 2007
Another beautiful review I had (with my pseudonym Vanethian) is this one at Splendid E-zine:
If you’ve ever caught yourself getting into the soundtracks that play in the background of sci-fi fantasy games, you might enjoy Futures Past. Unassuming synthesizers create a circumambient musical flow, taking you first to the distant and icy plains of Pluto, then back in time, where you’ll mingle with the shoguns of Japan and explore England’s age of chivalry. Born in Palermo, Manuel Marino, the man behind the music, started out playing solfeggio-style fingerpicking and jazz guitar. Marino’s heavy interest in role-playing games is evident on Futures Past; he takes his own personal enjoyment and translates it sonically through MIDI sequencing into breathtaking soundscapes that take the listener left of heaven into the World of Dreams. Taking Korgs, Rolands and Moogs to the next level, Marino remains modestly mindful of old masters Rick Wakeman and Alan Parsons when evoking his own brand of medieval methodology. From intergalactic battles to dystopian visions of society, infinite space is the only limit for Marino and his music.
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October 11th, 2007
I’ve been asked why there is no Reviews section. Well, if you search my name on Google.com, you’ll find many pages (in English and Italian languages) that talk about my music works. So, I don’t want to put a complete list of the links, but anyway I’ll post parts of the most beautiful reviews. I’ll begin with the one written by Bill Binkelman (Wind and Wire Magazine).
Here’s a part of the Review:
“Manuel Marino, a.k.a. Vanethian, records some of the best “pure” melodic synthesizer music around. He composes and performs in the same musical style as Larry Fast (Synergy). Manuel’s music is overtly electronic and yet rooted in pop-music sensibility (repeated motifs, refrains, and bridges); he (Manuel) has few (if any) contemporaries in this regard. Frankly, I’m always impressed with how good his music sounds.”
“Sophisticated listeners may hear Manuel’s (Vanethian’s) music and only discern overly slick pop EM. Myself, I’m a sucker for the hooks and expert musicianship that, in my opinion, Manuel excels at. As with the last album of his I reviewed, I make no apologies for how much I love his music. It’s chromium candy - polished, yummy, and never upsetting to my stomach, no matter what mood I’m in. I can see why this guy gets a shitload of videogame and computer game music work - he’s a wiz when it comes to hooks and he’s an EM engineering professional.”
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