rewatching charlotte's web 40+ years later
The Charlotte's Web I'm referring to is the animated movie from 1973. And even before I start, I noticed something weird right at the beginning of the flick. The copyright date states 1972, but it's always listed everywhere as '73, so I looked up why that is. It's because the release date was 1973-March-1.
Only because I didn't know otherwise, I always thought this was a Disney movie. No. It's Hanna-Barbera. I could forgive anybody for mistaking this as from Disney, as it an animated feature film, a musical, G-rated, has talking animals in it, dancing numbers, and so on.
As for how I feel about the movie, I'll get the negatives out of the way first.
I know this movie is made for kids, but even so, it plays it way too safe. Tension is what makes for a good story. The simplest way to explain that tension is seeing something happen in the movie and feeling anticipation for what's coming next. Something happens, curiosity is sparked, and an emotional connection is made because you wonder what's coming. At this point it's up to the movie to determine how much anticipation to build before delivering the result. Good timing is necessary, and the result has to be satisfying.
For example, in Fantasia during The Sorcerer's Apprentice part of the movie, all of that is a masterful example of what proper tension is, even though not a word of dialogue is spoken. Right from the start, you see examples of tension, first with Mickey looking to the sorcerer standing in the darkness with a glow below him, where he's conjuring a mysterious mist. That's where the curiosity happens. Mickey wants to know what that is, but more importantly, you want to know what that is. Something bad? Something good? You don't know, and want to find out. The question is answered. The mist turns into a beautiful butterfly. The timing is just right, executed perfectly. And so much is said in just those few moments. The sorcerer is powerful, mysterious, mystical, and benevolent as he brought beauty out of the darkness.
Charlotte's Web, unfortunately, squanders tension at every given opportunity by deflating it much too fast. As I was re-watching it all these years later, from scene to scene I could tell there was an ever-present "don't scare the kids; don't make them cry" thing going on.
A simple example of that is the part when Wilbur thinks he can spin a web like a spider. He gets a string tied to his tail, Templeton loops the other side of the string on a nail sticking out of a rafter in the barn, Wilbur gets on a hay bail, tells everybody to watch him, leaps, he hangs in the air by the string, the string lets go, he falls on his ass, everybody laughs at him. And right after that when he says, "I'm gonna try that again!", Charlotte immediately replies back with, "I advise you to put the idea out of your mind", and that's it, move on.
The problem here is what happens after he falls. Or rather, what didn't happen.
Wilbur did not get hurt after he fell. Opportunity for tension lost. Nobody rushed to him to ask if he was okay. Another opportunity lost. He wanted to try a second time but didn't. Yet another opportunity lost.
The entire movie is like this. Every single time any buildup for tension happens with anything, nope, stop, don't scare the kids, don't make them cry, make everything happy-go-lucky again, move on.
This is, incidentally, why some people think this movie is boring and uninteresting. With every opportunity for story tension cut off quickly, the overall presentation suffers as a result.
What Charlotte's Web gets right is the showing the bigness of the country. Several scenes are far-back that show rolling hillsides, scenic views, long winding roads, and farmhouses. The paintings showing these things were made with care, and it shows.
The "Charlotte's Web" song scene, which comes right after "Deep in the Dark" song, is this movie's Fantasia tribute, which is why I mentioned that flick above. Not a bad thing, as it looks fantastic and was tastefully done.
It's the second half of the movie where the real money was spent, particularly in scenes when Charlotte is shown very up close. And this is where I can talk about seeing this now more than 40 years later.
As a kid, I only ever saw this movie on television and never in the theater, so my view of it was on a CRT television that both fuzzed out details and blocked seeing the full frame because of the 4:3 aspect ratio.
Before re-watching this, I never knew Charlotte had eyelashes, nor did I know she was animated with teeth that you can see very briefly in up-close shots when she spoke. I also didn't know she had antennae either. All of that stuff was fuzzed out from watching this on a tube television. Bear in mind what was shown on TV then was well before the days of remastered movies with cleaned up film. All the film jitter, washy colors and bad audio is what made it to broadcast.
I'm also certain seeing the movie originally as cropped 4:3 on CRT wrecked how certain scenes were supposed to look more than a little bit.
Still good?
Yes, still good.
Great?
No, but above-average.
I am glad I got to see all the visual details I never knew were there. As for story, the constant tension deflating knocks it down a few pegs.
I've never seen any of the other movies and don't intend to. I am aware of Charlotte's Web 2: Wilbur's Great Adventure from 2003 and 2006 live-action remake.
The '73 version is what I wanted to see again. I was glad to re-watch it.
i deleted thunderbird
While I did switch over to a TUI mail client, I did keep Thunderbird on my computer just in case I wanted to switch back to it.
After using NeoMutt for a couple of weeks, I did the deed and deleted Thunderbird. A backup was made first, then I deleted both the program and user data folders Thunderbird used.
Before the deleting, I thought about switching back to it. Twice.
Both times, I launched the program and got annoyed with it almost immediately.
In the first instance, there were JavaScript crash errors. This wasn't Thunderbird's fault, but rather from a buggy regex plugin because I need regex searching. More on that in a minute.
In the second instance, I got annoyed from all the hoops I had to jump through just to adjust things, since Thunderbird doesn't know how to get out of its own way.
A few NeoMutt limit view examples to explain what I mean
"Show me emails in the inbox that have arrived in the past 3 days"
l
~d<3d
"Show me emails in the inbox that have arrived in the past 3 days from bob@example.com"
l
~d<3d ~f bob@example.com
"Show me emails in the inbox that have arrived in the past 3 days from bob@example.com and joyce@example.com"
l
~d<3d ~f "(bob|joyce)@example.com"
"Show me emails in the inbox that have arrived in the past 3 days from bob@example.com and joyce@example.com with the word report in the subject line"
l
~d<3d ~f "(bob|joyce)@example.com" ~s report
"Show me emails in the inbox that have arrived in the past 3 days from bob@example.com and joyce@example.com with the word report in the subject line and office party in the message body"
l
~d<3d ~f "(bob|joyce)@example.com" ~s report ~b "office party"
"I'm using an IMAP folder, don't download all the messages first to search, and search by string instead"
l
~d<3d ~f "(bob|joyce)@example.com" ~s report =b "office party"
"Show me emails in the inbox that have arrived in the past 3 days from bob@example.com and joyce@example.com with the word report in the subject line and office party in the message body, but NOT the words balloons or clown in the message body"
l
~d<3d ~f "(bob|joyce)@example.com" ~s report =b "office party" !=b balloons !=b clown
"Okay, I'm done. Show me all the messages again"
l
all
Another example
"Show me emails from Big Ass Bank"
l
~f "Big Ass Bank"
"Show me emails from Big Ass Bank received only in March 2025"
l
~f "Big Ass Bank" ~d 1/3/2025-1/4/2025
(Mutt/NeoMutt requires dates in day/month/year format when filtering like this. The date range shown is 2025-Mar-1 to 2025-Apr-1. I could have used 2025-Mar-31 as the date range end but it's just easier to do first-of-month from one to the next; doing this means I don't have to remember if the month ends in 30 or 31.)
"Show me emails from Big Ass Bank received only in March 2025 that has the phrase 'account balance' in the message body"
l
~f "Big Ass Bank" ~d 1/3/2025-1/4/2025 =b "account balance"
"Okay, I'm done. Show me all the messages again"
l
all
And if I want to set that up as a macro so it runs whenever I hit F6 on my keyboard, that's doable in muttrc with this:
macro index <F6> "<limit>~f 'Big Ass Bank' ~d 1/3/2025-1/4/2025 =b 'account balance'<enter>" "View Big Ass Bank account balances for 2025-Mar"
Okay.
To do everything I just said in stock Thunderbird is technically doable using a Saved Search, except no regex.
The way Thunderbird does search is that everything is a drop-down menu. Using AND or OR is not an option. If you want to find messages containing or not containing certain things, multiple fields have to be configured. If for example I want to find messages not containing red, green or blue in the message body, that means I have to set up three separate "body doesn't contain" fields. One for red, one for green, one for blue.
With regex, if I want to find messages not containing red, green or blue, that's just a NOT with (red|green|blue). Easy. The pipe acts as the OR.
Regex is a godsend for searching through emails because it's written short and operates fast.
Now about that buggy regex plugin I formerly used in Thunderbird...
One regex search plugin exists for Thunderbird, and it sucks. The only saving grace of it is that you can use it with filters and Saved Search, sort of. Since it's a buggy mess, if it encounters even one email it can't parse through for whatever reason, a JavaScript pop-up happens with a crash error. Thunderbird itself doesn't crash, but you have to click off that pop-up or wait until it goes away. Until it does, search is effectively locked until the plugin "resets" or do whatever it does to recover.
I had to use that stupid plugin because there was no other option. For those Bob and Joyce examples above, the longest one would take SEVEN fields configured using a stock Thunderbird search. With the buggy regex plugin, it's technically doable with one line, if it decides not to crash and burn on the attempt.
You either have to deal with the arduous, tedious process of stock Thunderbird internal search, or use a plugin where it's a dice toss whether it will work or crash every time you use it.
If you're wondering why Thunderbird doesn't have regex, join the club. Thunderbird users have been screaming at the devs to put in regex for years. Possibly well over a decade by now if not longer. They absolutely won't do it. No matter how many users have said HEY, PUT IN REGEX FOR SEARCH AND FILTERS, nope, not happening. Enjoy the Thunderbird search that hasn't changed in 20 years. Thanks for playing.
Then there's stock Mutt and NeoMutt. You never have to touch the mouse, and there are no fields to configure. Type your oneliner, and it will work on the first try. And you can macro it.
NeoMutt really is an upgrade
The oneliner search/filter capability in NeoMutt is something I took to very quickly. Going back to Thunderbird, losing that and having to click-click-click with the mouse all over the place to do simple stuff... no.
It wasn't just the oneliner stuff that convinced me to delete Thunderbird, but it was one of the major reasons.
Another major reason is I don't want graphics in my email anymore, which includes the interface itself. I didn't realize how much a GUI mail client annoyed me until I used NeoMutt for a bit and then did two short stops into Thunderbird later. I saw the window panes, the folder icons, menus sprawled all over the place, etc.. All of that left me with a feeling of blah, and wanted nothing to do with it.
The only GUI thing about my email now is that one small titlebar change whenever a new message arrives that I talked about before, and that's it. Everything else is 100% text.
Again, I don't want to go TUI-everything, but graphics have no place in email, and arguably never did.
Think of TUI as the black PC steel case of email, i.e. everything you need, nothing you don't, and the best thing to use to get the job done.
the last great nav app goes evil
I periodically look up navigation apps on my phone mainly for entertainment, because it's funny to read the complaints. I read the gripes people have, and think yep, you should've bought a Garmin, be it 5" Drive 53, 6" DriveSmart 66, 7" DriveSmart 76 or 8" DriveSmart 86.
I'm a staunch Garmin user, but even so, I have a backup nav app on my phone. That app was no longer being shown to me in the Google Play Store. This was weird, because that means my phone is "too old" to run that app, so I go over to a web browser and look up the app.
And whoa, did this app drop a train on everybody that used it.
The app I was using for backup navigation was Magic Earth. This app is OpenStreetMap based and was totally free. Yes, was. Without any warning whatsoever, the new version released now has a paywall on it. Instead of getting everything in the app for free, a subscription is "required" to "unlock" all the features. And from what I read in the reviews, you don't get everything back that was in the previous version even if you do pay.
WOW.
The interesting thing is since my phone was "too old" to run the new version, I still had the previous free version that worked perfectly fine. But I'm certain Magic Earth will stop delivering free maps for old versions if they haven't already, so I just deleted it off my phone. See ya.
Over the years, I've watched nav app after nav app do this and it never ends well. It starts off as free, stays that way for a few years, and then whammo, pay up.
But the nightmare doesn't end there. The subscription structure doesn't stay consistent at all. First it starts off as yearly, then biannual, then quarterly, then monthly. Any nav app that charges anything always does this, and many times I've see user reviews to the tune of people paying for a 1-year subscription, the subscription structure suddenly changing, 1-year option disappears, user gets locked out, is NOT REFUNDED, and told to pay again, pay monthly, or go away. And there's not a damned thing the user can do about it.
The push to go monthly is because the most money is made that way. The subscription starts off at $20/yr, which is $1.67/mo. Then it changes to "only $15" every 6 months, which is $2.50/mo. Then it changes to "only $10" every 3 months, which is $3.33/mo. Then it finally tops out at "only $4" a month or more than that, depending on how greedy the company is. Every single subscription structure change is specifically done to charge more every month by design. Rope people in, raise the price, rinse and repeat.
Things don't end there, as there's one more thing that makes a modern nav app truly evil. I don't know if Magic Earth is doing what I'm about to say since I can't run the app anymore to see for myself, but it wouldn't surprise me if they are. The true evil happens from "securely storing" all saved favorites, past locations and/or tracks and routes in the cloud. Anything saved in the app is locked behind a paid account, effectively holding the data hostage. Oh, you want to continue to have access to your data, do you? Pay up, sucker. And if the company one day decides to quit and the app stops working, everything saved is lost. And no refunds.
Also, if the company quits, which could and probably would happen, will they sell off all the personal data for every user? If they do, a "terms of service update" will occur right before they jump ship to make you "permit" them to do it. They know nobody ever reads that. Or at least not read it until it's too late. Thanks so much for being a customer, bye!
The ruination of phone navigation continues
Magic Earth spells out what will happen with all navigation on the phone. Anybody who uses the phone for navigation now will inevitably suffer the same nightmare. And it's not a possibility, it's a certainty, regardless of app used. They're all going to go full evil.
I am so glad I never switched over to phone navigation. What a mess.
after buying casio watches off and on for 15 years...
I recently bought a second Casio AE1000W. I still have the first one but don't know when it was bought. I'm thinking it has to be at least a decade old. I do remember I bought it from a Target store in Tampa Bay Florida. Which one? No idea, but the reason I remember it was from Target is because of a price match thing that got the price down to about 15 bucks. The price of an AE1000W now is of course more, but it's still not crazy-expensive.
My reason for buying a second one is because it's a 2010 model still being made today, I like it, and wanted a backup. Fortunately, Casio is still making the AE1000W exactly the same as they did in '10, easy-press buttons and all, which I very much appreciate.
I was favoring the W735H for a while, but the thickness and weight of it was annoying me. That watch is 51.7mm lug-to-lug, 47.1mm diameter, 16.1mm thick, 50g in weight. After that, I favored the WS1600H, which is 45mm lug-to-lug, 42.1mm diameter, 12.5mm thick, 39g weight. Much nicer, but it too started annoying me because the buttons are annoyingly stiff and I'm not a fan of the menu system. An example of that is that it takes 5 mode button presses just to get to the alarm screen. Dumb.
Then there's the AE1000W, which is functionally identical to the AE1200WH, but without the stiff buttons nor the annoying layout. 48.2mm lug-to-lug, 45mm diameter, 13.8mm thick, 40g weight.
The most annoying thing to the point of being almost infuriating about the AE1200WH is the insert sitting on top of the LCD.
Specifically, I'm talking about the black bar just below the map. That stupid bar casts a shadow, effectively making the date unreadable when viewing it outside during daylight. It is a common mod for AE1200 owners to take the watch apart, take out the insert and cut that bar just to get rid of that shadow. There's no need to do this on the AE1000W since the date is displayed at the bottom of the LCD.
A feature I use is the countdown timer and can't go without it. If I didn't need the timer, I'd honestly wear a W218H all the time. That watch has ridiculously good legibility with no LCD washout, absolute top tier night light, very nice easy-press buttons, great size, looks like a G-SHOCK square, light weight...
...but again, I need that timer as I do use it often. And as it turns out, the AE1000W is the Casio watch I fight with the least, so that's what's on my wrist.
For the past 15 years, I've been buying Casio watches. Simple ones, complicated ones, big, small, digital, analog, ana-digi, and so on. I've determined that what I get along with best is something lightweight that's 100% digital, shows time + day + month + date on the home screen, has multiple alarms, and of course the countdown timer. The weekday has to be 3 letters like WED for Wednesday instead of just WE. The menu system it uses has to make sense. Numbers when adjusting settings must be able to be scrolled forward or backward. The watch must have easy-press grippy buttons or I want nothing to do with it. The battery has to be easy to replace. The style has to be basic black with wide (meaning not F-91W skinny) strap. AE1000W covers all those bases.
AE1000W has two basic black models. AE1000W-1AV and AE1000W-8AV. Both of mine are 1AV which has some small text in a light gold/brown and black everywhere else, which is fine. In photos, that text looks like a louder orange. It's not, and is gold/brown like I said. The 8AV, a new colorway for this year, has that same text in a muted blue. I did consider getting that as my second AE1000W, but said nope, I'll stick with what I know.
There is a specific alarm feature I really like that I've only seen on the AE1000 and AE1200, which is 1-ON. Instead of having a worthless "snooze" feature or alarms that can sound on a particular date (very annoying to set), you have 3 options for each of the 5 alarms. ON, 1-ON or OFF. ON and OFF are self-explanatory. When set to 1-ON, the alarm sounds at the time set, then automatically switches to OFF. What makes this great is you don't have to remember to go back and disable the alarm once after it sounds. If you want that alarm to repeat at the same time every day, that's what ON is for. If you need it to just sound once and then disable until you need it again, 1-ON. Very nice feature.
The alarm setting is a very good example of what I mean by fighting with a watch. On other Casios, that stupid alarm once set will sound every day. If it sounds on a day when I don't want it to, that's annoying. If I actually need the alarm to sound but forget to enable it, also annoying. The 1-ON alarm feature eliminates two annoyances, so it's a watch I fight with less.
But that doesn't mean I don't fight with it. As good as 1-ON is, the AE1000W is missing something I have on other Casios. On both the W735H and WS1600, when setting an alarm, the current time is also shown at top while setting it, which is very convenient. There are times I'll go to set an alarm and forget what time I just saw two screens ago, so I have to leave the alarm screen, go back to home screen, read the time, back to alarm setting, set again. The infuriating thing is that Casio could have switched the bottom part of the LCD switch to show the current time while setting the alarm, but they didn't do that.
Is there a 100% digital Casio model other than AE1000 and AE1200 that has multiple alarms, AND shows the current time while setting an alarm, AND has 1-ON? Other than the AE2000W and AE1400WH, which are basically just bigger versions of the AE1000W that I can't wear, no.
Not having the current time shown while setting the alarm on the AE1000W isn't a deal-breaker since having the 1-ON setting for all 5 alarms is so convenient.
I have other small complaints about the AE1000W, but they're not worth mentioning because the positives outweigh them. I can adjust the night light to stay lit for 1.5 or 3 seconds. Good. There is a physical thin vertical line on the LCD at bottom separating the day from the date. Good. The leftmost digit for the larger numbers is not "scrunched" when it shows a digit other than 1 (many Casios purposely make the leftmost digital smaller). Good.
The menu system does make sense, but there are four oddball settings.
Mute feature. That's a press-and-hold of the bottom left button for 4 seconds, then MUTE appears at top left of the panel. Repeat to unmute.
Auto Display feature. Four different time zones, T-1 through T-4, can be set for the home screen. To have the AE1000W auto-scroll through them, press-and-hold bottom right until a beep happens. Each time zone is then displayed for 2 seconds until you leave the home screen or short press of bottom right button.
To swap one time zone for the other, such as swapping T-1 with T-3, you have to select it first with bottom right, then press top left AND top right. A quick double-beep happens, and one time zone is swapped with the other. Repeat process to switch it back.
To swap the "world time" to home time, press bottom left to go to WT screen, press top left AND top right. Repeat to switch it back.
Before writing this, I totally forgot about the top left + top right button combo to do the time zone swap thing and had to look it up in the manual. But I remembered everything else.
Things I've learned after buying way too many Casios for about 15 years
1. Solar sucks.
Better to just use a "10-year battery" model, provided the battery is relatively easy to change. The AE1000W is one such model.
2. Modding ruins watches.
I did try my hand at modding with a few Casios I owned in the past. Bad idea. Don't do it.
3. Basic black is the only style that works on a digital.
I've owned Casios in other colors, and got rid of them all. If it has the resin strap, what works best is black strap, black case, positive LCD panel.
4. Dopey text sucks.
Casio is infamous for putting way too much printed and/or embossed text on their digitals. At least with the AE1000W, that text is kept to a minimum. For a Casio, that is.
5. Atomic timekeeping sucks.
This is all Casio Wave Ceptor models. I own one, the WV58. Works fine, but in reality, the worst that can happen for any plain non-atomic Casio digital is that it will be off by 30 seconds after 30 days. Again, that's a worst case scenario. That being true, plain quartz is pretty much just as good as atomic.
6. Tool-specific models suck.
I've owned "Fishing Gear" Casio models, "Runner's" models, and the like. I don't use any of that tool-specific crap. Just give me a way to read the time and date in a way I like, alarms that can be set how I like, a countdown timer, and I'm good.
7. All Casio digitals look goofy.
There's no way around this. If it's not the dopey text on the case, it's the case shape. If it's not the case shape, it's the text on the panel. If it's not the text on the panel, it's the way the buttons stick out. It's always something. I've learned to accept the goofiness of Casio digital watch design, especially considering there's really no such thing as a truly classy digital timepiece. The closet thing I have to a 100% digital classy Casio is the B650WD. Dopey text is kept to a minimum, LCD panel is clear of any inserts, and the minimalist design works. That's as least-goofy as you can get.
Right now, the AE1000W suits me unless Casio comes up with something else that would suit better.
tui, the interface for gen x nerds
I first said that I might be switching over to using email in the terminal. After that, I talked about Inbox Zero.
After a lot of experimentation, I found a setup that works for me, so I'm going all-in with TUI for my email.
TUI, as in Text User Interface, is as computery as it gets. The email client I've decided to run with is NeoMutt, and for one main reason. It has something regular Mutt does not called New Mail Feature. If NeoMutt did not have this very specific thing, I wouldn't have bothered with it, and I'll get back to this in a minute.
My NeoMutt setup is a combination of POP3, IMAP, getmail and server-side filters. It's complicated, and I'll leave it at that. I don't think anybody who uses Mutt or NeoMutt does it simple, because why bother with the plain stuff when you can customize the bejeezus out of it.
As complicated as my NeoMutt setup is, the end goal was to have very minimalist email that works. Did I get it? Yes. Mission accomplished. The complicated stuff is done, and now NeoMutt just sits there and does its job.
The older I get, the more minimalist my computing becomes. Having email as a terminal text-based thing brings a feeling of calm and peace. The experience could even be described as zen-like. At some point I may even go to the next level and pare down my Linux setup to using an ultra-lightweight window manager like Openbox. Or maybe Xfce, which while not ultra-lightweight is something I always got along with in the past.
This is not to say I want TUI-everything, because I'm not about to start using the internet that way. But where email is concerned, TUI truly is a proper fit since it's just all messaging.
However, there is one GUI thing I wanted, and wow was it a fight to get it, but I figured out a way. In fact, what I'm about to describe is a battle I've had to engage in every few years for one reason or another.
First, rewind the clock back to the late 1990s.
Microsoft Outlook Express had this very nice thing where when a new email arrived, an icon would appear next to the clock. That was your mail notification. The "full" Outlook had this too. Also very nice.
That little icon, while not sounding like all that much, was really convenient. You didn't have to open a window to check your email. If you had a new-mail icon down there at the clock, you had new mail. If not, no new mail. Simple, easy, and almost perfect.
Where things got perfect, at least for a while, was with Mozilla Thunderbird. You could still get that icon in the tray for new mail, but also something else. With the right plugins, you could "close" Thunderbird, but instead of it closing, it would minimize and HIDE itself. How did you get Thunderbird back? Look for the little Thunderbird icon next to the clock. Click-click, and up pops your email. Click the minimize OR close button in Thunderbird when done, and it keeps running but hides itself away. If there was no new mail, a little plain Thunderbird icon was displayed. For new mail, it changed to a different icon of your choosing. And as soon as you read all your new mail, the icon would automatically switch back to the no-new-mail icon. Brilliant setup.
This setup is commonly known as minimize to tray. It means, "When I click minimize or close in my email program, keep it running, but hide it, show a tray icon next to the clock that I can click to bring up the email program when I want, have that icon change to show whenever there is any new mail in the inbox, and also change back to a no-new-mail icon when all new mail is read."
Only two email clients in Linux I know of mostly do this right, Sylpheed and Claws Mail. You can configure either so when minimize is clicked, it stays running, hides, shows an icon in the tray, changes the icon whenever there is new email, the changes it back when all new mail is read. Clicking the tray icon brings up the program. However, if you click X to close the program, it just closes. You can't do the "clicking minimize OR close just minimizes to tray" thing. Like I said, it mostly gets it right.
I do not have minimize-to-tray for NeoMutt, but I was able to come up with the next best thing.
NeoMutt's New Mail Feature allows the client to fire a command or a script whenever new mail arrives. A simple example of that would be to fire notify-send -t 5000 -a "NeoMutt" "You have new mail" for a 5-second desktop notification. And yes, there are ways to pass over the subject line and other stuff in the notification if desired.
However, that's not what I wanted. I needed an icon that appears and stays there where I can see it.
I tried getting an icon to appear in the tray, but nope, nothing I did worked. Just when I was about to give up, I had the the thought it might be possible to change the Konsole titlebar instead. Did some experimentation, and yes, THAT worked. Whenever a new email arrives, NeoMutt fires a script, and the titlebar changes to show a light bulb emoji icon followed by "new mail". That's exactly what I needed. And this is one of the very few instances where I was happy emoji icons existed, because it saved me the hassle of having to figure out how to show a PNG in the titlebar area.
After that, I needed a way to reset the titlebar. It was much easier to figure this out. I assigned a NeoMutt macro to F8 that runs a tiny script to change the titlebar text. Done. Yes, it has to be done manually, but at least I don't have to restart the client. There is probably a way to automate this using folder-hook, but I'm fine with what I have because it works.
Is this as good as minimize-to-tray? No, but it's good enough. The only GUI thing I wanted was that new-message icon notification, and got it. Considering the fact that NeoMutt by its very design doesn't do graphics at all, I think I did okay.
Why did I go through all this crap?
It's for minimalism as mentioned above, nostalgia because it reminds me of BBS messaging back from the early '90s, futureproofing so I have an email UI that absolutely does not change, and understanding that text is text.
The worst messaging experience is in a graphical web browser. All web browsers are memory-hungry pigs. Add in images, audio, video, emojis, bloated code, badly written JavaScript, servers getting blasted with millions of data requests, and the whole thing is miserable to use. It doesn't matter if it's email or social media. The experience of using messaging in the graphical browser sucks because of all the garbage intertwined with it.
Messaging is about the text. No graphics are required to read text. Strip all the crap out, and messaging gets better instantly.
Only when messaging is experienced in something like NeoMutt does one truly understand how weighed down a graphical web browser actually is. This is when mini PCs and refurb Dell Latitudes start looking really attractive. You get one of those, yank out the drive, slap in a 500GB SSD if it needs one (you don't need anything more than that for a host drive), install Linux, install your TUI programs like NeoMutt and whoa-ho... wow, it's really, really fast with no choke anywhere.
If you're wondering, yes, others have tried to do the text-only thing with social media like Facebook. I'm not talking about a "lite" or "basic" version, but rather a very stripped down text-only experience. It's an unfortunate truth that programs and apps that deliver a social media text-only experience never last. As is the way of things, the platform will inevitably change something (by design?) that makes text-only programs/apps break.
With email, as long as your account has POP3 and/or IMAP access, you can still strip it all down to just text.
TUI for email use is awesome.