In case you hadn’t heard as of yet, Google has just released their newest concoction: Google Calendar. I’d recommend you go check it out — It has to be one of the coolest web 2.0 applications I have seen as of yet. Here’s the problem, you have to have an internet connection to check your calendar!

For many people this is not a problem because their computer never leaves their desktop, but for a more mobile user like myself, a solid wireless connection cannot always be found. That being said, let me give a little background information on my experience with calendar applications. In the past I have messed around with Outlook, Mozilla Calendar, and most recently Rainlendar. I really like rainlendar as it sits quite nicelyon the desktop without using up many system resources.

So, here’s the question I had: can I get Google Calendar and Rainlendar to play nicely together??? At first it looked like the answer was a definite no. The one promising feature of Rainlendar was an included extension which allows one to import and watch an local ical data file and synchronize the rainlendar calendar with that file. Google Calendar allows for one to subscribe to an online ical feed.

The problem: Rainlendar requires the ical file to be local and google only provides a web location for the ical file.

The solution: Wget, a simple command line application which allows one to download a file from a remote location to the local hard drive. Following are the steps I took to get a working Rainlendar/Google Calendar setup.

1. If you haven’t already done so, get a Gmail account, and go check out Google Calendar.
2. Also, you’ll want to download Rainlendar if you haven’t already done so.
3. Download Wget and extract the files to a location on your hard drive that is easy to remember (I put mine under “program files/wget/”).
4. Go onto Google Calendar => Settings => Calendars => (Your Calendar) and then click on the link for the private address of your ical feed. Copy the url; you will need this in a minute.
5. Now, we are going to need to create a batch script to download the ical file to the local hard drive using wget. To do this, open up a text editor such as notepad and write a simple script resembling this one (modified as needed) and save it somewhere as a .bat file:
   @echo off
"C:\Program Files\wget\wget.exe" -O "C:\mycalendar.ics" [address copied from Google Calendar]
   You will need to replace the ‘%40′ in the google calendar address with ‘@’, the at character.
6. Now you have a script which should download your calendar to your hard drive whenever it is run. Try running the script to verify that it works. Now we want to set up Rainlendar to synchronize with this file. In the Rainlendar menus go to config => plugins => iCalendar Plugin => Settings and add your file. Your rainlendar calendar should now be updated to match your Google Calendar.
7. The final step of the process is to keep our local calendar up to date with the changes made to our Google Calendar. All that is needed to do that is to periodically run the batch script we created. This can be done automatically using a Scheduled Task. To create a Scheduled Task navigate to Control Panel => Scheduled Tasks => Add Scheduled Task. Browse to select your .bat file and modify the task to run as frequently as you like (mine updates hourly).

And that’s all there is to it… The final product is a nicely updated local calendar which sits on my desktop which is stored online on Google Calendar.

I’ve decided to update my blog to Wordpress 2.0 (wordpress.org), and I must say it is looking pretty sweet. The spam prevention is supposed to be much better; something I can definitely be thankful for. And with the update to WP 2.0 I’ve decided to give the blog a facelift — I considered making my own WP Theme but decided that I would just do some slight modifications to an already awesome and pre-existant theme: Squible.

The theme has some very nice features like the ability to display photos from my flickr site and ajax powered comments (in firefox at least). For you xanga users, I would encourage you to check out my main site and enjoy the goodness.

In other news, I finally got around to writing the guestbook script for my main site. It is simple but nice looking, so head on over and sign it already! It always feels good to use something that you created from a blank start. Once again, the guestbook is here: http://posborne.net/guestbook.php.

Enjoy!

Well, last night our family had our little Christmas (we are in Wisconsin visiting the relatives on Christmas Eve and Day) and gift-opening. It was a good time with the family, and I must say my parents really outdid themselves on gifts this year. The highlight gift that I received was a Canon Powershot A520 4.0 megapixel digital camera. I had been kinda hoping to get a digital camera so that I could take some fun pictures. It will definitely come in nice this summer to document the fun things I do up there.

Speaking of camp, I met with the camp director and another staff member (Graydon) for lunch at TGI Friday’s for a few hours. We talked about various camp-related things which was good (the details of which I will not reveal for sake of secrecy and the fact that they would bore most), but beyond that it was just good to be reminded of camp and to see some of the guys (especially Graydon who goes to school in Colorado). Though I’m still not completely sure if camp is where I am being called to be next summer, I think it is becoming more clear that returning is the decision I am to make. If I’m up there, my new digital camera will come in handy taking wonder pictures like this one of Lake Wilbur (the lake on which the camp is located).

A picture of Thunderbird’s RSS handling capabilities in action

Thanks to a tip by Jeremy, I now have all of my Xanga subscriptions put into Thunderbird for easy access without having to ever visit xanga again (except to post comments). I must say it is quite nice to be able to check whether there are any new xanga postings (and read them) all in the same way you would go about checking your email. It just seems like it is the way it was supposed to be.

If you haven’t yet, go check out my site made from scratch by your’s truly. The URL is: http://posborne.net/

Ok, so I’ve been reading through Proverbs and there really are a ton of good ones… I’ve been underlining many of them in my Bible…

An idea just hit me a few minutes ago that I could (being the geek that I am) create a web-based cron script in php that would send out a daily random proverb from a long list of ones that I would laboriously (and joyously) record. I would create a system where you could enter your email address in order to receive the proverbs (of course, it would also have a confirmation system so that you couldn’t just sign up other people). Along with the verse, each email would contain a link to a page for comments on that verse where people could share their thoughts on it.

I considered (and am still considering) integrating this into a weblog system like xanga where the daily proverb would be posted to that (and people could read it in their subscriptions) but I’m unsure as to how much work it will be to ping that information to the xanga servers…

Anyway, what do you all think of the idea?

Ok, so I really didn’t want to post much tech stuff on this blog, and I intend to keep it that way, but I felt the need to make at least one fairly loaded post that will hopefully help some people discover some “cool” applications that make computing a much nicer experience.

First things first: What browser are you using? Most people aren’t even aware that there is more out there than Internet Explorer which is conveniently bundled with Windows. Internet Explorer isn’t completely terrible, but it sure isn’t the best browser out there. Internet Explorer has numerous security holes, allows pop-up ads, and just isn’t as cool as Firefox (even the name is cool). Firefox is an open source project (which to most people just means it is completely free) with many talented developers standing behind it. It is much more secure than Internet Explorer and has a ton of cool features as well such as the ability to download a ton of cool plugins and theme (skin) the browser. It also runs very quickly, and the coolest part is that it is a “tabbed browser” so instead of having a billion pages open you can just have one window with a bunch of tabs you can quickly switch between. It may seem like a trivial feature, but once you go tabbed you won’t look back… I ususally have at least 8 tabs open What are you waiting for? Go Check it Out!. [A Screenshot of firefox -- Screenshot]

Also related to firefox is the Thunderbird Email Client. Many people just use webmail now-a-days, which is cool, but if you are like me and still enjoy downloading your messages to your pc where you can access them when you are offline and whatnot then you’ll want to check out Mozilla Thunderbird. It, like firefox, is open source and will be very familiar to those who have used Microsoft Outlook. There are some very cool features and it is what I use everyday to send and receive email messages. An interesting feature that Thunderbird has is that it can deal with RSS (XML) Feeds. This is kinda cool because it is like receiving emails of all your favorite stuff like (for me) BBC News, Slashdot Geek News, and of course posborne’s blog… Well, go check it out! [A Screenshot of Thunderbird -- Screenshot]

Ok, I really didn’t discover the possibility of this until a couple days ago, so I figured I would share my excitement Windows XP is quite pretty compared to Windows 98/ME, but it can still be approved upon. And of course, I had to go out and find out how I could at least try to make it look better. The best solution I have found so far is an application called Style XP. Go to the site to learn a little more about what you can do with the app. There are a ton of “Visual Sytles” for Windows XP available at customize.org under the XP VisualStyles Section. If you just want to go and download the App, here is a link to the download page. To get a better idea of what you can do with this application check out a screenshot of my current desktop [Screenshot].

Alright, I’m on a roll now — why stop. One last application that is pretty sweet. The application is called Trillian and it is and Instant Messenger Client. I know what you are thinking… I already have all my friend and contacts on AIM or MSN. No worries, in fact, that is the beauty of Trillian. You can talk to all your friends using trillian regardless of whether they are using AOL, MSN, ICQ, or several other IM clients. It’s that easy. And unlike AOL and some others that have ads and whatnot, Trillian is completely ad-free. It’s what I personally use. Here is a link to the Trillian site and here is a Screenshot of trillian in action.

Well, I could go on, but I will not.