Daily Tech Diva » ical

Woe no more…iCal is back!

Jessica — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 03:26:33 +0000

When the 10.5.3 update to OS X borked my iCal installation, I tried quite a few things to get my iCal back in working order. When you clicked the dock icon, it would just bounce and never actually open the program. I tried trashing a couple of files according to some directions I found on the Apple discussion boards, but that didn’t work either. So I’ve just been biding my time with Google Calendar in full-screen while waiting for the 10.5.4 update to come out.

I have been busy the past couple weeks, so I just upgraded to 10.5.4 over the weekend. I’m happy to report that iCal is now functional! It opens very quickly and everything is just as it should be, syncing up with my Google Calendar via BusySync. I’m so happy to have it working again, especially since it’s so nice to see my appointments and deadlines on my 19″ wide screen LCD when I’m working at home!

Moral of the story? I’ll be backing up my Mac very, very soon (using Amazon S3 and Jungle Disk of course!) just in case any future updates don’t install correctly.

Sour Apple: More 10.5.3 woes

Jessica — Fri, 30 May 2008 15:10:13 +0000

I discovered yesterday afternoon that my iCal appears to be broken. I haven’t had a chance to sit down and explore the problem yet, but when I click on the iCal icon in the dock, it bounces up and down, appears to try to open, and then shuts itself down again. Rebooting did not fix it.

I’d heard reports of the new update borking people’s wireless Time Machine backups, and even totally crashing their machine, but I haven’t heard of iCal breaking yet. I know there were some significant iCal updates in the 10.5.3 upgrade, so I’m hoping that my upgrade wasn’t messed up. I had heard that the download for the upgrade would be in the 420 MB range, and mine only downloaded 198 MB. So now I’m totally paranoid that it didn’t do a full upgrade!

I haven’t backed up my Mac yet. I know, I know, bad, irresponsible computer geek. I just signed up for Amazon S3 (which I’ve been using with JungleDisk on the eeePC) but I haven’t set it to back up the Mac yet. I should probably do that, then tackle the iCal issue. I really don’t want to have to rebuild this Mac from scratch.

Introduction: searching for the perfect digital calendar solution

Jessica — Fri, 16 May 2008 14:00:33 +0000

I always aspire to lead an organized life. Whether I actually am or not at any given point in time is really another story. (I am lucky enough to have a photographic memory and be able to put my hands on things that I need in my office or my apartment pretty easily!) I can be pretty anal retentive about digital things like the way my Google Reader feeds are organized in their folders, the things on my Firefox toolbar, or my del.icio.us bookmarks even when my car is a mess and the clothes in my closet are more on the floor or in a never-ending laundry basket than they are on hangers.

However, in my work life, I can’t help but be as organized as I can. I rely heavily on email, because often times it drives my daily tasks as well as provides a clear documented line of communication between me and my clients. I think it’s that way at almost every company in the modern age–live and die by email. I also use the Outlook Calendar a lot for scheduling client meetings, internal kickoffs, and more.

We have a documented project process that we follow for every client project, and I have the elements in place on my computer at work to get those things set up and completed. However, I am forever writing new to-do lists in the margins of my Levenger Circa notebook (my best analog tool at the office!) and I really hate trying to keep a paper datebook because my timelines for projects tend to be very fluid when there are delays, hiccups, or changes in scope. I also hate having to change all my Outlook calendar entries when a project’s timeline changes, because somehow it never seems to sync up right to my PDA phone or iCal on my Mac at home.

I know I’m not the only one who has sat down with their various daily driver gadgets and thought, “Surely there has to be a way to make it all talk to each other!” There doesn’t seem to be one outstanding solution that will handle all needs for all platforms–yet. I think it’s coming, I HOPE it’s coming soon, but I can’t wait for it to arrive. I need a solution NOW.

I use the following devices every day:

Windows Mobile Pocket PC phone running WM 5.0
PC at work running Windows XP
Power PC Mac at home running Leopard
eeePC running Ubuntu Hardy Heron 8.04

I think I am slowly but surely figuring out the way that I can get everything to connect and sync together without trying to sync the PDA phone with any computer (a nightmare on Mac and Linux, annoying even on Windows) and across the multiple software platforms.

I have the first three “phases” of my calendaring setup completed and working, which I’ll document in more depth tomorrow. So far, I have the eeePC, the work PC, and the Windows Mobile phone all communicating to the same central hub that I have set up in Google Calendars.

Up next, part one–tweaking out Thunderbird on the eeePC to be a robust calendar and task solution!