RasterWeb!This morning I just couldn’t sleep… It’s not even 5 AM, so what do I do? Get up and start working… One problem…
After a bit of panic, I took care of things that I really needed to take care of on my own computer, like entering contact info into Address Book, and file management, and backups, etc. Hmmm, maybe I should disconnect at least once a week.
Ahh, things are back to normal, the connection has been restored. (Thought I still have that Javascript-powered Gallery to write…)
I’m working with a small company to determine what file server and backup solutions might fit their needs. Here is what I’ve come up with so far…
They are a small group all located in one office, so for a file server, nothing too big/costly should be needed. My first thought was a Linksys NSLU2. The pros of the NSLU2 are that it is cheap and simple to set up and administer. It seems ideal for this situation. They would need to add their own external USB drives, which is not a big deal, as they’ve already got a bunch of those in the office. Are there any cons to the NSLU2? Other than the fact that it formats the filesystem of the external drives as something you can’t plug directly into your Mac, I don’t know of any…
Instead of the NSLU2, they could use an old PowerMac G4 that is on hand and not doing much. They could still plug in the external USB (and Firewire) drives, and keep them formatted as-is so they could be moved to another Mac if needed. Internal drives could also be used if desired. The pros of the G4 are that they already have it, it could use internal and external drives, and could be a more full-fledged server (print, http, etc.) The cons to the G4 is that management would not be as simple, and it’s more/bigger hardware with more/bigger failure points.
For an off-site backup solution, I’m seriously looking at Amazon’s S3. I’ve been using it for myself since it launched, and I think with a simple client like Jungle Disk or Interarchy, they could easily create off-site backups at a very affordable price. They do a lot of large files for print, as well as audio & video production, so Amazon’s pricing is excellent.
So what do you think? Did I miss anything?
Since I can’t leave well enough alone with this, I’m following up Calendaring: Still not there… with a post about events. I blame Aaron for this.
Sure, I could talk about Darwin Calendar Server, mention Calendar Swamp, or complain about http and WebDAV and CalDav and webcal in relation to calendars (I guess they are all somehow different…) But why bother? Aaron posted about upcalendar and he even released code.
Now, I’ve known Aaron for a long time, and I still read many of his posts and then re-read them, and then scratch my head and say “Huh?” As for his code, I try not to look at it. Anyway, from what I can decipher, upcalendar is about taking your events from Upcoming.org with you, so that’s what I wanted to attempt.
First I went to Upcoming.org and under ‘My Upcoming Events’ choose ‘Subscribe’ and picked the iCal URL. I then subscribed to that in Apple’s iCal, and set iSync to sync it with my Nokia 7610.
After syncing, my phone had all of ‘My Upcoming Events’ in the calendar.
This seems somewhat close, in theory, to what Aaron did, at least I think so. Who can tell what he’s taking about half the time. Anyway, enjoy… I’ve got to get back to solving this calendaring problem…
I’ve been rolling my own (or trying to) for quite some time now, and I still am not happy with my calendaring solution…
Let’s see, I started with Sunbird, and then added in Upcoming.org (even helped fix a bug) and eventually settled on Thunderbird and Lightning.
Well, Thunderbird and Lightning and iCal and an AppleScript to make sure iCal updates my calendar before iSync syncs it with my Nokia 7610… Did you get all that? Does it sound insane?
I’m all for crazy hacks if the end result is what I want/need, but I also like simple/elegant solutions, so I’m shopping around. I looked at Google Calendar, but I don’t like it. I tried to add in my own calendar, which is stored on my server and accessible via WebDAV, but it didn’t like that. Then later is seemed to like it, but it doesn’t consider that ‘My Calendar’ because it considers the one stored on Google’s server as ‘My Calendar.’ That’s not what I want… I can view my real calendar, but I can’t seem to make edits, and edits I make elsewhere do not seem to update. Google Calendar just plain doesn’t work for me. Google Calendar == no damn good.
Next I gave 30boxes a try. By the looks of the app, the folks behind it really “get it” as far as how the web works. Again, if you have simple needs, 30boxes might work for you, but when I added my real calendar under ‘My Web Calendars’ it showed up, screwed up some events, and doesn’t seem to refresh or allow me to edit my real calendar. Other than those issues, 30boxes looks pretty nice. Sigh…
So is the only answer a display-only solution? (I was doing that with PHP iCalendar like 3+ years ago, and it wasn’t ideal then.)
Is there any web-based calendaring app that will let me use my own .ics file stored on my server and made accessible via WebDAV?
BarCampMilwaukee.com is up and running. If you are interested in BarCampMilwaukee, please go there for details, and to sign-up.
Now that we’ve got a date (Sat. Sept. 30 & Sun. Oct. 1, 2006) and a place to have BarCamp (Bucketworks) we are working on things like getting participants (campers) and sponsors, and promoting it. Are you involved in a technology-related group in the Milwaukee area? Tell the people in your group about it.
We’ve set up a Yahoo! Group for BarCampMilwaukee where we are currently discussing all the details for the event. I think we’ll also be meeting at Bucketworks on Sunday, August 20th, 2006 to do some in-person discussion and planning (waiting for confirmation on that meeting…)
I’m also hoping to design & print up some flyers in the next few days… And, you know, if I’m posting too much about BarCampMilwaukee, just let me know. ;)