Recent Posts

Event duplication in iCloud accounts

I have had a couple of emails in the last few days in relation to Apple's iCloud and duplicates in iCal. Having used iCal Dupe Deleter the duplicates for some users are re-appearing in iCal after a short while. The addition of the duplicated events is due to iCloud re-introducing the duplicated events back into the calendars from the server.

Apple have created a knowledge base article (TS4038) that outlines how they suggest users to remove duplicates in MobileMe. This method is identical to that for iCloud calendars and (although it seems long winded) I suggest you follow these instructions when de-duping events from iCloud calendars.

Submitted by John M on 18 October, 2011 - 23:41
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Dates to iCal 2.3 update released

I have just uploaded Dates to iCal 2.3.0. This update has several feature improvements.

Firstly (following on from the French, German and Spanish localizations in version 2.2.4) Dates to iCal 2.3 is now localized into Italian. I'm very grateful to Roberto Miola for his translations which have enabled this.

Submitted by John M on 18 October, 2011 - 23:26
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Dates to iCal now updated for Lion

I have just uploaded Dates to iCal 2.2.5. This update makes Dates to iCal OSX Lion compatible and I recommend all users update to this version before installing Lion.

For those who have Dates to iCal installed and have already updated to Lion, I suggest you do the following:

1. Replace your previous version of Dates to iCal with version 2.2.5.
2. Open iCal and delete the calendars associated with Dates to iCal.
3. Quit and re-open iCal.
4. Make new calendars to contain the Dates to iCal events.

Submitted by John M on 22 July, 2011 - 21:21
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Lion and Dates to iCal 2.2.4

Currently Dates to iCal 2 (as of version 2.2.4) is not compatible with OSX 10.7.

I am working on an update and expect to release it in the next few days.

Submitted by John M on 21 July, 2011 - 07:16
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Get Facebook Birthdays

Mixin.com offer a Facebook app that creates a calendar file of your Facebook friends' birthdays that you can subscribe to in iCal. Take a look at www.fbcal.com. I wrote the following Applescript to copy your Facebook friends' birthdays into Address Book so that Dates to iCal could have access to these dates.

Submitted by John M on 26 February, 2011 - 16:44
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Looking for translators

For as long as I have been writing software for Apple Macs I have had occasional, but regular requests that I translate the applications I write. Much to my embarrassment, I have usually evaded such requests due to my worries over the time and complexity I expected to get into, not to mention I really only have a grasp on one language. With a (soon to be released) version of Dates to iCal I'd like to break with that and hope to be able to release it in as many languages as required - but I need your help.

Submitted by John M on 18 February, 2011 - 00:12
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Toggle OSX screen saver password lock

In OSX it is you can set it so the screen saver asks for a password to unlock. The normal way to set this is to go to System Preferences > Security Pane > General Tab and check the tick box. Here is a quick Applescript to toggle the screen saver password setting. I wrote this in response to this request on Apple Dicsussions. There are also another couple of responses there that use Systems Events GUI scripting to open System Preferences. This script used the UNIX command 'defaults' to set the preferences .plist for the screen saver directly without opening any windows.

Submitted by John M on 9 February, 2011 - 14:36

UPDATED: Dates to iCal and MobileMe beta

UPDATED: A couple of weeks after writing this a user of Dates to iCal wrote to tell me that Dates to iCal is now working with the MobileMe beta.

Apple have recently opened up their MobileMe beta and I have had reports that Dates to iCal is not working with the new beta version of MobileMe that uses CalDAV. I'm working on this and hope to have a solution as soon as possible. See below how to use Dates to iCal with the MobileMe beta.

Submitted by John M on 15 August, 2010 - 22:47
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Easily switch to login window

A while ago I came back to my home computer to find I had not logged out and things not as I left them. There were files on the Desktop with names like 'sdfgasfgafasz' and things moved or disappeared. It took this happening a couple of times before I connected it to my my three year old daughter and resolved to do something about it.

In OSX there are many ways ways to protect your login when you leave the computer, logging out, using a screen saver with a password etc. These all tend to have a shortcut (like ⌘⇧Q to log out of the current user or hot corners) but none of these quite fitted my usage.

Submitted by John M on 22 July, 2010 - 06:10
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List Events and Todos of Calendars

I like how Applescript allows for quick solutions to what otherwise would be tricky problems to solve. Take the total number of events in an iCal calendar, this is a question asked recently on Apple Discussions. Counting them by hand would be a bore (especially with 40,000), but with Applescript it's as easy as:

tell application "iCal" to count events of calendars
(gives the result of 1279 currently for me.)

Submitted by John M on 13 July, 2010 - 22:23
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