Something I’ve wanted to do for a while is have two way sync between gCal and iCal. While there have been third party solutions (eg Spanning Sync) I just wanted something that might not have to cost me money. I hadn’t checked for it seems a couple of years, since today I did a search and found that gcal has been able to do this for a couple of years. Best instructions I found are on lifehacker, about syncing desktop calendars to gcal, and my quick test it seems to work a treat. The advantage of this is that I share my gcal calendar with work colleagues, and I can also make it talk to the Groupwise corporate calendar at work, since it involves iCal it will also turn up on my iPod touch, and since it is two way I can add stuff in google or iCal and all will be sweet.
UPDATE: ah, talks to ical and gcal but not to iPod touch via network. So could manual sync them using iTunes but that defeats the purpose. Easy fix: on iPod settings can go into the gmail user settings and turn on calendars. Done.
UPDATE on the UPDATE: bugger. The Great Firewall of RMIT breaks it. iCal is not allowed to chat with gcal from inside the barriers. To make it worse if I try to run iCal on my desktop it launches, get an error related to the gcal account, and it quits. This is major problem. Have to think about next step.
Tags:
Lifes,
Lifes Little Pieces,
Little,
Pieces
These are my links for June 19th through June 27th:
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I’ve started a writing project that has come out of the research leave I had last year. Basically I’m writing draft essays come semi-structured thoughts, which will end up online. I’m using Tinderbox because while my blog has some good stuff in it, I can’t find it easily, and I also want a writing project that grows and becomes more densely interconnected than a blog tends to be. So the writing has been going well, have a prototype site designed but not public yet (currently pretty much the same as I’ve used for the integrated media course notes this year) but I have a dilemma.
The first major part has become a 5000 word node, which means I can also spend a bit more polishing time once I do the publishing in this particular project to turn it into something for publication. But 5000 words! The original idea of writing like this was for something more hypertextual. Shorter nodes that broke off and linked to other bits when new ideas arose. Instead this is pretty much flat land essay. Now, the actual dilemma. I could break this up into more appropriate nodes, rewrite each of these so they are more self contained and not like an essay. The advantages of this are that I know I can write more quickly, more broadly, but also with more detail like this. For me everything is intertwingled (to quote the ever quotable Ted Nelson) and so one reason this node has grown to 5000 words is because this idea leads to this one which leads to this one which then needs more background and explanation.
The disadvantages, for me, of writing more hypertextually though are that if this 5000 word essay became five 1000 word nodes then to turn that into a publishable outcome, which nearly always still means a traditional essay, means taking these parts and reworking them quite a bit to make them work as an essay. It is not, technically, that difficult to do, though can be time consuming. It often involves a lot of editing because to write hypertext hypertextually often means writing things in relatively self contained ways. But the biggest problem is that I find finishing things, getting something from 85% finished to 100%, the hardest, and so that last step – taking it out of Tinderbox and into Word or whatever to roll it into an essay. If it is too distant from that final form then I’m concerned it just won’t happen. Now, that doesn’t matter, the work is published online, out there, available. More available then it will ever be in a bloody journal quite frankly. But I have to tick boxes as part of my position description as an academic, and simply creating and distributing doesn’t tick any.
What to do? Suck it and see is the only option isn’t it? No good trying to solve it here. Let’s try to move to a more hypertextual writing model, less essay nodes, and see what comes of that. Long nodes aren’t of themselves wrong – look at Wikipedia in many ways I think the idea of having most collected on the one page makes a lot of good sense – but if it gets in the way of my thinking and writing practice then that is a problem.
Tags:
hypertext,
Network Literacy,
practice
This is an interesting proposition:
Students must learn how to become ‘problem finders’ as well as problem solvers – helping organisations define the nature of the problem as well as how to respond to it. As budgetary pressures grow so to will the pressure to find fundamentally new ways of delivering public services. Designers must know how to work ‘upstream’ and be confident of the distinctive value they can bring to strategic design in public services.
It comes from the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce’s (aka RSA) “Six Challenges for Design Education“. It is an intriguing prompt as we spend so much time rabbitting on about how our students should be problem solvers, yet they’re right. Problem finding is a better and more relevant skill. This is what honours is all about. This is also what teaching is about. What is a problem worth finding, and then finding out about? It is also how you frame or come up with ideas worth doing and projects worth making.
Tags:
honours,
practice
These are my links for June 12th from 20:10 to 20:44:
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These are my links for June 12th from 19:45 to 20:00:
- 104-MC (104MC) Bachelor of Arts (Honours)(Media and Communications) – 2010 – Melb Uni Media and Comms honours
- Bachelor of Arts (Honours) : Faculty of Arts : The University of Melbourne – Melb Uni Arts Honours programs. Has links to three honours programs.
- Honours degree of Bachelor of Visual Communication, Monash University – Monash Vis Comm Honours
- Honours degree of Bachelor of Multimedia and Digital Arts, Monash University – Monash Multimedia and Digital Arts Honours
- Honours degree of Bachelor of Design, Monash University – Monash B.Des honours
- Honours degree of Bachelor of Arts, Monash University – Monash BA honours
- Bachelor of Communication (Honours), Monash University – Monash Comm honours
- Bachelor of Design (Multimedia Design) (Honours) at Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia – Swinburne Mulitmedia Design Honours
- Bachelor of Design (Communication Design) (Honours) at Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia – Swinburne Comm Design Honours
- Bachelor of Film and Television (Honours) at Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia – Swinburne Film and TV Honours
- Bachelor of Arts (Honours) at Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia – Swinburne Arts Honours
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These are my links for June 11th from 22:02 to 22:09:
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These are my links for June 11th from 21:32 to 22:01:
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These are my links for June 5th through June 11th:
- THATCamp Canberra – Very interesting and exciting unconference being hosted by the Uni of Canberra.
- PhD2Published – A blog detailing and documenting the transition of a PhD from a PhD to a published book. Useful for PhD candidates late in their candidacy, and of course recent completions.
- digress.it guide « digress.it – Plugin that you add to wordpress to let paragraphs be annotated. Has some interesting potential for annotated readings of documents for classes, though think a wiki might be better.
- Apple – HTML5 – Apples demo of what HTML 5 can do, Safari only. Another shot in the format war that is playing out as a standards battle.
- YouTube – International Experimental Film Group – YouTube group desciedd to experimental film. Haven't looked so don't know if dedicated to youtube specific experimental practice, or if video specific, or just a way of disseminating experimental practice.
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