Undercrank

Apple

March 18, 2004

Movable Type template for iCal

For reasons I'm not entirely sure of, I've put together a feed of this site in iCalendar format (as used most notably by Apple's iCal).

This is another one to be filed under "because I can", but having blog post summaries appear in the calendar is well, interesting. Taken a step further, iCal could become a simple news aggregation tool that gives a more natural view of blog updates in relation to eachother.

The iCalendar file, and the source code for the index template are available. iCal users can subscribe using the webcal:// protocol by using this link.

There's a few issues to be aware of if you feel like taking this further:

Timezones: Timezones are hard-coded, as there's no support in MT to write out "GMT", or "Europe/London" as might be expected.
Appointment length: All the 'appointments' are one-minute long.
Line length: The summaries and descriptions tag as per the spec should wrap at 75 octets in length; however, I've not figured out a decent way to do this in MT. A plug-in might help here.
MovableType support: The template requires MT 2.66 or higher (I think), as I used some of the new tags required for Atom support (in particular <MTIfNonEmpty> and <$MTEntryModifiedDate$>).

More of the same RSS

Pairing up a SyncMaster with the Mac mini: I'd probably have managed to hold off the temptations of the newly announced Mac mini if only for the fact that I appear to already own the perfect monitor for the teensy, tiny little thing.
Apple's inventory management sucks: Not content with messing up with their inventory on Power Mac G5's, eMac's, iPod mini's and iMac's, Apple have now delayed the Airport Express for another two weeks in the UK.

Upgrading the iPod's headphones: With the attraction of the iPod's shiny white headphones to thieves I've been using Sony's MDR-EX71SLB alternatives instead and can't rate them highly enough.
Blatant FCC Violation Version: Despite being essentially banned in the UK, my very own iTrip landed on my doormat this morning. First impressions are great, with the look and feel being very much like it came from Apple's own R&D department.

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Comments

pam on March 18, 2004

forgive my "unknowingness" but, how does this work - the ical thing - I am looking for an MT plugin that will act as a sidebar thingy for a calendar of events, to do list or something like that because I have a wierd work schedule and everyone always asks me when I am working or what I am doing - just thought it would be a good thing to have.

thanks.