Tour de France iCal - Calendar Feed

Updated for the 2015 Tour de France!!!
Updated for the 2014 Tour de France!!
Updated for the 2013 Tour de France!
Updated for the 2012 Tour de France

Tour fan?  Want to know what stage is on at what time so you can organise your TV viewing around your work schedule (kidding - kind of)?  Want it to dynamically update your calendar as the Tour develops?

Well how's this look...

I've setup an iCal feed for the Tour De France which you can subscribe too.  If you use your iCal compliant calendaring tool (iCal.app on Mac or Outlook on PC, or your iPhone) then it will display all the stage details on the days that they happen.

You can see below that it creates a separate Calendar so won't write over the top of any other calendars you have, and can easily be toggled on and off.

As I get updates on the start times, distances and anything else I find interesting I'll update the feed and you will automagically see the updates in your calendar.

This will work (providing anybody uses it) for subsequent years of the TDF as well and will populate as the data becomes publicly available.

I've tested this on iPhone and Mac iCal, just clicking on this:

webcal://openstripe.com/iCals/icalgen.php?cal=tdf

Not sure about other clients, you may need to use the standard http protocol from other apps.

http://openstripe.com/iCals/icalgen.php?cal=tdf

Make sure you subscribe and don't just download the calendar entries otherwise you won't get any updates.

Please leave me a comment if you find this useful, it will help me find the five minutes needed to update the calendar with the stage details.

How to use with Outlook

 You can subscribe this calendar in outlook by doing the following.

"File" -> "Account Settings" -> "Account Settings" -> "Internet Calendars" -> "New" -> "webcal://shermanroad.dyndns-home.com/cals/icalgen.php?cal=tdf"

Change the Name to "Tour de France" or something meaningful for you.

You should then be able to toggle it on and off as a new calendar.

Sheeva Plug Problems and Fixes

Problem)
PHP errors with "PHP Fatal error:  Call to undefined function curl_init()"

Fix)
apt-get install php5-curl; /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

MacOS X Widgets - Video File Size Calculator

A while back wrote a simple widget for MacOS X which calculates the file size of Video files based on their length and Bitrate.

It also shows the workings on the reverse!

Just in case anyone might want it, and so I know where it is when I do...

You can download it here: Download Link

To toggle the "Tick" in a UITableViewCell

To check or uncheck a "tick" box in a UITableViewCell cell and also unhighlight it afterwards.

First make sure it's accessoryType is set:

cell.accessoryType = UITableViewCellAccessoryCheckmark;

And then in the didSelectRowAtIndexPath method:


// Toggle the "Tick" on and off
UITableViewCell *cell = [tableView cellForRowAtIndexPath:indexPath];

if (cell.accessoryType == UITableViewCellAccessoryCheckmark) {
cell.accessoryType = UITableViewCellAccessoryNone;
}else if (cell.accessoryType == UITableViewCellAccessoryNone) {
cell.accessoryType = UITableViewCellAccessoryCheckmark;
}
// This removes the highlighting of the Cell
[tableView deselectRowAtIndexPath:indexPath animated:YES];



A call to all Xcode / iPhone tutorial writers

I'm trying to learn some iPhone development using xcode - It's real difficult.  Xcode is really painful to learn.  It's often made even more confusing by Interface Builder the tool for graphically designing apps.

Why does a company so steeped in design and graphical loveliness make it impossible to graphically layout the majority of your app?

I've been trying for a day and a half to learn how to select an option in a list and navigate to a different view when it is selected - I'm still not there, why is this so difficult?!  I'm on probably my 13th tutorial but I'm suffering badly with these as well.  And there's two common problems with them:

1. Not providing downloadable code.  I've worked my way through at least 5 which plain out just didn't work.  If I can download the code I can check it works, does what I need, and only then read the tutorial.
2. Not explaining the Interface Builder actions well enough.

Here's an example of the second from an otherwise excellent tutorial:

"Once you have dragged this on connect the IBOutlet in the Driller App Delegate object to the Navigation Controller by dragging from the app delegate whilst holding the control key".  

WTF.  

I'm sure it's easy when you know, but if I knew I wouldn't be here looking at a tutorial.  As soon as you don't get this bit the rest of the article is then off limits.

Having said that however I'd like to thank everyone that has bothered to write tutorials.  But please provide the source code....

Configuring vSphere 4 to deploy Windows type OS with Customizations

This link gives the versions of sysprep you need and where to stick them on the vSphere server to allow customized deployments of these OS's.

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1005593

Change the Password Complexity of Windows Server 2008

For a default install of windows server 2008 the password has to be overly complex.  This is a right pain in the ass.  To switch this off (this won't work if it's part of a domain) use the following:

Start -> All Programs -> Administrative Tools -> Local Security Policy

Open Account Policy and change the field "Password must meet complexity requirements" to disabled.