Category Archives: Call Me a Geek

The things I do and think about computers.

Sunrise & Sunset in iCal

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Must-have data — at least for me.

It may sound strange to folks who live in the world of alarm clocks and wrist watches, but my life’s calendar is managed by the sun. I wake early — before sunrise this time of year — and I sometimes can’t do things until after the sun has come up. As a pilot, I also need to know when the sun will rise and set so I can schedule sunrise and sunset flights, night flights, and photo flights, all of which depend on the sun for timing.

Each year, I export the daily sunrise and sunset information from Time Palette, a shareware application that provides various almanac information, into a FileMaker Pro database I created, which turns the exported data into real dates and times. I then export the Sunrise and Sunset info as separate FileMaker Pro files. I import those into iCal Filter, which enables me to export them back out as iCal .ics files. I open those file to import the information into iCal, thus displaying sunrise and sunset times on my iCal calendar.

Although it seems like a lot of work, I only do it once a year and then I’m set for the entire year.

If you’re interested in the .ics files for your location, I could probably be charmed into whipping up the files for you in exchange for one of the items on my Amazon.com wish list. (I really like surprises.) I might even throw in the moonrise/moonset times; I’m working on adding them, too.

How to Use E-Mail More Safely and Effectively

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“Hacking Email: 99 Email Security and Productivity Tips”

I just stumbled across this article on the Web today. It’s got some really great tips and advice for using e-mail.

From Hacking Email: 99 Email Security and Productivity Tips on ITSecurity.com:

The 99 tips in this article make up the best in email practices. From how to ethically use the “BCC:” to what attachments will make your mobile emailing compatible with everyone else’s, this list covers everything you need to know about emailing.

Highly recommended reading if you use e-mail in your day-to-day communications — and who doesn’t these days?

Wanted: A Few Good Feeds

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I need to feed Endo.

I’ve been trying for a while to use a feed aggregator to keep track of blog and site feeds. Although I prefer reading articles the old fashioned way (on the Web in my Web browser), I have since realized the value of using an aggregator to quickly identify and open the articles that interest me most.

A typical session with Endo (my reader of choice) works like this:

  1. I launch Endo and let it download entries from feeds I subscribe to.
  2. I open my InBox, which includes all the new entries since the last time I read them.
  3. I breeze through the entries at the alarming rate of 10-20 per minute, determining from their titles and first paragraphs whether they’re something that warrants further reading.
  4. I click the title link for an entry I want to read, thus opening it in a new tab of a Firefox window lurking in the background.
  5. I decide whether it’s worth continuing my subscription for each feed and delete the unworthy subscriptions. (Keep in mind that I sometimes try them again in the future.)
  6. I quit Endo and read the articles waiting for me in Firefox.
  7. I often link to the articles I find most interesting and want to share, either in a blog post or via del.icio.us, which automatically lists each day’s new bookmarks in my blog (see This just in…).

The topics I’m interested in most are news (real news, not celebrity news), blogging, technology (consumer and computer), Macintosh and Apple, productivity, and writing. That doesn’t mean I’m not interested in other topics — I am. I’m just not sure what they are yet.

And that’s why I’m writing this post — to get suggestions from readers about sites and feeds that might interest me.

Here’s the deal: use the Comments link to share your suggestions for RSS-published sites that might interest me or, considering the topics on this site, other site visitors. You can include your own site only if you include at least two other sites that aren’t yours that you sincerely think visitors and I might find interesting. Since SpamKarma is likely to flag posts with multiple links as spam, I’ll have to check daily (at least for a while) to retrieve messages marked as spam. So be patient if your comment does not appear immediately. I’ll leave the comments open as long as there is no abuse or until I think I have enough results.

If you recommend a site and I like it, I’m likely to link to it (formally), mention it in an article, and/or mention it in an upcoming episode of my sorely neglected podcast, Maria Speaks. If you recommend a site I think is a complete waste of time, I might mention that, too, but not in a way that would send any visitors there.

That said, please comment!

The Most Difficult Task I Had Today

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And I still can’t figure out why.

I spent about 2 hours today putting together an advertisement for Flying M Air‘s Southwest Circle Helicopter Adventure to be printed in a German publication.

I didn’t have to translate it. The advertising company sent me a translation of some text I’d sent them months ago. Trouble is, I couldn’t figure out what the text said. It took a while to find the original message asking for the translation. Oh. That’s what I wrote. Okay. Now at least I knew what I was advertising.

The Finished Ad at about 1/2 sizeTrouble was, the existing ad I wanted to modify for this job had the wrong photos. That means I had to get new photos. Then I couldn’t get the style of the new photos to match the photos I wanted to keep. So I had to find the original versions of all the photos and prepared them all over again from scratch. But I couldn’t remember out how I’d done it in the first place. So I had to figure it out.

Then I realized I rotated some of the images the wrong way and redid them. Then I had to re-rotate them again because I was right the first time. The drop-shadows completely baffled me. I couldn’t remember how I’d done them and I had to try doing it a few different ways before I got the desired results.

Then I had to squeeze in the text. Ever notice how it takes more, longer words to say something in German than in English?

Of course, I’m doing all this in Photoshop, which isn’t exactly the friendliest environment for laying out text and graphics elements. InDesign would have been better. But the old file was in Photoshop, so that’s what I thought I’d use to save time. Wrong!

Anyway, I’m done. You can see the ad here.

Now let’s just home I get some calls from Germans who speak English and want to take a 6-day helicopter excursion.

Google Zeitgeist

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Search statistics for a statistics lover.

Google has published its year-end search statistics for 2006. If you like stats as much as I do, you’ll enjoy reading about the top searches overall, for current events, entertainment, and other categories.

From the Google Zeitgeist Home page:

Pulling together interesting search trends and patterns requires Google’s human and computing power together. Search statistics are automatically generated based on the millions of searches conducted on Google over a given period of time – weekly, monthly, and annually. With some help from humans, and a pigeon or two when they have time, these statistics and trends make their way from the depths of Google’s hard drives to become the Google Zeitgeist report.

The Google Zeitgeist is updated monthly, so you can get your stats fix regularly if you need to.