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.

My New Year's Resolutions

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The obligatory New Year’s Resolutions post.

Every year I make a New Year’s Resolution and every year I fail miserably at keeping it. Makes me wonder why I bother. I know a lot of other people don’t.

This year I have two New Year’s Resolutions:

  • Lose Weight/Get Fit. Yeah, that one. It’s the same one I’ve made for the past three years in a row. This year, however, I have a local gym membership and actually plan to use it. With a 90-minute workout 3 times a week and a more sensible diet, I can’t fail. (But we’ll see, won’t we?)
  • Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free ProductivityGet More Organized. I am organized, but not nearly enough to keep my mind from getting stressed out when a bunch of things need doing. Mike bought me a copy of Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen. (From my Amazon.com wish list.) I started reading it last night and have already learned a lot of tips for handling the outrageous number of tasks that face me every day. I’m hoping it will help me become more organized so I can live life with a cleaner desk and a clearer idea of the tasks I need to complete daily.

So what I have here are the usual self-improvement resolutions. Yours might be the same. Or they might not. Care to share them with us? The Comments link is below.

Rewarding Reader Participation

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Because reading blogs should not be a spectator sport.

Sometimes I feel as if I’m blogging to myself. I know I’m not — the stats show more than 3,000 page views a week here, which isn’t too shabby. But the people who stop by seem to read (or browse) and hurry on their way without offering any feedback on what they’ve read.

Now everyone has an opinion and I like to think that everyone has additional insight they can share on many topics. That’s what the Comments links are for. So, in an effort to encourage comments from readers, I’ve decided to experiment with a little giveaway.

At January month-end, I’ll give away one of my books to a randomly selected commenter who posted a comment on one of my January 2007 posts. The book is reader’s choice from currently available titles. If this little reward program is successful at getting site visitors to participate with useful, insightful comments, I’ll continue the program for each month with similar rewards.

Keep in mind that this applies to comments posted using the Comments link for a particular post on this site. (Feedback submitted via contact form is not eligible.) The comment must pass muster with our spam prevention software, so if you comment and your comment doesn’t appear within 48 hours, it’s likely that its content was considered spam.

What do you think about this? Don’t keep it to yourself. Use the Comments link.

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!