Mindwebs.

A friend asked me whether we could somehow share our appointments and dates in order to know each other's whereabouts and deadlines. Since I use iCal, I told her that at least for my part it should be easily doable. She, on the other hand, would first have to have her schedule in some digital form or another; this could be a nice way to get her started writing everything down in the first place.

With iCal, you see, one can publish their calendars. And having access to a WebDAV-server, it can be done for free. Ideally, both of us could set up to publish our calendar and, with automatic updating activated (there are options to both update a subscribed calendar and even to automatically update the published one when a change is made), we should be just fine.

Not so fast. As a matter of fact, I personally have more than a handful of calendars: I like the option of having different colors for different parts of my life as well as the ability to arbitrarily switch one or the other off when looking things up (it gives me focus). For example, one is for private stuff, another is for university related things, the next for work. Just by their colors, a quick glimpse at my weekly overview is enough to know how my activities are balanced over the next couple of days. But this leads to a nuisance: If I want to share more than one calendar, since they're independent of one another, I'd have to publish each and every one separately. And the other party would have to subscribe to all of them.

Enter "Calendar Group".

I looked around the net and found surprisingly few matches to this problem. Almost all of the results you find when putting "iCal" and "publish" in the same query, are ways to integrate iCal calendars and Google calendars. (That is the reason, btw, for this post.) Still, I found the decisive tip in a MacRumors forum: Calendar groups. (Thanks, jonathanInMi!) It does just what the name says — it allows you to group calendars together.

Granted, the other party will see all my appointments as one calendar, but that is more than OK: She simply wants to know where I am and what I do, she doesn't need to differentiate between appointments as I want to. Still, the system's not perfect. There are some limitations. Serious limitations.

For one, you cannot nest groups. And while for me this is not a problem (at least not right now), the replier in the thread mentioned above for example would benefit of such a feature. Also, calendars are either part of no group or one group. There is no way of adding a calendar to two different groups. As such, were I to need to share different calendars to separate people, I simply couldn't. (I would have to, if I wanted to cause the other parties as little trouble as possible, create a group for the least common denominator and then another group for the remaining stuff that differs between the two receivers. And it would get even more complicated if they were more than two &mdash even though, to be fair, the more persons the more improbable such a case is).

Another issue are my own subscriptions: While I can create groups within my calendars as well as within my subscriptions, there is no way to mix and match. For example, I'd like to share the dates of my team's soccer matches I plan to attend as my own (for the person subscribing to my calendar). But since I myself subscribe to my team's dates and I cannot drag that subscription to the group within my calendars, this appears not to be possible. She'd have to subscribe to the team's calendar herself. Bummer. (And why somebody would want to aggregate subscriptions and re-publish them as one is beyond me — but possible. As long as they're not nested or shared between groups…)

To be honest, all these limitations seem a bit silly to me. Still, it's better than nothing.

Every once in a while I get a thought about something I'd care to share. In my mind sentences form, and I go on rambling for a while thinking about that one thought. And then I think to myself: If only I had recorded these sentences I formed in my mind. They would make great blog entries, and so I make a mental note to myself how I'd have to blog about this or that.

More often than not such thought occur when laying to sleep after a long day. And since I have a loft bed (I built myself!), even when I'm not too tired hitting a keyboard is more of a fuss than it would seem. Also, usually when I finally get to bed I'm already angry at myself for letting it get so late — sitting down to work really is not an ideal option.

Especially since writing such a long(ish), elaborate(ish) blog entry — as I like to do — takes me quite some time (as I mentioned earlier as well). It's not something I can do in a couple of minutes. Since I want something decent as an end result, I apply myself thoroughly, so that it becomes hard work. It's not like writing is a nuisance, on the contrary, it's just that that aftewards I feel exhausted, particularly mentally. But very rewarded just the same, mind you!

(In case I have a very, very short contribution, I don't sit down and compile a blog-post. Instead, I opt for a tweet on my twitter account.)

Under these circumstances it is also difficult to throw in writing an entry somwhere in between other activities. Not only would the short break be protracted, it also wouldn't have served its purpose of regenerating.

(When I do want to take a short and "constructive" break, I usually opt for my account on the micro-blogging platform soup.io.)

And so I am left here with a list of topics which I would very much love to elaborate about, but instead I'm sitting here writing a meta-entry. I hope to getting around and writing down as many swirling thoughts as I can as soon as possible…

Recently I received a zip-file. As I went on to extract the file therein contained, I found out that the archive was password-protected. I checked my source — nothing hinted at any password protection. Hmpf. What now?

I am pretty that zip-file passwords are not the most secure protection around, so I searched for a "password recovery" program. I found, to no surprise, heaps. I downloaded the first that was free, but before even balking at the time it would need to brute-force a possibly decent password, the program gave up: It didn't recognize the file format. (Even though my system says it's a plain vanilla zip-file…)

A bit flustered, I remembered that the file I was handling should have been quite wide-spread on the internet — so I googled it. In fact, within the ten top hits for "<filename>.zip password" already the google summary revealed what appeared to be a promising password. First try, success!

And I know that the title I chose for this post is quite the mouthful; still, my first reaction as a computer scientist to a "forgotten" password was something along the lines of "I can recover it". But my approach was evidently completely wrong — even if the password cracking program would have worked, it probably would have taken a lot of time. If it would have found the passwort at all. Had the program worked. Lots of ifs. Though the "social engineering" of a simple (much more simple, I might add, than searching, downloading, intsalling, and using a dedicated program) google search revealed the solution. In a handful of seconds.

I found a user whose photos on flickr, the photo-sharing site (now owned by Yahoo) I really like. After discovering a little batch of his pictures, I realized that he had a ton more online — soon I longed to check them out. On my terms.

That requirement encompasses a set of necessities: The short version being that I needed them on my PC. Understand that I am not trying to steal or modify the photos in any way: I just want to have the freedom to view them as I please, not as how flickr allows or dictates me to do. Since I love the photos I truly revere their author; the last thing I want to do is any harm to that person!

Anyway, as one can imagine, flickr doesn't like you to download its pictures in batch. Particularly if they are copyrighted. In fact, there are a lot of hurdles to overcome were you trying to do so. Which is, in a way, understandable. But I, being a computer scientist who means no harm, know that if there is a way to view the photos on your screen, you can save them on your hard drive. Scripting such a task, on the other hand, might be a little more difficult. The hurdles I was talking about also hinder you doing such a thing.

So I started looking around for tools which do just that. Uploading is not an issue. As isn't downloading your own pictures. After searching around a bit, one can find tools which — after having linked the program with your account — through flickr's APIs can even download photos marked as openly accessible.

Funny thing is, several of the tools I found (and tried) were very ccreatively named: "flickr downloadr" is the name to at least a dozen programs doing the exact same thing (more or less successfully)… You can be glad if you find such a tool with a different name: At least you could tell them apart!

But, alas, of course I chose the more difficult option.

My chosen photographer of choices marked his photos as "copyrighted", which means the just mentioned tools wouldn't work. The API will not allow that. Even more, since one photo contained some (extremely mild) nudity (as I later discovered), the whole account was marked as "R-rated" or something, since it asked me a couple of times if I were sure I wanted to watch the photos or "return to the kittens" (no kidding: that's what the warning said). So I was afraid that even if I found an "illegal" tool that downloaded a bunch of photos marked as copyrighted, it would fail (probably miserably) because of this further restriction.

I digged deeper into Google, and found several workarounds/scripts/apps that promised to do just that — but apparently flickr is working just as hard fighting those. As a matter of fact, most of the tools I found were quite outdated (as far back as 2007, IIRC). It must have been easier to circumvent flickr's safeguards that far back. Finally, I found a more "modern" tool which caught my eye because its last update wasn't even a week away: Saleen Flickr Downloader (note that it seems that even the developers haven't quite figured out a unified way to name their product…). I had struck gold!

This program has one extremely clever and ingenious — and yet simple, as for most elegant solutions to a problem — feature that made it everything I was searching for (even though I didn't know it beforehand): It basically is a simple web browser. A browser exclusive to flickr.

Just like that, the program can preempt flickr's any and all warning. Basically, you use this "sub-browser" to log into flickr, surf to the desired photos/user/set, answer every question flickr might pose (like the "R-rated" thing) and then starts doing its work. Remember how I said if you could view it on your screen, you could save it on your hard drive? Well that's exactly what it does. By being a browser, the program inserts itself on the last possible step before delivering the picture to your screen, while still working its magic way after any checks that flickr might have built in. It's so effective, it's perfection. Incredible.

So, after logging in, locating the user in question, and making flickr happy with all its requests, warnings, and whatnots, I advised the program to start downloading all the pictures. And finally, after way longer than anticipated, I could enjoy those beautiful pictures.

For the first time in my life, while watching a TV seriese — it was "Lie to Me", S02E04 — I saw some realism in an acted scene. The sort of realism like "Why doesn't anybody ever use the restroom?" or "Why isn't anybody ever hungry? It is a well known truth that, in filmmaking and acting in general, "frivolities" such as using the bathroom or eating (just to mention the two introduced above) are included exclusively when they serve some purpose or action to advance the plot.

Being a movie-lover (and thus, at least to some extent, drama as a whole), you can imagine my utter surprise when something completely unnecessary to the plot and even to the character development happened while watching a trivial TV series. To tell you the truth, it was very subtle. But still scripted; I mean, it couldn't possibly have been the actor (or, in this case, actress) ad-libbing it. There was circumstantial evidence to prove it. (OK, so "circumstancial evidence" and "proof" in the same sentence maybe isn't the best of choices; but bear with me for a second and I'll explain what I mean.)

The character danced. She danced.

Well, more accurately, she "moved to the rythm", she bobs her head. The character, Ria Torres (portrayed by Monica Raymund), sits in her car listening to music, drives up to some house, but, before getting out, needs to check something in a folder (the folder lying in her car actually does serve a function in the plot; so the whole scene has its purpose). And after having stopped the car, while checking the folder, she sways to the music blasting out of the radio.

The diegetic music coming out of the car's stereo is actually the "evidence" that the whole thing must have been planned: The scene would have worked just as well without any music at all. So what other reasons could be behind her enjoying the music? There is no direct reference to the music in the episode. A character trait? Possibly; the character displays youngness, some sort of freshness compared to the quite some years older other (main) characters. She is the youngster, protege of the series' protagonist Dr. Lightman. Her young age was actually a crucial aspect right in the previous episode (S02E03). That appears like a pretty weak selling point for her moves, but still a plausible explanation. Later in the episode, the character blames herself for not locking the car in that particular instance referred to in the scene in question. So maybe the music (and her obvious being distracted, almost beleaguered by it since she is even responding physically to it) does indeed play a central role in the episode? Even this theory seems like quite a stretch, though it appears more believable since more directly connected to the action than the depiction of a character's trait.

Anyway, whatever the reason: I was thoroughly astonished by that couple of seconds. It's been a while since a simple scene carried me away so completely as to inducing me to write a 3000 character "essay" about it.

So even TV can have an effect on me…