Well I found some free time today and its been sitting in the back of my mind to write this little program.  So far so good.  I have the uploader working to my satisfaction as far as bouncing back bad files.  Now I need to tie it in with users for security.  The next thing I need to do is add the column configuration to the uploader.  This is so that users can set what columns are what for differently formatted CSV files.  Right now it is generically setup very similar to the CSV to iCal converter I wrote for my school’s calendar system.  I hope to have everything but the security done tonight, although I’ve been known to surprise myself with how fast I can code sometimes.  But right now I’ve got some useless Economics Homework to do.  So we shall see.
Read more

So I’ve decided I am going to write a csv to iCal(ics) converter for everybody to use.  It is going to require a bit of input from the user to define what columns are what but I think its possible.  If you are looking for one immediately please drop me a line and I’ll work on it all that much faster.  Otherwise its gonna hang on the back burner for a while.  Right now I’m a bit worried about security and anonymous file uploads.  Maybe I’ll link it to users here so I can track who has access to it and control any problems there might be.  I need to design a decent web interface for it too so it will be usable to the average user.  Otherwise there isn’t much of a point to making it ifi people can’t use it.  Gotta figure something out for this one.  Get to me if you need it fast.

So I was helping my girlfriend with a paper on Religion last night and we were discussing Wicca and the 1986 court case came up.  The one that officially recognized Wicca as a religion.  According to the case, a prisoner was charging that he was being discriminated against because he was (is) Wiccan.  He was not allowed to (as a prisoner) obtain the items needed to practice his religion.  Now I wonder if this would fly today.  I mean think about it, imagine a Catholic was told he couldn’t have a bible in jail, or a Muslim could not have the Qur’an or a floor covering for prayer, or one of the other major religions being denied what is required to practice actively.  All hell would break loose.  I don’t mean to say if some guy says he needs a knife or a gun to actively practice his religion in jail that we should give it to him.  But put him in a padded room and let him go at it.  I mean he’ll get tired out eventually.  But in all seriousness, I don’t want to think of the consequences.  I was speaking to one of my friends about it and they made an off color comment to the effect of, if we took away a muslims right to practice in jail that they’d blow something else up.  Read more

I’ve noticed I’ve been getting a bunch of hits for converting iCal (ics) calendars into CSV files.  Not sure why you would need to do this, maybe has something to do with old versions of outlook or something.  If you need an iCal (ics) to CSV converter, drop me a comment and I’ll email you back. (you need to register to comment)  And I’ll see what I can do for you.  Seems easier to go from .csv to .ics but I don’t see why I can’t write one in a week or so.  Don’t want to write it if its not gonna be useful.  So please drop me a line and I’ll get on it.

Update (29-Dec-2009): I have posted an update here.

So right now I am trying to come up with a good name for this.  I think I might actually sell it to other schools if I can get it working well enough.  I have tried it against a few other school’s calendars and it works great.

I added better handling for malformed events, now instead of ignoring them, they get changed to an all day event and “****” gets added to the front of the title with a message at the end of the title telling the user to verify event details manually the old fashioned way on the web calendar.

I also added a lot of debugging code, logging code, and statistics code and the ability to turn them on and off.  So now the admin can turn the logging code on and off so they don’t end up with tons of logs they don’t need.  Why create a debug log with 4+ lines per event when you aren’t debugging?  Most of the logs will be completely disabled in the production release anyway.

I also changed the way parameters get passed to the program through the URL.  Instead of just calendar.php?Calendar_name, its now calendar.php?cal=Calendar_name.  This will allow me to easily add other parameters and the order of them wont matter.  Been thinking of adding a manual start and end dates but I’m not sure I should even bother.

Maybe I should add some way of turning logging on and off through the URL and some sort of username/password.  We’ll see.  A few more features to add  before I go live like that.

I feel that I have made it far enough to call this a release.  Each file was given a release version of 1.0 while the overall program has gotten a release of 0.1 Beta.  I hope to be at 1.0 Beta by the end of May.  Though I expect it to be sooner.  Right now (as I’ve said earlier) it only works for Stevens Institute of Technology, however, since I do plan on selling it, it could be coming to your school one day.  If you like the idea of subscribing to your school’s calendar, let me know and I’ll see if they would be interested.