Occasional Thoughts

There are already some documented methods on how to access your Google Calendar with KOrganizer.

In case you really want to have a (almost fully working) 2 way sync, you may check out the solution using the GCALDaemon that is described here. The GCalDaemon is a server that runs locally on your system that serves as a kind of proxy to Google Calendar. However it's major drawback is that it is written in Java. Thus you need to have a JVM running all the time just to be able to access the server. Well, I don't want to waste these resources on my Laptop.

Another possibility is to simply access the ICal address using a remote calendar directly. Well, this has the drawback that you can just access the calendar read-only. But for me a read-only access is OK. Google Calendar provides a nice web UI to enter events so I am fine with that restriction. I am more interested in getting Reminders for my events as I tend to forget the time while I am working.

But both solutions mentioned above have a major drawback: They only work while you are connected to the Internet. There are so many occassions, when I just wanted to check my calendar when I don't have an internet access like on the hallway when I just would like to see where the next meeting is located. So for me it's more important to have a calendar synchronization that syncs with offline data. But the solution is simple and may work not only with just KOrganizer, but with every application that works with ICS files. So here it is:

Choqok KDE Twitter Client

So I tried the KDE Twitter plasmoid. But Twitter is really not so important to have it on the desktop all the time. In addition KDE Twitter provides basic Twitter access only. There is no possibility to access other services like identi.ca or an integrated access to twitpic. I wanted a Twitter client that is not restricted to just Twitter, but lives in the system tray, is running unobtrusivly in the background, but always there at a keyboard press to publish a thought.

As a Linux user the search was over pretty quickly: You have a problem, you google an Application to solve this problem and a nice soul has already the answer for you. Then an apt-get install and you're happy.

In case of Twitter my solution is Choqok.

Update: In case you do not get updates anymore upgrade to Choqok 0.6.1.

Fehmarn is located in the east sea of Germany.

I and my family visited my mother, who recently moved to the isle Fehmarn, for one week. It was way too short (as every vacation) but we will be back soon as Fehmarn is a very beautiful isle in the east sea of Germany just right before Denmark. We visited almost every possible beach on the isle and every single beach was different. From a sandy (but artifical) south beach to a rocky east beach.

And of course I had my camera with me and took a lot of beautiful pictures. In my opinion two of them are very suitable as wallpapers and here they are.

Dunes of Fehmarn

Grass in the dunes of Fehmarn

This time I've packaged the wallpaper in the KDE 4 wallpaper format, which includes multiple file sizes. KDE will automatically select the appropriate size after installing the wallpaper. Please see below for more information on how to install it or how to use the wallpapers on non-KDE systems.

And here is the download link for the Dunes of Fehmarn wallpaper.

Canola and Poppy

A field full of canola and poppy on Fehmarn

Just like the wallpaper above also packaged in the KDE 4 wallpaper distribution format.

Here the download link for the Canola and Poppy wallpaper.

Congratulations Microsoft for finally introducing some features KDE users already enjoy.

Just saw some Windows 7 screenshots on Heise Online that once again reveals some Microsoft "innovations" that KDE users already enjoy.

Taskbar shows related documents

OK, the first screenshot shows something really new. It associates an entry on the taskbar with documents recently opened with that application. Could be a nice feature. However in general I think the list of recent documents is more useful. Why shall I first start an application to see it in the taskbar and then open a document related to that? But OK... let's give Microsoft one point for that.