Sunday, November 23, 2008 @ 2:39 pm I’ve been using 30 Boxes for years now, but just discovered the desktop calendar Rainlendar last week — and its ability to read a daily-updated iCal file on your hard drive with this script (instead of just importing it once). Since I wasn’t leaving 30 Boxes, I wanted to give the script a try ’cause having my calendar on my desktop and online would be awesome. Except I had to do some tweaking first.
All the steps below are basically the same as the ones here — just slightly modified since that post is over 2 years old and some things have changed:
- Create a folder called “Calendar” under your C:\ drive.
- Download wget for Windows, extract it to a folder, and place that folder in your C:\Program Files folder.
- Now you need to create the script to handle the automated downloading. You can call it download.bat or calendar.bat (or whatever-you-want.bat) and place it in your C:\Calendar folder. Copy and paste the code below into the new file:
@echo off
"C:\Program Files\wget-1.11.4b\wget.exe" --spider http://30boxes.com/iCalUser/xxxxx/name/numbers/1/
"C:\Program Files\wget-1.11.4b\wget.exe" -O "C:\Calendar\calendar.ics" http://30boxes.com/iCalUser/xxxxx/name/numbers/1/
Both URLs are the same, but need to be changed to reflect your calendar — find yours in 30 Boxes’ “Sharing” settings. Just copy the location of the “ICS File” link and overwrite each URL with it.
These last steps will set up a scheduled task to run the script however often you’d like:
- Go to your Control Panel.
- Open the Scheduled Tasks folder.
- Click “Add Scheduled Task,” then “Next.”
- Hit “Browse” and find your download.bat (or whatever you named it) file.
- Name your task and select how often you want it run (mine runs daily). Hit “Next.”
- Pick when you want it to start, and “Next” again.
- Leave the username and password fields alone. “Next” again.
- Check the “open advanced properties for this task when I click finish” box, and hit “Finish.”
- If an error comes up, hit “OK.” In the advanced properties box, check “run only if logged on” at the bottom. Hit “OK” again.
- Right-click on your scheduled task and run it to make sure it works.
All you have to do now is tell Rainlendar where the calendar.ics file is (make sure the scheduled task has run at least once before doing this — otherwise the file won’t be there):
- Open Rainlendar’s options.
- Go to the “Calendars” section.
- Click on the name of your calendar.
- In the “iCalendar Format” area, click on the “Filename” row and browse to where calendar.ics is with the “…” button.
- Switch “Monitor changes” to “Yes,” then hit “OK” and you’re done!
For the record, here’s what my 30 Boxes + Rainlendar (with the default theme) looks like:
My typography professor showed it to us during class, and I was like wow (my favorite is the peacock). Make sure you have Flash installed (mandatory) and sound turned on (optional) for it to work.
We cooked steak, burgers, and hot dogs outside. Then we roasted marshmallows. Jason and Jasmeen’s inMotion speakers for their iPods provided ample music and their PlayStation provided entertainment (board/card games did the rest). Everyone except Brian and I got to go in the hot tub, which kinda sucked … but I guess when guys get drunk (especially Matt) and the girls don’t care, previous plans don’t matter. I realized that driving a stick on a mountain is a challenge, and that Luray Caverns is closer to JMU than I thought. I had the most fun up until last night … then it slowly went downhill. But that’s no one’s fault — my getting comfortable with people (and staying that way) is hard.
At least I’ll have more time to work on my paper, which I need to start like now … 
