If you’re working with subscribed calendars in iCal, and find that you can’t see a subscription in the pop-up selector (I’m on iCal 4, on OS X Lion - yours might be different) then it might be because there are no items in that calendar.

I’m doing some development, where a calendar has three types of entries. It has standard appointments, recurring appointments and a special type of recurring appointment, that a user has assigned to them if they’re in a role for a period of time (think rotating roster). I have the first two types of entries sorted out, and disabled the output of these for testing purposes. This meant that the calendar was empty, and iCal hid it from the list of subscribed calendars. When I tried to add it again I got the error:

This is a duplicate calendar. This subscription calendar already exists in every account that supports subscription calendars.

If you’re having a similar issue, it might be because of this. On reflection, I can see why they’re hiding the calendar if there’s nothing there, but it made my debugging painful.

I wanted to remove myself from a mailing list today, but there was no unsubscribe link in the email footer. The list was legitimate, and I don’t suspect that the operators were intentionally trying to lock me in, but it didn’t help my situation. The content just is not as relevant to me as it used to me.

I had this nagging sensation that I’d already attempted to remove myself from the list before, and that it might have been a problem with me using my work email vs. my personal email, even though they end up in the same inbox. As such, I used the View > Message > Long Headers function of Apple’s Mail application to see what address the email was actually being sent to. Doing so revealed a bunch of other headers that Mailman had added to the email that I found really useful.

Of note is the the List-Unsubscribe header, which shows both a URL and an email address (and subject) that can be used to unsubscribe from the list. Hitting the URL didn’t work for me (it might not be configured to listen on that port anymore) but sending an email with the right subject to the right address worked a treat, and instigated the three-way handshake that’s commonly used to confirm I am who I say I am, and I want to leave the list.

The short version: on Xbox Live, the online network that allows you to play games and connect with friends via your Xbox 360 over the internet, you have an avatar. This avatar is a digital representation of yourself and is actually used in some games to represent your character. For example, in Guitar Hero 5, my avatar is on stage rocking out with a bass guitar (along with Magdalena, and any other friends I might be playing with).

With the introduction of avatars a few years ago, Microsoft gave users the ability to customize not only the physical appearance (sex, face, height etc) but also let you dress for success. You’ll notice that my avatar has a beard and kinda looks like me, and wears a Cleveland Indians hat, jeans Adidas sneakers and a black hoodie. Or, if you’re viewing this after September 15th, 2010, I could be wearing something entirely different. That’s also important to note: I actually take the time to change how I look online if I get bored, or no longer think that my mini-me represents me accurately anymore. According to the last paragraph in Randy’s excellent article about the Avatar Marketplace, he does the same thing too. I bet a fair few people do.

Here’s my idea, which is actually two ideas rolled into one. I would like the ability to dress my avatar how I like, then click a button and purchase those clothes in real life. Conversely, I’d like to buy some new clothes in real life, and receive an Xbox code that I can use to unlock the digital equivalent online.

Considering Microsoft have arrangements with a lot of recognized brands already, including Adidas, Quicksilver, Diesel, Burton and Roxy, as well as the facilities to enable online trade (with both real currency and Microsoft Points, the online currency used within Live for micro-transactions), it wouldn’t be much of a leap to connect these up.

Here’s a short snippet that I always forget, or confuse for awk:

In a few weeks my contract with Vodafone is expiring. This coincides with the (suspected) release of the iPhone 4G.

My iPad is using Telstra Next-G for mobile coverage, so I used the SpeedTest iPhone application to check each carrier’s connectivity from my office.

Each test was run once, so the results might vary if I used actual science and statistics to even things out, but that doesn’t reflect my real-life usage, so I opted for the “one chance to impress me” approach.

As you can see, Telstra’s network was about 1.5x faster downloading, and 2.5x faster uploading. Certainly, they’re different devices, but I think it’s comparable.

I just wish Telstra wasn’t, well, Telstra.