Fred Sandsmark's Blog

In the course of a research project I came across this gem:



The point of recycling? To create and have less stuff. How do you get more stuff in Kansas? By recycling!

As noted earlier, I've created a Google Pages account for the Castro Valley Community Band. I'm very impressed with Google Pages as a tool for creating basic pages like thhe band's -- the main reason being the ease of editing. As band members and their families have submitted pictures, I've added them; as events have been scheduled or completed, I've updated the appropriate pages. It takes just minutes, and no FTP is involved.

The downsides are many but minor. There's no built-in table function, and no linking within pages with anchor tags; probably the most bothersome (for me) is the handling of inheritance in stylesheets -- there's no "clear styles and start over" button for text. And, of course, the pages are template-driven, so that limits creativity -- but the template I've chosen is simple, clean, and attractive, so it's fine with me. (A lot of template-created web pages in other creation tools are unnecessarily busy or gaudy, in my opinion. How about some dignity, people?) I'm also looking forward to the Google Pages team adding a hit counter, guest book, and a way to meld Blogger pages into the site. The last two are probably one in the same challenge.

One other thing regarding the Castro Valley Community Band site: I made a donation to the band in the form of a domain-name purchase. You can now reach the site by way of www.CastroValleyBand.com.

Michael Wrenn, the French teacher at the Castro Valley Adult School, is highlighted in a recent article in the Tracy Press. Well worth reading.

Alas, the French class at the Castro Valley Adult School Michael teaches will not continue for spring quarter, due to lack of signups. I'm left with my CDs and videotapes to prepare for the SFBACC Tour.

I'm dependent on my Mac and my Palm Zire to get through the day. Getting them to work together is a great boon for me, especially where my calendar is concerned.

Not long ago I sprung for Mark/Space's Missing Sync, a product that synchronizes iCal, the Apple Address Book, and other things with the Palm. It's been a troubled relationship. The main challenge has been that synchronization is a painfully slow process, especially for the calendar. I use my Palm calendar extensively, but I don't use it unusually -- I have lots of entries, and many of them have memos attached, but nothing I do is out of the ordinary.

The main thing Missing Sync lets me do is use iCal rather than the Palm Desktop calendar. The first time I synchronized the two using Missing Sync, the process took a very long time -- more than an hour! I asked Mark/Space what might be the issue, and they suggested that the problem might be with repeated events -- especially those that repeat into infinity. So I deleted these events (unhappily -- if the handheld can handle them, and the calendar can handle them, why can't the program that sits between the two handle them?) and got things to synchronize.

The last few times I've run Missing Sync, I've gotten word that an update (to version 5.1.0) is available. Well, foolish me, today I downloaded the update and decided to run it. I followed Mark/Space's instructions to the letter, and now the synchronization has seemingly drawn to a halt -- or at best, a slow, slow crawl.



I'm going to let it run in the background -- all day if necessary -- to see if it resolves itself. Meanwhile, if you're a Mac-Palm user considering an update to Missing Sync 5.1.0, I recommend that you hold off.

I would like to hear from anybody else who has experienced slow synchronization with Missing Sync. I need to know I'm not alone here.