Google calendar corupted .ics export

If working in IT thought me one thing, is that it never works especially when you need it most, it will hang or even crush at some point so back it up!

That is why I always back up my google data, everything from calendar to the docs and most importantly emails.

I spent a weekend defining a process checking it making sure it works, tested everything - it worked. So I started using "the process" each time I needed to back up.

Now it came to the point when I actually needed to restore. Fellow geeks know that all your live is in the calendar even your wife's birthday (just in case you forget you'll receive a email one week before and a SMS message every subsequent day - hard to miss). My fiddling with my phone emptied my entire calendar so you can imagine how I felt. After getting my breath back, and within 10 minutes my speech came back to normal - I was so proud of myself that just few days back I backed up my data.

But... as I said at the beginning - it never works.

I always export my entire set of calendars in bulk, so I basically download an archive with all my calendars. I tried to import it back - no luck. Nothing imported, no proper error message (shame on you Google), nothing.

Again not enough air in the room, speech slurred - you get the picture. Back to google, even though you're pretty angry with them, they are the only one who can get you around the web properly.

My first thought was that it is the UID - I had this problem before. Basically each event is assigned a UID so you won't import it twice, this feature should help you not too duplicate your events. After fiddling around with it it was clear is not the UID (I created a new calendar and tried to import the same .ics - didn't work).

After some search I came across this link http://severinghaus.org/projects/icv/ to check my .ics file integrity. Well it was corrupted:

Filename:	Xyzxyzxyzxyzxyz_xyzxyzxyz@gmail.com.ics
Size:	343058 bytes

Sorry, your calendar could not be parsed.

Error:	Error was: Error at line 1568: Illegal character in scheme name at index 0: Xxxxxx;X-NUM-GUESTS=0:mailto:xyzxyz@gmail.com
Cause:	Caused by: Illegal character in scheme name at index 0: Xxxxxx;X-NUM-GUESTS=0:mailto:xyzxyz@gmail.com

Context for line 1568:

1565:	UID:040000008200E00074C5B7101A82E00800000000A2698BE0CCF25088C44FD0777539CF6
1566:	5100000002099930B2F20B86B092F11F93D0ADF0E
1567:	ATTENDEE;CUTYPE=INDIVIDUAL;ROLE=REQ-PARTICIPANT;PARTSTAT=TENTATIVE;CN=Oxana
1568:	"Xxyxyxxx" Xxxxx;X-NUM-GUESTS=0:mailto:xyzxyz@gmail.com
1569:	CREATED:20100220T103955Z
1570:	LAST-MODIFIED:20100317T095102Z
1571:	LOCATION:Reading

If you've found a bug—say, a definitely valid iCalendar that generates errors—please check out the iCal4j bugs, forums, or feel free to contact me; minimal test cases are always appreciated!

Some pretty basic mistake. So I escaped the double quotes, replaced <"> with <\"> and it worked like a charm.

DIY light diffuser

Ok this post is for ones who don't have expensive equipment or just or people who are out in about and just so happen they need a diffuser.

This used to happen to me very often, especialy when taking portrets indors. There is never enough light, but a flesh is too much.
The solution I found is pretty simple you just wrap a tissue around the flash, it is very easy to do this, you use the hole that the flash creates when it popes out. You just stick the ends of the tissue in it. Nice thing is that you just use as much of the tisue you can to let just enough light through. So you can dimm it and difuse it.

Please share your experience or any of your own tips.

Career vs. Life

I have been on a training course recently, one of those meant to help you to find you place in an organization. There were a lot of discussion about how important is to find a balance between your personal live and your job, your career. Someone from upper management was explaining how happy she is that she finally managed to find “the balance”. What was interesting to me is that it appeared that she just recently found “the balance”. Until now she felt she was spending to much on the job – maybe she did spent to much on her job, but I would say this helped her to get where she is now. Maybe is not to late for her to finally find “the balance”, but this means she didn't have one when she was pursuing her career. So regardless of what we are told, one thing is clear you can't have both! ...or can you?
I'm sure there are a lot of people who found their balance – lets go into more details on that. They found it – so they didn't have it straight away and depending on the career it was found sooner or rather later for a greater career.
I consider my self “a career” person, I like my job, and I like the path I'm fallowing, but I feel some time that my personal life has to suffer because of this.
I'm still not where I want in my career, I need to progress faster, but I don't want to lose these years. What should I do?!
Who knows when to stop working for your life and go and actually live it?

whoami

...have no idea yet