There’s a bug in Internet Explorer that causes HTML elements to randomly “disappear.” Without going too much into detail, there’s two ways to make something not show up in a webpage using .css style. You can either: 1) set visibility: hidden; or 2) set display: none;

They’re slightly different, because if you set the visibility to hidden, it will still “take up space” on your page and push other elements out of its spot. If you set the display to none, everything kind of collapses around it.

I spent a TON of time debugging Javascript today (and in the past) trying to figure out what FireFox, Safari, and Opera showed 4 elements that had been set visibility: hidden; and then back to visibility: visible;, but in Internet Explorer 6 AND 7, only two of the four would reappear.

Agonizing frustration: am I breaking something minor that only shows in picky IE? Did I misspell a tag or function somewhere? Even worse, if I trigger the SAME FUNCTION in IE using a different control, the stupid elements show up!!!! Curse you, Bill Gates!

Finally, in desperation, I do another Google search.

They said to try using display: none; instead, because IE has a visibility bug. I do. It works. (*&#$ Microsoft, get your stuff together. I hope IE8 fixes all this crap, but I’m afraid my hopes aren’t set very high.

Have Comcast (or Cox, or other non-participating internet provider) and hate them (yet, secretly love them) for not caving in to ESPN and paying licensing fees for ESPN360.com? (ESPN is the real villain here)

You have a few choices:
#1) Change providers. Lame, and in many cases impossible.
#2) Convince a friend who has a participating provider to set up Dynamic DNS, OpenSSH, and Port Forwarding, then set up Putty so you can tunnel your traffic over a Socks Proxy through their connection. (WAY too complicated, and puts a huge strain on their connection, if it’s even fast enough to handle it!)
#3) Load and switch.

Alex, I choose ‘Load and Switch’ for $800.

The idea is simple: ESPN360 only authenticates your network provider’s IP when loading their player. So as long as you boot up the service on a supported provider, you’re all set! There’s a few ways you can do this:

#1) Take your laptop to Starbucks (or some other AT&T hotspot), start the player in your browser, put your computer to sleep (browser still open) and go home.
#2) Get permission from your neighbor who has slow AT&T DSL to use his wireless connection to connect and load the player. Then switch back to your connection.
#3) Wardrive. (I do not recommend this one!)

I happen to live on a campus where I can use my school’s slow, highly-restricted network to connect, (all .edu or .mil providers get access!) and then toggle over to Comcast for the real streaming.

Now, combine that with Fullscreen viewing on Mac OS X and you’re all set!

How may KU Jayhawks games did I have to miss before I discovered all this? Far too many. Thankfully, that problem has now been rectified. Rock Chalk Jayhawk!

I finally got some satisfaction to a longstanding annoyance today. You see, with Firefox on Windows, you can view webpages in full screen–no taskbar, no chrome, just full view web. On a Mac? No dice. I’m serious, it’s just plain impossible to do…or it was. Some online video services make your browser magically take over the whole screen (like hulu.com), but many don’t. Today, the problem was ESPN360.com.

Given that Apple is totally lame in not giving Safari a fullscreen mode, and that Firefox still hasn’t implemented it yet, I went looking for other solutions. After all, I wanted to watch ESPN360.com on my TV, hooked up to my Mac Mini, and all that chrome was annoying as heck.

So I did some searching once before and found…nothing. Today, somehow I got the Google Query right, or found the right forum, and ended up with megazoomer. That’s right, no more lame zooming tricks (like this), although those are ok for sites that don’t offer a ‘fake’ fullscreen mode.

The only drawback is that this only works for Cocoa apps, so you’ll have to use Safari. The plus is that it works for ANY Cocoa app! Wohoo, no more permanent, unmoveable, unhidable toolbar!

What are you waiting for? Go start watching free online TV in real fullscreen today!

If you have comcast, like me, and thus can’t watch ESPN360 at all…there is a way around it: watch ESPN360 on Comcast.

Last step: synchronize Outlook 2007 and Google Calendar. This is the easy part:

1. Download Calgoo Connect.
2. Install it.
3. Follow these directions.

You’re done! How easy was that?!

This post is the last in a series on How to sync iCal, Google Calendar, and Outlook 2007.

Update:After much time and effort with this writeup, it appears that Calgoo can do all this much more simply. If you like easy, follow these steps:

1. Download Calgoo Connect.
2. Install it.
3. Follow these directions.

If you’d rather do it the fun or less intrusive way, follow these directions:

1. Download GCALDaemon and save it where you normally save downloads. Just visit This page and click the link that say “UNIX/Linux/AIX/Mac OS X compatible ZIP archive”. It’s under the “Linux compatible” section, but you don’t need Linux, because the OS X Terminal is compatible. Don’t open it or unzip it, just save the file.
2. Hit Apple-Space Bar to open Spotlight (Or just click the Magnifying glass on your menu bar), and type in “Terminal.” Click the result that looks like a black screen and says “Terminal”. Don’t freak out when it opens up with a boring little cursor.
3. Make sure you have Java 1.5 or higher installed. Just type in:
   java -version
   and hit enter, and it will tell you what version you have. If it’s lower than 1.5, go to java.sun.com and install the latest version.
4. Type in the following command, and hit enter:
   cd /usr/local/sbin
5. Type in:
   sudo unzip
   (add a space at the end, do NOT hit enter)
6. Drag and drop your newly-downloaded file onto Terminal. This pastes in the correct pathname. Hit enter.
7. Now type in each of these commands, and hit enter after each one:
   sudo chgrp -R admin /usr/local/sbin/GCALDaemon
sudo chmod -R g+w /usr/local/sbin/GCALDaemon
sudo chmod 755 /usr/local/sbin/GCALDaemon/bin/*.sh
9. Leave Terminal open

Sweet! Now that GCALDaemon is installed, we can set it up to do a two-way synchronize between iCal and Google Calendar.

1. In Terminal, type this in and hit enter to run the setup program: /usr/local/sbin/GCALDaemon/bin/config-editor.sh
2. Select the “File synchronizer” on the left, and click the “Google Accounts” buttom (screenshot)
3. Click the “New Account” button, enter your Gmail address and your password (twice), click “Verify”, and hit “OK”
4. Click the “New” button (Left of the “Google Accounts” button you just pushed)
6. Select your Google account, your Google Calendar (You may have to hit “refresh” to see them all), and your iCal file. Hit OK, and repeat for as many calendars as you have.

Almost done! All we have to do is make this program run whenever you’re on your computer.

1. Download Lingon here and unzip it into your “Applications” or “Applications/Utilities” folder.
2. Double-click on it to run it
3. Follow the five easy steps here. IMPORTANT: when it asks for the path in step 4, enter this:
   /usr/local/sbin/GCALDaemon/bin/standalone-start.sh

That’s it, you’re done! Now your Google Calendar will always be synced with your iCal! If you change one, the other will change automagically! Now, go ahead and set up Outlook 2007 to sync with Google Calendar as well–it’s much easier.

Imagine that you use Outlook at work to maintain your work schedule, and Google Calendar at home to keep track of your personal life, and you want to keep the two schedules together, but separate. You want to be able to share your Work schedule with work people, your home schedule with your wife, and nary the two shall meet.

The solution? Multiple calendars.

In Outlook 2007, you’ll be able to see these events side-by-side, but if you want to share just one of those calendars to your Boss, it will show only the events in that calendar to those who view it. (This also has the added benefit of showing you at a glance that you work too much!)

I personally maintain 5 calendars: Personal, Work, Class (I’m a full-time student), Church, and Birthday/Anniversaries. Makes it easy to keep my life nice and organized.

Here’s how you do it with Outlook 2007:

1. Open Outlook, and click on your calendar. (duh!)
2. Click the little arrow next to the “New” button just under your Tool Bar, and select “Calendar…” (screenshot)
3. Give it a name and hit OK.
4. Repeat as many times as you like
5. If in the past you’ve been categorizing by Color, you can now easily move items from your current Calendar to your new Calendars.
   1. Make sure your original calendar is selected (It’s called “Calendar”)
   2. Type a common letter (such as “a”) in the “Search Calendar” Box
   3. Click the “Categories” header to sort by Category
   4. Select all the items in a Category and drag-and-drop them into the appropriate new Calendar on the left. (If you don’t see them listed, Click the “My Calendars” heading under “All Calendar Items”
6. Finally, to overlay your calendars and view all events together, check the box next to each calendar, and use the little left-pointing arrow next to the Calendar name on each tab (screenshot).

P.S. This is also possible to do in Outlook 2003, I believe. I will post instructions when I have the chance.

Now that you’ve done this, you can go read how to do the same thing with Google Calendar and iCal, and then you can read sync multiple iCal, Google, and Outlook Calendars to keep them all automagically synced together!