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Owning my own data, part 1: Integrating a self-hosted calendar solution

emilygorcenski.com

31–40 of 157 posts

Re: Owning my own data, part 1: Integrating a self-hosted calendar solution

#32

I have Outlook (at work) and Google Calendar (at home) and synchronising them through HTTP is completely unreliable. They seem to mess the time zone all the time, sometimes they publish in UTC, sometimes not, with the consequence of having meeting always at the wrong time. I really don't understand how these 2 major providers cannot fix what seems to me such a basic feature. If using my own system would solve it, I'd…

Timezones across google products have been hopelessly broken across apps for decades. I'm sure the AI devs will get to it tout de suite now tho.

Re: Owning my own data, part 1: Integrating a self-hosted calendar solution

#33
Been thinking about this too.

Citizenship application is asking for my travel for the past couple years. And I have no idea. Especially since in Europe a weekend getaway to another country is feasible.

Some sort of long term tracking would have been really useful

Re: Owning my own data, part 1: Integrating a self-hosted calendar solution

#34
post #30

Nice!. I would like to do something like this but for Photos. I want to get off Dropbox and Google for a while. At the top of my list are: 1. Create a memories like feature from my photos to send on my cell phone, grouping by different features I like: anniversaries, similar activities, A `Me an X(X is Spouse, family, friends etc)`, Over the years(how x has evolved over the years). 2. Be able to save photos taken fro…

I just did this with Immich. I have 2TB of photos in it and I backup my phone automatically. Using cloudflare tunnels to access remotely.

Re: Owning my own data, part 1: Integrating a self-hosted calendar solution

#35

I know I will probably get pushback over this, but CalDAV sucks . People say that it's great and that it's easy; yet if that were true there would be way more self-hosted CalDAV solutions out there and they would be far more ergonomic than what's available. I was not impressed with Radicale. Because there's really only one calendar file I wanted to serve to myself, I tried implementing my own CalDAV server just for t…

I think the core issue with CalDAV (and by extension, the protocol it's build on top of, WebDAV) is one somewhat endemic with most W3 approved standards: it's way too overengineered to do too many things at the same time rather than a lean format.

The result is a protocol that's essentially become a furball of different ideas mashed together, which inevitably leads to the situation where a lot of services just... don't try to be full spec compliant since it's out of scope for what they actually want to do.

I don't think I've ever seen a W3 data format spec that didn't end up this way, it just always seems to happen. (It doesn't seem to happen with their lower level protocol specifications.)

Re: Owning my own data, part 1: Integrating a self-hosted calendar solution

#36
post #30

Nice!. I would like to do something like this but for Photos. I want to get off Dropbox and Google for a while. At the top of my list are: 1. Create a memories like feature from my photos to send on my cell phone, grouping by different features I like: anniversaries, similar activities, A `Me an X(X is Spouse, family, friends etc)`, Over the years(how x has evolved over the years). 2. Be able to save photos taken fro…

same. some projects in that space from a comment I made a while back https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39155977

Re: Owning my own data, part 1: Integrating a self-hosted calendar solution

#37
I have a self hosted calendar solution. It was $15 at Staples, and it hangs in my kitchen. It wasn't a complete out of the box solution, though, I had to do a little work to customize it. I placed a pen cup with a few pens in it on the counter near the calendar to ensure it is always easy to modify.

Re: Owning my own data, part 1: Integrating a self-hosted calendar solution

#38

I have a self hosted calendar solution. It was $15 at Staples, and it hangs in my kitchen. It wasn't a complete out of the box solution, though, I had to do a little work to customize it. I placed a pen cup with a few pens in it on the counter near the calendar to ensure it is always easy to modify.

How does it handle notifications? How do you access it remotely? How do you share it for common events with others?

Comparing a paper calendar to a digital one is like comparing a Nokia 3310 to a modern smartphone. Yes, technically both are "a phone" but that's roughly where the similarities end.

Re: Owning my own data, part 1: Integrating a self-hosted calendar solution

#39

I have a self hosted calendar solution. It was $15 at Staples, and it hangs in my kitchen. It wasn't a complete out of the box solution, though, I had to do a little work to customize it. I placed a pen cup with a few pens in it on the counter near the calendar to ensure it is always easy to modify.

>As someone who travels a lot, it’s also one of those things where statistically speaking, the chances of me being on a plane whenever some newsworthy event happens is higher than for the average person. I want my wife, friends, coworkers to know what flights I’m on and what cities I’m in. I’ve survived one terror attack, nearly dodged two others and a mass shooting. It’s one of those things where I want to make sure people who care about me can check in easily to see where I am.

It seems like the author has very different needs than you.

Re: Owning my own data, part 1: Integrating a self-hosted calendar solution

#40

I know I will probably get pushback over this, but CalDAV sucks . People say that it's great and that it's easy; yet if that were true there would be way more self-hosted CalDAV solutions out there and they would be far more ergonomic than what's available. I was not impressed with Radicale. Because there's really only one calendar file I wanted to serve to myself, I tried implementing my own CalDAV server just for t…

I worked on the CalDAV client that’s in every Apple product.

I agree, the protocol sucks. But we also had a ton of trouble handling Exchange and Google’s non-compliant CalDAV server, which all the users blamed us for.

Now that I work at Google I can see that gCal apps use an entirely different protocol.

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