Get Your Full Calendar History on Your Android Device

For a long time, Google only let you get one month of your Google calendar's history on a new device. More recently, they've upped it to a year. Much better, but not when you have FOUR years worth of history to preserve. I've done this several times, so I know it works. I'm just putting it here so I don't have to do a web search for the answer the next time.

1.  Go to your calendar on your computer. Click on the down arrow to the right of "My calendars." Select "settings."
2. Click "Export calendars" and unzip the file that you download.
3. One of the .ics files that is unzipped (assuming that you have more than one calendar) will have your username as part of the file name.
4. Click "Import calendar" and choose the .ics file from step #3.
5. Once it's done uploading, your phone/tablet will sync and you will have your full history!

This will NOT create duplicate entries. Essentially it "touches" (if you are familiar with the Linux command of the same name) all of the entries, so that the device thinks they're new and need to be synced. I got an error saying something about that three of my entries failed to sync, but it worked fine.

Android Screenshots in Linux

I've been helping a friend of mine beta test an Android application. A couple of problems I found were easier to show than explain, but Android doesn't have a built-in screenshot capability. I found this page that made things much easier. I already had the Android SDK installed and working. So I just needed to create /etc/udev/rules.d/android.rules with this line in it:

SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTRS{idVendor}=="0bb4", MODE="0666"

Once udev was restarted and I enabled USB Debugging Mode on my phone, I could run the ddms utility with the Android SDK and get all kinds of cool info on my phone, including taking screenshots.

Palm TX Reset Fix

I was having a problem with my Palm TX resetting every time I tried to sync the Datebook/Calendar information. I ended up downloading Pimlico Software's DateBk6 and installing a file called dbscan.prc which is in the AdvancedStuff.zip file. I ran the program and followed these steps:

1. Choose "Other" from the opening screen
2. Pull down the menu and choose "Remove All Deleted Records"
3. Push the "PalmOne" button

Apparently there were three deleted records in the Datebook/Calendar database. Now that those are gone, I can sync my PDA via pilot-link and JPilot once again.