For many years I've used the Unix calendar program to send me an email reminder of upcoming events and holidays. Unix calendar files are very simple text files with one event per line like this:

Apr 22  We bring Koidern home, 2006

Google recently added a calendar to their set of web programs, and like most things Google does, it offers a clean and elegant implementation. Best of all, it's on the web, so you can access the same calendar information from anywhere there's an Internet connection.

These days, calendar files are typically in iCal format. I wanted to convert my Unix calendar file over to iCal so I could import the data into Google calendar. Python to the rescue!

Download the script: calendar_to_ics.py

To use it: cat ~/.calendar/calendar | ./calendar_to_ics.py > /tmp/calendar.ics

Import the file you created into your Google calendar by clicking on the Manage Calendars link, and going to the Import Calendar tab. The script is only designed to handle simple events that take place once a year, on the same day, and it only accepts dates in MMM DD format. But Python is easy to read and hack, so if you have improvements, please email them to me and I'll incorporate them into the script.