iCal dabbling

I’m not great at remembering facts. Well, certain facts I am, but others I’m not. Social facts, for example, I don’t. Like birthdays. Thus the need for a calendar system.

Yea, I could just write them down in a text file. But would I seriously remember to look there? But a general calendar program has more potential use, and I’ll have more occasion to play with it.

iCal is an open standard that Apple and the Mozilla Foundation have embraced. Thus, I’ll have reasonable access to programs that understand this format for the mid-term future.

One nifty feature is the ability to subscribe to other’s iCal-endars. So for example, you can just say “Gimme all the national holidays, astronomical events, and keys dates in the history of the Beatles”, for example, instead of typing it all in and maintaining it. Very nifty. I think communities could benefit from collective use of such a resource. Imagine if your school or place of work published all pertinent dates, and each department or group maintained their own events-of-interest as well, and they just magically appear in your calendar.

Enough rambling for now. Let’s see how this endeavour pans out.