I'm not a programmer, and I'm not in a position to offer money to anyone who is,

but

In the unlikely event that any programmers are actually looking for ideas and are not already snowed under with their own projects here is my little idea.

Would anyone out there like to write a calendar generator for alien planets, for the use of sci-fi writers?

The user could enter the name of a unit of time = minute equivalent (and how many in an “hour”)

Then the user could enter the name of a unit of time = hour equivalent (and how many in a day)

Then how many days in a year and the orbit and phases of a few moons,

The name of a month equivalent and length of seasons

Then generate a calendar chart and diary based on the input information, it should be possible to mark events, work patterns and festivals on both of these.

Even better if it could be attached to an address book for your aliens with cross ref who is related to whom.

I have absolutely no cash and no programming skills but if anyone thinks it a good idea and decides to take it up as a project I would be quite happy to create digital artwork and gif animations, just let me know size in pixels and format needed.

This is a very interesting idea.
Also a very interesting idea is to try to learn programming
If you are interested, there are some very nice books, tutorials and other resources on the net. For example, have a look here http://www.byteofpython.info/ - it is a nice book about programming in Python language for people that have no experience in programming at all.
Good luck.

Oh Learning Python is definately on my list of things to do, in between working for a living, home schooling my kids, looking after an elderly parent, running a Cafepress shop, writing stories and creating and trying to sell digital artwork. I haven't had a go at programming since the days of BBC Basic but I'm hoping to find a few hours in my week in around 3 years time.