personal software

I have a problem, and it has nothing to do with cowbell.  It does, however, have to do with the eleventy-thousand text files that I have lying around my hard drive(s).  I just can't keep them organized enough any more!

I've had this problem for a while, actually, and I've gone through a few different softwares trying to keep my notes organized. Freemind (too structured for general note taking. Mind-mapping FTW though!), Evernote (too bloated/relying on external systems for my data), mempad (no automatic off-disk backups so I can access it from anywhere, but close), and finally my blog (too public. heh.) were all options at one point and I spent some time with each one to get them to "fit".

Welp, nothing did. Mempad came the closest to what I was looking for, but when I emailed the author about adding some off-disk backups, like WebDAV, he in-not-so-many-words-but-still-friendly told me that he wasn't interested.

But, to be honest, that was exactly the answer I was looking for :)

This bad larry has been around for a few years yet in my "inner circle of nerd-dom". I've just never gotten around to posting it here. I don't know why, but I blame the dog.

It's for Windows only, but should work in anything >= Win98SE.  Linux version is forthcoming, after I finish up with the second phase of the clock - Space Invaders!

This is an oldie-but-goodie. I made this a long long time ago. So long ago, in fact, the original page that I got the idea from is no longer around. The great Wayback Machine shows 2002 as the first incarnation, but I'm pretty sure it was before then.

Anyway, this PHP snippet shows the current time in relation to how I view my time, in chunks of how active I am.  The lighter the time, the more active I generally am during that block. The darkest means I'm sleeping (hopefully!).

The code is pretty simple and grossly outdated, but it works just fine and dandy!  You can check out a demo here.  Configuration options galore!

This is another little doo-dad that's been in my arsenal for a while now. I originally developed this to be used as a forum avatar and possibly figure out the real meaning of life.  I'm still waiting for the riches.

John Conway's Game of Life used to be my screensaver on all my Solaris boxes when I was a Solaris admin. I was facinated by it then and was feeling a little nerdy and nostalgic, so I spent an afternoon to read up on it and develop this.

It comes in two versions.  First, the drupal module that you see on the main page, and then a second standalone version.

I've seen a couple threads on the MediaMonkey Forums looking for help on supporting multiple databases, and it just so happens that I needed something that would let me switch databases easily while I test my Play Server application.

Being new to MediaMonkey, and not immediately seeing a solution to my problem, I went ahead and made my own!

Basically you use this program to switch the database and launch MediaMonkey. You can replace the MediaMonkey shortcut with a shortcut to this program, even.

I just discovered Dave's Quick Search Deskbar and man, this thing is cool! It gives you easy access to a ton of different functions like calculator, calendar, clock, currency converter, and stock quotes. Not only that, but any kind of internet search you can dream up like acronym finder, dictionary, translations - anything!

Not only is it so versatile right out of the box, but it's so easy to modify! The one thing I could find though was renewing my IP address though the tool. So I wrote it :)

Check out my "iptools" attachment. Just unzip it into your addons folder and refresh the Deskbar. Then you will have a couple commands at your disposal:

• "renewip": Renews your IP address.
• "showip": Shows your local IP addresses
• "showip /ext": Shows your external IP address

Sick of these things yet? ;)

One of these days I'm going to switch to Mono and check that out now that it supposedly has a Windows.Forms implementation. Someday.

For now, this is what I was doing this weekend when I wasn't visiting fam or fixing up my gameroom.

I present... Tail (shows you the last X lines in a file and/or monitors that file for changes). It's a lot like mTail but with a couple more features. Incidentally, mTail is a great program, so if this doesn't work for you I suggest you check it out (after letting me know how I can improve it of course ;) ).

Next up, Verify hash! This one will verify MD5, SHA1, and CRC32s of files that you download. The cool thing that I haven't found in other apps that do this (yes, I know there are about a million of them), is that it will look for one of these hashes in your Windows clipboard to verify against as well as a .md5, .sha, or .crc in the same folder as the file.

So, that means that when you download a file from a website and the hash is posted on the download page, you can simply copy the hash to your clipboard, right click on the downloaded file and select "Verify Hash" and you'll get verification right away.

It's portable too, unless you optionally register it to your shell (so you can right-click a file to get the hash).

So few steps, it's like taking a opening a can of beer!

I've been casually searching for a couple small functions that I haven't been able to find adequate implementations of. One is an IP gadget that lets me see what my current IP is and also /renew for me when I switch from NAT (work) to bridged (home) networking in my VM.

The other is a small calendar app that shows me "today" and any upcoming holidays/birthdays, etc (I'm constantly looking at the calendar for some reason). I want to enter in all my reoccurring dates (birthdays, paydays, etc) but I don't need a task scheduler. There are a brazillion calendar apps out there but they were all way overkill and didn't integrate with my system/workflow the way I was looking for.

I've been completely facinated lately with that old Busweiser commercial after seeing it again recently. Also recently, I've been getting back into C# trying to help out a friend of mine. Put the two together and what do you get?

True, True (*-style)!

Enjoy!