Windows Utilities
Home Planet is a Microsoft Windows 3.1, 95/98/Me, and
NT/2000/XP application which puts a somewhat different spin on the
usual astronomical or planetarium program. Home Planet places the
Earth in its place in the universe, allowing one to look up toward the
stars or down upon the Earth from a variety of perspectives.
Comprehensive documentation is included in a hypertext help file. For
additional information and instructions on how to download and install
the software, please see the
online documentation.
New:
screen saver
updated for Windows XP dual screen and registry-based individual
settings, and to use the
cloudless Earth image.
Did you know that “aim of blur” is an anagram of “Fourmilab”?
Well, now you can find all kinds of cool anagrams yourself, on
your own computer, without even connecting to the Internet.
Fourmilab's Anagram Finder is a
command-line program which finds all the anagrams of a given
phrase made up of words from a list of 117972 words legal in
the popular crossword game. You can build your own
dictionaries from custom word lists and search for anagrams
using them. The program is written in C++ and may be built on
any system with a modern, compatible, compiler such as GCC. A
ready-to-run Win32 executable and complete source code are
available. Written in the
literate
programming style, the hyperlinked source code may be read
on line.
New version 1.3 fixes compile problems with GCC versions 3.3
and 3.4, library incompatibilities on Solaris 5.9, and now includes a
native 32-bit Windows executable built with Microsoft Visual Studio
.NET.
Portable C program which encodes and decodes files in MIME
“Base64” encoding; this comes in handy when developing E-mail
and Web servers which accept and deliver embedded binary files.
New January 2001 update adds support for EBCDIC systems
and 32-bit Microsoft Windows platforms and includes a ready-to-run
Windows executable.
This directory contains the file
basket.zip, a PKZIP archive
which extracts into the file basket.xls. This is a Microsoft
Excel 5.0 (or above) workbook which allows you to
compose baskets of
the major trading currencies: Swiss Franc, German Mark, British Pound,
Japanese Yen, and U.S. Dollar and evaluate their performance over the
period 1984–1994 in terms of overall gain or loss, yearly volatility,
and maximum gain and/or loss from the initial position. Results are
presented both for investors who “keep score” in US$ and Swiss Francs.
A monthly database of currency values is included.
There are many disadvantages to being a balding geezer. In
compensation, if you've managed to survive the second half of
the twentieth century and been involved in computing, there's bearing
personal witness to what happens when a
technological transition goes into full-tilt
exponential blow-off mode. I'm talking about Moore's Law—computing
power available at constant cost doubling every 18 months or so. When
Moore's Law is directly wired to your career and bank account,
it's nice to have a little thermometer you can use to see how it's
going as the years roll by. This page links to two benchmarks I've
used to evaluate computer performance ever since 1980. They focus on
things which matter dearly to me—floating point computation speed,
evaluation of trigonometric functions, and matrix algebra. If you're
interested in text searching or database retrieval speed, you should
run screaming from these benchmarks. Hey, they work for me.
New September 2021 updates adds Raku (Perl 6) to the C,
C++, Chapel, Ada, Algol 60/68, COBOL, Common Lisp, Erlang,
Forth, FORTRAN, FreeBASIC, Go, Haskell, Java, JavaScript, Julia,
Lua, Mathematica, Mbasic, Modula2, Pascal, Perl, PHP, PL/I,
Prolog, Python, Ruby, Rust, Scala, Simula, Smalltalk, Swift, and
Visual Basic (6 and .NET) language implementations of the
floating point benchmark, and includes a comparison of the
relative performance of these languages.
Nerds weren't held in the highest esteem in the tempestuous times
of the late sixties, but if you had access to a mainframe
computer with a fast line printer, a great way to make new
friends and meet radical chicks was
cranking out banners for the cause du jour on the
graveyard shift when the Man wasn't looking. The FIST
program traces its lineage directly back to a program I punched
onto Hollerith cards
for a UNIVAC 1108
in September 1969. It prints banners with a clenched
fist and block-letter slogan of your choice. Various
silly options let you choose a right- or left-handed fist
according to your political persuasion and to adjust the
size of the fist commensurate with the vehemence of your convictions
and your printer's paper size. In the spirit of Donald E.
Knuth's most excellent mise à jour of the
Adventure
game, this version is presented as a
literate program
in the
CWEB
language; C source code is included.
Command-line utility which computes and checks
message digests (digital signatures) generated by the MD5
algorithm as defined by RFC 1321. This program is handy for software
installation, file verification, and other system administration shell
scripts and Perl programs. Includes complete C source code for Unix
and a ready to run Win32 executable.
New version 2.0 adds multiple file signature
generation (including wildcard expansion in the
Win32 version), tagging signatures with
file names, and optional lower case letters in
hexadecimal output.
MIDI music files are a simple and elegant representation of
musical compositions, but are stored in a somewhat arcane
binary format which is difficult to process without specialised
libraries. MIDICSV includes two utilities, midicsv and
csvmidi, which inter-convert MIDI files and
Comma-Separated Value (CSV) files preserving all information.
CSV representations of MIDI file may be loaded into
spreadsheets and database programs, and can be easily processed
with text processing languages such as Perl and Python. A
variety of examples, written in Perl, illustrate generation and
transformation of MIDI music files in CSV format. Complete
source code in portable ANSI C and ready-to-run WIN32
executables are available.
Microsoft Windows tool which displays the current phase of the Moon in
an icon and other information when opened. The program is in the
public domain and complete source code is available. New
1999 release includes a 32-bit version which supports the Windows
95/98/NT time zone setting, works for all non-negative Julian
day numbers, minimises to the system tray, and includes a Help file.
For old time's sake, an updated
16-bit version compatible
with Windows 3.0 and above is also available.
Portable C program which encodes and decodes files in
RFC 1521 MIME “Quoted-Printable” encoding. You can use
this developing E-mail and Web servers which accept and deliver
text files containing characters not present in the 7-bit ASCII
printable set.
Extended file dump and load utility for Unix and 32-bit
Windows. Lets you dump a file in hex, decimal, or octal
(with optional side-by-side ASCII/ISO-8859), then use
whatever text editor you like to edit the data, even
inserting and/or deleting bytes, then reload the edited dump
to create a modified binary file. No need to learn a
different editor to edit binary files!
The Bullets Screen Saver
extends the life of your monitor by riddling it with indiscriminate
gunfire, complete with (optional) sound effects. Both a
ready-to-install screen saver for 32-bit Windows systems and source code are
available.
New version 2.0 is compatible with dual screen
configurations on Windows XP and saves preferences in the registry
individually for each user.
What better way to protect your monitor's phosphor than by smashing
rocks into it at dozens of kilometres per second? The
Craters Screen Saver
simulates cratering of initially flat terrain, obeying the same
power-law relating crater size to number observed on airless solar
system bodies. New version 3.0 is compatible with dual screen
configurations on Windows XP and saves preferences in the registry
individually for each user. This is a minimalist screen saver
originally released in 1994 which
appeared in the November 2000
issue of Sky & Telescope magazine.
Retro-computing enthusiasts may
download the original version for Windows 3.1 which runs fine on a 20
Mhz 80386 and will probably work on a PC/AT with an EGA.
The Earth Screen Saver
(for 32-bit systems such as Windows 95/98/Me and NT/2000/XP only)
shows the Earth with the correct illumination based on the date and
time. You can view the Earth from the Sun (day side), Moon, night
side, or at a given altitude above any location specified by latitude
and longitude. New version 3.1 is compatible with dual screen
configurations on Windows XP and saves preferences in the
registry individually for each user.
Inspired by the Chris Carter drama series, the
Millennium Screen Saver counts down
the days remaining until the apocalypse of your choice—perfect
for Millennium fans and programmers engaged in the
struggle against the forces of idiocy to avert catastrophe when
date fields overflow. Both a ready-to-install screen saver for
32-bit Windows and source code are available.
New version 1.2 is compatible with dual screen
configurations on Windows XP, saves preferences in the registry
individually for each user, and counts down, by default, to
Black Tuesday, January 19th, 2038, when 32-bit signed Unix
time() values go negative.
Now you never need to go outside again!
Sky Screen Saver
shows the sky as it presently appears including stars
from the more than 9000 star Yale Bright Star Catalogue, the Sun, Moon
(with the correct phase), and planets, deep sky objects drawn from a
database of more than 500 prominent objects including all Messier objects,
constellation names, boundaries, and outlines, and ecliptic and equatorial
co-ordinates. All of these items can be individually selected to customise
the display. The screen saver can be configured for any time zone and any
location on Earth. This program is based on the more comprehensive star
map window of Home Planet,
adapted to be a self-contained and well-behaved screen saver. Like Home
Planet, this program is in the public domain.
New version 3.1 (July 2006) saves preferences in the registry
individually for each user.
The Slide Show Screen
Saver shows images (in JPEG, GIF, PNG, and BMP
format) and plays sound files (MP3, WAV, and MIDI) from a
designated directory, either in random order or alphabetically
by file name. A variety of options allow scripting slide shows
and an accompanying sound track. Both a ready-to-install
32-bit screen saver for Windows 95/98/Me and NT/2000/XP and
source code are available.
New release 2.0 allows Internet shortcuts (.url files)
to be included in slide directories, permitting the inclusion of
dynamic images and sounds from the Web in slide shows, improves
randomisation when in “shuffle play” mode, and saves
preferences in the registry individually for each user.
Since 1995, our Terranova:
planet of the day has invited
visitors to celebrate the inexorable spread of life throughout the
galaxy by exploring a new terraformed planet every day. Now, the
Terranova Screen Saver for
Windows 95/98/Me and NT/2000/XP lets you generate your own endlessly varied
planets, star fields, and cloudy skies. This screen saver
is extremely computationally intense and is not intended for use on
computers with processors slower than a 90 MHz Pentium.
New version 1.2 (July 2006) saves preferences in the registry
individually for each user.
One of the most persistent complaints to operators of Web sites which
provide downloadable archives is that files on their
servers are “corrupted”. As is so often the case when
corruption is mentioned in connection with computers, the problem is
not at the Web site, the user's computer, nor on the Internet which
interconnects them, but at Microsoft, whose incompetently implemented
attempt at a Web browser randomly truncates downloads and then
compounds the problem by storing the truncated file in its cache and
supplying it for subsequent download attempts.
This document
describes the problem and suggests alternatives which avoid such
problems. A companion document,
Downloading
Files from Fourmilab with FTP, provides a step-by-step tutorial
for the alternative of downloading with Microsoft's command-line FTP client,
while explaining why, thanks to how laughably obsolete this
program is, it is sadly not an option for many Internet users.
Digital Video Discs (DVDs) bear a “region code” intended to
block their being viewed on players sold in a different
geographical area. Customers in Europe, for example, who order
DVDs from online vendors in North America may receive discs
their players won't accept. Many computer-based DVD decoders
are not hardware region locked and are physically capable of
playing discs from any region. Microsoft, however, have blocked
this in the DVD Player shipped with Windows 98 by a crude
software kludge. This document explains how to circumvent the
region lock and play any DVD on Windows 98. These
instructions apply only to the Microsoft DVD Player included
with Windows 98, not other players supplied with decoder boards,
and will not work if your DVD decoder card contains a hardware
region lock. See the full document for additional details.
What's a “WUXGA”? Ever since the advent of the IBM PC,
manufacturers of personal computers, graphics adaptors, monitors,
and projectors have obfuscated the resolution of their hardware
with increasingly grotesque acronyms. This document deconstructs
the various acronyms and provides the information you ought to
have been given in the first place: how many pixels each mode
can display.
This directory contains the file
poss.zip, a Zipped archive
which extracts into the file poss.xls. This is a Microsoft
Excel 5.0 (or above) workbook which contains a catalogue of the
Palomar Observatory Sky Survey plates, including the mapping
between the original plates and the MicroSky microfiche edition
published by Deen Publications, Inc.
Screen Savers