Programs

I figured I could share some of the programs that I’ve written & see if there is any interest in further development on any of them.

Most of the programs are developed in VB6.0 since that’s the development software I’ve got access to.

Most of these are just zipped up files… Unzip them into their own folder & run the exe file with the program’s name-sake. I had/have installers for some of them, but I HATE VB6’s included package & distribute tool’s installer… You shouldn’t have any issues with most of these tools, if you do, let me know & we’ll figure it out.

• KMA
  This is a program I built because I had a sizable data entry task to perform, but I HATE monotonous data entry. It started with mouse movements & I added keystroke capabilities. Honestly, I copied routines off the web for the keyboard & mouse hooks, but I put it all together in this package to script mouse movements & keystrokes.It’s relatively easy to create a script & you can even modify a saved script in your text editor of choice. If you’ve got questions or problems with it, let me know!
• MasManBlocks
  A simple game with no real way to “win”…
  Clicking on a colored block will eliminate it along with all like-colored blocks that are adjacent. The more blocks that are touching when you eliminate them, the more points you’ll for that click. It does save your high scores and you can select how many blocks you start with, but this was more of a proof of concept for me to program than a game I wanted to publish.
• Five
  This is another game that I had fun creating…
  One or two player game (one player plays against the program). It’s a simple 5-in-a-row turn based game. I was very proud of how my program plays against a human until I found some hard-to-block combinations that allowed me to beat it… Go ahead, give it a try, see if you can beat it!
• MasMan Calculator
  A calculator program that allows you to type in full formulas with parenthesis.
  Nothing too special here, but it was something I found VERY useful when I was doing drafting work. You can set up stored formulas and save formulas or numbers for later use. Running history so you can scroll back & see what you’ve already done, etc…
  There is a lot that can be added to this to make it even more useful, but until I have a reason to mess with it, it will probably stay just like it is.
• Random Character
  A simple command-line program to return a random character (or characters) to the command prompt. Again, this was another test to learn command line access (arguments & output). Not super useful, but fun to write.
• Random Number Generator
  A simple program to return a pseudo-random number. Sorry folks, no radioactivity measurements going on here… It’s a fun tool to use to come up with random numbers in a “suspenseful” fashion. It will flash through random numbers through however many iterations you please. You can define the minimum & maximum numbers to keep your random number between. There’s even a simple “Easter-egg” that lets you change the time gap between each iteration. And another one to see all the iterations it came up with (hm… lottery number picker anyone? Maybe not.) hehe…
• Batch Print PDFs
  A program I hacked together to allow you to print a bunch of PDF files to your default printer (with the default printer settings). We had a need to print a bunch of PDF files & we were tired of having to open each one & setup up the printer settings, and click print. This made things go A LOT quicker.
• Simple X10
  A program I wrote to make use of X10 transmitters hooked up to your computer. It works with the X10 Firecracker (CM17A) and the old Serial ActiveHome Computer Interface (CM11A/HD11A). It’s just a simple interface to send individual commands (On, Off, Dim, Bright). The CM11A also handles extra commands like Dim amounts (like Dim 50%) and All On/Off, but the firecracker doesn’t.  I added the code to loop through multiple Dims to get a similar effect and it will loop through to do an All On/Off.  I also added the capability to take command-line arguments so you can script it (batch files or whatever fits your fancy) or add scheduled tasks to automate your house a little bit. This program has a few dependencies, so I went ahead & packaged it up with a setup program (some of the programs above can run the exe with few-if-any dependencies )