Bytes and Pieces
Welcome to my website, where I'm posting software applications I've written,
computer programming
methods I've found interesting, source code of some Visual C++ projects,
and
some short essays on a
potpourri of other topics I'm interested in. If you have a
question or would like to
comment, feel free to
send me email at
bobday.nh@verizon.net.
-- Bob Day, January 2009.
"All these you are, and each is partly you,
And none is false, and none is wholly true."
FREE SOFTWARE APPLICATIONS:
Call Screener, v1.7 - free -
Block unwanted telephone calls
Call Screener is software that blocks unwanted phone calls. It
runs under Windows XP SP2, and
requires a dial-up modem that has voice and caller ID capability to be installed on your
computer.
When a
call is blocked, Call Screener speaks the message contained in the
ZapMessage.wav file
to the
caller. An example ZapMessage.wav file is included in the kit that comes
in the download.
Documentation is also included in the kit. Some dial-up modems that have
worked well for me
are the Rosewill USB RNX-56USB, the Zoom 3025C, the AOpen FM56-PX, and the
Best Data 56HP92-PCT. The Rosewill is an external modem that plugs into a
USB port, and
the others are internal PCI modems.
Click HERE
to download.
Phone Recorder, v1.6 - free - Join and record an
ongoing telephone conversation
I wrote Phone Recorder because I didn't want to pay $49.95 for EzPhone
Recorder. Phone
Recorder
doesn't have much of a user interface -- just two buttons: "Start recording/Stop
recording" and
"Exit". When you click on "Start recording", Phone
Recorder will join an
ongoing
phone conversation on
the same line, and the button label will change to "Stop
recording". The
conversation is stored
as a .wav file in the same folder as the Phone
Recorder executable (.exe) file. Phone Recorder runs under Windows
XP SP2, and you
need to have a dial-up modem that has voice capability installed on your
computer. Some
dial-up modems that have worked well for me
are the Rosewill USB RNX-56USB, the
Zoom 3025C, the AOpen FM56-PX, and the
Best Data 56HP92-PCT. The Rosewill is an
external modem that plugs into a
USB port, and
the others are internal PCI modems. Be sure
to tell the
other party or parties on
the line that
you are
recording the conversation if it is
legally required to do
so.
Click HERE
to download.
HomeSentinel, v1.27 - free -
Guard your home or business with HomeSentinel!
HomeSentinel is software for Windows XP systems that
you can use to help protect your
home or business while you are away. It can continuously monitor the video from
up to
four webcams and alert you by email, phone, or both when it detects motion.
Email alerts
contain the video image that caused motion to be detected and four additional
images
spaced at three second intervals. Click
HERE to
download or HERE
for more info.
URLRedirector, v2.9 - free
- Enables a static URL for a non-static IP address
Pay no more Web hosting fees! You’d like to use your computer as a Web server,
but you
don’t have a static IP address? URLRedirector solves that problem!
URLRedirector is a
dynamic real-time URL redirector that allows users to use a fixed, unchanging
URL to go
to the website on your computer, even though the IP address of your computer may
be
constantly changing. Click
HERE to download or
HERE for more
information.
TCPGateKeeper - free - A utility to display and
control your internet connections
MemLatency, v1.5 - free - A utility to measure random
access memory latency
ESSAYS:
The Dynamic Universe
Theory
- a Theory of the Universe that Makes Sense!
Accelerating
Expansion of the Universe: Yes or No?
ECC Memory Isn't Everything -- It's
the Only Thing
Chipkill Advanced ECC - Overview of How It Works
Consciousness Totally
Explained and Elucidated
Why the Pucks Go at Right
Angles
Time
Derivation of the Formula for
Mortgage Payments
Reading
SOURCE CODE OF SOME OF MY SOFTWARE APPLICATIONS:
Feel free to use the code in this section in any way you wish. An
acknowledgement would be nice.
Please let me know about any bugs you find.
Model code for doing fits
of the SCP Union SN Ia Compilation dataset
MATLAB project. This code is intended to serve as a basis to make life
easier
for anyone who wants to do his or her own fits. Modify it to suit your own
purposes.
SendATCmdToModem
Visual C++ project.
Uses TAPI in passthrough mode to send an AT command to a modem and
receive a
response. This code has no GUI and no I/O; it's just a detailed example
showing one
way of doing it. To see what it does, compile it in Debug mode
and single step through it.
CSVtoTXF - Converts Buy and Sell Stock transactions to
TXF format for Schedule D
Visual C++ project.
Matches stock purchases in Comma Separated Value files to their
corresponding
sales and writes them as entries for Schedule D into a Tax Exchange/Export File.
This file is suitable for input into TurboTax or TaxCut. If you use this
code, you'll probably
have to adapt the parsing section to the format of your
own CSV input files.
ChatServer - Handles up to 5000 simultaneous
internet text chat sessions
Visual C++ project.
Technique of using an Asynchronous Procedure Call to handle multiple
(up to
5000) internet text chat sessions in a single thread.
MemLatency - A utility to
measure random access memory latency
Visual C++ project.
Contains an implementation of the algorithm for generating a random
grand tour
sequence, described under "Programming Methods".
TCPGateKeeper - Blocks connections from
user-entered IP addresses
Visual C++ project.
Technique of terminating a TCP/IP connection given its IP address.
WebExcavator - Searches
internet web pages for email addresses
Visual C++ project.
Multithreading; technique of scanning web pages; reverse polish
deconstruction
of boolean expressions; fast boolean expression evaluator.
PROGRAMMING METHODS:
Algorithm for generating a random grand tour
sequence
Function to generate a
bit-reversed number sequence
Cool technique for loop unrolling
- illustration
Binary trees and bit reversed
numbers
Boolean
Expression Evaluator for Web Searches
Random Access Memory Latency
VITAMINS FOR THE MIND:
The 4:00 Meeting
Tom and Bill are standing at two places on a straight road.
Tom starts
walking toward Bill and arrives at Bill's original place 11 minutes
after
Bill had left. At perhaps a different time, Bill starts walking toward Tom
and arrives at Tom's original place 15 minutes after Tom had left.
When
each reaches the other's original place, he immediately turns and starts
back, and they meet in the center at 4:00. Assuming that they
walked at
constant rates, when did each start to travel on the road?
Alice Forgets Her Purse
On her way out of Macys, Alice walks down a down-moving escalator
in 50 steps. When she reaches the bottom, she suddenly remembers
she forgot her purse, and she turns and runs back up the escalator in
125 steps, stepping five times as fast as she went down. How many
steps
are on the surface of the escalator?