Just wanted to let you know I am still alive!

I am burried under my PhD thesis at the moment, so I got almost no time for my little programs …

But only almost :-) In fact, there is just ONE, SINGLE function to be implemented for Mr. Burns TOK 3. Everything else is already completed, tested, and working! So stay tuned!

 

While I was coding for Mr. Burns 3 config-dialog window I realised that I made a silly mistake in the GUI of Dib. Sometimes, reading or writing the desktop icon information takes several seconds and the Dib GUI did not show that the program was still busy. I mean, how stupid is that.

Dib.1.3.15.0.zipDib.1.3.15.0.zip Desktop Icon Backup
There is a newer Version of this File available
[377 KB; MD5: 82bb2c82aeaf070412c40192fbe3390e; More Info]

So I loaded the Dib project and made this little change (less than 30 minutes of work). Therefore, here it is: a mini update for Dib.

Last week I tried to use DIB to restore the icon positions on my computer at work. However DIB told me that he couldn’t find my desktop. … wut?

So, I debugged a little and checked what was happening. Actually, the desktop window was really detached from the desktop’s process main window. I have no idea what happend, but since this strange state survived even a reboot of my machine, I decided to update DIB to be able to work with this situation as well. Here it is:

Dib.1.4.16.0.zipDib.1.4.16.0.zip Desktop Icon Backup
Selected File Version not found, showing newest Version instead
[378 KB; MD5: 846a6d216e74ad0f09eae94f1f2279d7; More Info]

We can’t ignore the fact: the year 2010 is almost past. At such times I recognize how much I have not done of what I wanted to do. I am still not millionaire and all my projects are significantly less complete than they should be. There is absolutely no doubt that this will also happen next year. But, that is no reason not to try as much as I can (or more). :-) I want to show you a, for sure incomplete, list of my current projects and my projects planned for 2011. I sorted the list according to my personal priorities, which might change any minute.

  • MegaMol
    The only “commercial” project I will show here. Early 2011 I plan to get version 1.0 of MegaMol up and running.
  • Exoworlds
    It possibly is my oldest long-term project. But I love it and I will not let it die!
  • MILC
    A very young project, started this week because of personal needs. I don’t want to give too much information about it just now, but stay tuned.
  • Nameless Board Game
    A small board game I am planning for some time now (imagine a cross-over of “Risk&quot, “Chess”, and “Checkers”). Every now and then I had a name of the game, but I didn’t liked most of them. Currently I am still tweaking the rules, because I want to ensure that no player could force a tie. Although, there is some progress, it is much slower than I hoped it would be. Well, I believe creativity cannot be forced.
  • Working Title: NSB
    Behind the working title NSB stands an idea; a good idea! :-) More info to come…
  • Kanoneur 2
    In the week just before Christmas a good friend of my reminded me of the mini-game “Kanoneur” I have written a long time ago. For me it was a project to gain some practice in OpenGL. The gameplay was basically the one of Tank Wars. When my friend reminded me of all the “enhancements” we came up for the game, I wanted to re-start that project again. So “Kanoneur 2” will come, although it is probably the game with the most stupid name of all time.
  • My Websites
    There is still much to do at my websites; nothing visible, all optimizations and enhancements of the scripts.
  • Mr. Burns TOK
    I didn’t forget about it. It’s just that my motivation to work with this ancient source code is not that high. But I promise, I will do it “soon”.
  • All my little Helpers/Tools
    I got roughly a dozen small tools I am writing to ease my daily work. I would be nice if some of them would finally be completed. :-/

Because I know myself, and I am pretty sure I will not write another post this year:

I wish you all a Happy New Year 2011!

There is a bug is Mr. Burns TOK. On some systems the buttons of the window are not present. Unfortunately, until now I was not able to create this effect on my own computer and therefore the fix is difficult. I believe the problem might be some Dll-dependency, however I have no prove yet. Because I have only very little time for my tools at the moment I cannot make any promises until when I will have the solution for the problem. I will write as soon as I know a solution.

Here is, once again, a small tool the world does not really need.

UrlCollector.zipUrlCollector.zip UrlCollector
[158 KB; MD5: c7b75fcfbd602beec5902f8019f14ebb; More Info]

The UrlCollector is a very small and simple utility. It simply checks whether the windows clipboard contains a single line of text which looks like a Web-URL. If it does, that text line is copied from the clipboard into the program window. E. g. that way you can easily collect several download links from a website for later download, without hitting “Ctrl+V” all the time. Just “Copy link location” does the job.

About two years ago I was tinkering with code for changing the resolutions of my monitors. Of course, I screwed up several times and broke the layout of the icons on my desktop. So I searched the internet for a tiny as-simple-as-it-can-get tool to store and restore the layout of my icons. I did not find any. I mean, I found hundreds, but some were to blown-up by functions I don’t want (background services automatically detecting screen resolution changes, or something like that) and some were shareware.

Shareware!

I mean … WTF?!

Don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against someone earning money with a useful and good-written software, but such a tiny little icon tool. I mean, it’s far less complex than Calc.exe of Notepad. I was really miffed and so I decided to write such a tool by my own and to give it away as freeware. Yes, freeware. Just, because I can.

Dib.1.4.16.0.zipDib.1.4.16.0.zip Desktop Icon Backup
Selected File Version not found, showing newest Version instead
[378 KB; MD5: 846a6d216e74ad0f09eae94f1f2279d7; More Info]

And here it is: Desktop-Icon-Backup (DIB). Written in C# with Windows Forms and a whole bunch of P/Invoke. It only took me two or three afternoons to make it work. I am absolutely sure that somewhere out there a tool like this exists, and that I missed it, like I missed many others. Who cares? Now the world is blessed with one more freeware. Get it and have fun with it.