Index Librorum Liberorum
Contents of http://www.fourmilab.ch/
by John Walker
15th January 2004
Frame-based site navigator.
Frequently asked questions.
My Web tree is organised as a
collection of subdirectories, each containing a separate package or
class of files (for example, electronic texts of public domain works,
short documents, etc.). The directories and their contents are listed
briefly below, followed by detailed descriptions of each. After the
summary brief notes point out recently added or updated items. You're
welcome to any and all of this stuff; except as otherwise noted,
it's all in the public domain and you can do anything you
like with it.
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.
ATLAST (Autodesk Threaded Language
Application System Toolkit) is a (very) FORTH-like language kernel
designed to be embedded into applications, rendering them extensible
to a degree far beyond normal macro languages. Indeed, using ATLAST,
it is often possible, in the spirit of FORTH, to "factor out" much of
the control structure from an application, reducing it to a set of
data-driven services whose interaction can be modified by the user
with ATLAST. ATLAST is written entirely in portable C, and has been
tested on MS-DOS, Windows, a variety of Unix machines, and the
Macintosh. Complete documentation is included in PostScript,
Microsoft Word (PC/Mac RTF format), and LaTeX source code form.
ATLAST has been placed in the public domain and may be used without
restriction or compensation.
The Autodesk File, 4th (1994) edition. The history of
Autodesk and AutoCAD told through contemporary documents,
edited and annotated by Autodesk founder John Walker.
You can read this 900 page book
on-line on the World-Wide Web, or download a
copy to read or print off-line in either PostScript
or Adobe Acrobat PDF format.
(Free Adobe Acrobat Reader software for the Macintosh, Windows,
DOS, and various Unix workstations is available directly from
Adobe Systems.)
The WWW and Adobe Acrobat versions have hot-links for all table
of contents items, cross-references, and index entries.
These files are big; think before you download.
Microsoft Excel database of Autodesk, Inc. stock
(NASDAQ-ADSK) from its initial public offering to the present
(I usually update the database quarterly). Daily high, low,
and closing prices are included, along with volume.
Annotations point out significant events in the company's
history and contemporary news items. All quarterly sales and
earnings reports are noted. A
daily price chart linked to the
database is included as well as a database which
ranks Autodesk among countries of the world, considering its most
recent yearly sales as Gross Domestic Product and number of
employees as population is included. Charts of the relative strength of
Autodesk stock compared to shares of
Borland,
IBM,
Intergraph,
Microsoft,
and the Dow
Jones 30 Industrials are available, as well as a chart which
compares
stock performance under each "administration"--chairbeing and
president--since Autodesk's initial public stock offering in 1985.
Requires Microsoft Excel 5.0 or above.
In 1837, Charles Babbage invented The Analytical Engine, a
mechanical card-programmed digital computer which anticipated almost
every aspect of the electronic computers which would not appear for
more than a century afterward. These pages are a virtual museum where you can
explore the Engine both through historical documents and a Java-based
emulator which allows you to experience for yourself what it
would have been like to program a steam-powered computer.
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.
The BGET Memory allocation package. Useful for stand-alone
(embedded systems) use and as a replacement for malloc
and
other system-provided allocators which may be too slow or
otherwise unattractive. Layering this package under the
Microsoft Windows 3.1 allocator, for example, sped up some
programs by a factor of 10. Extensive diagnostic and
debugging support is provided, to help find memory leaks,
clobbered buffers, use of pointers to released buffers, etc.
In portable C.
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 Windows 95 and source code are
available.
Cellular Automata Laboratory
invites you to explore the world of cellular automata with
the aid of high-speed programmable simulators for both
MS-DOS and Windows. Cellular automata rules are defined
by short programs written in Java, C, Pascal, or BASIC; rule
definitions in Java can be compiled even if you don't have
a Java compiler by using a Web-based compilation server.
The accompanying on-line
laboratory manual,
equivalent to more than 250 printed pages, explains
the theory of cellular automata, how to use the simulator
programs, documents the many
ready-to-run rules included,
describes how to create your own original experiments,
and contains a comprehensive
bibliography.
Utility which encodes and decodes binary files into
five-letter code groups just like
secret agents use. Handy for sending small binary messages by
telephone, radio, or telegraph.
What better way to protect your monitor's phosphor than by smashing
rocks into it at dozens of kilometres per second? This directory
contains a Windows screen saver named "Craters" which
simulates cratering of initially flat terrain, obeying the same power-law
relating crater size to number observed on airless solar system
bodies. Ready-to-use screen savers for both Windows 3.x and Windows 95
and complete source code are available for downloading.
The only reason Einstein's special theory of relativity seems weird to those
learning it is that the velocities we're familiar with are such a tiny
fraction of the speed of light we've never had a chance to
gain an intuitive sense of relativistic effects. If the speed of
light were 100 kilometres per hour, footballers would have no trouble
dealing with relativistic goal shots. C-ship
uses computer image synthesis to put you aboard a starship entirely
consistent with the laws of physics and lets you look out the window to
experience special relativity with your own eyes.
OpenWindows tool for accessing the "Languages of the World"
CD-ROM of language dictionaries. Provides pop-up
language dictionary tools with an inverted index that allows
near-instantaneous access to dictionaries on the CD-ROM.
Dumb Interpretively Executed String Expression Language in
portable C. This is the kernel of a
tiny string language you
can embed in applications which need limited macro facilities.
You can extend the function set by supplying C code. DIESEL
is used in AutoCAD for menu macro processing, and has been
released into the public domain by Autodesk, Inc.
Assorted documents:
rocketaday
-
A Rocket A Day Keeps the High Costs Away asks why it is,
considering that the V2 cost about US$13,000 each (1945
dollars) and could be launched at rates approaching 100 a
week, that today's launchers cost 1000 times as much. A
market-oriented approach to overcome the current cost
barrier to space development is suggested.
c64neural
- A neural network simulator
associative memory demonstration for the Commodore 64--really!
Includes complete source code in BASIC.
cites
- Citations of this site by Web critics.
eht
- Three great twentieth-century physicists: Albert Einstein,
Werner Heisenberg, and Frank Tipler stand before the Throne of God
on Judgement Day. Original science fiction story.
hackants13
-
Rudy Rucker's recent science fiction novel
The Hacker and the Ants
(reprint: Four Walls Eight Windows, 2003: ISBN 1-56858-247-1) concludes with all the loose ends
tied up. Or does it?
Here's a chapter that starts at the
end of Rudy's book and puts a somewhat different spin on
the events that precede it. SPOILER WARNING!! Don't
read this until you've finished Rudy's book. Being a
conclusion, it gives away many of the plot twists in the
earlier chapters.
hacklinks
- A proposal (not yet implemented) for hacking Xanadu-like
(but with less functionality) back links into the Web
without requiring browser, server, or HTML support.
- How to Play DVDs with any Region Code on Windows 98
-
Digital Video Discs (DVDs) bear a "region code" intended to block
their being viewed on players sold in a different geographical area.
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.
il14.ps.gz
-
Autodesk Information Letter 14, perhaps the most
widely-disseminated and discussed "internal memo" in the
recent history of the computer industry. In PostScript;
also included in The Autodesk File; see
"autofile".
K40
-
The radiation dose to a living organism from naturally radioactive
atoms within its body, principally Potassium 40, is roughly equal to
the background radiation at sea level--today. But Potassium 40 has a
half-life of 1260 million years, so the first living organisms on
Earth experienced endogenous irradiation almost 7 times higher than
living things today. Could this explain the long delay between the
origin of life and the emergence of complex multicellular organisms?
- Microsoft at Apogee
-
I hereby predict that, in retrospect, early 1997 will be seen as the
high point in Microsoft's domination of the personal computer software
industry. Will they be blown away by Java, Oracle, or IBM? No...I
think not; the situation is more complicated that that, yet has
clear precedents in the mainframe and minicomputer eras.
nanotech
-
What's Next: Nanotechnology in Manufacturing. An
Autodesk Technology Forum presentation, since reprinted in
numerous publications. This is a flat ASCII text version,
without illustrations. An illustrated version is included
in The Autodesk File; see
"autofile".
newtech.ps.gz
-
The New Technological Corporation. Why technological
companies are different. In PostScript; included in
The Autodesk File; see "autofile".
ohmygodpart
-
The Oh-My-God Particle. On October 15th, 1991 a proton
with an energy of 3×1020 electron volts slammed into in
the Earth's atmosphere. Let's crunch some numbers.... A
performance comparison with 24th century Galaxy Class
starship technology is presented.
- The Power Switch
-
A very short parody of the style of computer user manual writing which
reminds me of beating a moose to death with an aluminium baseball bat.
ProgramsArePrograms
-
Programs Are Programs: How to Make Money In the Software
Business discusses the rapid evolution in the
distribution channels for software over the short history
of the personal computer industry and suggests that the
next few years may see software moving from a sales
oriented model to a subscription model, much like cable
television and perhaps technologically linked. This paper
is strongly related to the "Unicard" paper and is
best read in conjunction with it. This document is
included in The Autodesk File; see "autofile".
- How
to Mount a Lens on a Linhof Technika Recessed Lensboard
- All right, I'll admit it: this document is a little specialised.
A recessed lensboard allows a large format camera to use short
focal length lenses which would otherwise not be able to focus
at infinity due to the minimum extension of the bellows. The
Linhof Technika recessed lensboard is supplied with a mechanism
to permit a cable release to operate the shutter, whose own
cable socket is buried within the recess, but with
no instructions on how to install it. This
document walks you step by step through the installation of
a Schneider Super Angulon 47mm lens on the recessed
lensboard, and explains how the curious collection of
parts supplied with the lensboard are assembled to
operate the shutter.
spacedrive
-
Thermodynamics confronts special relativity in this
physics puzzle which explains why intergalactic spacecraft
will be streamlined just like in the movies.
spaceguns
-
Blazing Satellites: Guns in Space.
Manned orbiting battle stations, armed with rapid-fire machine guns!
Bad science fiction? Well, actually, space age history, just
recently revealed. Read all about it, and explore guns in
space: yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
sftriple
-
Three original science fiction stories,
Free Electrons,
We'll Return After This Message, and
Not With a Bang,
plus a wild-ass
speculation regarding
nanotechnology and cold fusion.
These have been published in various places such as
Micro-Times, CAD++, etc.
specrend
-
Colour Rendering of Spectra explains
how to calculate, given the spectral composition of a light source, what
colour it will be perceived as by the human eye, and which red, green,
and blue intensities best approximate it on a computer monitor.
C source code which
implements the technique is included.
threeyears
-
What can you learn, in three years of computer time, about
an obscure problem in recreational mathematics? Not very
much, at least in this case. But hey, negative results
are still results, right? And still the Quest beckons to
your idle loop. In 1995, Tim
Irvin continued the Quest to two million digits.
His story
illustrates both how fast computers have gotten in the the last five years,
and how much of that power is often devoted to the idle loop.
tipler
-
A review/rant about Frank Tipler's 1994 book,
The Physics of Immortality.
titanium
-
The Titanium Cranium Awards:
a collection of genuine, breathtakingly clueless E-mail sent by
visitors to this site.
top10
-
Yo! Windows application developers...it could be worse--you could
be damned to Hell forever! But would that really be worse?
unicard
-
Unicard: Ubiquitous Computation, Global Connectivity, and
the End of Privacy discusses how a variety of
technological trends are converging to make possible a
world in which privacy no longer exists. It argues that
in most cases privacy is not taken away from individuals
by governments and corporations, but is rather willingly
relinquished in exchange for convenience and/or perceived
security, and that the apparent benefits of these new
technologies will be so compelling that resisting their
adoption, or demanding that they are implemented in an
inherently secure manner, will be a difficult challenge.
univac
-
UNIVAC Memories returns
to the 1960's and early 70's to explore the room-sized UNIVAC
mainframe computers I programmed in those days. Discover million-dollar
memory, two and a quarter ton 100 megabyte hard drives, minus zero,
and other curiosities from the brash adolescence of the second generation of
computers.
- Vacuum Propellers
-
Fast interstellar travel will never be possible with any kind of
rocket, regardless of the energy source (be it chemical, nuclear, or
antimatter), due to the need to carry the rocket's
reaction mass on board. How can a person who coined the maxim
"Never invest in something that violates a conservation law" seriously
entertain the possibility of "propellantless propulsion"? This
brief document speculates on how a "Vacuum Propeller" might be
built which violates no law of physics.
This directory contains a
Windows screen saver (for 32-bit systems
such as Windows 95 only) that 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.
Interactive server which lets you
view the Earth and Moon, as illuminated by the Sun at the time of your request,
from a variety of viewpoints.
Inconstant Moon explores
a universally seen but seldom observed phenomenon: the different
appearance of the Moon at perigee and apogee.
Electronic texts, all in ISO-8859 Latin 1 (superset of ASCII
used by most Unix X Window systems and Microsoft Windows), in
Unix end of line convention. All of these Etexts can
be typeset using LaTeX and an embedded C translation program.
World-Wide Web editions which may be read on-line may
be found in the subdirectory www.
- World-Wide Web editions of electronic texts.
- Art of Money Getting
-
Here is Wisdom. One of the greatest entrepreneurs of the 19th
century, P.T. Barnum, presents his 20 "Golden Rules for Making
Money" in this pithy, succinct, and witty document penned in
1880. A Web edition and plain ASCII electronic text are
available, both in the public domain.
- Autour de la Lune
-
Jules Verne's Autour de la Lune, original
French-language 1870 edition, fully illustrated.
- Bible
-
King James Version of the Bible, both Old and New Testaments.
Includes anchor labels for every chapter and verse, permitting easy
citation from other documents in the conventional form. For example
the parable of the Good Samaritan may be cited as:
<a href="http://www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/www/Bible/Luke.html#10:27>.
- De la Terre à la Lune
-
Jules Verne's De la Terre à la Lune, the original
French-language 1865 edition, fully illustrated.
- From the Earth to the Moon
-
English translation of Jules Verne's De la Terre à la Lune,
fully illustrated with figures from the
original 1865 French-language edition.
- The Hebrew Bible
-
If your browser supports dynamic fonts and cascading style sheets, you can
read this on-line Hebrew (Koren) Bible without
installing any special fonts, applications, or plug-ins. A companion
document describes the public domain Hebrew
font used to produce this text.
- Le Tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours
-
Jules Verne's Le Tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours, the original
French-language 1873 edition, fully illustrated.
- No Treason
-
Lysander Spooner's No Treason: The
Constitution of No Authority.
Written in 1870 and
published by the author, No Treason remains one of the
greatest flat-out anarcho-libertarian rants ever penned.
- On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies
-
An English language translation Albert Einstein's 1905 paper which introduced
Special Relativity, as published in the 1923 book
The Principle of Relativity.
This document is
is both a monument of twentieth century physics and
a masterpiece of scientific communication. In addition to
the Web edition,
a ready-to-print
PostScript
file and
LaTeX source code
of this document may be downloaded.
- Does the Inertia of a Body Depend upon its Energy-Content?
-
An English language translation of Albert Einstein's 1905 paper which
first derived the equivalence of mass and energy,
as published in the 1923 book
The Principle of Relativity.
Starting solely from the principle of relativity for
observers in uniform motion and the constancy of the
speed of light, Einstein employs an elegant kinematical
argument to deduce the most famous equation of twentieth
century physics: the equivalence of mass and energy.
In addition to
the Web edition,
ready-to-print
PostScript
and Adobe Acrobat PDF
files as well as
LaTeX source code
of this document are available.
- The Time Machine
-
H. G. Wells' The Time Machine.
- Universal Declaration of Human Rights
-
The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
- Vulgate
-
Saint Jerome's A.D. 405 Latin translation of the Bible.
Includes anchor labels for every chapter and verse, permitting easy
citation from other documents in the conventional form. For example
the parable of the Good Samaritan may be cited as:
<a href="http://www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/www/Vulgate/Luke.html#10:27>.
- The War of the Worlds
-
H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds.
Plain text files are available for the following documents.
adlune.txt
- Jules Verne's Autour de la
Lune, original French-language 1870 edition.
DeLaTerreALaLune.txt
- Jules Verne's De la Terre à la
Lune, the original French-language 1865 edition.
tdm80j.txt
-
Jules Verne's Le Tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours, the original
French-language 1873 edition.
NoTreason.txt
- Lysander Spooner's No Treason: The
Constitution of No Authority.
Utility programs for processing electronic texts are available
as follows:
etset
- C program which automatically translates electronic texts
prepared in the format used at this site into LaTeX for
typeset output, HTML for Web publication, or 7-bit ASCII
for readers unable to display 8-bit ISO characters. Available
as a zipped archive or as
a gzipped TAR file.
See the manual page for
details, including how to prepare compatible texts.
Impress your friends! Persuade the undecided! Meet new and
interesting people! Get your car shot up by right-wing
yahoos! Be smeared on the front page of The Wall Street
Journal! Yes, it's the one, the only, the original
"Evil Empires: One down, one to go..." bumper sticker, in both
PostScript and PNG image formats in a variety of resolutions.
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 movement
and your printer's paper size.
Resources for learning French. Includes a document describing various
tools and techniques I've found useful in learning
French, a one-page reference-card in PostScript, LaTeX, and an
on-line Web document
which translates 230 thorny "glue words", and a list of
40 word-endings developed
from a study of more than 18,000 French
nouns which allow you to predict the gender of 75% of French
nouns with an accuracy of about 95%.
This program allows you convert either transfer log files from wu-ftpd
or Netcom FTP access reports in folders of electronic mail into either
HTTP daemon common log file format or a Comma Separated Value (CSV)
database suitable for analysis with Microsoft Excel or other packages
which accept this format. A manual page
and Makefile are included.
Documents and interactive Java
applets which explore Newtonian Gravitation and Einstein's General Theory of
Relativity.
- Bending Spacetime in the Basement
demonstrates the universality of gravitation in a "basement science"
experiment which shows the gravitational attraction between masses
of less than a kilogram.
- Orbits in Strongly Curved
Spacetime illustrates how orbits around compact objects
such as neutron stars and black holes depart drastically from Kepler's
laws, and explains why.
The Hacker's Diet: How to Lose Weight and Hair through Stress and
Poor Nutrition book plus associated computer tools. You can
read the book on-line
on the World-Wide Web, or download a
copy to read or print off-line in either PostScript
or Adobe Acrobat PDF format.
(Free Adobe Acrobat Reader software for the Macintosh, Windows,
DOS, and various Unix workstations is available directly from
Adobe Systems.)
The WWW and Adobe Acrobat versions have hot-links for all table
of contents items, cross-references, and index entries.
A set of Excel spreadsheets which accompany the book (but are
not necessary to use it) is also available
for downloading, and the weight logging and management tools
described in the book are also available for the
Palm Computing Platform.
Home Planet is a Microsoft Windows 3.1, 95, and NT 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.
Home Planet
Release 3, a 32-bit version which runs in native mode on
Windows 95 and Windows NT 4.0 is now available.
Quantum mechanics teaches us that, at the deepest level, uncertainty
rules the universe: there are things we cannot predict, even in
principle. HotBits harnesses this fundamental
uncertainty of nature to generate truly random bits, unlike the
pseudorandom sequences created by an algorithm on a computer.
Along the way, you'll find a discussion of the hardware and
software used to generate the random bytes comprehensive enough
to build your own, and peek under the hood
of quantum mechanics to see why the data are genuinely random,
and some of the implications of all this.
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.
Inspired by the Chris Carter drama series, the
Millennium Screen Saver counts
down the days remaining until the Big Round Number--perfect for
Millennium fans and programmers engaged in the struggle
against the forces of idiocy to avert apocalyptic events when the date
rolls over to "1/1/00". Both a ready-to-install 32-bit screen saver
for Windows 95 and NT and source code are available.
Anti-personnel land mines are the predominant terror weapon of our
time. With more than 100 million in the ground in more than 40
countries, they have killed and maimed more people in the last 50
years than nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles combined. Can we
deploy high technology in the form of advanced sensors and
semi-autonomous robots to close the gap between the cost to lay a mine
(about US$3) and the cost to remove it (about US$1000) and thereby rid the
world of this plague? This directory contains a growing
collection of documents
describing the land mine problem and clearance technologies. You
can go directly to the Minerats index with the URL
http://www.fourmilab.ch/minerats/.
Displays an icon with the current phase of the Moon on an
OpenLook or SunView screen. When opened,
up-to-date information
is displayed about the Sun and Moon.
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.
Additions to the NETPBM package. Currently contains
ppm.shar.gz
which
(extracted into the ppm subdirectory), contains additions to the
ppmdraw library to implement drawing ASCII text in a pixmap, using a
stroke font which can be scaled and rotated. There's a test/demo
program included, as well as two new PPM applications,
cietoppm and
ppmlabel. Cietoppm
makes a portable pixmap containing a plot of the
CIE "tongue"
diagram, optionally showing the colour gamut of various display
systems (NTSC, PAL/SECAM, SMPTE, HDTV, etc.). Ppmlabel draws ASCII
text, specified either on the command line or from a file, into
a portable pixmap.
Both cietoppm and ppmlabel require the
text drawing extensions to ppmdraw.
The archive
pnm.shar.gz
contains a new PNM filter, pnmhisteq,
which performs contrast enhancement through the technique of
histogram equalisation.
See the README file for details.
A Perl script which mobilises
standard PBMplus/NetPBM utilities to add simulated shadows to
bitmap images is available. Visit
the pnmshadow page for details,
sample images, and download instructions.
Windex is a Perl script
which prepares an HTML document containing a graphical
index for a collection of image files, with each small thumbnail
image linked to the corresponding full-size image.
sbigtopgm is a filter which
translates image files produced by the
Santa Barbara Instrument Group's
astronomical CCD cameras into PBMplus portable graymaps.
Utilities for generating
one-time key or password pads in a
variety of formats. Options allow you to select key length, whether
digits or letters are used, and whether alphabetic keys are truly
random or obey the digraph statistics of English text (less secure, but
easier to remember and transcribe). Both a C language
program and a Web page with an embedded
generator program in JavaScript are available.
This directory contains the file
poss.zip
, a PKZIP 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. (for information E-mail
glen@metronet.com
).
The "Postage Stamp Rasteriser",
a small, highly portable and
Reality Hardened rasteriser which scan converts lines and
filled concave or convex polygons. Polygon scan conversion
contains compensation for almost a dozen problems of
singularities and numerical instabilities which cause
incorrect results in the simple algorithms you find in
textbooks. Optional TIFF output is available to aid in the
inclusion of preview images in DOS and Windows PostScript
files. Written in portable C; public domain.
A program for the analysis (not generation) of random and
pseudorandom sequences. A variety of tests,
including many
from Knuth, are applied to the contents of a file and the
results reported on standard output. In portable C; public
domain.
Access and
browser
statistics for this server, updated daily.
A Unix utility which, run by root as a cron
job, calls the
National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder
Colorado in the U.S. and sets the system time from their bank
of atomic clocks. This was written for a Sun running SunOS.
Due to the variety of schemes for port locking, serial I/O
ioctl
's, etc. you may have some difficulty getting this to
work on your system. Note: if you're connected to the Internet, you don't
need this program; you can set your system's clock directly across
the net using the daytime
utilities available from the NIST.
Now you never need to go outside again! This directory contains a
Windows screen saver that
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 (see homeplanet),
adapted to be a self-contained and well-behaved screen saver. Like Home
Planet, this program is in the public domain.
The Slide Show Screen Saver
shows images (in JPEG, GIF, PNG, and BMP format) and plays
sound files (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 and NT and
source code are available.
SMARTALLOC, a portable C package based on the standard
malloc()
/free()
functions, which detects
many common memory allocation errors such as memory leaks, releases of
bad pointers, use of buffers after freeing them, and counting on the
initial contents of allocated buffers. Most programs can use
SMARTALLOC simply by recompiling with its header file and including
the code. SMARTALLOC can be disabled for production use with a simple
#define
.
Solar System Live, an
interactive orrery for the Web, lets you
view the solar system
in a variety of ways for any date between 4713 B.C. and A.D. 8000.
An ephemeris can be displayed for any location on Earth and, given
orbital elements in the form published in the IAU Circulars, the orbit
and position of asteroids and comets can be plotted.
Dumb little utility which splits a binary
file into pieces which you can reassemble with cat
.
Yes, I know there are 100 other programs which do this, but the system
I was using when I wrote it didn't seem to have any of them available.
Steganosaurus is a plain text steganography (secret writing)
utility which encodes a (usually encrypted) binary file as gibberish
text, based on either a spelling dictionary or words taken from a text
document. In portable C; public domain.
As life inexorably expands from the home planet throughout the galaxy
and beyond, there will come a time when our descendents render a
new planet habitable every day.
Terranova invites you to visit
the terraformed planet of the day.
The entire U.S.
Internal Revenue
(26 USC), and Immigration and
Nationality (8 USC) Codes compiled into Web documents.
Cross-references within sections are hyperlinked so they can be
followed by clicking on them. You can search the full text of the
Code for occurrences of words and phrases and view matching sections.
Tools for World-Wide Web authors and site managers.
- base64
- 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.
- BLITZ
- Perl utility
used in conjunction with the Majordomo mailing list manager
to remove bounced addresses from mailing lists.
- Demoroniser
- Using Microsoft applications to create Web pages runs the risk
of publishing pages which appear to be the product of a semi-literate
moron when read on non-Microsoft platforms. Demoroniser corrects a
number of errors and gratuitous incompatibilities in Microsoft-generated
HTML, both generic and specific to PowerPoint.
- Flashback
-
Ever lost a day's worth of editing on Unix by
fat-fingering something like "rm * .o"?
Flashback
makes a gzipped tar snapshot
of the directory you're working in (and any subdirectories)
to a common backup directory from which you can restore
clobbered files when needed. Flashback reports the
size of the backup directory after adding the new backup so
you'll know when it's time to clean up old backups.
- logtail
- Perl utility which allows a system administrator to
watch, in real time, items added to any number
of log files on any number of hosts on a network.
- pnmshadow
- Web authors
with access to Unix systems equipped with Perl
and the PBMplus or NetPBM image processing
utilities may be interested in pnmshadow,
which adds simulated shadows to bitmaps, creating the popular special effect
where the content of a bitmap appears to float above the page, casting a
shadow on the background.
- qprint
- 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.
- redirex
- Isn't it irritating when you change the IP address of a
Web server and discover that, months later, requests still
rain in from search engines and other sites which have linked
to the absolute IP address rather than your site name?
Redirex is a small, lightweight Perl server which intercepts
HTTP requests sent to the old address and redirects them
to the site's new home.
- rpmsize
- "Yikes! Who ate my hard drive?", you exclaim, having
installed a Linux distribution update and discovered your 4 Gb
root partition is now 98% full.
RPMSIZE
provides two Perl programs to compute the size of
files belonging to a given
RPM
software package, and prepare a list of all packages installed
on a system and their sizes, sorted by size, to point out
promising candidates for banishment.
- Shadow Server
- Web server which adds cool-looking simulated shadows to
images submitted in GIF, JPEG, and a variety of other formats.
Allows folks who can't run pnmshadow
on their own computers to generate images with shadows.
- textogif
- Perl program
which transforms equations written in LaTeX into GIF files suitable
for inclusion as inline images in Web HTML documents.
- Windex
- Perl script
for Unix systems which uses PBMplus and JPEG utilities
to prepare an HTML document containing a graphical
index for a collection of image files, with each small thumbnail
image linked to the corresponding full-size image.
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!
OpenWindows utility which shows you,
as an icon or resizeable
window, the
portion of the Earth
currently day and night. In
conjunction with the "Two Line Elements" posted to the space
newsgroups periodically or obtained by FTP, lets you track
Earth satellites, with the current satellite position shown on
the map.
Your Sky makes custom maps of the
sky for any location on Earth and any date from 4713 B.C. into the
distant future. Maps can include stars as faint as magnitude 6.5,
constellation names, outlines, and boundaries, the Moon and planets,
deep sky objects from a database of more than 500, and a comet or
asteroid whose position is calculated from its orbital elements. A
variety of display options allow customising the map for its intended
use.
Items which span multiple categories appear in all applicable categories.
Autodesk and AutoCAD:
Books on-line:
Cryptography and steganography:
Diet and nutrition:
Language learning:
Nanotechnology and eschatology:
Science fiction:
Software components / embedded systems:
Windows utilities:
by John Walker