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Robert R. Fenichel |
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Indoor activities I do various odd-job programming for myself, mostly dealing with a series of interlinked Advantage databases that keep track of my business, various household inventories, my photographs, and so on. Some of my non-database utilities are described (and available for download) here (I'm also willing to share my ISP-checking program, but be warned that it depends on the Advantage infrastructure). The Advantage DB is free for non-commercial use; you can get it from the manufacturer or from me here. Each of these programs can run from any directory, and each maintains some registry entries (under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\RRF) but no other storage. Each downloadable ZIP file contains the executable file, and most of them include the Delphi source code. I wrote BushWillPass (updated 3/22/07) to display a countdown to the end of the Bush administration, but the program can be used to count down to any future event. Given supplies of (say) 3-, 23-, and 39-cent stamps, what's the best way to make up $1.70 in postage? To answer questions like that, I use ChooseStamps (updated 3/13/07). I had been playing with the persistence-of-vision device produced by Adafruit Industries, and I felt compelled to write a message generator for it. Here is a simple database (using the Advantage software described above) for storage and exchange of recipes. Every week or two, part of my backup strategy has me copying the entire contents of my data volume (about 10 GB each time) to an external hard drive. The accumulated copies are substantially redundant with each other; this provides some additional backup strength, but the disk-space requirements rapidly become onerous. With a rolling delay of a year or so, I use my DuplicateFileEliminator (updated 12/04/11) program to cull from the pile; it accepts an old directory tree T1 and a newer directory tree T2, and it deletes from T1 any file that is identical in name, length, and age to a file that is identically placed in T2. I have lately been playing with machine tools; some notes related to that hobby are on pages starting here. A hardware-software project that started out as a simple scheme to control lawn watering developed into an elaborate environmental monitoring system that has nothing to do with my lawn at all. Page revised: 12/04/2011 16:32
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