The short version is that these are programs I wrote to "scratch an itch", that is I needed to do X, and broke out my copy of VB and wrote a program to do said X. These little programs are more or less one hit wonders, they do one thing really well, and very little else. Case in point: Color q ('q' for 'question', little 'q' for a little question) takes the RGB value of a color and then displays that color on a black background. That's it, that's all it does, but it took care of the problem at hand.

Below are four of these little programs, each of which has a brief explanation of what it does, how to use it, and what inspired it. All of these can be run without installing them. Just run the executable. If you can use them, please, use them. If you've got suggestions for other such things, please, let me know.

Color Picker - No longer available for download here. Check out Color Picker 2.0 instead. You'll like it more, anyway.

• Purpose: Color Picker outputs the color at a given point in an image in four different formats: a VB style long integer, a Hex value (compatible with HTML, I think), and RGB values in both decimal and Hex.
• Usage: Unfortunately, Color Picker can't open image files on its own. To load an image into Color Picker, open the image with your image editor of choice, then select a chunk of the image and copy it to the clipboard. Once the image has been copied, hit the 'Paste' button in Color Picker (that's the middle button on the top. It has a little picture of a clipboard on it.) Once you click 'Yes' in the resulting dialog box, your image should appear in Color Picker. Them, simply toggle on the color picker tool (the leftmost button) and click on the part of the image you want to sample. Information about the color should appear in the labeled boxes on the left of the screen. The two little boxes beneath the color data are samples of the color, one on white, and the other on black.
• Inspiration: I wrote this while I was working on the Virtual Fountain. I wanted the colors in to be as accurate as possible, so I decided to try and get the color information from photos I had of the Musical Fountain. When I discovered that there was no really easy way of getting the color information I wanted using the software I had on hand, I wrote Color Picker to gather the info I needed.

Color Picker 2.0

• Purpose: An upgraded version of Color Picker which still outputs the color at a given point in an image in four different formats: a VB style long integer, a Hex value (compatible with HTML, I think), and RGB values in both decimal and Hex. New in this version, the ability to read in images from files. <Hurrah!> Currently supported file types are JPEG (.jpg, .jpeg), GIF (.gif), and Bitmap (.bmp), as well as icons and cursors (.ico and .cur respectively).
• Usage: Loading images from the clipboard has changed not one whit, but I'll repeat the procedure for the benefit of those who don't know. To load an image into Color Picker, open the image with your image editor of choice, then select a chunk of the image and copy it to the clipboard. Once the image has been copied, hit the 'Paste' button in Color Picker (that's the middle button on the top. It has a little picture of a clipboard on it.) Once you click 'Yes' in the resulting dialog box, your image should appear in Color Picker. To open an image file, click the newly added 'Open' button, find your file, and click 'Open'. Now, simply toggle on the color picker tool (the leftmost button) and click on the part of the image you want to sample. Information about the color should appear in the labeled boxes on the left of the screen. The two little boxes beneath the color data are samples of the color, one on white, and the other on black.
• Inspiration: Color Picker did what it did very well, but didn't go far enough. Needing to fire up Paint in addition to Color Picker got on my nerves, so I decided to fix things so that C.P. could actually open the files itself. In case you're wondering, the 'Paste' option is still available to allow a specific chunk of an image to be loaded into Color Picker, rather than the whole thing. (C.P. has no way of scaling an image so that it fits in the available space, which means that large images won't be displayed in their entirety, therefore making it rather difficult to pick a color if it's in the part of the image that isn't diplayed.)

Color q

• Purpose: As mentioned above, Color q takes an RGB color value and display the corresponding color on a black background.
• Usage: There are three little boxes (labeled 'R', 'G', and 'B', respectively) in the interface. Put the color values in them, and the color will show up as a big-ish box to the right of the RGB values.
• Inspiration: Color q was written so that I could test the values Color Picker was returning. In early versions of Color Picker, there was a screw-up on my part which caused the RGB values to be put up out of order. Color q was a simple test to determine if the color I was picking matched the color values I was given.

While the above program downloads are just the EXE file, the ones below this point are packaged in ZIP files. A list of the contents of the ZIP is included with the description of the program.

Desktop Clock

• Purpose: Desktop Clock puts a customizable clock in the upper right corner of the screen. The user can choose the font, font size and color. Background color is automatically matched to the color of the desktop.
• Usage: Desktop Clock requires no input from the user to run. Once it's started, it is perfectly happy to sit quietly in the corner and count time. Tinkering with D.C.'s options is pretty simple. Click on Desktop Clock, then type Control-s. That'll bring up the settings box. The 'show in taskbar' option tells D.C. that you want to see it in the taskbar (you know, down by your Start button). Control-x and control-q both exit the program. There's a readme included that explains things in more detail.
• Inspiration: Desktop Clock came about because I couldn't read the clock Windows provides because I was running at very high resolution on a small monitor. To compensate, I designed a clock that could have its font size changed independent of other system settings.
• Package includes: The main Desktop Clock executable (DeskClock.exe), a Readme file (Deskclock.txt) and Desktop Clock's configuration file (settings.dat).

UBC

• Purpose: Um, how to describe the UBC? Basically the UBC (short for Universal Base Converter) is a little app that converts numbers from one base to another (think Binary to Decimal). The UBC can natively handle all bases from 2 to 36, and can be expanded to deal with any bases you want. It's also got options coming out of its (metaphorical) ears. I include the source in a handy VB module so that the UBC can be used in other peoples projects. Feel free to use it, I just ask that you drop me a line telling me you're using it.
• Usage: Basically, plug in the starting base, starting number, and ending base, then hit 'Convert'. Full details about how to do this, that, and t'other are in the included readme.
• Inspiration: The UBC is more or less one of those "I wonder if I could..." things. In addition to writing it to see if I could, the UBC is also part of another project I'm working on, although that project is still a fair ways from completion.
• Package includes: The main UBC executable (UBC.exe), a Readme file (Readme.txt), the code module that actually contains the UBC (UBC 2-0.bas), the VB form for the interface of UBC.exe (UBCModuleInterface.frm) and the VB6 project file that can be compiled to recreate ubc.exe (UniversalBaseConverter.vbp)
• Future development: As of now, I'm planning on discontinuing work on the UBC in VB (although the VB version will still be available here) in favor of developing a C++ include file to do the same job. I'm not sure when the C++ version is going to be put together, or what it'll include, but look for it in the future.

In addition to this VB software, I also have quite a collection of programs for the TI-83 series of graphing calculators (the TI-83, 83 Plus, and 83 Plus Silver Edition). I have a wide variety of programs for Algebra, Geometry, and Calculus, as well as Physics and basic Electronics. If you're interested, send me a message and I'll see what I can do to help you.