BootBlock.co.uk

Seeya, poochy.

Popularity: 4%

I really hated the look of the old Software area of the site, so I went ahead and redesigned it. While I was at it, I did a ton of work which resulted in the listed below. This took longer to do as it required some major code changes within the application I use to actually maintain the listings data as well as of course the server side of things.

Here are the bigger changes …

• Completely redesigned. XHTML 1.0 Strict compliant.
• Product icon and PAD downloads, where available.
• Support section for each product - click the question mark symbol.
• Awards section - click the golden star symbol. See below.
• Changed products information during the last update.
• Lots of small changes.

Awards. I’m sure a lot of you have seen software sites that give awards to the programs they feature. These days, awards mean absolutely nothing. They just exist as a means for software archive sites to get more links back to them. They’re crap, and I hate them. So, why did I add support for them? Because I want to release the application and associated PHP files for the software section so others may use them, so it’s up to the individual user if they want to make use of this feature or not.

I mentioned a Support section in the above list; at the moment is just provides a means of contacting me about a particular software title. I want to expand this so it also provides frequently asked questions and general trouble-shooting information.

There is also a facility to purchase the full versions of any shareware, but that isn’t currently used as pretty much all of my stuff is free. Oh, yeah - the page is also fixed-width. This was accidental and will be fixed some time in the future.

Finally, I have integrated a part of this blog system with the Software section backend which results in the latest releases being displayed on the right-hand menu that you can see. Click on link to be taken to its relevant area of the Software section.

Edit: Erm, I think I may have made the link badges on the right a bit too glossy. Oops.

Popularity: 7%

I’m doing a lot of interface work recently after having purchased a pretty awesome icon pack and creating that Vista-style gradient panel I mentioned a couple of posts back. Today we have a new release of Mass Extract, which incorporates these changes.

Speaking of the panel, I’ll be making the BiQubic.Suite .NET libraries available sometime soon. This suite includes class libraries such as (BiQubic.Suite.)Controls, (etc.)Filesystem, Media, Network, and so on, which provides various useful controls and methods for use in application development. This used to come in the form of the BiQubic.dll library that I linked with 98% of my dotNet apps and was a monolithic 280KB.

I couldn’t be doing with such a bloatfest and so I’ve split everything off into their own libraries and removed a lot of the rubbish that I barely used. I’m still organising the methods into their own classes and writing the XML documentation; once done, there will be a first public release. Source code will come at some point.

View: Mass Extract, BiQubic.Suite

Popularity: 51%

So that’s good, then.

Edit: It was posted five days ago and it hasn’t arrived. Looks like it’s going to arrive on launch day (Tuesday). That’s the fourth time Play.com’s completely shit delivery balls has taken nearly a week to get my crud out to me. Well done, dickheads!

Popularity: 60%

For something that’s a small program, it certainly has had its fair share of development time. This time round it was merely a test-bed for an update library I wanted to write. Without really going into it, the updater ties into the software section of this site and queries it for any updates on behalf of the host application.

But when I finished that, I went and added a Vista mode to my GradientPanel control. The Windows XP look is starting to get somewhat stale, so I’m going to be going for the glossy Vista look where I can. Take a look here for a screenshot of the Vista-style GradientPanel in the new updater. The GP update came about due to seperating the interface controls from my BiQubic.Functions library and placing them into their own.

But anyway! That’s why there’s a new version of YouChoob. Oh yeah, for those that don’t know: YouChoob allows you to download videos directly from YouTube and save them to your harddrive or another location of your choice.

I’ve also got some news on BlockBox, but I’ll leave that until later. In the meantime, check out the BlockBox site to download it (its home-theatre PC software) and view some info on the new Windows Presentation Foundation version that I started the other day.

View: YouChoob

Popularity: 79%

Flash games, hmm? They’re generally completely rubbish, but this one is a bit… weird.

In your role as Reiko, you must restore your position as top lady of the house by opening your right hand and slapping some bitches in the face. That’s the entire game, right there. You open-hand slap people in the face. Slaps can even crit for extra damage.

The first four fights were easy enough, but the five? Wow. I’m surprised my character didn’t instagib all over the screen. I was doing ‘er a good ‘un, and then got hit in the face with her sasuage fingers. Ouch. Edit: Yay, got her on the third go without being touched.

The game itself is all very well done, with anime-style graphics (I’m not a particular fan of the non-anti-alised lines, personally), proper music and sound effects. I particularly like the Street Fighter-style visual effect of out-slapping a wench. Maybe the sequel will feature big hairy geezers towel-flicking each other in the pods - watch out for that one.

Takes a little while to load, but here you go: Rose & Camellia.

Popularity: 81%

Another day, another release.

This is a rewrite of the original Wake On LAN Ex I did quite a while back. What’s new in version 2? It’s been rewritten in .NET (bang goes the instant loading, damn!) and is more complete. The biggest feature is the pinging of entries in the address book and notification of when they change status (eg. going offline).

View: Wake On LAN Ex 2

Popularity: 100%

Maybe it’s just because they’re retards or something, but Microsoft have removed a load of the MIDI configuration tools from Windows Vista. Because of this, I wasn’t able to use my MIDI keyboard. Which pissed me right off.

Thankfully, using skills that can be classed as “quite mad”, I did a little app which allows the selection of the Midi output device so I can hear what the hell I’m physically doing with the Midi device and stop Midi-aware apps from barfing.

Truly, it is the space year 2008.

View: Vista Midi Picker

Popularity: 100%

You’re impressed by the title, aren’t you? I can tell.

Here’s another application. This one was done in an afternoon and allows you to directly download videos from that video crapheap they call YouTube.

Enter the page URL that contains the video you want to save and click Download. It’ll prompt you for a location and filename to save the video under and download it for you. It’s multi-threaded and gives you lots of progress information, too. Aren’t I just too kind?

Incidentally, I’m going to be releasing the home-theatre software BlockBox over the next couple of days. So watch out for that. Or don’t. Your choice.

View: YouChoob

Popularity: 99%

Despite being in development for a long time, it hasn’t had that much work done on it. In fact, I’ve managed to 99% complete work on its big brother Timeline before I’ve gotten around to releasing it. So, here it is.

WhenThen is an application that responds to user-specified events and reacts to them. For example, you can transfer a file via FTP in another application and get WhenThen to shutdown your computer when that window finishes transferring closes. WhenThen can also react to target and elapsed times, and other things.

The main aim of WhenThen was to be very user-friendly in that it was quick to set it up to do whatever you want without having to mess about.

Take a look and download WhenThen or its (as yet unreleased) bigger brother Timeline.

Popularity: 97%