BootBlock.co.uk

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

Wow, erm, hello? Let me release something quickly so it looks like I was working on stuff all along.

Here are a couple of apps that I did years ago but sort of forgot about. The first one is …

Mass Extract [link]. ME automates the process of parity checking and extracting a ton of archives. Drag and drop the directories containing your files and away you go. This one is a bit rough around the edges but seems to work without any problems on the machines I tested it on. It’s also pretty intelligent, as software goes.

MediaCore [link]. Apparently I made this available but for some reason it wasn’t downloadable when I rewrote the Software section of the site. This app lets you read, watch, view, and listen. TV channels, comics, images, music, etc, are all viewable in the application as it provides a preset of available material that is freely accessible over the internet. Now this one is extremely rough around the edges. Hell, it might not even work properly. I did this years and years ago when the .NET framework first came out; the code is so different to how I write now that it would be quicker to rewrite the entire application than to update it. It’s probably not worth downloading this, but I’ve made it available anyway.

The Software section of the site has been offline for a week or so and was resurrected only this morning.

The reason for this is that I have rewritten the back-end and entirely overhauled the application that generates the data. This took a while, but now I don’t want to rip my own eyes out when I update the catalogue.

What this means to you, fair reader, is… not much, really. There are thumbnails of screenshots available as opposed to the text links originally. In fact, I have added a lot more screenshots - especially for applications that didn’t have any at all. Three new apps have been added to the listing (including Timeline, my latest project).

If you were linking to any of the software in the Software section, you might want to update your links. The old method was extremely optimised in its PHP code, but the linking method (from other sites) was far too verbose for its own good. So I chucked the old code out and reworked things to how they should have originally been.

There’s other stuff in there like an integrated version checking service for my applications to make use of and other such stuff.

Last thing I need to do is completely redesign the appearance of it all as it looks a bit too simplistic for my liking. And a bit poo.

It’s okay, I’m still alive.

I’ve been caught up in doing some major reworking of the site. The smallest task involves getting the old TNK-BootBlock.co.uk domain redirecting people to whatever they were looking for but on this domain.

The biggest of the tasks requires the Software section getting an overhaul. I’m using an application I created a while back called Software Catalogue (temporary name!) to maintain the listings and associated data, which I’m currently in the process of reworking.  It’s getting there; I’m just about to re-do the screenshot support and give it a proper gallery instead of the textual links it was using before.

There’s still a lot more to do, but once I’ve finished with the program and updating the backend, I’ll be turning to adding services to the website which involve adding update checking to the Software area so all my apps will support version checking (without having to launch an external browser; it’ll all be built-in and incredibly lightweight) and all that stuff.

I don’t think I’ve ever written about a TV show before as they’re generally “meh” and there’s so many of them, but I was pretty surprised by this one.

Peter Serafinowicz has been in a lot of productions, including Star Wars: Episode One, Shaun of the Dead, Look Around You, Black Books, and others. He’s a part of the current generation of UK comedians and actors (Simon Pegg, Mark Heap, Kevin Eldon, and so on), so I was looking forward to see how he’d do in his very own sketch show after being the main force behind the Look Around You series.

After watching the first episode, I’m honestly surprised to say that it wasn’t crap! Hell, it was great. I say “surprised” because I’ve seen Peter in panel shows and he doesn’t seem too hot at impromptu comedy; granted, a sketch show is obviously written, but it still somehow marred my initial thoughts on how he’d do in something that isn’t driven by plot or direction.

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