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Details: Written by: Richard_McKie; Parent Category: Information Technology; Category: Software; Published: 23 December 2010; Hits: 7318

Over the years I have written many small applications and utilities.

In order of sophistication these include:

Simple HTML web pages
Command line scripted utilities and batch (BAT) files
Embedded Java code in web pages
Word and Excel macros typically written in Visual Basic for Applications VBA
Simple databases with VBA or Visual Basic (VB) VB frontends
Database related SQL queries batch data manipulators, templates and structures
Simple stand-alone utilities in in VB
Windows utilities written in plain C++ or using the Microsoft Foundation Classes (MFC)
Fully featured relational databases using SQL Server and VB
Complex applications written in C++

Some examples include:

Automatic footers and metadata updater code for Word and Excel; optionally to bring up a dialog to ensure file naming conforms to a standard.
A utility to process business financial data to reveal a variety of comparable ratios indicative of business health.
An applications to change registry settings and to install and run files on desktops and servers across a network.
A library (DLL) of simple encryption routines that add no overhead (don't change the file size) that can be used on any file; or encrypt in URL friendly characters to secure URL strings sent to web pages.
Several applications based around this library that can easily be called by applications written in languages other than C (VB, VBA, Java, C# etc).
File manipulation software for archiving, file moving and general file management; providing scripted batch processing archiving and reporting.

I'm happy to provide more information on any of these on applications or tools. Use the contact facility on this website.

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Travel

Taiwan

In May 2015 four of us, Craig and Sonia Wendy and I, bought a package deal: eleven days in Taiwan and Hong Kong - Wendy and I added two nights in China at the end. We had previously travelled together with Craig and Sonia in China; Russia, India and South America and this seemed like a good place to do it again and to learn more about the region.

Taiwan is one of the Four Asian Tigers, along with Korea, Singapore and Hong Kong, achieving the fastest economic growth on the Planet during the past half century. Trying to understand that success was of equal interest with any ‘new sights’ we might encounter.

Fiction, Recollections & News

Are we the same person we once were?

I was initially motivated to write this cautionary note by the controversy surrounding the United States Senate hearing into the appointment of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the US Supreme Court that was briefly called into question by Dr Christine Blasey Ford's testimony that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her when they were both in their teens.

Kavanaugh is but one of many men who have come to the attention of the '#MeToo' movement, some of whom are now cooling their heels in jail.

Like the Kavanaugh example, a number of these cases, as reported in the media, seem to rely on someone's memory of events long past. Yet as I will argue below after a decade or so our memories are anything but reliable. After that time we should be respecting the accused's legal right to be presumed innocent, unless there is contemporary immutable evidence (diaries photographs and so on) or a number of non-colluding witnesses or others who have suffered a similar assault.

Now in the news another high profile person has been convicted of historical sexual assault. Cardinal George Pell has appealed his conviction on several charges relating to historical paedophilia.

There is just one accuser, the alleged victim. A second alleged victim took his own life some time ago. The case was heard twice and in total 22 of the 24 jurors decided in favour of the alleged victim, despite the best defence money could buy. Yet, as with the '#MeToo' movement in respect of powerful men, there is currently worldwide revulsion (see my Ireland Travel Notes) at sexual crimes committed within the Roman Catholic Church, such that a Cardinal is likely to be disbelieved, just as at one time a choir boy's accusations against a bishop or a priest would have been, and were, dismissed.

Both trials were held in closed court and the proceedings are secret so we have no knowledge of any supporting evidence. We do know that the two alleged victims were members of the Cathedral Choir and at least one other ex-choir boy also gave evidence. So justice may have been served.

Yet I'm just a little concerned about the historical nature of the charges. How reliable is anyone's memory?

Opinions and Philosophy

Jihad

In my novella The Cloud I have given one of the characters an opinion about 'goodness' in which he dismisses 'original sin' as a cause of evil and suffering and proposes instead 'original goodness'.

Most sane people want to 'do good', in other words to follow that ethical system they were taught at their proverbial 'mother's knee' (all those family and extended influences that form our childhood world view).

That's the reason we now have jihadists raging, seemingly out of control, across areas of Syria and Iraq and threatening the entire Middle East with their version of 'goodness'.

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