Free Doug Creations
Image->Data Digitizer (coordinates from image -> file with scaling - tcl/tk application)
'Star Wars with the Gipper' (videogame - Java applet, with audio)
I've been exposed to a variety of platforms and programming languages in the midst of doing my thesis in Computational Fluid Dynamics and obtaining a minor in Computer Science. Below is anything I felt like saying from the Computer Science side of me.
TCL/TK
Tcl/Tk (tickle tee kay) is a scripting language with extensive libraries for building GUIs (window interfaced programs, read: user-friendly). I've found it frustrating at times, probably because it's my first real exposure to doing non-trivial programs with scripts. But in all, it is reasonably simple to learn and use and has been well developed (meaning there are many useful features which are reliable). It's freely available from Sun (Dr. John Ousterhout's group) and installation is fairly painless. I've written an application in tcl/tk recently to digitize points off images and store them in the scaled data coordinates. This is useful to me for getting data off plots from other research papers (so I can compare mine against it) without resorting to a ruler or other clumsy solution. If you'd like to try it, click here to download it or read more about it. I've also been working on a Tcl/Tk interface to my CFD solver (a vortex method). It's not ready for public viewing yet but feel free to contact me about it. As a final toss in, here's a page with some good tcl/tk links.
Java
My descent into computer geekdom continues as I've now written (well, at least customized), a Java applet. I like to call it 'Star Wars with the Gipper'. It's a videogame and you'll find it most entertaining if you support .au audio files. And, quite shocking to me, this applet was actually rated "Cool" by Gamelan.
Java's been super-hyped of late, so if you don't know what it is, just go find it at Yahoo or whatever and get up to date. There are actually some pretty fun applets out there so look around.
Home
Got tired of fiddling with WIN/OS2 settings every time I wanted to try out some interesting looking Windows program, having certain irritating bugs when using basics like Word, etc... so I submitted to the dark side and put Windows 95 on my computer. It proceeded to have the typical 'features' of a Microsoft product and upon installation deleted a bunch of files I created in Linux on a different but connected hard drive on a FAT partition. But life is easier now that I've joined the dark side, anyway.
Check out my first web page (obviously the pointers on my old page may be out of date so click at your own risk) (OK, for those few who for some reason remember my Web history, I did have one even more atrophied page than that but I've long since deleted that evidence).
Perhaps you'd like to go to some other part of my abode or leave me a note in my message box. If so, you'll want to return to my foyer/home page.
doug@galcit.caltech.edu