Home

Kevin
  Main
  Resume
  Projects
  Links
Beth
Ryan

Photos
Directions
Recipes
 Worcester World

Projects

My main project recently has been Misfit Model 3D. These are older projects that I'm not really doing anything with.

About software on this page

First of all: This page is very out-of-date. None of these projects are maintained. Some of them are incompatible with recent versions of APIs that they depend upon. I left this page up for historical reasons. The software on this page may or may not be useful.

Second: I'm really bad at coming up with original names.

All programs on this page are Free Software. They are released under the Free Software Foundation's General Public License. See the links at the bottom of this page for more details. Each source tarball also contains a copy of the license in a file named "COPYING"

I'm not really a GPL zealot. The GPL has it's problems, but I feel it's "good enough" for what I want. I wrote this software to be Free, and I'd like any software based on it to remain Free. This is the only reason I chose GPL over the BSD license.

This software was written for Linux, and if it runs on your favorite Unix-like OS that's great. If it doesn't you can send me an email and I'll see what I can do to fix it.

If you're not familiar with the Free Software Foundation, or Linux, you should check out the links at the bottom of this page.

Some of these programs will require the Qt GUI toolkit from Troll Tech. See the links at the bottom of this page for details. Much of the user interface code comes from my first experiences writing GUI applications over 6 years ago—it isn't pretty.

Morse Code Dojo

About the program

Current version: 0.6.0

Last Updated: Jun 26, 2003

Note: The sound API I used for this program changed out from under me. I don't think this program works any more, but you're welcome to try it.

I wanted to learn morse code. I was also dissapointed with the selection of morse code software available for Linux. I started writing Morse Code Dojo so that there would be a decent Morse-Academy-like program for Linux. My intention is to provide a tool that will teach morse code as well as provide sample tests to aid in preparing for the ARRL's 5 wpm code test (element 1).

I also didn't like the fact that Morse Academy used the PC speaker (I prefer to leave mine disconnected).

Features

  • Simple lessons to teach letters, numbers, and prosigns.
  • Practice sessions with a series of random characters
  • Receiving game sessions similar to Morse Academy.
  • Custom character weighting.
  • Includes the 43 letters, numbers, and prosigns that are on the ARRL's 5 wpm code test (element 1).

Future features

  • Simple statistics—speed, accuracy, etc....
  • Koch method (for those who would rather learn this way).
  • Randomly generated QSOs and tests.
  • Program help.

The practice and receiving game windows are usable. The lessons and QSOs are functional, but I don't have lessons or sample QSOs to use with them. Morse Code Dojo is not usable as a teaching tool yet. It is, however, good for morse receiving practice.

Installing

The code is available here:
projects/codedojo/

You'll need the Qt GUI toolkit. See the links at the bottom of this page. Make sure to set your QTDIR environment variable to the location where Qt is installed on your system. Run "make" and cross your fingers.

You'll need at least Qt 2.0.x, possibly a 2.2 or 2.3 release. I currently compile against 3.0.5, so I don't know if earlier releases will work.

Eventually I'll get around to learning GNU autoconf.

En Passant (Chess)

About the program

Current version: 0.1.0

Last Updated: Jun 24, 2000

I started writing En Passant because I thought it would be a good programming exercise. It reached a usable level and I stopped actively coding. It still needs some work, but I haven't done anything with it for the past several years. I may never change another line of it, but I thought I'd throw it up here in case someone else wanted to take a look at it.

This was one of my very first large GUI projects, so the GUI code isn't as clean as it could be.

Features

  • Two player chess game
  • Rotating board (I just can't play black upside-down!)
  • Keeps score (piece point count).
  • King-side and Queen-side castling. (move the King two spaces right or left)
  • En passant (of course!).
  • TCP/IP Network play. I've never tried it on anything but my local LAN, but there's no reason why it wouldn't work over any TCP/IP connection.

If you want to try network play, have both players start the program. One person (not behind a firewall) should open up the network window, clear the hostname field, and hit "connect" The second player should enter the first player's hostname or IP address and hit connect. One (not both) of the players should select "New game" This player will be white, and the other player will be black. I know this system is clunky, but my intention was to just to make it work in a short period of time. This is one of the first things I'd clean up if I ever revisit this code.

Installing

The code is available here:
projects/enpassant/

You'll need the Qt GUI toolkit. See the links at the bottom of this page. Change the "QTDIR" variable at the top of the makefile to point to the location where Qt is installed on your system. Run "make" and cross your fingers.

Eventually I'll get around to learning GNU autoconf.

Bronco File Manager

About the program

Current version: 0.15.4

Last Updated: Nov 03, 2001

I don't use this program any more. You shouldn't either. :-)

Bronco Goals

  • Quick filesystem navigation, by mouse or keyboard
  • Convenient keyboard shortcuts
  • Interface to comunicate with external programs and scripts
  • Light on graphics
  • No annoying "desktop crap."

Features

  • Standard two-pane file manager, directory tree and directory list.
  • Tab-completion-like keyboard navigation.
  • Multiple directory list windows with shared copy/paste clipboard.
  • Copy To and Move To options for those who dislike copy/paste.
  • File search (regex and shell glob) and grep.
  • Keyboard shotcuts for just about everything.
  • View, pack, and unpack tar archives.
  • Launch shell prompt in current directory.
  • A library for writing custom extensions to Bronco.
  • Basic on-line help.

Installing

You'll need the Qt GUI toolkit. See the links at the bottom of this page. Change the "QTDIR" variable at the top of the makefile to point to the location where Qt is installed on your system. Run "make" and cross your fingers.

You'll need at least Qt 2.0.x—possibly 2.2 or later.

Bronco also makes use of KDE 2.x for themes. You can disable KDE support if you do not wish to include it. Simply edit the Makefile and set USE_KDE to something other than "TRUE" (like "FALSE" an empty string, or just comment-out the line). You must disable KDE support if you want to use Qt 3.0 (for now).

Eventually I'll get around to learning GNU autoconf.

The code is available here:
projects/bronco/

There is also a library for writing "helper" applications, customized extensions to Bronco. This library is available for C++ and Perl. For more information see the HELPER_API file in the main Bronco distribution, and the README distributed with the Bronco Helper libraries.

The code is available here:
projects/bronco/helper

References / Other Sites

The following list is a selection of links to other sites that are devoted to Free Software and its development.

Copyright © 2005-2007, Kevin Worcester