Logical Developments..

Starting with simple tinkering on the first few computers, all the way to today's Visual Studio environment, programming has nearly always preoccupied my spare time. There are two simple reasons why I never worked as a developer: I stuck to Visual Basic from the days of its first appearance and thus never thought of myself as belonging to the big league; and a private hesitation to enter the stressful fray of today's demands on coders.

Still, I found myself all to often in front of my screen wondering why a particular piece of software either did not exist or did not work the way I required. Being logically inclined, I followed the only path open to me: do-it-yourself.

Initially this was restricted to overcoming limitations dumped on me by whatever OS I was using at the time, but I soon found other uses for the skills I had: from simple enough VBA/VSTO alterations, via changes to how my copy of MS Office operated, to publicly available tools for a particular gaming community.

In 2008 & 2009, I enjoyed considerable success in that community after designing and coding four game utilities for the surprisingly large fan base the Maxi's SimCity simulator still enjoys. The set of tools (an organizer, an image viewer, a download manager, and an off-line forum editor) have found wide-spread acceptance, totaling to more than 18,000 downloads world-wide.

These utilities still evolve, and new versions are due out later this year, and an on-line help system, created with MadCap Flare, is in the works. As is a 64bit-compatible version of the primary application, to be released August 1^st, 2010.

Naturally I designed the informal SC4 Tools web site to feature the packages, and the downloads are available on most of the major community sites. As an aside, and more of an exercise than a product enhancement, I also created the application packaging shown on the right, using Adobe's PhotoShop and Fireworks.

More recently I am working on a Video Catalogue with built-in DVD burner and player; a File Synchronisation tool to keep my various backups in line, my Personal Accounting System. and an offline Content Management System for an ASP web site for a private client.