danshuk.net – The damp corner of cyberspace where I pile my junk

April 2, 2008

Image2ASCII Converter

This program converts several image formats (JPG, BMP, etc) to either B&W ASCII or colour HTML text. Colour HTML output allows various customisations to the processing; text string, font and size selection, several aspect correction techniques, line-width limits, etc. B&W ASCII output allows customisable greyscale ramp, but there’s no real reason to change it.

I saw a web-based version of this tool a few years back and thought it would be kind of interesting to figure out how it worked, so I wrote this little application in Delphi to find out. Some pretty cool effects can be generated, although to be quite honest I can’t think of any real use for them!

Just one note, if you convert an image much larger than your average avatar, make sure to check the constrain line-width option otherwise you’ll end up with a massive output file. That should probably be automatic, but there you go!

Download: image2ascii_11.rar (213.11KB)

April 1, 2008

Sweex UPS Minidriver

A minidriver for the Sweex 600VA UPS. Will probably work with other Sweex UPS devices, infact just about any UPS that uses a Megatec style protocol. It might be worth fully testing before you rely on it for anything critical though.

Since the software that accompanies this UPS (or more precisely, the software you have to download yourself) seems to be, well, bloated both in size and in memory footprint, I wrote this minidriver in Visual C++ using the Windows Server 2003 SP1 DDK. Tested on Windows XP SP2, should work on any Windows OS that allows non-overlapped serial communications.

To install the driver, unrar the archive to a temporary folder, right-click the .inf file and select “Install”. The .dll will be copied to C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32 (or wherever your OS is installed). The minidriver can be activated from the Power Options -> UPS tab in Control Panel.

Source code for this minidriver is available on request.

Download: sweexupsdriver1001.rar (28.37KB)

April 1, 2008

Tetris-clone

Here’s a Tetris-like game I made in Delphi. You’ve probably played a game similar to this before so I don’t think I need to explain how to play, plus it’s so simple and the instructions are right on the screen from the start. There’s also a readme file in the zip.

Oh, and I’m afraid there is no way to stop that damn music without turning the volume down. Sorry 🙂

Download: tetris.zip (220.70KB)

April 1, 2008

SSSSnake!

A snake-like game for J2ME mobile phones. Tested on SE K750/W800, but should work on any MIDP-2.0 compatible device with screen resolution of 128×160 or 176×220.

Using the phone’s cursor or 2/4/6/8 keys, guide the snake to the food (green and red flashing blocks) without crashing into your own tail. The quicker you reach the food, the more points it’s worth and if it’s flashing red it’s worth even more!

The difficulty setting can be adjusted to match your skill, or lack thereof, and hi-scores are saved so you can compare your score with your mates! It’ll also save your game should you have to quit and look like you’re actually working, not playing with your phone. I had planned to make some fancy graphics for this game but never got around to it. Maybe one day…

There’s also a jad file in the rar should your phone need it, or you can download direct to your mobile from here with the second link.