Welcome to my utilities page. All these programs are free!

You can download:

To report a bug or suggest an improvement email me at pablof@isengardtech.com

These programs are written in PureBasic and require no runtime. If you're not familiar with PureBasic let me give you a quick rundown.

PureBasic is a programming language that is available for the Windows, Linux and Apple platforms. The syntax is somewhat similar to many Basic programming languages, but the similarities end there. It compiles into a very small .Exe and requires no runtime.

If you purchase a license ($99), which is quite worth the money, you get a lifetime license! Not only that but it applies to all three platforms! As you can tell, I'm quite fond of PureBasic. 

Visit my PureBasic website for more information and links!

Now to the programs:

PBProject
BackGround
PBProject  is an application that helps you manage the various files in your PureBasic project.

For more detailed information, check out the help file: PBProject.chm
With PBProject you can easily access all the files in your project from one interface.

This graphical representation of your project makes it easier to organize all the required elements.

The titlebar will display the name of the currently open project.

At the bottom right corner is a button with a paperclip image.  This button will toggle the PBProject window to stay on top.

The location of the PBProject Manager is stored and reset each time you use PBProject.

The Help button displays this help file.

The About button displays information about PBProject, PureBasic and my PB site.

 

 

Gmail Check
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Gmail Check is an application that resides in your system tray and periodically checks your online Gmail account for unread email.


No Email

If Gmail Check finds no unread email in your Gmail account it will briefly display a red circle with a white minus sign through it:


It will then display the default icon:

If it finds unread email it will display each unread email in a window that will fade in and fade out above the systray:

A single left-click on this preview window's text will launch your web browser and load your Gmail account.

Additionally, the icon will display a green circle with a white plus sign.

On-Demand Check
A single left-click on the Gmail Check icon will cause it to check your Gmail account.


Settings
Right-click on the GmailCheck systray icon and choose Options...Settings.
The following screen will display. Here you can set the frequency in minutes that Gmail Check will check your Gmail for unread email.


About Gmail Check
Right-click on the GmailCheck systray icon and choose Options...About will display the following screen:
Here you will find links to the PureBasic website and forums (highly recommended) as well as my email address.


Gmail Check Help
Right-click on the GmailCheck systray icon and choose Options...Help will display this file.

Gmail Check Quit
Right-click on the GmailCheck systray icon and choose Options...Quit will exit the application.

My Links
BackGround
I have a set number of websites that I visit quite often. Even thought Internet Explorer has a Favorites menu where you can create links, I don't like menus and prefer single click access.

I also wrote this application because it was an opportunity to learn more about PureBasic and to see if I could figure out how to code various things that would be needed for this utility such as capturing a portion of a webpage and shrinking it down to a 16 by 16 graphic that I could use for the button.

Installation
The download file is a setup application that will install the program (no dlls) and create the appropriate menus etc.

How to use My Links
When you first run the application, it will create a small toolbar with three buttons.

When you click the first button it checks to see if Internet Explorer is open. If so, it takes the current URL as the page you want to create a link to and displays it in the following page:

If the website you want to link to has an icon it has designated as it's "favicon" or default icon, the application will download it and display it. If the website does not have a "favicon" you can click the "Pic" button to create your own icon for the button.

When you click the "Pic" button you will see a small transparent window displayed:


You will be able to see through it to the webpage you're on. You can drag the window around and you can use the "+" in the bottom right of the window to change the size of it. You can use the "x" in the upper right of the window to close it when you're done.

When you have place the windo over the area that you which to capture, you can double-click it to do so. When you do so, it will create a graphic of that area and use it as the graphic for your button.

Tip: The bigger the area you "capture" the better the button graphic will look. If there is a recognizable logo on the page, trying using that for the graphic for the button.

Below the "Pic" button, you will see a textbox where you can enter a tooltip for the button that describes in a couple of words the website.

If your internet connection requires a proxy, you can click the second button "settings" which will display the following screen:

Here you can enter the necessary settings for your proxy. When you close the window, it will save the settings in a file with the password encrypted.

When you click the last button "About" you will see a window with information about the application as well as other information.

If you need to Delete a button you created, you can right-click it and a "Delete" menu will display. Clicking it will remove the button.

 

Here is an example of my toolbar:



Astronomy Today
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I'm an astronomy buff and sometime back I discovered the NASA "Astronomy Today Picture of the Day" website. It's a simple webpage that displays a different astronomy related picture. It also gives you a brief discription of the picture.

I often set the picture of the day as my desktop image and eventually thought it would be nice to have a program that would automatically download the image and set my desktop background.

I wrote a program using VB.Net and it worked fine. But then I started to get requests for the program from friends and the need for the 20 meg. .Net platform installation made it a bit of a pain.

About this time I discovered PureBasic and wondered how difficult it might be to rewrite it. Well, it took 125 lines (which is considerably less than the .Net version) and produced a 24.5K executable with no runtime required!

Installation
Once you have downloaded the program, if you want it to download and set your desktop image each day, download one of the many schedulers available on the web and schedule it to run once a day. I set mine to run every morning at 6 am. Or you can manually launch it.

If you create a text file in the application folder and name it "at.idf" and in the first line of the file you put "true" (without quotes) the program will download the large version of the image which will cover more of your desktop.

Each time the program runs, it will create an HTML page in the same folder as the program, which contains a description of the image.

Future Updates
The Astronomy Today site has images going back to June 1995, so there hundreds. I'm thinking about changing the program to update the desktop image multiple times a day if you want it to by randomly downloading one of the images from the archives.

Buh-Bye
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I don't particularly like to use the mouse when I program or for much else for that matter. I was remembering the old DOS days when you could often close a program by pressing the Escape key (hardly used anymore). I thought it would be nice to be able to press the Escape key and have whatever window was on top, be it an application or an open folder, close. So I wrote Buh-Bye to do this.

Installation
When you run Bye.exe it loads an icon into the system tray (the red circle with a white X in the image above). If you want to close the topmost window or program, press the Escape key. If you haven't saved your work, the program you're closing should prompt you to save first. Of course haven't tested this on every program so be careful.

If you right-click on the icon, you will see a popup menu with Settings, About and Quit options. The Settings option will allow you to set the "Force Close" which will force folder windows and certain applications such as Internet Explorer to close. The About option will display a form with a link to my homemade salsa website (best salsa in Texas!) and links to my email and the PureBasic website. If you want to unload Buh-Bye, choose the Quit option.

Capture
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Over on Scott Hanselman's Ultimate Tools List, I found a screen capturing tool that displays a transparent, resizable screen that when double-clicked creates a .jpg screen capture of the area below it and puts it in a folder on your desktop. Very cool tool. Very useful for creating documentation or training materials.

Unfortunately, it's written in .Net, so once again if you don't have the .Net runtime you have to download and install the 20+ meg. installation. After writing the two previous applications, I wondered if this might also be possible in PureBasic. Of course it is. Probably not much you can't do in PureBasic!

I wrote the application in a couple of hours and it took only 180 lines of code and produced a 56k executable.

Installation
When you run capture.exe, you will see a transparent window with an X in the top right corner and an cross in the bottom right. You use the arrow to resize the window and the X to close it. You can drag the window by clicking and dragging it. When you have it placed where you want and sized properly, you can double-click it to create the screen capture. It will create a folder on your desktop called "Capture" and place .jpg images in it named captureX.jpg where the X is an incrementing number. In the top left corner is a question mark which will open up a browser with this page.