Emoji Buddy is a simple little program that lets you quickly and easily access some of my favourite Unicode Emoji and other characters.

Click any button and the Unicode character is copied into the Clipboard buffer on your Windows, Mac, Linux computer, so you can paste it into Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, any word processing document, presentation, spreadsheet, etc.

If you place the mouse pointer over any button, a tooltip will display the a brief description of the Unicode character. e.g. "Rolling on Floor Laughing".

If you want all of the Unicode characters, click the "All" button and paste them wherever you need them.

No need to visit web sites, or load a word processing document containing your favourite Emojis, just run my tiny Emoji Buddy program and click a button and then paste the characters wherever you need it.

I personally use Emoji Buddy several times a day on my machines. Perhaps someone out there will also find it useful ?

Also:

• Use Ctrl + Mouse Wheel Up/Down to increase / decrease font size (just like you can do on a web page).

See EmojiBuddy.txt for further information.

Full Screen Background is a simple little program that creates a full screen "background" over your desktop and any underlying applications that you want to hide.

Why is this useful ? I'm often doing screen shots, live demos, and recording desktop videos using tools like Camtasia Studio, and I don't want to show / include the clutter of my desktop icons, or show any material in any open documents that I'd rather keep private, so I needed a program that I could run and it will cover everything below it - no more desktop clutter, no more private information revealed, no more worries about prying eyes of strangers or "busy bodies" walking by, etc.

So, I created Full Screen Background, and it has proven incredibly useful to me. Maybe someone else out there will also find it useful ?

See FullScreenBackground.txt for further information.

Troy Hunt runs the Have I Been Pwned? (HIBP), https://haveibeenpwned.com/, web site which has collected more than a billion passwords that have been involved in system / web site breaches. i.e. where web sites have been hacked / compromised and user data has been stolen.

You can visit Troy's web page and type in a password and see if it is contained in any of the password lists he has. If it is, then account(s) with that password have been hacked, and you can look up further details to find out if it is one of your accounts. In any case, if a password hash match occurs, even if it is NOT for any of your accounts, I highly recommend that you change your password asap, preferably to something much stronger. I use my Password Generator (freeware) whenever I need to create new passwords. (I use it several times a week).

Anyway, Troy's web site is all well and good, and Troy might well be a great guy (he sure seems to be), but I would never recommend anyone typing in their passwords to random web sites on the internet. Troy's web site might be legit (again, it sure seems to be). But this or another web site may be legit but may have been hacked and running malicious code that collects passwords that users type in.

So, what can you do ? How can you safely check your passwords to see if their hashes appear in the available lists of hacked passwords ? Well, thankfully Troy has made an API (application programming interface) that let's you check your passwords with 100% safety.

The basic idea is this: you SHA1 hash your password, pass just the first 5 characters of the hash to Troy's web API, and this searches its database and returns a list of the full hashes of all passwords that have the same first 5 character hash. You can then - on the safety of your own computer - see if any of these full hashes match the full hash of your password. So, you never need to enter or pass your password to Troy's web site. And you never need to provide Troy's web site with the full password hash (which can be revealing as well). So, this is a truly great service that Troy provides.

Sounds confusing ? No, it's really very easy. Let's look at an example. Say I want to check to see if my password "abcd1234.zxc" has been involved in any of the available password breaches. First thing to do is to create a SHA1 of this password:

	SHA1 ("abcd1234")  = 6367C48DD193D56EA7B0BAAD25B19455E529F5EE
	First 5 characters = 6367C
	Last 35 characters = 48DD193D56EA7B0BAAD25B19455E529F5EE
	

Now we take just the first 5 characters of this SHA1 (6367C) and pass this to Troy's API, and this passes back the last 35 characters of the hashes of all passwords that have the same first 5 characters. i.e. it does not pass back the 1st 5 characters - to save bandwidth. In this case, at the time of writing, there are 479 passwords the same first 5 character hash (6367C), here's the first 5 of these:

	007CD33394246EC7F935F5E1322FD3269EF:1
	00B380DE79B14B6A40F9179A75EC4B61D4F:1
	012792D4FC572AB467D73191760CCB8B166:2
	012D94C9EBDDD6A89E3ED7230FF6011E2F8:2
	0155661E1EA3A2F0A448321090563F78E6E:2
	::: etc
	

The number after the colon on each line above is the number of times each password hash appears in a list.

So what you can then do is to compare the last 35 characters of our password's hash (48DD193D56EA7B0BAAD25B19455E529F5EE) with each entry in the list. If a match is found, then the password has been compromised, and you need to login to any accounts that use this password and change it immediately.

Now, how can this information help the average Jane or Joe? I could provide a nice GUI application where you could type in or paste in a bunch of passwords, click the "Check" button and it could check each using the above processing. But, why would you trust me ? I'm just a guy who loves developing software, and has been doing so since 1980, and have released over 100 free software titles onto my web page since 1996, and none have ever been malicious, deceptive, or contained any viruses or malware in any way, shape, or form. I could tell you about all of the clients I have developed software for around the world, the work I have done, and convince you that I have a *great* track record, etc, but this still wont be enough for some people to trust me. (And I applaud people for being skeptical and careful).

So, what can I do to help the average Jane or Joe who does not trust me ? Well, here's my Java source code to do the above password checking. Compile and Run instructions are included at the top of the file, and a .BAT file is provided for Windows users. All you need to do is download and install the Java JDK, edit my Java source code and type in the passwords you want to check into the array provided, then compile my Java source code, and run the compiled program. A sample run screen shot is on the right.

By freely giving out my Java source code , even non-programmers can have a quick look through my code and see that everything is above board (no malicious code, etc), and feel confident that their passwords can be checked in safety (providing their own computer has not already been compromised).

Anyway, to conclude, this is *very* important: download my Java software above, follow the instructions in the readme.txt file, and check your passwords today.

NOTE: If this is too hard / too much work for you and you would like me to provide a nice GUI application where you can copy and paste in your passwords and click the "Check" button, let me know.

MineSweeperGUI is my clone of the Windows Game "MineSweeper".

How to Play:

• Left mouse click: select squares that you hope aren't mines.
• Right mouse click: flag squares that you think are mines.
• Use the number inside the squares to work out where nearby mines are.
• Keep going until you have selected all squares or hit a mine.

Also:

• Use Ctrl + Mouse Wheel Up/Down to increase / decrease font size (just like you can do on a web page).

I never really played MineSweeper much until early 2018, and then I realised what a terrific game it is. So, on a rainy Sunday morning, I created my own version.

See MineSweeper.txt for further information.

Money or the Case is my game based on games and game shows like 'Pick a Card', 'Deal or No Deal', 'Pick a Box', 'The Money or The Box', ... and ofcourse is just for fun.

How to Play:

• Click the 'Start' button to start a new game.
• Select 'your' case.
• One by one, select the required number of cases for the round.
• At the end the round decide whether to accept the offer or play on to the next round.
• If there are 2 cases left, then select one of the cases.

Needless to say, all money / winnings in this game are 'funny money'.

Also:

• Use Ctrl + Mouse Wheel Up/Down to increase / decrease font size (just like you can do on a web page).

See MoneyOrTheCase.txt for further information.

Oblotteration is a simple game - my clone of a game called Flood It.

How to Play:

• You start each game in the top left hand corner (the white square).
• Use the colour buttons at the bottom of the screen, or click any coloured rectangles in the game grid, to change the top left square (and all horizontally and vertically adjoining squares with the same colour) to the selected colour.
• The game ends when all squares are the same colour.
• The aim is the end the game in the least possible turns.
• Can you beat the Computer AI ?

SciFiComputer 1950s Simulator is stupid little program - it is my lame attempt at simulating a 1950 Sci Fi movie computer - which had a matrix of flashing lights but didn't do much. My program is the same - a matrix of flashing lights but doesn't do anything useful. :) It is just flashing lights. Ummm, OK ? :)

There's no labelled buttons, no menus, no labels, and it is not user friendly, it's not meant to be - this is a 1950's SciFi computer simulator !

• The 9 (nine) leftmost, top row grid buttons change the colour scheme.
  The "CS" value in the title bar shows the colour scheme number.
  Default CS: 0 = black and white.
• The 2nd row grid buttons change the maximum random number of seconds between random colour scheme changes. If you don't want any colour scheme changes, click the left most leftmost, 2nd row button.
  The "V" value in the title bar shows the maximum random number of seconds between random colour scheme changes.
  Default V: 0 = no random colour scheme changes.
• The 3rd row grid buttons change the maximum random number of seconds between grid refreshes. If you don't want grid refreshes, click the left most leftmost, 3rd row button.
  The "R" value in the title bar shows the maximum random number of seconds between grid refreshes.
  Default R: 0 = no random grid refreshes.
• The top right grid button, and 4 bottom right corner grid buttons show a simple About screen.

Sound Effects SoundBoard is a collection of buttons that play specific sounds, and buttons that play random sounds or stop all sounds playing. The sounds included are all FREE, public domain sounds. My friends and I havee had a lot of fun with these sounds, so maybe others will find them funny, useful, or interesting at work, at home, and with friends.

A Live Demo of the Sound Effects SoundBoard is available on YouTube:

• https://youtu.be/zgMNV3npj04

The software is very easy to use:

• Click the sound buttons to play sounds.
• Click the "Modern Life" button to keep playing random sounds over the top of each other - it is hilarious and sounds a lot like modern city life. Umm, if you had a lot of cats around ;)
• Click the "Play Random" button to play a random sound.
• Click the "Stop" button to halt playing all sounds.

Sound Board Lenny is a collection of buttons that play specific sounds, and buttons that play random sounds or stop all sounds playing. The sounds included are all FREE, public domain sounds. These sounds are perfect for tying up phone scammers to waste their time and stop them from targetting others. Help fight the good fight ! Simply put your phone next to your PC's speaker and press buttons to let Lenny do the talking.

A Live Demo of the Sound Board Lenny is available on YouTube:

• https://youtu.be/kUUNG4zAuRU

The software is very easy to use:

• Click the sound buttons to play sounds.
• Click the "Play 1 Random" button to play a random sound.
• Click the "Play Many Random" button to play random sounds sequentially, one after the other, until you click the "Stop Sounds" button.
• Click the "Modern Life" button to keep playing random sounds over the top of each other - pure chaos !!
• Click the "Stop" button to halt playing all sounds.

Video SubTitle Tools provide functionality to covert subtitle files (SRT, SBV, and Echo 360 XML) to a plain text transcript.

You can drag and drop subtitle files onto VideoSubTitleTools using Windows Explorer. Or paste the subtitle data in from the Clipboard. Or click the "Open" button and select a subtitle file to process.

Check / set the options you want. The following are available.

• Remove HTML and XML: remove all HTML and Echo 360 XML tags from the subtitle file. Some subtitle files include HTML to colour the subtitle text, or to make the subtitle text italic or bold:

  	<font color ...> ... </font>
  	<I> ...</I>
  	<B> ...</B>
  	<U>... </U>	

• Remove Scene Setters: remove all "scene setters" from the subtitle file. Scene setters are text contained within square brackets [] to add explanation or describe the mood. For example:

  	[Cheerful instrumental music]	

• Remove Counters: remove all counters from the text. i.e. remove all lines that contain just a number. For example, remove the "1" in the example below.
• Remove TimeStamps: remove all time stamps and time durations from the subtitle file. For example, remove the "00:00:08,840 --> 00:00:11,600":

  	1
  	00:00:08,840 --> 00:00:11,600
  	On this shipwrecked episode
  	of Mythbusters...	

• Remove Blank Lines: remove all blank lines.
• Combine All Lines: combine all lines of text into a single paragraph. Bullet points (lines starting with *, -, +) are always placed on a new line.

When you have the settings set the way you want, click the "Convert" button to process the selected subtitle file (in the "Source" area) and display the converted data in the "Results" area.

Feel free to explore. :) You can change settings and click the "Convert" button to see the results and keep trying options until you get the results you like best. :)

Click the "Save" button to save the results.

YahtzeeGUI is my Java version of a simple dice game. Yahtzee is a *GREAT* dice game, one of the very best, right up there with Pirate Dice / Liars Dice. This new version is a remake of another Yahtzee game I developed (in Delphi) that is also on my web site - it uses the same icons, same sound effects (my voice, etc) but apart from that, this Java version is a complete re-write.

Forgot to mention this in the YahtzeeGUI.txt file, use: Ctrl+Mouse Wheel Up/Down: to increase / decrease font size (just like you can do on a web page).

See YahtzeeGUI.txt for further information.