Software

Darkside 2.3

Darkside is a screen saver based on Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon albm art.

If you're feeling adventurous, try using the screen saver's "settings" window (in display settings -> screen saver tab, click on "Settings" or "Configure").

• Reduce the texture size and number of objects if the screen saver runs slowly
• Increase the number of monitors that the saver uses, if you have multiple monitors on your pc
• For single-monitor mode, enable Fullscreen to improve performance, and to reduce "screen tearing"
• Change the speed of objects, and add more if your computer (and eyes) can handle it!

For the first few seconds, the screen saver is obscured by the Battlesnake logo. During this time, it tests several quality settings and chooses the best one for the frame rate selected in configuration. Frame rate settings equal to your monitor's refresh rate, or equal to half of that tend to produce the best results.
Click here to download

Fire

A raging inferno

This screen saver starts with a hot bar at the bottom of the screen, which slowly bursts into flames. Around 15-25 seconds in, the temperature exceeds 3000°C and a raging inferno remains. For those mathematically minded, this screen saver uses a combination of the 2D heat equation and the advection equation. The heat equation simulates radiated heat and heat conducted through the air while the advection equation carries heat up in twisting air currents.

Click here to download

Matrix I

A fairly simple and colourful screen saver, with lots of moving balls

This is based on Newtonian motion. Differently coloured particles have different mass and charge. These interact according to inverse power laws. Charge only acts on particles of the same group - red/blue, green/yellow, cyan/magenta. White is not paired, so only interacts with other whites. A crude short-range "strong force" prevents particles from overlapping

Click here to download

Matrix II

This screen saver is less chaotic than its predecessor, a bit nicer and takes one to several hours to form structures (or sometimes, doesnt actually form any, due to its random nature).

Slightly better graphics hardware is needed for this screen saver to run smoothly. It has been shown to run nicely on a Radeon 4870. It will still run on less powerful hardware, but won't look as nice.

If you have any ideas for a sequel to this ("Matrix III"), feel free to suggest them to me via my About page.

The source-code for the Matrix screen savers is quite messy, so I'm not too keen on giving it out. If for some reason, you really want parts of it, give me a reason when you request the code.

Click here to download

Xmouse

Xmouse allows you to use an Xbox 360 wired controller (via USB) or wireless one (via dongle) to control the mouse and general web browsing on a PC. An Xbox 360 wired controller costs around fifteen pounds, about the same as a decent cordless mouse, but is much more versatile and comfortable for general web browsing.

Using sticks instead of a mouse may take some time to get used to at first, but if you've played much Portal, Team Fortress or Call of Duty, then it should be quite easy.

Xmouse can hide away in the tray, rather than wasting space on your taskbar - click on its tray icon to show/hide Xmouse, right click to close.

Click here for the help file

This program is currently supplied without an installer. If you find it useful, create start menu-shortcuts for it (or put it in your Start Up folder). Click here to download

Mufold II

Most media organisers, such as Windows Media Player and iTunes, can be quite slow and memory-hungry. This is because they have to open every individual file in order to read the artist, album and title info. They then have to add this information to a database. In order to browse the media library, this database must be loaded into memory and can consume quite a lot of it - slowing the entire computer down.

Mufold assumes that all of your media files are sorted into folders already, and allows you to browse the folders similar to using a normal Explorer window. So why use Mufold then if it just displays folder trees? Well, it has a few extra features, to allow common media and playlist tasks to be done easily:

• One-click to create a playlist from a folder (or folder tree)
• One-click to add a folder (or folder tree) to a playlist
• Fast playlist editor & manager
• Playlist is generated automatically when a folder is played - so you don't have to find the folder again next time
• Very fast interface (no bulky skins or tacky effects)
• Compact - program is only 300K
• Uses your default media player to actually play the files or playlists - Mufold doesn't replace your normal player!
  You can still keep your files in Media Player/WinAmp/iTunes's library if you sync to a portable player, but use Mufold for creating playlists and finding albums quickly
• If you like VideoLAN's minimalistic no-nonsense style, but miss having an accessible media library and playlist maker, Mufold provides the solution
  VLC seem to have finally fixed the bugs in their playlist editor - the latest version of VLC seems quite nice.

Mufold uses (by default) your My Documents\My Music folder as the root folder of your music library, and My Documents\My Music\My Playlists as your playlist folder. One feature of Mufold II is the lack of any configuration files - the only file needed to run it is the program itself! Consequently, the media folder and playlist folder must be set via parameters if they are different to the defaults:

1. Create a shortcut to Mufold
2. Right click on the shortcut and click "Properties"
3. In the "target" box, will be the path to Mufold.
4. At the end of this path, type a space
5. To set the music folder, now add /music="path to your music folder" (including quotes)
6. To set the playlist folder, now add /playlists="path to your music folder" (including quotes)
7. For example:
   "C:\...\Mufold.exe" /music="C:\Music" /playlists="C:\Music\Playlists"
   Sets the music folder to C:\Music and the playlists folder to C:\Music\Playlists, where C:\...\Mufold.exe is the path that was already in the box to begin with.
8. Use this shortcut to open Mufold, rather than just running the program file.
9. This can be quite useful if some of your media library is on a USB disk, or another computer - you can create different shortcuts to each media library, rather than having "File not found" errors all the time when your USB disk or other computer isn't connected.

It creates and edits playlists in the .m3u format, so they will open with almost any modern media player.

To use:

• Download Mufold
• Save Mufold somewhere suitable (in your music folder?)
• Create a shortcut to Mufold in your start menu (the easiest way is to drag the downloaded Mufold file onto your Start button.
• When you want to open Mufold, just click on that shortcut icon!
• Mufold can hide away in the tray, rather than wasting space on your taskbar - click on its tray icon to show/hide Xmouse, right click to close.

Where Mufold is particulally useful:

• Old / slow / low-spec computers, which almost grind to a standstill when you run a normal media player - use Mufold, along with the VideoLAN media player
• Laptops - Mufold, in combination with the VideoLAN media player, will generally use less battery power than more advanced, slower and more complicated library and media player programs.
• Computers with small screens.
• The entire interface can be used with just a mouse, or just a keyboard, so is quite accessible.

When not to use Mufold:

• If your music library is not sorted into any sensible folder structure (most CD rippers and media players can now do this organisation task for you very quickly)
• At work (unless you run it off a pen-drive) - most IT staff don't like programs that they haven't heard of before
• If you're an Apple fanboy
• If you prefer programs that have lots of fancy graphics and pointless skinning features

To suggest a new feature, contact me.
Features coming when I next update Mufold:

• Library search - similar to Explorer's search, but a more suitable and advanced (also without the annoying animated dog)
• Sorting program - will take artist/album/title/track info from filenames and/or ID tags, then re-organise the library and rename files based on that info

This program is currently supplied without an installer. If you find it useful, create start menu-shortcuts for it (or put it in your Start Up folder). To uninstall, just delete the program. Click here to download