Open Source Software by Swerdna.

Preview: A graph plotting utility for visualising two dimensional serial numerical data.

"Preview" is a Linux executable compiled from FreeBasic source code. No doubt the code can be compiled into an EXE file for Windows users, and maybe I will some day. At the moment it's only in *nix form and I've only run it on Linux machines, specifically openSUSE using KDE, Fedora using Gnome and Ubuntu using Gnome.

I wrote this application because other graphics software is so comprehensive that it's over complicated when you just want a preview of your data to see whether your experiment or research is progressing as planned. It's a first-look program for visualising your data with a single shell command. Utterly simple, you just place the single executable in your Linux path to install it. You don't set axes or scales, that's all automatic. Zooming in and out and scrolling back and forth, up and down is with arrow keys and mouse clicks, very simple.

Safe Web Comments: A Web Page Comment Form Protected from Spam Robots by Captcha & other spam traps.

Safe Web Comments is utterly simple. Comment data are gathered through a Web Form, parsed into html and posted into an HTML Data file that is in fact just a text file. The comments are displayed by "including" the HTML Data via Server Side Includes into the originating web page. Protection from spamming web robots is effected by guarding access to the Web Form with the random image generator known as Captcha as well as a couple of anti spam tricks that make spam from robots almost impossible.

These general features have been incorporated:

• No complex databases - data are maintained in a flat text file.
• The web page and the comment data are independent so the web page can be edited independent of the separately-stored comments.
• The styles for the displayed commentary are customisable.
• Styles are set in a browser-based GUI, requiring no knowledge of CSS or HTML.
• The commentator can preview and edit before posting.
• Webmaster can choose oldest first or newest first for the date-ordered display of comments.
• Webmaster may limit the number of posts to any number, autoerasing the oldest first.
• Protection against accidental multiple re-posting using redirects
• Webmaster receives email of each comment posted (option to turn on/off).

These anti spam features have also been incorporated:

• Reverse Turing test using Captcha guards a gate to the comment form.
• Spam trap: There are two text-box spam traps on the posting form.
• Active hyperlinks are banned in the comments.
• All HTML and other scripting tags are allowed but are deactivated before being displayed.
• Commentator may supply home page as an active link. It's displayed with the anti-spam rel="nofollow" property.

Web Hit Counter: a system for recording and displaying simple web page hits on an Apache web server.

There are two applications/executables. One is the executable "increment" which is used to advance the counts for individual web pages. The other executable is "site" which is used to advance the counts for the entire site. You may use one or the other or both. Examples of counts are in the footer of each page on this site.

Status: this software has full stable release status. It has run on this site for a year or so.

• Designed to be utterly simple to install and use.
• The display is text on your web page, styled by ordinary HTML/CSS styling.
• Comprised of two simple executable files.
• Every page can have a separate counter and there is an overall site counter.
• To install: place the executables on your Apache server and enable Server Side Includes.
• File locking protects agains data corruption during frequent page hits.
• Uses no complex databases.
• Your Desktop can use any operating system.
• No knowledge of programming or scripting needed.
• Suitable for .html and .htm pages, not .php pages. I will enable for .php next.
• Data are stored in simple text files.
• Doesn't depend on a scripting language like Perl or PHP.
• Open Source software with no other ties, links or constraints.

Areas of Interest

This column gives a lead in and a link to each of the major topic ares on this site.

The Linux Pages

These are detailed accounts of my voyages in the fascinating world of Linux. Ranging across Samba networking, connectivity, servers, filesystems, administration and other miscellany.

Swerdna's Open Source

These are some free and Open Source applications I've developed as an interest around C, Freebasic and PHP.

Musings & Recipes

In the real world I sometimes muse on a high cliff where contemplative works are born, or brood over a fire, creating gourmet masterpieces.

MS Windows Tricks & Tips

Some HOWTOs for everyday people (not geeks like me) to save you money by doing little things to make Windows and its programs run well. A bit of patience will save a lot of money!

Web Authoring Tutorials

these are derived from experiences learning CSS and (X)HTML. Everything presented here arose from issues faced composing this site. The largest issue was and is getting Internet Explorer to work in some relationship to internationally accepted standards.