Happy Anniversity, Announcing A Programmers Give Back. Free Gifts for all. Backstory and Software. + 5 SBI Contest Giveaway:

First the Story and then the Gift to All....

The Contest information will be at the end of the article.

This Year marks and Anniversary for me. Exactly 40 years ago I started making software as a programmer while in High School!

In 1979 I an Artist, Football Player who was good in Math in and Science, was lucky to fall into Programming.

I can thank my love of art and a little Kismet...
To tell the truth it was a lark, how my life would go.....
Had a room not been a little to warm, who knows where I may gone in life!

So here's the Story:

I was always good in Art, Sports, Math and Sciences growing up.
When I was growing up there were no Computers or Cell Phones and NY was considered the height of the Media Market of the World with 7 Over the Air TV Stations.... Yes 7, in fact a VHS Recorders for the home only came out while I was in High School!

And Pong the First video game machine was when I was a freshman in High School.

It all started when I happen to be walking to far off corner of the high school to go see my Art Teacher at his office. It happened to be in the hall that the computer room at Scarsdale High School was. The door was unlocked and open because all the heat the computers were giving off was making the room to warm for the students inside on a free period. Scarsdale was a very progressive school 1st off they had computers that with access for students, which only maybe 3% of schools in the country back then had.

So as I walked by I happen to glimpse in and saw a random square black and white Kaliedascope program running on the screen of a Pet Computer. I stopped in my tracks mesmerized!

And because I was on a free use period and saw some other students inside eating lunch and drinking, I walked in to talk to the den of Nerds to check it out. I told him how cool it was.

A few were surprised that someone wearing a varsity sports jacket was interested, and like all nerds (myself included) they proceeded to try and one up each other showing me how they used the machines to make programs and store them on paper tape and tape recorders. FLOPPY DISKS and Hard Drives didn't even exist yet.

I saw that the Kalidescope program was only doing fixed size squares the same amount and said it would be nice if it could do rectangles, vary the speed, sizes and amounts. Immediately some one goes over to the most experienced guy for help. He acts all high and mighty and but shares the program in a trade with the guys I'm talking to. Next thing you know they modify the program (takes around 10 minutes) and now it's putting more squares on the screen between clears.

As this is going on the guys explain that it's the computer takes instructions called basic. And they are stored on these little strips of paper for a reader or on an expensive cassette tape!

I was hooked, I needed to try it myself. Next thing you know I'm learning basic so I can build more elaborate kaleidoscope programs with doughnuts , triangles, using the funky extended ascii codes.

So when I saw I could type my papers, print them onto paper and not have to use White Out ever again!

that was it for me.

Last time I used a typewriter for me! I type fast but make a lot of typos.

Your so lucky to have auto-complete, grammar and spell checkers of today! And yet you still contract and misspell stuff!

That's the story that started my trip down this life's course, more my journey through life in a later Blog...

Over the the last 40 Years of Programming and Systems Design...

So first the story behind the Gifts. Since I have always been doing work as an Independent Programmer Developer during my who adult life, even when I was running my own Non-software companies. I have had develop alot of tools and libraries over the years to both give a leg up versus other developers by making it easy to quickly speed processes up to do clerical work, prototype, build and maintain component, programs, docs, libraries and systems.
They have made me very handy!

By building tools, libraries, frameworks, languages, tools and systems. Not to mention art...
It's time to throw open the vault.
I'm putting those useful items up on the internet for others to use and enjoy.
Everything from games I made, cgi models, programmer tools and libraries, art for icons, costing spreatsheets, editors, open source products not found anywhere on the internet, items that passed into the public domain many years ago, and electronic art I have done for icons, backgrounds. and alot more.

Every week from this point on I will release something I've either made or accumulated years ago that is still usable today and useful... So if your want some help this is the thing for you....

And the first one is a tool to encode and/or decode a use in html for urls lines and cross language transporting.
Many times you need to pass values on the address line of a webpage unfortunately you can't just put spaces or special characters in it. This Tool converts the text to replace them with escape codes thus making it passable without errors.

It's hosted here at: http://steeminati.com/utilities/urlencode.asp

So that's the free Gift to the world, Now time for the Contest for the 5 SBI..

The first person to answer this question correctly will get the 5 SBI, you only get 1 guess and put your guess in a reply to this post. I'll comment on them, but will let the winner know at the end of the week....

As people give answers I will give a hint....BTW the answer is findable on the internet if you know where to look.

Ready...Here's the question,

I did a bunch of things to make money during college, how did I make money ( very good money) in college during finals week specifically, while tricking Professors at the same time! Be specific!