The home page of David Ingalls Bell
I was a computer programmer of much experience with an interest
in science and mathematics. I was born and educated in the United
States, but I now live in Canberra, Australia.
My hobbies include Astronomy, Linux, and Conway's Game of
Life.
I am appreciative of the large amount of free software (with
sources) that many others have written, and am happy that I have my
own software to offer in return. This page has links to the best
bits of it, mostly for UNIX and Linux.
My EMail address is: dbell@tip.net.au.
Here are some of the freely available programs that I have
written:
- Weather 1.12 -
Java application to plot weather observations from the Australian Government's Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) web site.
- FileSelection 2.0 -
Java application to manipulate lists of files.
- BrowserWatcher
1.0 - Java application to watch HTTP connections made by your
browser.
- calc -
an arbitrary precision programmable calculator with a C-like
syntax.
- calc 3.2 (experimental) -
an experimental new version of an arbitrary precision programmable
calculator with a C-like syntax.
- dblife 10.14 - a Life
program running under X11 and UNIX with many editing features.
- su1 6.2 - allows
specified users to run certain commands as root.
- lifesrc 3.8 - a
program that finds oscillators.
- hashlife 2.1 - a
specialized Life program.
- sash 3.8 - a stand-alone
shell with many built-in commands.
- scanSquidLog 1.1
- quickly finds URLs in squid log files.
- ips 4.2 - an intelligent
process status program for Linux.
- configprog 2.0 - lets
programs have configurable strings in their executables.
- path 3.3 - allows easy
manipulation of PATH-like environment variables.
- fsc 10.4 - a set of
source control utilities for personal use.
- dpy 4.1 - a curses
replacement which allows easy definition of terminal windows.
- dpygames 2.3 - a few
terminal games which use the dpy library.
- blumrand - a very good
random number generator.
- mille 3.2 - a Mille
Bournes game for terminals (needs dpy).
- mw 3.0 - a multi-player
mazewar game for terminals (needs dpy).
- rivhack - A program to
examine or modify Riven save files.
I have written some articles on Conway's Game of Life and
related automata:
I maintain archives of some objects in Life and related
automata. These can be read using my dblife program (or some other
Life programs):
I viewed the total solar eclipse of 4 December 2002 at Ceduna,
South Australia. A picture and discussion of the event is
here.
I walked from Canberra to Cann River (a distance of 300 km)
in January 2006.
An annotated log of my trip is
here.
Change history (since 2017):
- 26 October 2017 - updated dblife to version 10.3
- 11 November 2017 - updated dblife to version 10.4
- 11 November 2017 - updated JustFriends archive
- 18 November 2017 - updated dblife to version 10.5
- 2 January 2018 - updated dblife to version 10.6
- 14 January 2018 - updated dblife to version 10.7
- 29 January 2018 - updated dblife to version 10.8
- 7 March 2018 - updated dblife to version 10.9
- 4 May 2018 - updated dblife to version 10.10
- 8 February 2020 - updated dblife to version 10.11
- 17 June 2021 - updated su1 to version 6.1
- 1 October 2023 - updated su1 to version 6.2
- 16 December 2023 - updated dblife to version 10.13
- 23 April 2024 - updated dblife to version 10.14