The home page of David Ingalls Bell

I am 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@canb.auug.org.au.

Here are some of the freely available programs that I have written:

• fileselection 1.0 - 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.
• dblife 7.4 - a Life program running under X11 and UNIX with many editing features.
• su1 5.1 - allows specified users to run certain commands as root.
• lifesrc 3.8 - a program that finds oscillators.
• hashlife 1.5 - a specialized Life program.
• sash 3.7 - a stand-alone shell with many built-in commands.
• scanSquidLog 1.1 - quickly finds URLs in squid log files.
• ips 3.3 - 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 3.1 - a curses replacement which allows easy definition of terminal windows.
• dpygames 2.0 - a few terminal games which use the dpy library.
• blumrand - a very good random number generator.
• mille 2.0 - a Mille Bournes game for terminals.
• rivhack - A program to examine or modify Riven save files.

I have written some articles on Conway's Game of Life and related automata:

• Spaceships in Conway's Life (Part 1)
• Spaceships in Conway's Life (Part 2)
• Spaceships in Conway's Life (Part 3)
• Spaceships in Conway's Life (Part 4)
• Spaceships in Conway's Life (Part 5)
• Spaceships in Conway's Life (Part 6)
• Spaceships in Conway's Life (Addendum 1)
• Speed c/3 Technology in Conway's Life
• HighLife - An Interesting Variant of Life
• Day & Night - An Interesting Variant of Life

I maintain archives of some objects in Life and related automata. These can be read using my dblife program (or some other Life programs):

• Archive of c/3 ships and puffers in Life
• Archive of c/5 ships and puffers in Life
• Archive of Day & Night objects
• Archive of HighLife objects
• Archive of Just Friends objects

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 2005):

• 12 February 2005 - added fileselection 1.0
• 21 August 2005 - updated Just Friends archive
• 23 January 2006 - updated dblife to version 7.4
• 26 January 2006 - update fsc to version 10.4
• 3 April 2006 - added Cann River walk
• 31 March 2007 - updated Day & Night archive
• 25 January 2008 - updated ips to version 3.3