spare time coding projects

Making Excel Graphics Better

I have been using Microsoft Excel 97 for analysis and visualisation of oilfield data from custom data sources, and have developed some Excel VB routines for programmatically attacking a crappy looking Excel Chart (grey background, gaudy multi-colored bars, heavy handed-grid-lines etc.) and turning it into something decent.

Java Business Graphics

In line with the ideas espoused in Visual Display of Quantitative Information by Edward Tufte.

I would like to design a Java class that does the following :

runs as an applet or in a server in all common java environments
generates the most common chart types as graphics
implements the minimising chart junk and maximising data ink ideals of Tufte
makes intelligent choices if left to its own devices.
oh yes, is documented and open source

If you know of somebody who has already done this, then please email me at watmough@iname.com and tell me. I haven't found anything I'm really impressed with that people aren't trying to make money out of.

Java Defender (Planetoid on the BBC Micro)

jPlanetoid

Have a play with my jPlanetoid Applet. Here's the Java 1.0.2 Source for this game. It's a bit messy but I'm cleaning it up when I have a moment. Actually, there is a bunch to do including level end, new level, some missing animations, and at least two really terrible bugs.

Asteroids on Palm Pilot WABA

It's pretty easy to implement a game of asteroids :

Implement a gameclock
Plot the player
Move some asteroid shapes
Move some missiles
Collision detect
Detect game end and keep score

The trick will be making the control system workable, and (sigh) finding the time to do it...

Radiopharmacy Database Software

As part of a short-term contract in 1991 or therabouts, I implemented a radiopharmacy database solution in Lotus 1-2-3. Later this was reimplemented in Microsoft Access 1.0/1.1/2.0 and fully documented. This version supports

Technetium generator administration
Daily dose worksheet administration and dose labelling
Radionuclide waste (patient) estimation
Waste radionuclide material measurement/administration - cinbin tracking
Stock administration, including decay calculations
Ad-hoc report generator

I am planning to extract the datamodel from this package and reengineer it into SQL such that it could leverage the power of another system that supported user administration, protection etc etc.

Once the datamodel looks reasonable, the system should be amenable to having a modular web user interface written to talk to it.

If you have already done this then email me and tell me about it. I tried a web search and couldn't find anything. Email Jonathan Watmough.