My Little Worms Download

Welcome to my little corner on the web. It has a littleinformation about me and some things that I find interesting.

First things first.. my warmest thanks go to Ken Badertscher of Miracle Max Media who produced the very cool image of Simeonof Island above and kindly gave me his permission touse it.

The Internet, Best and malch

One of my first voyages of discovery on the Internet commenced on December 29, 1994, when I opened an account with Best Internet Communications in Mountain View, California. Sadly, this once wonderful Internet Service Provider was acquired by HiWay, which waspurchased by Verio, which was gobbled up by NTT. Long story.Notwithstanding the eventual demise of Best, I came to makemany great friends there and learned much about the Internet.

Best Internet (motto: We suck less!) started out in alittle store on Castro Street in downtown Mountain View. Theyhad a few machines, and a whole bunch of Sportster modems nailedto a wall (literally). Founders Rich White and Mike Schwartz were joined by a motley crew including Matt Dillon, Sam Habash, Karl Mueller and Ron Echeverri and others.To preserve the history I have shamlessly stolen somepictures from Best's websbite.And if you doubt the historical significance of Best, youmay be interested to know that other customers who startedtheir websites at Best include Hotmail and eBay.

During that time, I registered the malch.com domain and started this web site.

Computing Stuff

I have multiple computers at home. They're all networked andconnected to the Internet. For years I tolerated ISDN and then ADSLbut recently I fired the phone company (see Companies that Suck)and hooked up with Comcast cable giving me a speedy 60 Mbps down and 6 Mbps up.

A few products I use and highly recommend, include:

all network intrusions stone-cold dead. And thatincludes all unwanted SPAM, viruses, worms, hackers and othernasties that you may encounter on the Internet. This device is soeffective, it's Guaranteed Forever. It will completelyeliminate every known and potential network vulnerability andinstallation is a snip. If you like my Guaranteed Forever Firewall, you're sure to love the WinDuck 2001 Install Accelerator.

Download SWatch.exe A Simple StopWatch for Windows

Robocopy with Shadow Service (for geeks)

Next up is a simple DOS/CMD script for serious geeks. This script willshow you how to use the very powerful Windows Robocopy (Robust Copy)command in conjunction with the Windows Volume Shadow Service (VSS).This can be used to synchronize a copy of a volume or folder, even when some of the source files are currently open and in use. The following text file contains the script together with somedocumentation/instructions:

Download roboshadow.txt Combining Robocopy and the Volume Shadow Service

64-bit Windows File Manager

Finally, a File Manager. I was a huge fan of the original WindowsFile Manager (Winfile). Adding the FMStepUp plugin made it even better.However, over time it became outdated and hacks were required to make it work on Windows Vista and 7. Worse, there was no 64-bitimplementation. I made many efforts to identify an alternative butfailed to find real satisfaction.

Once again, I decided to try writing my own and I think it workedout pretty well although I'm sure it won't appeal to everyone.Relative to the old Windows File Manager:

• It has two fixed panels. This saves time arranging and rearranging windows.
• It has one drive bar for each panel. This saves time changing drives.
• It will recognize when new drives (e.g. USB devices) are added or removed.
• The filename/file size/modification time are displayed in sortable columns.
• It has a very simple filtering ability.
• It has a powerful and customizable context menu.
• Drag and Drop operations are always COPY commands unless the SHIFT KEY is depressed and then they are always MOVE commands.
• It includes the ability to quick preview many image types.
• It's configured via an old fashioned .ini file.

Feel free to try it. Extract the ZIP archive and be sure to see theREADME.txt file before starting the program:

Download Winfile64.zip My 64-bit Windows File Manager

Older Computing Stuff

I have some interest in chemistry, and the applicationof computers to that science.Below is a picture of a chemical structure. Santa's big adventure. This particularexample illustrates the structure of the drug omeprazolewhich is a proton pump inhibitor used in the treatment ofgastric and duodenal ulcers.

Molecular Design Limited (MDL) produced a lot of very coolsoftware for chemists. They have since merged with Accelrys.You can even download their Accelrys Draw software:

At one time I worked for Prime Computer. You'llfind some interesting information about Prime on my site:

Some years ago, in the Windows 3.1 era, I wrote a Data Communications FAQ. It's now pretty ancient.

Anyone still running Windows 3.1 might also enjoy this neat littleshareware utility what I wrote. It's a clock, resource monitor,task switcher, program launcher and more. But, it's small, fastand intuitive the way software should be, but rarely is these days.

My favorite news reader is NewsXpress. Sadly it's nolonger being developed although I still use it every day:

Photography Stuff

I also have some interest in photography and created some resources here:

Legal

In our litigious society, everyone needs a legal disclaimer.I'll refer you to one drafted by my old friend George Schaftand hereby incorporate it by reference: