I used to sell a command-line email utility that I had written for 32-bit implementations of Microsoft Windows. The utility was named MailSend ( not to be confused with the three or four other command-line mailers which share the name. ) The domain name that I used to host MailSend and other utilities, mailsend-online.com has come up for renewal. After 23 or so years of having that domain, I think it’s time to retire it.
In 2009, I was tinkering with the Windows multimedia subsystem and I wrote a short program to play MP3 audio files from the command-line ( cmdmp3.exe ). I created a second program that was a GUI application ( cmdmp3win.exe ) for those who didn’t want the console window to show. Althought it’s technically a GUI application, no visible user interface is present unless an error occurs.
I have released a new version of the sources and executable programs tonight ( 26 Jan 2024 ).
Originally published on: Fri, 7 Oct 2011.
The Y2K panic was not the first time I had encountered a date-oriented software bug. Years before Y2K problems were even a worry, I ran into a situation where an MS-DOS program written in C began to run amok on October 10th.
There had been no new releases of this particular program in months. It had behaved normally running continuously on an unattended PC in a computer room.
I had discovered the International Obfuscated C Coding Contest (IOCCC) some time in the late 1980’s in the pages of a printed technical magazine. At the time, my C skills were still in their larval stage, but I was very intrigued by the handful of entries that had been presented.
In later years, I tried my hand at other obfuscated coding contests, each time usually on a whim. I managed to irritate a few people with an entry in an obfuscated Ruby coding contest and I managed to see print in The Perl Journal for one of that publication’s obfuscated Perl coding contests.
When I first began using microcomputers in the late 1970’s, development tools for 8-bit machines were precious and mysterious commodities. Most of these sorts of tools that looked to be useful were very expensive. My usage of most of these tools was driven by budgetary constraints.
The Gateway Drug : BASIC
All it really took to pique someone’s interest in microcomputers was to show them a simple program such as:
I had written a little C program a while back for the 19th annual International Obfuscated C Coding contest.
Not only did my code not win … it didn’t even warrant an entry in the honorable mentions or anything like that. If you look at the winners and look back at my code, you’ll immediately see why; the winners and the runners-up were much more creative than my effort.
Rather than get lost in obscurity, I felt that my entry needed to be published, so it has been given the honor of appearing in my first public blog post.