Welcome to my place on the web. Virtually everything here comes with source code and at least a passing description. Nothing is guaranteed to work for you. I have enough trouble just getting things to work for me. The most redeeming feature is that it's all free (and worth every penny!).

Other people named Eric Phelps

Scripting Languages
How to write a simple plain text file that can leverage what's built in to Windows to solve real-world problems.


Win9x Batch Programs
The beauty of doing things with batch is the simplicity of the limited command set. There are few enough commands that anybody can learn it. The challenge is in using these limited commands to accomplish anything useful!
Windows Scripting
It's way better than batch, it's standard with Windows 98 and newer, it's free for Win95 and NT4, and unlike batch, it works the same (for the most part!) across all Windows platforms.



Real Programs
When I had no other way to solve a problem, I wrote these. They worked on my computer. If they work on yours, you're welcome to them.


BarCode  Bar Codes
I needed some bar codes with text below them. I couldn't find any free ones, so I created my own. Then I released them all to the Public Domain. Better than free!

CommTool
I kept locking up my serial ports and modem while writing comm programs. I wrote this to forcibly take control of ports opened by the Win16 API so I wouldn't keep having to reboot. The coolest thing is that it can change port settings while another program is using that port (without knocking the other program off!). 

FFIND
I used to be a big BBS guy. I wrote this to search BBS file descriptions, but I've found it does great at searching data dumps from our communications analyzers too! 

MapPoint ASP
Sample code showing how to use MapPoint 2001 or 2000 as a CGI or with ASP. You should already know how to do database operations before you try this code out.

Pong
Sure, pong for Excel 97. The little ball bounces around your spreadsheet and you chase it with your paddle. Add it to any spreadsheet. Demonstrates "callbacks" under VBA. This will not work under any other version of Excel. 

ProbeMe!
Run a unique port probe on your own computer to see what Winsock ports are in use and which are available.

Q193998
A way to read binary files if you don't have ADO. And sample code showing how to do it if you do have ADO!

Schedule
Automatically launch programs, scripts, or documents whenever you want. No shareware nagging, no task bar clutter. Any combination of day, date, month, etc.. How many other schedulers can launch a program every Friday the 13th?

SetIni
A little utility I wrote to modify Windows INI files from DOS before Windows comes up. It really cut down on the complaining Windows did when the network wasn't there or some other fool problem. 

ShutDown
Do you need to shut Windows down, log off, or reboot under program control? And have it happen either as a screensaver or as a scheduled task? Here is my solution.

Tnef
I get stuck receiving file attachments from Outlook users who don't know how to turn off the "application/ms-tnef" file encoding. So I wrote this to help me pull files out of the otherwise useless mess that "ms-tnef" is.

WebGet
I needed a scheduled batch file to pull a file off the web each night. It should have been simple. But it was a secure web server. Login required. So I wrote WebGet (basically a wrapper for msinet.ocx) to allow me to get whatever I wanted. You can use it from a batch file or automate it from VBA or the Windows Scripting Host.

CommLink
I needed to hack a proprietary communications protocol, so I wrote this. If you have two serial ports and have access to the target computer's RS232 line, you can grab and analyze all the data. There are better ways to do this now, but they weren't around when I wrote this...

CRLF
I got tired of being on the losing end of the text differences between the Unix, DOS, and Macintosh operating systems. I wrote a couple of utilities so I could convert from anything to anything.

Headers
I was writing a CGI program and was getting nowhere fast. The problem seemed to be in my headers, but I had no way of looking at them or comparing them with known good headers. Now I do! Now I can check out the otherwise hidden headers in any web page or cgi I want.

NoFonts
Have you ever used Excel to create an HTML table? Did you ever wonder why it was so big and took forever to load? This program removes all the font info from an HTML table, reducing it's size to about 25% of what it was.

Pop3
Retrieve your email automatically. Or delete spam. Or kill modem-choking big messages without downloading them. Run it standalone, from a DOS batch file, from Windows Scripting or from VBA. The really cool thing is that you can read messages in your normal mail program or read the same message in several different mail programs at the same time.

FileCap / Prn2Pbm
I work with equipment which can print to a serial printer. But I have no serial printer. With the FileCap program and a null modem, I can capture the output from my equipment into a "prn" file. With the Prn2Pbm program, I can convert the prn file into a usable graphics file.

Setup
Not a very original name, but it's a very simple program. It just installs all Palm "pdb" and "prc" files that happen to be sitting in the same directory.

Slideshow
Not just a slide show, it shows you several different ways you can build a self-running slide show yourself. Handy to know when building training modules for your intranet. The goal here is to make things so the user doesn't have to have to have any special software and you don't have to have any special server.

UnCheck
After a major crash, I found myself looking at lots of "FILE0001.CHK" type files. After hours of trying to identify each one, I wrote this to automate the process. It copies CHK files into whatever type they really are.

Word Search & Replace
We had a zillion Word documents that needed several phrases and words replaced. Word 97 VBA automated the whole thing.


Security   Tips on how to get your PC secure and keep it that way. No, you can't just buy a computer and use it on the internet.

About me
   Every personal page I know of has a link to a mind-numbing collection of pictures and ramblings about the poor lifeless nerd who created the web page. Why should I be different?

Fediverse   because I gave up on Facebook.

Favorites   Not my bookmarks, but a collection of URLs that are either interesting or useful. Interesting or useful to me. Not to you. So there.

World's Smallest Political Quiz
   You know what party you're registered to vote in, but do you really fit in there? Take this ten question quiz and you might be surprised. Afterwards, check xkcd out for a laugh.

My Trips: Venezuela 2006  Chile 2006  Saint Vincent 2007  Las Vegas 2007  
                

Lost? Look at the site map.

Bad links? Questions? Send me mail.

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