It's an ill wind that blows no good. Hopefully, my winds blow benefits to all. Below find listed programming projects (and programming-related projects) I offer to any and all who can benefit.

How to Create A Slide Show in CSS

By: Paul S Cilwa	Posted: 3/27/2023		Page Views: 598
Hashtags: #Programming #CSS #HTML #WebDesign
There are a lot of hints on the Web how to create CSS-only slide shows. This one works.
Estimated reading time: 9 minute(s) (2085 words)

I recently posted a blog entry inspired by our addition of a new doggie door. I had taken three pictures of my grandson, Dominic, demonstrating the doggie door to the dogs, who understandably were taken aback by it. To display the three photos, I wanted to fade one over the other, as opposed to simply displaying one below the other. However, to my surprise, I found that the instructions to do what I would call a pretty basic function, were murky at best, or very specifically aimed at special circumstances: two or four pictures but not three; or photos of a specific and unchangeable size (not the size of mine). Modifications didn't seem to work; so the only remaining option was figuring it out on my own. But I did, so now you won't have to.

Manifesto Obscura

By: Paul S Cilwa	Posted: 3/14/2026		Page Views: 51
Hashtags: #VBNET #DisplaySleep #MonitorOff #Win32API #NamtiraLib
A tiny one-click desktop utility that instantly puts your display to sleep.
Estimated reading time: 3 minute(s) (629 words)

Manifesto Obscura is a tiny desktop utility that does exactly one thing: puts your display to sleep the instant you double-click its icon (or single-click, if it's in your Taskbar). No window, no dialog, no settings—just darkness.

The Mystery of the Missing Tracks

By: Paul S Cilwa	Occurred: 7/27/2023 Posted: 2/10/2026		Page Views: 134
Hashtags: #Programming #ChatGPT #MusicLibrary #VBNET
ChatGPT can write useful programs for you if you just know how to ask.
Estimated reading time: 7 minute(s) (1482 words)

This is such a simple task for an experienced programmer (or, frankly, a new one) that I wouldn't have even bothered to write out the above description; I would have just started coding. But my grandson has been bugging me to try ChatGPT and I decided this would be a good first try. If it worked, it would be a total of less typing!

Multiverse Minder

By: Paul S Cilwa	Posted: 9/13/2022 Updated: 3/14/2026		Page Views: 184
Hashtags: #VBNET #MultiverseMinder #TelevisionEpisodes #TagLibSharp #DragAndDrop #NamtiraLib
A VB.NET desktop app for merging episodes from multiple TV series into a single folder, renamed in chronological viewing order.
Estimated reading time: 7 minute(s) (1448 words)

As a retired professional programmer who still loves writing code, I often catch myself doing some repetitive task and start thinking: would a little app save me more time than just finishing the job by hand? Usually the answer is no. But every now and then, the task is annoying enough and frequent enough that the math works out.

Easily Register DLLs and OCXs

By: Paul S Cilwa	Posted: 3/14/2026		Page Views: 1,109
Hashtags: #Programming #DLL #OCX #WindowsRegistry
How to create a simple Registry merge file that will add double-click registration (and context menu unregistration) to DLLs and OCXs on your computer.
Estimated reading time: 6 minute(s) (1385 words)

Anyone who's had to wrestle with the hundreds and hundreds of Dynamic Link Libraries (DLLs) and tool libraries (OCXs) in a typical Windows system can certainly appreciate the sentiment. And while users don't typically have to worry about them anymore, developers still must give a care as to making sure the correct libraries are present; the correct versions of libraries are present; and sometimes, must even jump back and forth between versions to determine the source of a bug or to compare features to an older version of a client program.

Visual Basic Legacy Runtime Libraries

By: Paul S Cilwa			Page Views: 1,040
Hashtags: #VisualBasic #RuntimeFiles #Programming #Windows
Free (and ad-free!) access to Microsoft's runtime libraries for legacy versions of Visual Basic, from 1.0 through 6.0 SP6.
Estimated reading time: 3 minute(s) (585 words)

Visual Basic has always produced program files (also called "executables" or "applications") but never program files that don't require context: They all, also, required a Visual Basic "runtime" library that actually contained virtually all of the Visual Basic program functions used by the programmer to make his or her program work. The original idea is that the runtime library would be a part of Windows, distributed with it and therefore not part of the overhead of disseminating a program itself. Alas, this never became the case.

Whatever2JPG

By: Paul S Cilwa	Posted: 5/7/2024 Updated: 3/21/2026		Page Views: 673
Hashtags: #ImageConversion #JPG #AVIF #WEBP #VBNET #MagickNET #NamtiraLib
Free (and ad-free!) simple drop-and-convert app to make JPG copies of almost any visual format.
Estimated reading time: 4 minute(s) (894 words)

Whatever2JPG is a barebones, free desktop app for converting image files from other formats (PNG, GIF, BMP, WEBP, and AVIF) into standard JPG format. It does not touch the original file. Just drag and drop an image onto its desktop shortcut and a .jpg copy appears in the same folder—no dialogs, no settings, no ads.