Software and Games

I have just completed another program. This is short, it is an update of a program I wrote a number of years ago. I originally wrote this in pure C++, and it ran in a dialog window, I have since rewritten it in Qt.

It now runs in the background, and uses a tooltip to pop up a random quote at an interval specified by the user. The quotes are read froma text file, which can be modifed at any time by the user. The program comes with a list of over a hundred quotes.

The full readme for the program is HERE.

I have this program selling on my payloadz account HERE.

This link can be used to easily purchase the program using paypal:  

This project is finally done. It took a long time to finish, I ran into quite a few tricky last minute bugs. It’s true what they say in the software design field: The last 10% of the work takes 50% of the time!

The user manual to the program is HERE.

I have uploaded the software to a new site that I started using called PayLoadz. The link to the Program is HERE. Prelimary price is $9.99.

I intend to release updates to the program later on, when I get time.

I am almost finished with this project. I ran into a few last minute bugs, that turned out to be more serious than I thought. I ended up having to rework some of the programs logic.

The program is basically done, with the exception of some minor debugging issues. It is a little spartan at the moment, I haven’t added any graphics, tutorials, or help guis yet, which I will have to do, but I hope to have the program selling online sometime next week.

I am almost finished with this project, however I have had to temove two features due to time and security constraints. I had originally intended to implement a multi-user system, where several users could create accounts and journals using the same program. However, protecting the passwords of these users without using an external server would prove too complex to be worthwhile.

Secondly, I had intended to implement a syncronisation system, where the same journal could be written to on multiple devices, and then syncronised. I still intend to implement this, but I don’t have time for something this complex at the moment. It would involve a lot of client/server and networking work.

I have managed to complete the encryption and custom tag systems however, and have started on some debugging. The program is now feature complete. With regards to encryption, hasing, and computer security in general, I found THIS site, which provides an excellent in-depth discusson of the subject. It also provides THIS. It is a dictionary hack tool, which allows users to check the hashes of their passwords for reliability. An unreliable password can be broken easily using this approach.

I intend to have this program done by the end of the month, and then I intend to release updates to it (synchronisation, data integrity verification, etc) over time.

This week, I implemeted a a “search tag” system in the program, which allows the user to tag a post with a list of key words and phrases, which are then searchable using the search function. I am also putting in a custom tag system, where users will be allowed to specify a field, either in the new Journal screen, or in the post entry screen. These custom tags are searchable, and can be used to customise a journal according to project specific needs, for example, a “supervisor” tag could be added, or a “Final Release Date” tag could be used. These tags can be modified per post, or per journal.

I also began work on a predictive text system for these tags, where the user will be able to quickly choose a tag by typing it letter by letter, and having a list of compatible tags appear to the right of the text input screen.

I am experimenting with various different methods of searching and displaying information in this project, and predictive text is something I have never done before, so it will be interesting to see how it turns out.

I spent the majority of my time, however, working on the encryption system for this project. After some research, I chose to use crypto++. This is an open source, (Under the Boost Software Licence version 1.0) well-supported and fully-featured encryption library for C++.

However, I ran into some irritating issues implementing this in Qt. I was having a lot of linking issues, caused by the build setting being different from Visual Studio, where I compiled the crypto++ library, to Qt, where I am developing my program. There are several ways to use crypto++, static linking dynamic linking, debug, release, etc etc. I had to try a number of different linking, additional dependencies, and build setting before I could finally get it to work, but eventually, I did, and I now have a working encryption solution.

I am not sure if I will be able to implement full data verification and integrity checking like I spoke about in a previous post (preventing the user from altering their own files), but at least I will be able to offer solid, easy to use, encryption for data security.

Next week, in addition to fully implementing encryption and some other minor things, I will have to start working on some kind of client/server sync system to allow the user to use multiple versions of the program on multiple machines without having to have a dedicated server set up to sync both files.