Free in the setting software for linux

jSettings package is meant to provide a Java library for dealing with program settings. (I use "settings" as just another synonym for preferences, properties, etc but I chose the word settings because of the already existing Preferences and Properties frameworks in Java). It wants to be a powerful tool for the developers of Java programs that want to manipulate structures of settings.
The code (as well as this page) is at an early development and testing stage. On top of that, I am only doing it as a means to teach myself Java (Im an economist by training and by profession) , so even at later stages you can expect the quality of the code to be quite low.
If you feel like any part of the design, code, Javadoc, examples etc is silly please dont hesitate to let me know about it. Also, I would also be happy to include requested features as long as I can understand the need for them and I also know how to do it. So please write to me if you have anything to say about this project!
Main features:
- Handles INI and FSTAB type of files and settings. There is no XML support yet, but I plan to do it if it seems to be requested.
- INI settings are specified by a setting = value pair.
- FSTAB settings are defined by an array of settings, each in a predefined field. I call them like this because the structure is similar to the fstab file in UNIX environments. Logical structure is quite similar to that of XML files.
- Settings can be logically structured into sections.
- There are two degrees of hierarchy available, called hierarchical and non-hierarchical. For example, in a hierarchical organization, the settings in a file called settings.ini, containing the following lines:
[section1]
setting1=value1
[[section1-2]] //Notice the double brackets
setting1-2=value1-2
would be refered to as
settings:section1:setting1
and
settings:section1:section1-2:setting1-2
In a non-hierarchical structure they would be
settings:section1:setting1
and
settings:section1-2:setting1-2 (section1-2 is not a child of section1 anymore).
- Loads settings from external files, either from individual files in ASCII format or from archives containing several settings files.
- Includes support for default values for settings, both for ini and fstab settings.
- The advantage is that the actual ini and fstab files will only contain the deviations from the defaults.
- Includes support for system-wide and user-specific settings, for multi-user environments.
- A program would first load the defaults, then the system-wide settings and then the user-specific ones. Also when modifying the settings, there is a choice between doing it at user and at system level.
- Support for adding/modifying/deleting settings.
- Default support for validating the settings.
- Each ini-type setting and each fstab-type field have a validation rule in the form of a regular expression. When loading the value for that setting/field, it is being checked against the rule and only accepted if it confirms to the rule. Of course, if the user wants it she can have .* as the rule for each setting.
- Support for flushing the changes made to the settings to the external files.
- Extensive logging/debug messages.

The Castle is a first-person shooter (FPS) style game in a dark fantasy setting. Your main weapon is a sword, so the fight is mostly short-range. 3 main levels included, packed with creatures, items and sounds.

Also a bonus level, from a well-known 3D game, will be available to you from "New Game" menu once you finish the main game (you can also switch to this level from the debug menu, if youre impatient).

Understanding computer networks without performing practical experiments is really difficult, not to say it is almost impossible. Unfortunately, setting up a networking lab can be very expensive.

Netkit has been conceived as an environment for setting up and performing networking experiments at low cost and with little effort. It allows to "create" several virtual network devices (full-fledged routers, switches, computers, etc.) that can be easily interconnected in order to form a network on a single PC. Networking equipments are virtual but feature many of the characteristics of the real ones, including the configuration interface.

Netkit exploits open source software (mostly licensed under GPL) and is heavily based on the User Mode Linux (UML) variant of the linux kernel. The purpose of this project is to solve many of the difficulties and technicalities that a user could have in using UML for networking. We offer the users an easy-to-use-and-install package, which at the same time implements effective network emulation. Further, we provide a corpus of teaching material that can be used for courses at different levels.

Rippy the Aggregator project is a lightweight RSS aggregator written in vanilla PHP.
There are several Web sites (Slashdot, for instance) that I visit regularly or semi-regularly to check for the latest news; there are also several more (like, say, the EFF) that post regular updates and that Id like to visit regularly, or that would like to have me visit regularly, but which I dont visit regularly because its just too much work to keep track of all of them, and too disappointing when I remember to check and find nothing new. I even run a Web site of my own which Id like to have people check regularly - but since I dont spend time making the rounds of my friends similar sites, I cant expect them to visit mine. Rippy the Aggregator aims to solve all these problems.
There is a standard called RSS, for Web sites to publish their updates in a machine-readable format. An appropriate client can quickly visit all the Web sites youre interested in, download their updates, and present you with a customized list of all the newest items. Most "blogging", "portal", and "content management" software already generates RSS files (although its operators may be unaware of that!), and there are services like Syndic8 that compile lists of RSS "feeds". So it only remains to get an appropriate client.
That presents a problem. I hacked an RSS output onto my Web-site updating scripts, so I had that aspect covered, but then I wanted to start reading others RSS feeds, and I discovered that the client programs you can get on the Web mostly suck. Some of them are Windows-only, so those are right out. I saw one in Java that looked pretty good, but its Web site didnt provide a way to download it except through some kind of weird Hot-Buzzy-Java-Scripted-Auto-Virus-Install-Plugin-Thing - there was no actual file. I did eventually find its source code, but it required third-party libraries.
Then I looked at several RSS readers that were written in Perl or PHP and designed to run as scripts on a Web site. Those had possibilities, but they required multiple third-party libraries (Perl) or an SQL server and compiled-in PHP modules that most people dont have (PHP).
The best attempt I found was one written in Python, but in order to make it run I had to start not one but two background server daemons, which would make it tricky to use on my office computer at school. There are Web sites that provide the service of RSS reading, but they all require registration, cookies, JavaScript, etc. I couldnt find an RSS reader (or "aggregator", as theyre called) that I could just download and have it work. Thus, it was necessary to create one: enter Rippy!
The name "Rippy the Aggregator" refers to an Arrogant Worms song about a cute, cuddly little alligator who goes "chomp, chomp, chomp," down in the bottom of the swamp, swamp, swamp. Abram Hindle has suggested that Rippy the Aggregator should go "grep, grep, grep," down in the bottom of the net, net, net. Anyone wanna write the rest of the song?
Main features:
- Cute name
- Written in PHP (needs 4.3.0 or above)
- Doesnt require any compiled-in optional libraries that dont ship with PHP
- Stores its cached data in flat files, no database needed
- Freely licensed and customizable under the GNU GPL version 2
Enhancements:
- Parser ruggedness and general stability were improved, and support was added for setting options like user agent and proxying when acting as an HTTP client.

The Distributed Hardware Evolution Project allows the distribution of a genetic algorithm evolving hardware designs across the Internet by setting up an island on each clients PC which will evolve during idle time. Individuals from these islands will migrate between each other as they compete for survival.

All source code is available at Sourceforge under the projects named JaGa, DistrIT, and IslandEv. The source code is generalizable to any genetic algorithm or distributed processing task.

The Analysis & Reconstruction Sound Engine also known as ARSE, is a program that analyses a sound file into a spectrogram and is able to synthetise this spectrogram, or any other user-created image, back into a sound.
The ARSE consists in two main parts, a spectrographer with a base-2 logarithmic frequency scale, and a spectrogram synthetiser.
Unlike most spectrographers which are based on STFTs and perform the analysis by cutting the signal into small time slices to analyse these slices in the frequency domain, the ARSE is based on a filter bank followed by envelope detection, which means that the signal is cut into small frequency-domain slices, and then analysed in the time domain.
The filter bank is, as of now, made up with overlapping bandpass FIR filters defined logarithmically. Once the original signal is filtered with the filter bank, each resulting signal is sent to envelope detection.
Envelope detection in the ARSE isnt based on a Hilbert transform and peak detection, as its usually done. To achieve envelope detection, we first perform a FFT on the signal, zero-pad the beginning of the signal in the frequency domain according to a user-defined setting, then we perform an IFFT, and, now in the time domain, we turn every negative sample into a positive one, and we low-pass filter (and eventually decimate) the signal according to the same user-defined setting as we previously used.
For instance, lets say we have a signal with a sampling frequency of 44,100 Hz, and that we want to obtain an envelope for it which sampling frequency would be 100 Hz. Once we perform the FFT, we add enough zeroes in the frequency domain at the beginning of our signal so that every frequency component shifts by 50 Hz (100 Hz divided by two, it will later appear obvious why), and we perform an IFFT. Our signal now has a sampling frequency of 44,200 Hz (44,100 + 100 Hz), and the original signal which previously spanned from 0 Hz to 22,050 Hz now spans from 50 Hz to 22,100 Hz.
Now we turn every time-domain sample into its absolute value by turning every negative sample into a positive one. To perform this on a signal means that, for example, a sine wave of a certain frequency would become a signal which periodicity would be twice that frequency. Once we low-pass filter that signal to twice that frequency we obtain that signals envelope. In our case, now that we have obtained the absolute values for our signal, since the periodicity of a sine at the lowest frequency - 50 Hz - would now be 100 Hz, we only low-pass filter our signal at 100 Hz to obtain the original signals envelope. We can now decimate the signal to a sample rate of 100 Hz.
The resulting envelope for each frequency band makes the horizontal lines of the image representing the spectrogram. The amplitude of the envelopes translate linearly into intensity in the image.
The spectrogram synthetiser is based on modulation using horizontal lines of the image as envelopes. Each horizontal line is upsampled to the sampling rate of the desired final signals sampling rate, and is then modulated with, depending on the synthetisation mode chosen by the user, sines matching to the central frequency each horizontal line represents, or noise filtered through the filter bank.
Enhancements:
- Replaced fixed phase sine generation with random phase sine generation
- Changed the PRNG
- Removed the unused code
- Removed every call of nearbyint() due to compatibility issues
- Included the necessary files in order to make using ./configure && make && make install

DMines project is a dynamic version of the classic minesweeper game.
Some of the unrevealed mines change locations every set number of seconds (15 by default).
Current features include 3 levels (easy, normal, and hard), resizing of the playing field, setting the number of mines, and setting the time it takes the mines to change locations.
Main features:
- 3 levels (easy, normal, and hard).
- Resizing of the playing field.
- Setting the number of mines.
- Setting the time it takes the mines to change locations.
Enhancements:
- First public release