While running the light board at City Center Theater, I saw that there was a crying need for the first two utilities on this page. Since I had already learned how to read an Obsession© show file, it seemed like "peekoboo" should be very easy to write. Since many of my jobs have been in "service organizations", like The Joyce Theater and City Center Theater, it seemed logical to give away something that was little work for me. I happened to be learning Borland C++ Builder ("BCB"). Because BCB generates so much of the code for you, it actually took only about 8 hours to write the program. That's no tribute to my skills, but rather to the "Rapid Application Development" scheme of BCB.
"patchcsv" took longer. But I realized that the freeware might attract paying customers for modestly priced products of use to the same people. Of course, it takes much longer to write something that you charge money for; I hope you'll come back to this site in two months to see if there's something useful enough to buy. I'll be sketching out some ideas for products under the heading "Software Development Ideas." I may not get to all of them. You are welcome to submit ideas, but do remember that I'm the only guy here, and I have a full-time job already.
If these free utilities save you a lot of time or trouble, please let me know. I'd like to learn that they turned out to be as useful as I imagined they would be.
The software for sale will require registration of some kind. I hope you don't believe that all software should be free: www.pslweb.com/history.htm. I also don't believe that being in a profession where few people get rich (i.e. show business) entitles you to pirate software: lrs.ed.uiuc.edu/wp/crime/d-stone2/piracy.html. If you imagine that someone, somewhere, is getting rich on theatrical software, forget about it. Remember that I have to ask myself just how hard I should work on a program that might sell only a few copies. In the unlikely event that I take in enough software money in the next year to pay my AT&T Worldnet bill (my ISP), I will cheerfully tithe 10% of my gross receipts to The Actors Fund, and post the amount here. (By the way, that charity serves anyone in show business, not just actors.)
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