Zachary Blair's Website

Programming

Screenshot of Entropy being run from a Windows XP command prompt.

Entropy Utility

This utility analyses a specified file, and determines the average amount of information provided per byte, in bits. It then divides this amount by 8 bits to arrive at the efficiency of the encoding, as a percentage.

Using this utility, you can observe that files that have some compression, like JPEG images, MP3's, or ZIP'd files have very high efficiency ratings, while files that are not compressed, like bitmap files or text files, often have much lower efficiency ratings.

Download the Entropy Utility

This program has been tested on Windows XP. You can download the .zip file here.

Cube saver screenshot

Cube Screensaver

This was an experiment of mine in OpenGL. It's a simple screensaver that places three 256x256 24-bit bitmap images on three rotating cubes that bounce around your screen. The images are easily changable by replacing the provided image files: first.bmp, second.bmp, and third.bmp.

Download the Cube Screensaver

This program has been tested on Windows XP. You can download the .zip file here.

Intro to Perl for C++ Programmers

This is a short tutorial I wrote as an introduction to the Perl programming language, tailored for readers who are familiar with C++ or C.

View the Perl for C Programmers Tutorial

Perl CPAN modules

I've uploaded a few simple Perl modules to CPAN (the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network) that you can download in use in your own Perl projects.

Zachary Blair - search.cpan.org

©2010 Zachary Blair