This clock-like device was the first applet I ever wrote (as the
source no doubt shows):
My second applet
(actually a family of applets) is educational and presents a
small program (in Ada) and allows the user to reorder the statements and
execute the resulting code. The applet was rated in the top 5% by
JARS for August 1996 (B090827-1).
You should enable Javascript as well since I use
it to automatically update solution choices for new problems. Unless you
can make your browser window about 870x870, it's going to be hard to use.
Finally, here's the
source if you are interested.
I became interested in the topic of my third
applet while looking into one
of the proposed fixes for the impending Y2K problem, the use of Julian Dates.
Julian Dates count the number of days since 1 Jan 4713 BC. I have
found them to be a more sensible way of communicating time and have
become a convert to the point that I plan to start using Julian Dates
on paperwork and the like. One complaint that I can imagine is that it would
be too difficult to compare such large numbers and thus to get a feeling for
time periods. Julian Dates, however, are often written as JD 245 1159
(10 Dec 1998) with groups of ten thousands days representing a single myriad.
Since a myriad is approximately 27.4 years, recognizing that we are in the
first part of the 245th myriad and that WWII was started at the beginning of
the 243rd myriad gives substantially more time period awareness than simply
saying that they occurred in different halves of the 20th century AD.
A simple up and down counter was my fourth
applet. I know this has been done many times before, but when a
colleague asked me for an applet that would do this I figured it would
take about as long to write it as to go searching for one. The parameters
allow you to set the colors, starting values, increment size, and the time
period between increments (in milliseconds).
