This was written as a quick project for a colleague in the Biology Department. It can be used to count up or down by a specified step size at predetermined intervals from an initial starting point. I'm sure this has been done many times before, but I was to lazy to look for it on the web.
Here's an example that counts up:
And here's one that counts down:
This applet/application has been written to be an applet (as seen above) and an application rolled up into the same code. When run as an application it presents itself in its own window appearing as the above applet does. Here's the source code if you are interested.