Lawlor Development

Mac Programming Page

I learned to program on the Macintosh, a beleagured but recovering computer platform of late. I still prefer the hardware and software superiority of the Mac; but most of my programming nowadays is done on other platforms.

COS

Someday. Someday, when I have found a way to fit 18 hours of class, 10 hours of programming, and 12 hours of sleep into a single day, you may see a real, downloadable Mac 3D app here. This is not vaporware: it actually exists, in the form of about 10,000 lines of buggy C++, with an equal quantity remaining to be written. Right now, I'm still working of the preliminaries to coolness (multithreading; tight, reliable, quick graphics routines; UI standardization; platform independence), while occasionally indulging myself and writing one of the really cool things we all dream about programming (like a little, functional 'net app).

A little, functional 'net app:

My girlfriend is an avid writer, and enjoys corrosponding with fellow writers via the internet with her world-builders newsgroup. The problem is, however, that she doesn't have a computer. Luckily I the boyfriend came to the rescue with...

the Tiny VT100 Application

It's small, it's fast, and best of all, it runs on the Mac 128K I had lying around.

It's a shockingly simple program which does nothing other than turn the printer port of your Mac/PowerMac into a VT100 terminal, perfectly suited for surfing the 'net. Best of all, it's free. You can get the source code of the guts of the emulator.

Some Encryption

Encryption has been a fascination of mine lately, and hence I wrote a 30K app that runs in 35K of memory which can password-encrypt 250K of data per second on my Mac IIsi. It's also accellerated for PowerMac (heck, it only added 8K to the file- why not), but since I don't have a PowerMac, I can't test it out. I'd appriciate it if you'd download it, because it's quick, secure, and in need of PowerMac testing. So just click here if you'd like to download...

Encryptinator for the Mac/PowerMac, v1.00 Beta



And don't worry-- it's not "guiltware" (shareware); it's "reputationware". It's only a 30K download, so please take it. Instructions: drag a file or files to the encryptor. Let go.

Unless, of course, you don't live in the United States. The US Customs service has been feeling rather frisky lately in prosecuting programmers who write very strong encryption programs. Though Encryptinator probably doesn't qualify as that, for it only uses a 32-bit password key, which is by today's standards fairly weak, I still fear the feds (I am a Republican, after all). Never fear the safety of your data, though, because it would require several days of supercomputer time to crack any one message, not trillions of years like the "secure" programs. It's still strong enough for we mere mortals (I think). If you have data that you really fear somebody with infinite resources might want to get into, don't even store it on a computer (or buy a commercial encryption product with a guarentee and years of testing). But if you want software that's tiny, fast, and impossible for me, the author to crack (without your password, of course); this is your app.

You can check out the body of the encryption code (C++) by following this link. See: it's secure enough that I'll publish the algorithm. I'd appriciate your comments, suggestions, etc. on this code, and may incorporate any changes into the next version. I'd particularly like to hear about security holes (the remainder of the program is not directly encryption-related: it deals with reading in the dropped file or files piece-by-piece and writing out the data).

Orion Sky Lawlor, olawlor@acm.org, circa 1997
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