Download Free Utility Programs

We have begun developing useful utility programs that you can use as long as you want for free. As more become available, we'll add them to this page. Check back occasionally!

In addition, we've also developed some software for educators. You can get more details on these packages.

Free 2024 Calendar

I've made a 2024 calendar in a narrow strip for the top of your computer monitor. Very handy! Just download the PDF file, print it, and tape it to your monitor. Some printing tips:

Legal size paper works best--standard paper gives a calendar that is a little smaller.
Set your printer to its best print quality, and color output.

Credit Card Payment Reminder program

Download the free Credit Card Reminder program version 1.1 (1679 KB). Includes install and uninstall support.

This program helps to eliminate late charges and fees by reminding you to pay your credit cards in a timely manner. With our busy lives, it is easy to forget a payment--especially if you have several cards that come due at different times of the month. Once you have entered the relevant dates for your credit cards, the program will automatically check when payments become due and show a reminder screen on your computer indicating which cards need your attention.

Create depth of field charts for your point-and-shoot or SLR camera.

Download the free Depth of Field Table program (1576 KB). Includes install and uninstall support.

Enter the focal length of your lens, the circle of confusion (hints are given for this value), choose a range of distances and the range of f-stops your lens has. Then click "Create chart" and you will see a table of the ranges of sharp focus for this lens.

Merge the tracks from a multiple CD set into a single sequence

Download the free MergeCDs program (803 KB). Includes install and uninstall support.

When you download a multi-disc set to your MP3 player, the player considers each disc as a separate album. You can't shuffle songs from the whole thing unless you create a separate playlist. It is even worse with audio books, as the track names, genres, disc titles, and even the artists' names are sometimes inconsistent from one disc to the next, so your player may not go from one disc to the next properly.

In addition, the track names ("song" names) on audio books are often meaningless (such as "aa", "ab", "ac", or "Track 1", "Track 2", etc.). The display on my car MP3 player only shows the artist and song name for what's playing, and I'd rather see the name of the book than the meaningless track name.

This program merges all of the tracks of a multi-disc set into a single sequence of tracks, as if they originally came from one enormous CD. This makes it more convenient to play the entire set on your MP3 player, and when you shuffle-play the album, the player will shuffle through the tracks from all of the discs. In addition, the tracks for audio books are renamed to display the book title plus the disc and track number. When we listen to audio books on our Ford (using Ford's Sync system), the display shows useful information and the book plays from start to finish, in order, all by itself.

Convert GPX files to CSV format for your GPS

Download the free gpx2csv program (393 KB). Includes install and uninstall support.

Some GPS units allow you to load your own Points of Interest (POIs). But some units, like mine, require that they be in a CSV (comma separated values) file. Many web sites (such as the Finger Lakes Trail: www.fingerlakestrail.org) offer downloads of POIs that are in GPX format. This program reads the waypoints (POIs) in a GPX file and creates a CSV file containing the same information.

Merge GPX files together

Download the free MergeGPX program (397 KB). Includes install and uninstall support.

Some programs that deal with GPX files allow you to load the contents of two or more files. However, some do not--one case in point is Garmin's MapSource. If you would like to work with tracks from two or more GPX files in MapSource, this program will merge them together so that all of the data can be loaded at once.

Gas Price Calculator

Download the free Gas Price Calculator (410 KB). Includes install and uninstall support.

Ever wonder if it is really worth it to drive farther in order to buy gas for a few cents less per gallon? This free Gas Price Calculator will tell you. Just enter how much gas you want to buy, the price for gas at both stations, how much farther you must drive to get the cheaper gas, and your mileage. Then click the Calculate button to see your answer! What could be easier?

CRC Calculator

Download the free CRC Calculator utility (405 KB). Includes install and uninstall support.

The CRC Calculator is used to see if the contents of a file have changed. This is particularly useful if you must do something to a file that might accidentally change it, such as storing it on a floppy disk for a long time or sending it over a network or phone line to another computer.

The program computes a CRC (Cyclic Redundancy Check) value for a file. This value depends on the contents of the file, so any changes to the file will change its CRC value.

To use the program, you first compute the CRC value for the file you're interested in, and write it down. Then do whatever you want to do with the file, and compute the CRC value again. If the new value is different than the old one, the file's contents have changed.

Octal Dump

Download the free octal dump utility (72 KB). Save it in your C:\windows\system32 folder.

Have you ever wondered what a particular file contains? You can find out with the Octal Dump program (called "od"). od prints the contents of a file in any of four unambiguous formats: 8 bit characters, 16 bit words in octal, 16 bit words in decimal, or 16 bit words in hexadecimal. Each line of output begins with an offset in the file (shown in either octal, decimal, or hexadecimal), followed by the 16 bytes that begin at that offset. The data bytes are shown in the format you have selected.

After saving this program in your C:\windows\system32 folder, start a command prompt window and type "od" (without the quotation marks). You will see instructions on how to run the program.

End of Line Converter

Download the free end-of-line conversion utility (75 KB). Save it in your C:\windows\system32 folder.

Each line in a text file on a computer ends with an "end of line" sequence of special characters. However, these sequences are different for different types of computers. For PC's, the sequence is "carriage return, line feed". For Unix systems, the sequence is "line feed" (though in the Unix world, the line feed character is called "newline"). This program, called "eol", reads a text file and converts the end of line sequence to either PC-style or Unix-style; the resulting data is written to a new file.

After saving this program in your C:\windows\system32 folder, start a command prompt window and type "eol" (without the quotation marks). You will see instructions on how to run the program.

Head

Download the free head utility (75 KB) that prints the first few lines of a text file. Save it in your C:\windows\system32 folder.

This utility shows you the first few lines of a text file. For those who often work in a command prompt window, this is a great way to see what is in a file without having to open notepad or some other editing program.

After saving this program in your C:\windows\system32 folder, start a command prompt window and type "head" (without the quotation marks). You will see instructions on how to run the program.