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WebWasher
An excellent free utility from Siemens who were clearly taking a momentary break from designing increasingly cool looking dishwashers. It most effectively eats all advertisements and helps prevent those mindless pop-up windows too. Rather tricky to set up because it works as a virtual proxy running on your machine, but highly recommended.
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Forms Suck!
Its amazing how worked up some people get about a technology that is so crap that a certain web site seems to think it has something of intellectual property just by allowing you to type your details in only once. Imagine what your users would say if you wrote a VB form that was as dumb and primitive as any web form you've ever seen?

Anyway, I much prefer when they assign a GUID to me behind my back and then track everything I do without telling me :)

The Web Developer's Virtual Library
Like CodeGuru for the Internet. Foolishly giving away a bible's worth of information on the subject of XML, HTML, Java etc etc, this isn't as funny or stylish as WebMonkey but it does have better technical content.

NTK
The most bitter and sarcastic UK news update I've ever seen. Also by far the best. Visit and get the newsletter delivered now. Sample news item (*true*)

"We don't make these investments to get a return," said Andersen spokesman Andrew Giangola. "We make them because we want to be involved in a hot and exciting online business."
here ...perhaps not the management consultancy you'd paid good money for...
Also, you might want to write to the author to tell him the amazing news about how it is even possible to have graphics on the Internet these days (or so I've heard).

Lego Mindstorms
In our efforts to discover increasingly unlikely sites with Visual Basic coverage we are informed of this one, which includes a Visual Basic SDK for programming the RCX language which in turn is used to instruct the electronic control unit for some super-cool Lego Droids, Robots and Vehicles. I want one!

MonkeyDex
The MonkeyDex is a unique internet stock index, created by persuading Raven, a six year old chimp, to throw darts at a board listing 133 Internet stocks. Raven’s picks have increased 55 per cent in the last six months and the Monkeydex creators are now looking for 1,000 competitors to test their skills against the primate. Try your luck!

Beating a dart throwing monkey is always going to be tricky. So if you want the added advantage of competing against people who think they know what they're doing (always a certain route to failure in the stock market :) then try competing against some fellow humans.

WinGrep
Its always nice to get your hands on a master-of-one-trade program that has a nice small download! This one searches and replaces in files across multiple directories. Apparently its based on a tool for some other operating system called something like "UNIX" but I haven't heard of it.

The GIF Controversy - A Software Developer's Perspective
This article describes the Unisys LZW patent which effectively rules out writing GIF files from your application. Well, at least until the year 2003, when the patent expires! And did you know that IBM patented exactly the same algorithm 3 weeks before Unisys, but the US patent office failed to recognise the similarity? Read about this and more...

VB and Pet Shop site
There cannot be very many sites which offer advanced VB source code and a full pet shop as well. This is an example.
Do you have or know of a site which incidentally covers hardcore VB tips whilst nevertheless being devoted to an unrelated subject? Please send me!

Abstract World's "Close Approach"
The first (they say, anyway!) 3D accelerated space shoot 'em up action game developed in VB and Direct3D. Pilot your ship in true 3D space and destroy the asteroids before they collide with Earth. No source code, but it shows you what you can do! Check it out - free demo and cheap to buy also. Winner of a PC magazine software award.

Carl & Gary’s Visual Basic Home Page
Back again after being away (well, not actually away, but a little neglected) for over a year, this is an enormous VB site. In fact its so enormous that I've yet to find anything there! If, however, you don't have a brain the size of a small walnut like me you're bound to find something. Perhaps. Party like its 1994!

The Onion
Undoubtedly America's Finest News Source. "Roof Of Mouth In Serious Condition Following Cap'n Crunch Consumption"



Practical VB
Actually nothing to do with VB at all, this site is devoted to V Bernardelli's handguns. But in the interests of completeness...

  Selected "Accelerator" Related Resources

Royal Trux: Accelerator
Royal Trux "they believed in sex and looking good, with their own brand of music" did me the great honour of naming their 1998 release after vbAccelerator. Unfortunately due to a misunderstanding between their cover artist and the printers, the vb bit was missed out). Accelerator is a super-raw and quite different indie rock record which sounds damn good to me. Scored number 8 in the NME Top 50 Albums of the Year so read their more pretentious review there. (My personal favourite from their selection for 1998 was MDK's "Open Transport", in with a bullet at number 43 . 31 tracks(!) sliding between Aphex Twin distortion noises, jazz, Hip Hop, thrash metal and various tunes with murderous intent. This record was only bettered this year by the UK compilation "DJ Pogo Presents The Breaks" which has without question the finest rendering of the Beatle's "Back in the USSR" I have ever heard.)

Acceleration Convertor
Convert acceleration from various useless units to other, less useful ones.

Physics 1 Kinematics Notes: Velocity vs. Acceleration
A short teaching style example illustrating quite nicely the patronising "Build em up, Tear em down" type of teaching which was to build vbAccelerator's author into the quivering nervous wreck incapable of answering the simplest question he is today.

JP Accelerator
Less is clearly more at this site.

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Copyright © 1998-1999, Steve McMahon ( steve@vbaccelerator.com). All Rights Reserved.
Last updated: 25 November 1998