Software by Kai MacTane
Please Note: As of late 2003, both QuizMaster and mlm-command are fairly obsolete. QuizMaster has been supplanted by the plethora of online quiz generators; mlm-command by GNU Mailman and other mailing list packages with integrated web front-ends. Neither has undergone active development in some time, and I don’t expect them to ever be upgraded. This page is retained mostly for historical curiosity; the pages linked to below have not been updated. For more modern software of mine, please see my page of useful libraries.
The list of software projects below displays only those that I consider actual projects; naturally, as a code-competent system administrator, I’ve also done a large number of one-off scripts for all sorts of administration tasks, from user management to the ever-necessary system backups, but those aren’t really polished enough for a public release. My administrative scripts were done either in sh/bash, or in Perl for those that were more complex.
Much of my current focus is on mail filtering and spam prevention; I should have a few interesting projects to release in that field soon.
- mlm-command (Perl)
- mlm-command is a CGI API for sending commands to email mailing list managers (MLMs). It’s essentially an HTML-to-MLM gateway API, designed to provide an easy, standardized interface for Web form designers.
- QuizMaster (Perl)
- QuizMaster is a quiz engine, designed to allow easy creation of simple quizzes scored on a single-axis point-scale. A quiz designer writes up a simple text file defining the text of questions, potential answers, and point values for each answer, plus a scoring regime. Then QuizMaster does the rest — it generates the HTML, tracks answers and the person’s total number of points, and eventually presents the user with an evaluation text based on their score.
- tecindo (Perl)
- The name tecindo means “writer” in Quenya, the “High-Elven” language invented by J.R.R. Tolkien. Just as English is normally written in the Roman alphabet, Quenya is often written in the tengwar characters (the “Elvish runes” also devised by Tolkien, and seen on the One Ring). tecindo transliterates Quenya from the Roman alphabet into tengwar. It requires version 1.9d of Dan Smith’s Tengwar font, "Tengwar Quenya", which is likely to already be installed by tecindo’s intended user base (linguistically-adept Tolkien fans).
If you like (or hate) my software, you may also be interested in some of my coding philosophies, or in how I quit worrying and learned to accept my own geek-hood. You can also read my resume.