Welcome to the sci-fi fantasy electronic and alternative opera... I'm a secular Atheist/Agnostic that leans toward Buddhism and Taoism, but I do eat meat and fish. Chicken, pork and seafood mostly, but every once in a while I eat beef. I don't play guitar and I've never owned a guitar in my life, but they certainly sound good in the hands of a skilled player. Nobody has black skin, and nobody has white skin and no two people have *exactly* the same skin colour and that's a scientific fact: *everyone* has an entirely unique skin colour.

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Downloads [April 8, 2026!]

Windows Software


Shhhh! Digital Media Old School
Scrolling Text and 2D Boids style Flocking Demo [2021]


I wrote this updated version of my very first scrolling text demo entry into the world of "underground" coding as an exercise to get me in touch with the character Zheng Ni Wong from my books and stories Butterfly Dragon and A Lady's Prerogative III: Singularity. With Zheng Ni Wong being a computational biologist, I thought it would be neat to add the Boids-like fish, who follow a limited parametric design that yields their flocking behaviour. If you try this demo, when you move the mouse on screen, the fish will, if they're close enough to it, try to follow it, though I gave them enough autonomy for it to be semi-reactive behaviour, following some ideas I tried to integrate into Zheng Ni Wong's understanding of biological simulation.


Dirbs as I call this demo (a play on the word birds), is a graphics demo containing a very simple playfield using sprites and scrolling text that I modeled after the code I wrote about thirty-eight years ago (from 2026) that earned me a place in the coder scene back at that time. The original code was a cludge between Turbo Pascal/Turbo C, using fixed point math (most CPUs in those days lacked onboard floating point hardware, ie 386SX, the pseudo 32 bit/16-bit hybrid CPU, versus its more advanced 386DX counterpart). 


There wasn't any flocking simulation in the original old school demo I wrote back then, though AI programming for video games often yielded systematic behaviours, though it was Craig Reynolds  who formalized this when he published his famous Boids paper [University of Toronto]. 


Craig created the early CGI effects for the Tim Burton movie: Batman Returns. My original graphics  demo had a very cool sinusoidal scrolling text effect that I achieved with SIN tables quantized for accuracy on a 320x200 raster display (Mode 13h VGA). 


It seemed very complex back then, but is very trivial now with all of the coding tools and APIs there are. I used GameMaker to write this modern version of the demo, so there was no having to hand craft a font grid and its corresponding masks like I had to in the old days, so that I could BLiT (BLock Transfer) the font sprites directly to screen memory (after restoring the background from the previous frame using the masks to reduce the total pixels written to the graphics hardware per frame) from the text string, via lookup tables. The original code ran with minimal math on the CPU, completely relying upon lookup tables, addition and multiplication. Calculating divisions back then was notoriously slow compared to addition/multiplication, hence everything was achieved via invert and multiply. All profiling back then was achieved through onscreen debug print lines and text file logs, which were  then omitted in the final compilation (via conditional defines).


In all truth, it was a pain in the ass compared to what we have today, especially in terms of APIs, perhaps the single greatest software advance in history, aside from Lady Lovelace's realization of the fact that the patterns used in weaving looms were actually the archetype for what would become the basis of all software programming. Object orientation, event driven programming and modern integrated development environments are certainly up there in terms of advances, not to mention the very specialized development IDEs like GameMaker, Unreal Engine, Unity and one of my personal favourites, Delphi, given its long standing history, it essentially having originated as Borland Pascal, with support for object orientation, and a minimal system library. It eventually gained the addition of a Pascal based Windows Framework called VCL (Visual Component Library) which was a visual component based framework and direct competitor with both Visual Studio's MFC (Microsoft Foundation Classes) and Visual Basic's ActiveX components. However, Delphi had the advantage of being a native compiler, producing x86 machine code executables without heavy duty reliance on runtime dynamic link libraries. I find that both the modern versions of Visual Studio and Delphi are both excellent tools, and have so many new bells and whistles that there almost isn't enough time to get to them all. Thank goodness for AI though, because it makes that process much easier. Also, keep in mind that many of these advances that we enjoy today were built originally on the back of Unix, Vax VMS and CP/M, all three of which serve as the foundation of all operating systems and the underlying programming languages that were used to write them, or that were bundled with them in the early days of ARPAnet.


For Linux and Mac users, this should run under CrossOver or WINE/WINESKIN.


DirbsRelease.exe
WinXP/Vista/Win7/Win8/Win8.1/Win10 32-bit installer 1.4.1.144 Download
MD5 Checksum: EDA795CEC234D355E57701D2A5152C68


If you really like graphics demos, and you have an NVidia graphics card, I suggest that you check out their graphics demo archive.


Remember, a lot of the great graphics that you see today would not have been possible without the dedication and contribution of the demo and party scene [scene.org]


Shhhh! Digital Media NIC Nix


Nic Nix is a simple utility that once installed, stays resident in your Windows tray area (bottom right). After configuring the utility, whenever you leave your computer idle for the time specified, Nic Nix will disable the network connections you select, and re-enable them whenever you use the mouse or keyboard.


Current Version: Network Connection Scheduler 1.4.1.144

Latest Version

WinXP/Vista/Win7/Win8/Win8.1/Win10 32-bit installer 1.4.1.144 Download
MD5 Checksum: B671D8CEB488872FF7AF910B1C696739


Send feedback, support issues and feature requests to brian.joseph.johns@shhhhdigital.com




Shhhh! Digital IP Monitor


A very simple tool that allows you to track and log changes to your Public IP Address, which might occur if you're on a provider that uses DHCP for your IP address allocation, or if someone is externally tampering with your IP address setup. Logs all changes and their time and date. It includes the Delphi source code too.

Updates


 - 1.3.4.126 

Fixed http error message during minor OS http service interruptions (which are common)

Logging now works correctly and log file can be found in Data directory off the install location
      
Added menu elements for setting the update interval
      
Removed Run On Windows Startup checkbox from interface
      
Placed Windows Startup interface in menus
      
Run on startup now operates correctly on program startup

 - 1.1.3.144
              
Added run at startup option
              
Cleaned up credits
              
Hovering over the IP Monitor tray icon shows public IP
              
Various miscellaneous fixes

 - 1.0.2.108   

Fixed error writing log to Program Files (x86) folder. It now saves the log to Documents\Shhhh! Digital IP Monitor

 - 1.0.1.99    

Initial release

WinXP/Vista/Win7/Win8/Win8.1/Win10 32 installer and application 1.3.4.126 Download
MD5: B24D6B7D6743E9C3A42E033D7B2C9F42


Note: the aircraft below will soon be replaced with the Gripen J39 E-Series, though I will keep both downloads available.

The new Gripen will be drawing upon the earlier work of JonathanRL and JuanchoGomez of CombatAce, though I'll be updating their versions of the Gripen to include the new increased payload  stations (from the C's 7 to D's 11), the Raven ES-05 advanced radar system. It will also include the Canadian 401 Tactical Fighter Group's insignia of course the same Canadian label that has appeared on our strike fighter jet fleet since the 1960s.

Canadian F-35A Lightning II And 401 Tactical Fighter Group for Strike Fighters 2: Operation Darius


As many of you know I'm a fan of many things, but aviation is high on my list. Especially jet fighter technology. As such, I'm a fan of flight simulators and anything with an aerospace twist to it. 

Being Canadian, I crafted this mod for the military flight simulator/flight trainer Strike Fighters 2. It requires both Strike Fighters 2 by Thirdwire, and a working installation of the Operation Darius mod to use. It allows you to fly the F-35A Lightning II when running Single Combat Missions or Campaign Missions as the Canadian Forces. It also includes the proper Canadian textures for the F-35A and the Canadian 401 Tactical Fighter Group.

For more details read the post at Combat Ace and download the file there, or from my site directly below:


Canadian F-35A Lightning II And 401 Tactical Fighter Group for Strike Fighters 2: Operation Darius  Download

Font Spy


Font Spy is a Windows font browser that allows artists to preview fonts in their own words and work. The latest version of Font Spy is integrated into the latest version of Shhhh! For Windows (v1.0.108.144). As of this writing Shhhh! For Windows is not available for download. Perhaps in the future I'll release it to the public, but until then you can use this standalone version of Font Spy.

WinXP/Vista/Win7/Win8/Win8.1/Win10 32-bit installer and application Download



A Lady's Prerogative Skyrim Special Edition (v0.4.1)


This is a mod I initially created for Bethesda's Skyrim which featured some of the spells and factions I'd designed for the A Lady's Prerogative novels. I ended up developing the whole concept into a much more encompassing though still limited mod.

Since that time I've converted the mod for use in Skyrim Special Edition, even cleaning up some of the Night Wytch spells to work much better with the new graphics capabilities in the Special Edition.

Currently there are only a few spell books available at some of the vendors throughout Skyrim that will allow the player to learn some spells from the Order Of The Night Wytch.

Its not much, but was a great place to throw around some ideas about how something related to A Lady's Prerogative could be implemented into an interactive format.


Enjoy!

Requires: Skyrim Special Edition on Windows. A Lady's Prerogative Skyrim v0.4.1 Download
MD5 Checksum: 063BB2CEFD406146D63F1DAB02694C34


More to come...

Copyright © 2024 Brian Joseph Johns