Hello- Welcome to the second installment, the second in just under a year, of the news and latest in my programming career. This output my seem a little paucitous for a site, and indeed an individual, who claims to have, if not exactly mastered, but engulfed the language of pascal to the extent that little of it falls outside their auspices, but I assure you that several of the items featured in the four new articles accessible to the left contain coding of an order unprecedented in much of my earlier work, and some have applications which could actually be viewed by some as practically useful. The first offering is a breakthrough in another way as well, as it features my first functional offering written in 32-bit protected mode code for the Freepascal compiler, which has now largly become the favoured option for the application of pascal code on XP platforms (any DOS interupts are essentially nonfunctional under XP, which renders many of the more complex Turbo programs unusable). The Directdraw graphical engine for Freepascal is a complete graphical toolkit for high resolution, 16-bit graphical work on a directdraw surface, with all routines scripted in pure assembly language and mind-blowingly fast. Anyone considering high-speedindependent graphical programming should investigate. Both of these qualification apply with fullest force to the third of my featured projects, the knattily and catchily named biochemical rate equation generator based upon the King-Altman method of mechanism analysis. The function of this program, which despite its marginal audience (pascal programming biochemists, anyone?) and strictly academic use (although there is something very aesthetically pleasing in watching it factorise) contains some of the most sophisticated code I have ever written, is to generate a model rate equation as based upon an enzymatically catalysed chemical reaction mechanism, entered into the application. By applying an algebraic (the original King-Altman method is, in fact, geometric, but this kind of procedure is notoriously difficult to render in any language, let alone Delphi) algorithm to the variable names entered, the program will generate a full rate equation, and even factorise the denominator to make transformation of the equation into a form with physical significance more simple. If you have no knowledge of biochemistry, enzyme kinetics or rate equations, then this program could still be of interest due to its noel way of solving a 'branching tree' problem (ie one where each procedure can branch into 2 or more sub-procedures, themselves versions of the main procedure which can then branch again, ad infinitum), by using a rather simple and elegant procedure that calls itself, resulting in several procedures with the same name, with a bunch of local variables also with the same name being resident in memory. Brain-aching to write and light on the eye, take a look at the rate generator opposite. Another breakthrough was achieved in another field, this one more suited to the usual content of the programming section: 3D vector models. The unpromisingly titled Ramachandran digram generator encompasses a fully rotating and manipulating accurate 3D model of a peptide bond in poly-L-alanine, glycine, serine and phenylalanine respectively, and will generate a diagram depicting which conformation, according to the angles of the two bonds with free rotation, are thermodynamically feasible, based upon the Van-der-Waals non-bonding interactions that occur. This is a chemically accurate model that uses vector maths (rotation etc) in 3D to rotate and move parts of the molecule, and again is (highly) biochemically relevant, investigating as it does the most important bond, in, well, the world. Very briefly, the scrabble engine employs some of the finest logical AI programming I've incorporated into an application. Written in delphi, the engine can investigate every possible combination in less than 2 seconds, and play the best. Despite my obstreperous lexicon, it pounds me every time. I hope you extract some enjoyment from these jotting and sketches- Thanks,

Jon, 15th December 2004