Maggie Owens' Home Page

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Last updated 12/08/04.

Protect your rights to use digital media! See http://www.digitalconsumer.org

If it was important enough to mean an update to my home page, it must be *really* important!!!

You may or may not be the 50742nd visitor to this page. This entire site is now available at www.maggieowens.com, but that switch has messed up some of my counters. I hope to figure out a way to fix that soon.

TmoDBNav 1.2 available here! This is the new version for Delphi 1, 2 and 3.

Table of Contents


Other "main" pages in this site

+ My Delphi pages. With links to free utilities and TmoDBNav.
+ My scuba pages (updated 12/08/04.)
+ Notes from my Assembler class

Table of Contents for this page

* International greetings
* Who is Maggie, anyway?
* Links of general interest
* How do you get to Carnegie Hall?
* How I did it

Keep scrolling for the rest of this page...

*** UNDER CONSTRUCTION ***

Always under construction (is a web site ever finished?). I've reorganized what is becoming (to me) an enormous array of pages for maintenance and usability. My future plans include adding tables for formatting, and perhaps just one or two frames for usability. Let me know what you think!

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

I have noticed that I've had a pretty international set of visitors. Like your typical stupid American, I don't speak any foreign languages fluently. But I like to include a "hello" or "welcome" in many different languages. (Please send me yours!) So far I have:

Represent your country! In the last month or so, I have had hits from the following countries: Austria, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Belarus, Canada, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Germany, Denmark, Spain, Finland, France, Greece, Croatia (Hrvatska), Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Malaysia, Netherlands, Norway, New Zealand (Aotearoa), Poland, Portugal, Russia, Sweden, Singapore, USSR (former), United Kingdom, South Africa and of course, United States.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Here's a little about me:

I develop database applications using Borland's Delphi (Borland has changed its name, by the way, to Inprise. Nowadays, I'm doing mostly 32­bit development (finally!), but there's still lots of 16­bit work to be done. Before Delphi, I was developing applications in ObjectPAL (Paradox for Windows), PAL (Paradox for DOS) and dBase with the occasional C applet here and there. I also teach Delphi. I live in the Chelsea section of New York City and I work in Hoboken, NJ. (If you want to send me personal or TmoDBNav­related mail, please send it to mmowens at panix dot com, and not my mailto link at The Burgiss Group.) I created the pages, but can't take credit for too much of the content ­ it was a group effort! These pages were also my first venture into frames. I keep hoping to do the same with my own pages, but just can't find the time.

Component creation is one of my favorite Delphi activities, tied with fiddling with RunTime Type Information. Recently I managed to write a procedure that copies all the property values from one component to another of the same type. That was cool. (Insert Beavis & Butthead sound effects here.)

My Delphi Tip of the Moment has moved to its own location. Check it out!

If you are looking for my DBNavigator, follow this link for information and to download the TmoDBNav.

It seems that although I'm just a lowly programmer, I spend lots of time working on web pages. It goes in fits and starts. Nickers International makes vitamin supplements for pets (dogs, cats, birds, rabbits and so on), horses and people. In creating these pages, I tried to make them as friendly to a variety of browsers as possible (like mine, I check them using Netscape (my browser of choice), MSIE and finally lynx. Just recently, though, I spruced them up with a little java. Don't ask me any java questions, I have no idea what I'm doing! I'm currently in the process of making a major perl effort on the order form. It was going along fairly smoothly for a novice like me ­­ until they upgraded the web server. Now everything's broken!

In my free time, I watch Star Trek (my favorite is the Next Generation, but since they're not making that anymore, it's a pretty close tie between DS9 and Voyager). Don't call me when any Star Trek is on, because I won't answer the phone. There are those who hate any Star Trek that's not the original, and others who go as far as liking Next Gen, but not DS9 or Voyager. Maybe that's because they're too busy memorizing silly trivia and not enjoying the show for what it is ­­ just plain fun!

I also like to scuba dive. I am revamping my dive pages. Check out what I've done so far!

I also like to read science fiction, fantasy and thrillers with an occasional splash of "real literature" to better educate myself. From my recent reading list, I recommend, Brother Termite, by Patricia Anthony. It's one of the most original new SF books I've read in a long time. I also recommend Red Mars and Green Mars, by Kim Stanley Robinson. It's about colonization of Mars, with well­­deserved great reviews from the NY Times Book Review, Arthur C. Clarke, and many others. I am eagerly awaiting the release of Blue Mars in paperback. (It's not that I'm too cheap to buy the hardcover, but hardcover books don't fit well into the outside pocket of my laptop bag!)

Current favorite movie: Star Wars. (Are you surprized?) Previous favorite movie Blue in the Face. (I do have interests outside of SF!)

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Here are some links of general interest

Also, check out the links at the bottom of the page for the tools I use to do all my web development.

+Gamelan contains all the java stuff you need to get started. Even Sun recognizes it as one of the best Java resources.
+Panix (Public Access Internet and Unix) has been my Internet service provider for the past three years. I learned my little bit of Unix on Panix. Panixians are an interesting group. Check out their web pages at @panix
+Nonags Freeware (this actually links to a mirror) provides lots of cool freeware for Windows 16, 95 and NT. A good choice if you want to be sure you won't have to pay. I've found lots of good stuff there.
+My friend Doug Morse is a filmmaker. Recently, Tony and I got to be extras in his film, Men Under Water. My mother (see below) has written music for two of his films.
+My mother is an internationally published and performed composer. Recent performances include a concert at Fundacao de Serralves in Porto, Portugal by pianist Francisco Montiero and the Buell C. Lipa Festival at the University of Iowa in late October. Upcoming: a new work to be premiered by The Merling Trio (piano, violin and cello) at Carnegie Recital Hall, Feb. 1998. Also in 1998, performances (including a premiere) by the Cann sisters from England.
+ Pat Fish's Tattoo Santa Barbara. She made a stunning contribution to my left arm last year. Even if tattooing isn't your thing, you'll love the art!
+ Andy Cohen, friend and my personal Perl advisor. Check out his thoughts on Microsoft and its relationship to Star Trek.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Anyone know how can I get this handy bug­zapper to work on my code?


Turns out, chameleons are pretty good bug­zappers, too, but they don't work on code at all. I will eventually put a picture of one of Tony's chameleons here. For the time being, here's a Parson's chameleon.

The tools I used to do this are:

HomeSite Maintained with HomeSite (written in Delphi 2.0!)

HTMLib Cool help file without which I'd have to keep a ream of printouts on hand

HTML Validator HTML syntax­checker without which I'd shoot myself

This page looks best when viewed with Netscape Navigator. Netscape

or best experienced with Microsoft Internet Explorer Click here to start.


[Back to the top] [Table of Contents]

©1996 Maggie Owens.