DLMax

As long as I can remember I’ve been busy by taking things apart (according to my parents it started at about the age of 4). The first years I wasn’t able to put these things together again, but as time went by I got the hang of it and was putting things back the way they belonged. In these early years the things I took apart where just simple mechanical things like those alarm clocks with big bells on top.

At the age of 8 or 9 some of my friends had “Technical Lego”; so I wanted that too. Instead I got “Fischer Technik” elements from my parents. This was and still is much more versatile (and expensive) stuff for boy’s (and even grown-ups!). I’ve been constructing a lot of devices that used motors, lights etc since then. I even tried to build some prototypes of stuff later on (but because of the lack of availability of new elements nowadays I never finished the computer driven devices I wanted to create).

Around the age of 9 or 10 I started creating some electronic devices; I created my own disco with light organs (= devices that make lights respond to the beat/volume of music), “looplichten” (=3 or more lamps that go on and off in a special pattern) and strobe-lights. Most of the prints where bought as assembly kits and were put together by me. Sometimes I even modified them because I wanted other effects.
I also bought a “Philips electronics building box” that consisted of a plastic plate, components and manual with instructions and background info on which you could build different electronic circuits.
After I tried most of the combinations of circuits my interest for electronics was evoked and I started buying the Elektuur magazine. I’ve created some simple things from these magazines, but for me it was more fun to read the mag to see what was possible with electronics than to build the things myself; this had to do with the complexity of the circuits with IC’s.

Also in 1983 (when I was 10) I’ve got a “Vectrex” gamecomputer because my parents thought I’d like such an electronic “GameComputer”
By this time my interest for computers was born.
Whenever we went to the mall I’d be at the store (the V&D) that sold some of the MSX-like computers like the Amstrad CPC 6128, the ZX-Spectrum, the Commodore 64 and the Philips MSX computers.
Most of these systems stood there just with a BASIC interpreter screen. I could spend hours there to reprogram the systems in displaying color-bars with text in them. I even locked them programmaticly, when I got more experience, to avoid others to stop the programs I’ve put in.

From this time on I would be begging my parents to buy one of those machines. Because they couldn’t at that time I had to settle in going to the mall to satisfy my addiction. In the mean time a lot of different computer types were put on the market.
Eventually in 1987 the Commodore Amiga 500 was available in The Netherlands and my parents bought this computer. It was really something for that time. Splendid graphics, a graphical UI and superb sound.

Most people used the Amiga 500 as a game computer. I used to play some games on it, but I was more interested in seeing how things worked and why things worked like they worked. So I looked and played with a lot of programs that where developed for the Amiga.

Eventually I started scripting (CLI scripting) for the amiga and later on I started to use Arexx (the Amiga version of Rexx script). In the years that followed we upgraded the Amiga 500 with an Amiga 2000 with Dual Kickstart board (Kickstart 1.3 & 2.0) and a changable harddisk of 40Mb. I also programmed some small tools in Assembly and C.

In 1988 I saw a workbook about Chinese horoscopes that described how to create and interpret a chinese horoscope. Because there were lots of tables that had to be looked-up I decided to write an application to automate the process.
The program “ZOOdiacs of the Orient”(as I called it) was written in “Rexx Plus” and worked great. The only thing that didn’t work quite well was graphics printing of the finished horoscope. This was because of some limitations in graphics printing from Rexx.

In the same year my parents bought an XT system, so they could work on their wordperfect documents at home. My preferred system was still the Amiga, but I started to look at programs on dos too.

During the following years I programmed on both systems, until I went to college in 1993. I had a specialisation in “technical business management” and in one of the classes I had to make some programs in the programming language Pascal. Because I’ve been programming a lot before, it was quite easy to switch to pascal and I’ve been programming a lot in pascal(as a hobby) since then.

During the year in “technical business management” I realised that I wanted to do something more technical. That’s why I switched my course to “Laboratory Information and Automation”. This course had much more to do with computers and programming (I liked that part) and a lot of chemistry(wich I liked for some time). In this course you were learnt to create systems that automate laboratory processes.

During the two years I followed this course I had to do 2 projects (each 4 months) in which I’ve written 2 programs: Autocon and Autoline.

The program Autocon was made with pascal and was targetted at the MSDos platform. It automates the process of a Conductometric titration by monitoring the conduction of the fluid with a Metex 3650-CR electronic multimeter, while adding titration fluid with a Dosimat 665 electric burette. The software controls the burette while gathering data from the metex. The data aquired from the metex is plotted against the amount of fluid added by the burette. The amount added by the burette is also controlled by the software.
Autocon used a GUI with buttons, windows, mouse-support and graphing. Autocon used standard RS232 ports to control the external hardware.

The program Autoline was made with pascal and targetted at the MSDos platform. This program was made to control the Fuji electric FCR microjet recorder PHA by using the RS-485 interface. This is a device that registrates temperatures on 12 thermocouples over time and plots these accordingly on a paper sheet.
The college bought the rs485 interface-card, but there was no software written for this device.
The program Autoline contained a text-based GUI with mouse support and 2 rows of 6 channels in which the data of the thermocouplers was represented.

As a hobby I was developing a better system to control vesa cards from pascal. Until then you had to use display drivers from borland that didn’t support all the features of the vesa standard. After reading the specs and the registers these graphic cards use, I started to make some objects in assembly that made it possible for me to use all features of the vesa standard.
In the meantime I rediscovered the book “Chaos” (by James Gleick) I’ve read before about the chaos theory and fractals and I dived in the theory and mathematics of fractals, Lorentz & Hennon attractors and Julia sets and decided to create a program that displays these.
At first I only wrote the basic functions and procedures and put them in the vesa library. Some of the functions: renderline (calculates the colors of the pixels in a row and then displays it) and divac(uses divide and conquer for calculating the colors).
After that I just wrote some simple small programs that just contain the numerical data and formulae for a fractal variant and then uses the basic methods to draw them on screen.
The last project I worked on was a wrapper application that could display multiple fractal types, contained a zoom function and palette rotation and safe as pcx-file.
(tried to run the progs for a screenshot but they fail on Win2k or WinXP)

In these years I bought the full version of Borland Delphi to make it easy to program pascal in windows environments, without the hassle of coding the GUI by hand. I rewrote the “ZOOdiacs of the Orient” and the “Autocon” application to run on the windows platform.

Because of one of my familymembers getting very sick and the strain that put on me I decided to go to the “MTS” in 1996 and to focus on graduating instead of having to redo the same class again on the “HTS”.
I decided to follow the course “Technical Informatics” that focusses on system and application development, project management, datacommunication and network engineering.

During the first year I had to program in C++. This was quite a shock! (people who program know why…) But over time it was as easy as pascal; if you know where the culprits are. In this time I rewrote one of my basic fractal programs to compile under c++. In the second year we had to do a graduation-project that took about 6 months.

The graduation project had to be written in C++, had to have use for companies and had to use data communication. My partner and I decided to create a pure java application (because of portability) the staff gave permission to code in Java, although none of the teachers knew the language; we didn’t know the language eigher…. The application was a java IRC client that followed the complete RFC1459 specification. The program was named JIRX what stands for Java Internet Relay client eXtra. The “extra” was the possibility to view and modify files on a remote system, if permission is granted. On top of that we created an extra protocol (JIP(=JIRX Internet Protocol)) that is encapsulated within the IP data segment.

In my last year on the “MTS” I had to do 2 terms of probation (6 months each). The first term was a programming practice and the second term was a system- /networkmanagement practice. I decided to follow the terms at a rehabilitation center for visually impaired and blind people; “Het Looerf“.

In the programming practice I developed a windows program that makes it possible for blind and visible impaired people to take psychological tests with a computerprogram. The program (PsychTalk) contains several tests; each consisting of multiple questions. The questions and their possible answers where both available in a very big font-type and as audio, so blind people could hear the questions.
Answering was done with a custom defined keyset on the keyboard. Repeating the question or going back and forward was also possible (except for tests that prohibit that). The answers where spoken out loud if the corresponding key was pressed.
I started the program in visual basic, but the database-integration with visual basic was poor in the version the rehabilitation clinic had available, so I decided to use delphi for this project.

In the second term I practiced system- and networkmanagement. Because of the upcoming millennium-change we had to do a lot of patches on all computersystems. Most of the patches had to be done in a certain order to prevent failure of the other installed Y2K patches.
This tedious job got me the idea to write a simple program that checks which patches had to be installed and installed them in the good order. This was again a simple application in delphi.
I also wrote a program in delphi that was called from the NT loginscript, that put the date, time, IP address and login name in a logfile on the server. This program runned hidden for the user.
During this year one of the most occuring problems was the password change in windows95. This is because the user had to change their NT domain logon, but not the windows logon. I wrote an application in delphi that let users easily change their domain password without windows coming up to ask for the new password.

After I graduated I started to work at Techdata as one of the network admins.
At one time we needed something that could fetch some userinformation from the logfiles the proxy made. With the use of delphi I created a small application that could search for specific information in multiple logfiles and create a cvs file from it, so it could be easily imported in excel.
While working at Techdata a collegue introduced me to th Psion Series 5 devices. I used a series 5 until I could buy a series 5mx cheap. I programmed some small programs in OPL (the programming language of Symbian Epoc devices) but nothing really serious.
In 2001 (after working at Techdata for 2 years) I decided to work in the ICT-Consultancy. During the time a worked for clients I created several applications that made life easier.

One client needed one system that could dial in to different servers. Each with different network, internet, e-mail and proxy settings. They needed a simple(for the end-user) system that could do that.
After exporting all related registry keys for all different servers I started scripting with Kixscript. After serveral days of testing and tweaking it worked like a charm. For the en-user it was just a question of clicking one of the icons.

Another client wanted a filled-in checklist each day of the status of all novell servers they had (about 20). This checklist had to contain: total, used, free and purgable diskspace of all volumes; System uptime for all servers; a check of all needed nlm’s on that server where running; a check on abends.
Gathering this information by hand took about one to one-and-a-half hour.
After a week doing this by hand I downloaded the novell sdk and wrote a program in visual basic for applications for an excel sheet.
Every time this sheet was opened the uptime of all servers and the diskspace information of all volumes was updated. This was nice, but I still had to check all needed processes manually. Hence I got delphi out my pocket and wrote an application that can be trayed on a windows system.
The user can specify which servers had to be checked and what nlm’s have to be running on the specified servers. The program can be told to run once or twice a day. When the program starts checking it creates a new excel file in a specified directory, gathers all information, saves and prints the sheet to the default printer and closes excel, waiting for the next run.

While working as a consultant I wanted to have a bigger more powerful system as my psion series 5mx, but I didn’t want to carry around with a laptop. I knew there were bigger and faster Psion devices available: the netBook. I could buy a second hand netBook and liked the system immediately. It has a bigger screen with colour and I could use this to make notes, write reports, keep track of my buisiness mileage and use route planning software (TomTom).

After some time I decided to modify the game “SameGame” to support color and the bigger screen and added sound support to it. The new version is HERE.
After this I wanted to create a simple application that could patch all greyscale applications to color ones (if people created the colorfiles for them(A lot are found at Martin Guthrie’s site)).
The problem with this is that you have to copy over a hundred files to your psion. I wanted to copy 1 file that contains all patches. Preferrably a zip file.
Because there isn’t a free zip-unpacker for Symbian Epoc devices I started to port the linux version of the Zlib library to epoc. This works now.

The “only” thing I have to do next is porting of the linux unzip tool that is included as a sample source (this makes use of the Zlib library) to epoc and write the application that does the actual patching.

(I think you may conclude that I’m a geek….. If so… have a bit compassion with my girlfriend…. She has to deal with me….)