Theo Verelst Highlights page

When a site contains more than a couple of dozen pages, it may become hard to find out what's realy valuable for a person between all that multi-media hype. This highlight page allows the occasional browser and everybody else to quickly skip to some of the pages I consider highlights. In fact, it has so much on it, that it may also be called a subject index page.

Recent Highlights

I'm preparing moderately extensive pages on the

Synthesizer Project.

This page is preliminary, but contains a lot of info on the way the microprossor and the PC based development system works. This will be including the already functional sample generators, example wavs (from the actual synth), pictures of the system, and there is a lot of both general and technical information on the system.

This page contains some research related pictures not all available on other pages. Jan 3, 2001: Updated picture links

(NOTE: the rest of this page is not so recent anymore)

Again: more Bwise

Adding actual content to the blocks in bwise means it can now start to process data as a graphical progamming environment, the first simulation results after a long break and a few days more programming are here

Linux

Not having access to the machine, I can't present any nice results at the moment, but I've installed Linux (5.0) on a compaq, and worked with it for weeks, being moderately happy. It works nice as a web server (Apache or Tcl), Ive done all kinds of CGI's (including forms that allow remote exec of tcl commands, which is safe enough considering the effectively enforced limited user rights under unix), C and tcl, is a real unix look-alike, has seriously usefull filesystem, user and process (multitasking) management, and the supplied X variation works fine, but I wasn't sure about the compatibility, at least not at install level for some things, and I had to get rid of the bash shell to feel more at home. It hangs at times, unfortunately (not just core dumps), and the install facilities are lousy. I heard they're better for 5.2, though. All that for free ? If you have to download bandwidth and/or time to spare. Beats cygwin, but doesn't reach the level of multi kilo dollar commercial unix variations. Makes sense.

Analog Machinery

What have I been up to lately ? For one thing, an analog synth prototype is getting shape. This page can fill you in on the progress, I will even put in some digitized pictures of the first 19 inch rack version. (Probably tomorrow).

Sorry its a bit later, but now a page with a complete modest PA system ('home'-built) is available, plus pictures of the available synth parts and the 19 inch rack mountable prototype enclosure.

I'll make a picture of the assembled system (which already has withstood 2 parties), and I've made a page on the Z80 system I've mentioned on my other pages, but unfortunately I couldn't yet ftp the pictures in place, because I'm out of wen space on tripod. be sure to check later though (I'll redirect them elsewhere) because it also contains neat pictures of the almost 20 year old DMA LED display unit I mentioned !

Though 80 Watts is fine, and the applied chip satisfactory, the availability of the Spice circuit simulator stirrs my curiosity as to what may be achieved through some serious discrete electronics design, and what the characteristics of some amplifier circuits can be. I will gather up some of my findings . I'll also include my notes on how to extend the set of available circuit models in Microsims demo package. When I'm rich I'll buy the thing (no promise, its quite expensive, but I'll consider it seriously)..

Network programming results: Mesa and Pcom

Not a new result, it has been available for a year or so, is the Mesa library and some examples , including a double buffered, real time goureaud shaded example. 3D graphics, in case you were wondering what that is all about, in a professional form, fast, and for free.

I've added a server option in a mesa program, be sure to check the bottom of the above page ! Sources, executables (windows 95) and libraries available.

I've done a prototype of a combination of a 'talk' tool, and a remote file transfer tool, check out the version 0.3 for free !

Personal and Christian whereabouts

June 6th I've sent another message to my beloved family, and a few days ago, I have been again reassessing the roots of christianity in general and the my own. THe previous link is not available, and I have no backup of the file, if anyone has one, please mail it to me, otherwise I'll have to type it in again !

Stay tuned for updates om the synth front, for instance I've started to look at some of the blocks of the fatman synth, which has some interestingly to the point implementations of analog synth building blocks in it. Worth reinstalling microsim's simulator (the evaluation version, that is) for. Sp are the schematics from here.

Synth design

a dutch page describing my own design synth from 15 years ago and the plan to redo this, and then improve on it.

Useful Retro

I've looked up trs80 simulators on the net, with success. I've got a completely working simulated model I level II disk (and harddisk) trs80 system running on a average PC, including tons of games, utilities and development tools. In core ready while you wait Z80 macro assembler? No problem. Interesting alternative for costly 8051 dev systems. I've just put some basic stuff on the page yet, maybe I'll gather al the necessities and some tcl file conver wrappers in a zip when I have time. This is the stuff I grew up on (1980 or so), at lest as far as basic is concerned.

Some thoughts on discrete event systems, electronics and physics

Thought material .

Circuit design

PLEASE NOTE: The microprocessor core page has been fitted with the wong circuit diagram, since of the 24 of may it contains the version that correponds to the supplied schematics file.

I've been working with MicrSim, and found out that before the demo-limits are reached, serious designs are possible. Therefore, the current project is to desig and simulate a microprocessor core , and a custom DSP core for various electronic music tasks.

Recent Programming Efforts

some recent sources.

Here is an example of a drum track generator I've started to program, with example sound file. NEW: I've made the drum track generator available as a stand alone Bwise application with (C) program. Build your own drum tracks!! This points directly to the ZIP file conaining all necesary parts, check above drum page for a description.

I've picked up on Tcl/tk, a package I;ve started a block diagram editor in when I was still at university, and that I've done a complete UI in for a graphics package and a set of communication programs. Lets see what a few days work in Tcl/Tk can do. In fact that page now contains a graphical 'flow' type of editor, which I programmed in about a day and a half (try that in Java or C++..).

Also try the Tclet (embedded tcl/tk in a hml page) version of Bwise on the same page!

Recent email

I would like feedback on this message I recently sent.

Electronic design

I did a first version of a 24dB/Oct resonant switched filter design, and produced a soundfile that could have come out of the real filter!

Making printed circuit boards also appears to be no problem, Microsims autorouter works just fine on the circuits in the schematic editor. I'll need to learn some of the PCB lingo, but the results seem good enough to be put into a board, and they use standard file formats. I tried others, but here is a very small inverting amplifier unit in schematics and half hand placed, auto routed circuit board:

NEW:
A page in progress is the sampler page , where I build up towards the circuitry for a serious sound sampler.

Latest programming efforts

I've looked at the physical modeling program again, and put in a WAV inerface, and made it a standalone module, without the need for the (large) cygwin library file. Basically, the modified source and resulting executable are available, as is an alternative version of od, to examine file contents (use 'od ') .

To play around with the PM synthesis program, download the file pm.exe, start a DOS shell, and type for instance:

pm 128 10000 soundfile sound.wav outnode 40
The program takes some time to run, when it is finished use a WAV player to listen to the ressults, usually clicking on the 'sound.wav' file in windows will do the trick. I am not sure the WAV format is perfect yet, some programs seemed not to be able to process it, but I could play the 16 bit PCM file simply by using the windows 'property' menu on the wav file.

Experiment with the number of nodes (128, e.g. 64) and the sample length (10000, could also be 100000 for longer samples) and the place of the waveguide where the virtual microphone is placed (40 can be anythin between 1 and the number of nodes-1). Better still, change the source code and recompile! Or wait for more elaborate user interfaces to appear on this site...

Abuse

A few recent highlights are the pages about what I consider a gravely undesirable situation in terms of power and sexual abuse , some of my own experiences, biblical assessment of all this , general proposed solutions and computer aid (?) . Please check out the 'spiritual reality' page as background reading for all this. Here I outline what I consider healthy and desirable in terms of relationships and sexuality.

Synthesizer

A physical modeling text and module .

An outline of my synthesizer related past activities, and a whole lot of synthesizer building blocks, toghether good for at least a few synth designs.

Electronics

Latest simulator activities Interesting!

Various electronics based (product) ideas.

Main electrical engineering page contains various references.

Software

Some software ideas ended up in other chapters, here I'd like to summarize some ideas for instance with respect to graphics ( opengl and graphical programming ) and communication. e.g. sockets under windows.

I've glanced at and programmed a fairly in depth Java example for which I had at least one motivation .

Cygwin has been my second solution to not having a decent compiler and no money to purchase one (gnu of course the first), and adds a lot of UNIX-like facilities.

Business/Professional

Sort of a business plan, will elaborate on this.

There are various subjects I haven't by far written enough about, such as various ideas in computer software and architecture and hardware , in nano-biology and in neuro(no)logy . See also this older link .

I've made various CV pages and docs for various purposes, this is a (recent) short one, this a more elaborate one to a synthesizer company. I'll add more later.

Publishing Issues

Both ordinary and web publishing activities call for copyright thoughts , and have to do with various subjects, such as major issues in society (e.g. nazism ) and issues of a more personal nature such as messages and thoughts concerning my own situation in a 'actuality' form.

Can one publish to expose possible criminal behaviour? I think one should, and start with an attempt to verify wether some of my thoughts are somehow related to reality. Read the heading of this page very well. Let me in on your thoughts, sign the questbook (can be done anonymously), send me a mail, talk to me (the picture on the main page needs to be processed to include a beard, because my raisor has been stolen).

All Time Goodies

This list is far from complete, but will grow to contain an ordered list of long term interesting pages, and provide the best entry points in some of the subjects this site deals with.

Favourite links

A list of them

Bible translation

A must read for each serious christian: Christ versus anti-christ.

What is christianity about? This FAQ answers some profound questions, while here a few experiences with christianity are presented as a consumer guide.

A lot of materials that grew during my study of the hebrew and greek of the old and new testament are long but not hollow texts, such as on imagery in James, where do I stand on main issues from e.g. Corintians (quite challenging), maltranslations of the greek (idem !), and my general (old) translation page which contains pointers to various translation efforts, amoung others a pictorial interpretation of the hebrew alphabeth , and its verification in (old) hebrew word examples. All of this can be put next to a examle interlinear translation to find out how much difference there can be between letter and lexicon based translation (and interlinear example) , and our bible text.

The greek has similar phenomenons, such as very crucial words like virgins .

Also, quite some passages have been translated/interpreted wrongly, such as in Timoty .