Biography

It was in the early seventies of the previous century that I was born in the city of Culemborg, where I lived with my parents and my brother. From an early age I had an interest in all things technical. Initially mainly mechanical things, but when I got into my early teens an interest into electronics started to grow. I began to read electronics magazines and started to build my own electronic projects, although at this age I was mainly building projects directly from the magazines rather than designing my own. Around 1985 the family acquired a shiny new Commodore 64, which captured my imagination and opened a world of BASIC programming. Later on the BASIC programming language was replaced by programming the 6510 of the Commodore 64 in assembly language.

The first technical school I went to was in the city of Utrecht. The school was a polytechnic, where I followed a general electronics course. Part of the curriculum was programming in Pascal, as well as programming z80 assembly language on a little system called a micro-professor. In the mean time I used the Commodore 64 to write the technical papers that the school expected from me. The text was done in VizaWrite and images such as schematics and diagrams were done in KoalaPaint. In VizaWrite I simply left enough empty space for the image and then after printing the text I placed the sheet of paper back in the printer so I could print the image separately. It baffled one of my lecturers that the Commodore 64 could do "images within text", something world leader WordPerfect could not (yet) do at the time. I'm afraid that I did not explain the actual process to him since I did not want to take the magic away for him...

After the polytechnic I went to study at the Hogeschool van Utrecht (HvU), where I followed a course in electronic design, which later on specialised in to microelectronic design. Part of the course included C programming as well as assembly programming of the 68030 for the OS-9/68k operating system. Around this time I bought myself an Amiga 500, which I used for programming in Pascal as well as 68000 assembly and I enjoyed making music, watching demos and playing games on the machine. For school projects I needed to be able to collaborate with other students, whom mostly used PCs by this time. I therefore kitted my Amiga 500 out with a KCS power PC board, which allowed me to run MS-DOS and more importantly, the latest version of WordPerfect, on my Amiga. Many of the electronic simulation tools we used were natively available for the Amiga as well. It did amuse me back then that the Amiga version of the SPICE electronic simulator was newer than the PC version used by the lecturers at the time.

Following my graduation from the HvU I replaced my Amiga 500 with an Amiga 1200 and I started work for Maycom Automation systems, an electronics company specialising in products for radio broadcasting and news gathering. The department I worked for was responsible for innovative new portable recorders aimed at radio journalists. The company unfortunately no longer exists, but two of the products I was one of the two firmware developers for were the Maycom Digicorder and the Maycom Easycorder. After more than 5 years at Maycom (by this time renamed as Audio Systems) I was offered a job that required me to move to the United Kingdom, where I have now been living for more than 21 years. Working in the UK for the Lime Broadcast Group I am responsible for the development of the STL-IP, a professional IP audio transmission device, as well as the LimeStreamer and LimeOnAir families of products.

My personal interests are going for walks in the country side with my wife as well as working with old computer gear and old audio gear. I also enjoy travelling, photography and watching old racing cars doing what they were built to do at venues like Shelsley Walsh or Goodwood. I also like old Victorian engineering as well as steam powered vehicles. My favourite walk at the moment is along the Severn Valley and see the trains of the Severn Valley Railway drive past while we have stopped for a picnic along the river.