Thomas shares makes

I wrote this syntax highlighting file for Vim because I had an Intel 8051 course in 2005, and wanted to do my coding in Vim. It's totally optional to have syntax highlighting, but it does give you many advantages. This .syn file will make sure recognised mnemonics and registers are given a nice color. Also values that are entered are only highlighted if they are valid. Note that the colors depend on the color theme you choose in Vim, no fixed colors are used. You can easily add extra registers specific to your 8052 to the .syn file, the file should be self explanatory.

Fetching POP3 mail over an untrusted WiFi public access point is dangerous, as the password is transmitted unencrypted (in plain text). Anyone with a laptop and a suited program can sniff your password right out of the air, along with your email. Sending mails is also impossible most of the time, since most ISP's only relay mail from computers directly connected to their network.

These two problems are solved by fetching and sending your email via an encrypted connection between your laptop and Internet gateway at home. If you run Linux and have a WRT54G, and it's running OpenWRT, you're almost there. Just follow this guide and you'll be set in under half an hour.

This is a list of electronics related links I collected in the early 2000's.

Gadget-maniac like me? Then how about some electronic junk you hook up to your computer's unused I/O ports? These toys are simple to understand, have few parts and are therefore cheap and easy to build!

On one of the last days of august 2005 I purchased a brand-new 12" G4 Apple iBook Laptop. This page is dedicated to this beautiful piece of hardware, I will share my experiences here. You can also read here how I installed Gentoo Linux on it back then.

I usually have more than one computer set up in my bedroom, a whole LAN segment so to speak. I used to network them together using a 10mbit hub (with a coax connector connected over the (75 ohms television coax) to other PC's in the house because it was the most practical way.

This is an alarm clock I built. It was very effective during the sort time I used it, because I programmed it to play a very annoying tune through a speaker. I actually started to wake up before the alarm went of, so other people in the house didn't wake up from the annoying pitches it played.

At the start of the third year of highschool (or fourth - I don't remember exactly) we had to buy a TI-83 calculator for math class, it was commonly known among pupils that many games were available for this device. One of the kids in our classgroup had some games on it, and we started sharing them and playing during class to pass some time. All the copying was done using the suplied 'link cable', which made it possible to transfer data amongst two calculators.

A description of my favorite free programs, written in Dutch.

I wrote this piece of advocacy in dutch. Linux used to a thing I explained frequently and this is where I pointed people to afterwards.

This is the final project I created my last year of highschool (2003-2004). It's about stepper motor control with an AVR microcontroller and BASCOM. I designed a PCB with AT90S2313 microcontroller and ULN2003 Darlington array to drive the stepper motor. It has a chapter about stepper motors that might be of interest if you want to know something more about stepper motors.

I wrote it in my native language, dutch.

An introduction to Linux. I wrote this piece of advocacy in dutch. Linux used to a thing I explained frequently and this is where I pointed people to afterwards.

At about Y2K, we moved into our new house, and decided to get an ADSL internet connection. Since we had more than one computer, we had to share our connection amongst them. After thoroughly searching on the web regarding this subject, I made a list of solutions, along with the advantages and disadvantages of the possible solutions.

In the year 2001 I became very interested in digital electronics, and wanted to start experimenting with microcontrollers. When I was about to buy (expensive) Basic Stamps, I found the JAL website, and read the Hello World material. The JAL language targeted the Microchip PIC controllers.