Career

When I was 12 years old, computers started to appear in society. Before that, computers were only afforable to large companies. But in the first years of my primary school, the first acceptable prized and acceptable sized computers came to the shops.

In that early time of computers, I caught the computer virus. I do not use them play games, but to realize my ideas. Once you get to know them, it's just like pen and paper: you can use them for many kinds of expression. It's much more creative than most people think.

The next paragraphs show me how my career in computers developed. (But as other pages show you, I also have a normal life!)

My first contact with computers was in 1978, when I was member of the DJO (Dutch Young Scientists) in Arnhem. Actually: I still am a member of that organization. They changed their name into TCJA (Tecnical Creative Youth Center).

A small group of guys build a computer based on the Motorola MC6800 processor (1MHz) with 512bit RAM-chips in that time. We are spreaking about pre-homecomputer history here. Jacob Beeksma told me how to program (ancient)BASIC and later Fred Melgert tought me MC6800 (later MC6809) assembler. These were my first steps.

When I grew older, I started to explain computers to other kids and designed and built a few MC6809-based computers myself. I found out that I prefered building things, not using things other people make.

From 1984 till 1990, I studied Informatics (or Computing Science, if you prefer) at the University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands. Especially Real-Time, hardware, and computer languages did attract my attention.

The title of the Master Thesis was `Fault Tolerance in Real-Time Multi-Controller Systems'; a set of computers which each perform the same tasks and check each other continuously for (hardware) problems. The five controlling computers in the Space Shuttle are an example of such a system.

I had to develop, implement, and maintain software that was used to manage a large variety of UNIX platforms; in each case complex client/server applications.

To be a bit more specific, this software controlled

• a centralized backup facility to back-up the disk-contents of over 100 systems to a tape-robot;
• user and group access control to a large set of systems (a package more powerful and flexible than NIS); and
• a workstation accounting system.

Between March 1996 and May 2002, I was a full-time teacher in UNIX related subjects at AT Computing in Nijmegen. This company is specialized in UNIX training and consultancy.

AT Computing was founded in 1985 and employs 10 full-time teachers. Their knowledge and experience covers all subjects related to UNIX based systems in great detail.

I was specialized in Perl, UNIX system administration, C, and the website related trainings.

Since May 1st 2002, I work free-lance. My activities can be found at the website of MARKOV Solutions.