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| This is my personal homepage. It contains: |
| Name | : | Kris Heidenstrom |
| Location | : | Wellington, New Zealand |
| : | k@heidenstrom.gen.nz (supersedes kheidens@clear.net.nz and kheidens@actrix.gen.nz) | |
| Web page | : | www.heidenstrom.gen.nz (you're reading it) |
| Mobile and txt (SMS) | : | +64 21 1100-458 |
| ICQ | : | 126156658 (but I don't use it much) |
| Snail mail | : | c/- P.O. Box 27-103, Wellington, New Zealand |
(Things I have designed and written) | ||
| Telephone line state monitor | A do-it-yourself electronic construction project. This circuit connects across a telephone line and illuminates a red LED indicator while the line is in use, so you can avoid interrupting a call in progress. It is powered from the telephone line itself. Useful if you have telephones, faxes and/or modems in different rooms sharing the same line, since several line monitors can be connected to the same line, but unfortunately it prevents 56kbps modems from connecting at full speed (doesn't noticeably affect voice or fax calls though). Circuit diagram, and design and construction notes. Release 2, 19 July 1998. | |
| LPTCAP parallel print data capture system | My LPTCAP hardware/software system which captures print data from any device that prints to a Centronics printer, using a PC running MS-DOS (not Windows). Mostly useful for getting data out of obsolete equipment such as word processors and special-purpose controllers. Presented as a build-it-yourself project, and aimed at the computer/electronics hobbyist. For offline viewing, get the release 1b archive (150K). Release 1b, 28 July 1998. For a simple MS-DOS-based serial capture program: SERCAP release 1, 22 June 1998 (12K ZIP file). | |
| Parallel port mini-FAQ (HTML, release 11) | A concise mini-FAQ with basic information on the standard and PS/2-bidirectional PC parallel ports. Covers only the old unidirectional and bidirectional ports, not EPP and ECP. Covers direct access to the port I/O registers, which is not allowed under Windows (Windows 95, 98 and ME allow it with some restrictions). | |
| PC Timing FAQ (ZIP file, release 3) | I wrote this large technical document in 1996. It covers timing and some related low-level programming techniques for PCs under MS-DOS (or an equivalent operating system such as DR-DOS or Novell DOS, or no operating system). It is presented as a large text file, with lots of sample programs (you'll need Borland C/C++ for MS-DOS if you want to modify and re-compile them). This material is still quite interesting (well, I think it is), but it has lost its relevance with the dominance of Windows, under which this kind of low-level programming is only allowed in device drivers and low-level operating system code. That link is to the file in the SimTel MS-DOS archive. If it doesn't work, try this one. | |
| RT - Resident Terminal emulator for MS-DOS - 40KB | Small pop-up (TSR) terminal emulator for MS-DOS or an equivalent operating system, using the PC's serial port. Useful for embedded work. Includes source code in assembly language (for Borland's TASM assembler). This is version 1.5.2 which corrects a bug in high IRQ support in version 1.5.1. Runs under Windows too as a simple replacement for HyperTerminal (yuck). | |
| ENGRAVR - device programmer for Atmel AVR microcontrollers - MS-DOS only - 70KB | A fairly comprehensive command-line-oriented software programmer for some of Atmel's AVR microcontrollers. Requires MS-DOS or an equivalent operating system (not Windows). Uses the PC's parallel port and programs the device using serial programming mode. Includes source code in C (for Borland's BCC compiler). Free software (Gnu GPL). | |
| ARK - Executable COM file archiver and EXE to COM converter - 45KB | A small MS-DOS utility that lets you create executable archives of COM files, and also converts small MS-DOS EXE files to COM files so they can be archived too. Similar to (and based on) Colin J. Stearman's XEQ utility but simpler and without the 64 kilobyte limit on total archive size. | |
| Abbey Systems | My employer, Abbey Systems Ltd. We design and build telemetry systems. | |
| The Onion | An excellent parody news magazine. | |
| ACD Systems | The authors of a very good image viewer and browser called ACDSee. | |
| UPX home page | UPX is an amazing freeware executable file compressor written by Markus F.X.J. Oberhumer (what a great name!) and László Molnár, which supports many executable file formats on several platforms. | |
| New Zealand is a country of nearly four million people, located
south-east of Australia in the southern hemisphere. It's included in the region
known as "down under", but New Zealand is not part of Australia, which
is a great comfort to New Zealanders (and to Australians too, no doubt). Here is a summary of names you may recognise in relation to Australia and New Zealand:
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| If you wait, all that happens is that you get older. | -- Larry McMurtry | |
| In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is. | -- Jan L. A. van de Snepscheut | |
| Apparently it's just a myth That a preposition is the wrong thing to end a sentence with. | -- me | |
| Alice, I'll get your daughter into that preschool, even if it means eating a whole cheesecake, then taking a nap. | -- Jay Sherman, "The Critic" | |
(As told to the person sitting next to me on the bus) | |||
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I was born on the 1st of August 1968 in
Wellington, the capital city of New
Zealand, and I've lived (t)here ever since. I have a very cool sister
Tina, who was born in 1970, and a very cool nephew
Ari, born in 1994. I love cats - here's a pretty good picture of
Spike taken by Tina.
SurnameMy surname is Norwegian; it means "heather by the stream". There are probably less than a hundred people worldwide with that surname, and as far as I can tell, we all get it from one person - one Andreas Peter Heidenstrøm who lived in Fredrikstad in Norway. He came from Sweden, where his surname had been Hedenström. If you are related, please get in touch!
Childhood friends and crushesThese won't mean anything to you, unless you know - or are - a person named below - if so, please get in touch, I'd love to catch up. Listed in roughly chronological order. Male names are childhood friends, female names are crushes :-)Lewis Graham, Elena Michaels; Duncan Cole, Craig O'Donnell, Jane Megennis, Victoria Spite; Juliet Moore, Rita Bouzaid; Kate Elliott.
Schools and workplaces
Job at Abbey SystemsSince 1988 I've worked for a Wellington company called Abbey Systems Ltd, as an electronic designer (doing circuit design and printed circuit board layout) and embedded systems programmer (working with microprocessors and microcontrollers). My work email address is kris@abbey.co.nz.Abbey Systems specialises in telemetry systems (also called SCADA - supervisory control and data acquisition). This is industrial equipment for monitoring and controlling remote, unattended installations such as water reservoirs, sewage treatment plants, electrical substations, gas pipelines, that sort of thing. We provide both major parts of the telemetry system - the RTUs (remote terminal units) which go into the remote sites, and a Master computer at the control room that communicates with the RTUs (usually over a radio channel) and monitors and controls everything. The company is small enough that I get a good variety of jobs, including an occasional on-site job around the country, writing documentation, and writing and presenting training courses for our customers. I guess that's why I've been with the company for sixteen years :-)
ElectronicsElectronics interested me from a young age. To start with I experimented with old black-and-white TVs and valves ("tubes") - great fun, and I even managed to avoid fatally electrocuting myself. Then I learned about CMOS gate ICs. After that I experimented and learnt about discrete design with transistors, starting with germanium transistors (I feel like an old man already :-), though silicon transistors were already widely used then, and building amplifiers and other linear stuff. Then in around 1983 I got interested in the Apple 2 computers at school, then microprocessors and microcontrollers, and now they're my job!My interesting projects now are based on microcontrollers (I've taken a fancy to Atmel's AVR range of micros), so they combine electronic design with embedded programming. Microcontrollers are a lot of fun to work with!
Music and bandsWhen I was young I had piano lessons, and in my teens I tried playing keyboards, then drums, then saxophone, but for a long time now, my main (only) instrument has been the bass guitar. I've played bass in several covers bands and in an originals band called Weave. I love being part of the rhythm section, pumping out the groove. It's a great feeling to look out at a sea of dancing people and to know that the rhythm section (the drummer and bassist, mainly) are the reason they're dancing.I'm into recording and if you're interested you can hear the song Leave_Nothing_Behind.mp3 (5 MB) by the band Weave, which I recorded in January 2003 when I was still the band's bass player. The best way to listen to it is: right-click the link and choose "Save target as" (or something similar), choose where you want to save it (I just download straight to my desktop), and start downloading. It will take about 15 minutes to download through a 56kbps modem. Once it has finished downloading, find its icon and double-click it. It occupies 5 megabytes on your hard drive. If you don't like it, just delete it. More to come... Maybe
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| During this virtual interaction between me (as I write this paragraph) and you (as you read it), you may wish to discover more about Kris, the person. For this reason I have listed some of "my favourite things" below. These preferences may change periodically or randomly, or they may not. Use them at your own risk. | ||
| Dessert | Trifle | |
| Women | Dark hair, dark eyes | |
| Music to play | Soul | |
| Music to listen to | Big band swing with a kicking rhythm section | |
Document revision history:
