About me

This is Wavetrex, a young man currently living and working in Romania

Philosophy

My vision about life is quite simple. We, humans, are only small specs of dust on a cosmic scale, and our life is incredibly short compared to the age of the things that surround us... trees, building, mountains, oceans, planets, galaxies

So, in the short time we have on this planet we called Earth, we must live as happy as we can, in harmony with nature and all life. I belive that a much better world is possible, and we have not yet reached our potential as a species, actually we are quite far from it. Most humans today spend their lives either trying to survive another day, or hoarding material goods which does not improve their life at all, just making it more difficult and hard to maintain.

Interests and hobbies

There are many things that manage to get my attention, however I am extremely pleased that I was born in the age of digital information. Computers have changed so many things, and it has just begun.

Who would have thought barely 100 years ago (not much longer than the average human lifespan) that we'll have the technology to instantly communicate anywhere on Earth at the push of a button, or that we'll have the possibility to record on video millions of hours of life experiences on devices smaller than a simple book ?

I consider that computers are the greatest invention in the entire history so far, so I am focusing my life into interacting with these wonderful machines. Some people do not understand me, and the possibilities that technology has offered, and maybe I sacrificed other things that are "normal" for many people, and if I had the posibility to start over... I would do the same. There is simply nothing more interesting in this world that the knowledge to interact with computers !

So... I have blended my passion with my work, and became a programmer.

Work

In present day, I spend most of my working time creating web-based software (using languages like PHP, JavaScript, mark-ups like HTML, CSS, XML, and database systems such as MySQL or SQlite ). I have a primary project I'm working on called DonReY Framework, which is (or will become soon) a wonderful tool for creating websites and other web-based projects

I do work on other things as well, creating websites to earn a living, and debugging and fixing computers. All these are hobbies, I would never do work that I don't enjoy... tried that and it didn't work. At all.

History

At 32 (soon to be 33) years old, I had so far plenty of life experiences, nothing out of the ordinary, I am just a normal person living his life

Early age

I was born in the city of Brasov, Romania, in a family which unfortunately did not work out. Ever since the age of only a few months old, I lived only with my mother, a wonderful person, to which I thank probably everything I am

As an infant and small child I travelled and moved in several places, in the capital of Romania, Bucharest, and also a little village called Tisa. Only at around 6 years old my mother and me settled in a place which was home to us for 26 years, in the city of Brasov

My interest for technology showed up at very early age, probably less than 4 years old, when instead of going out to play with other kids I stayed inside and watched my grand-father, who is a Ham Radio hobbist, work and play with his electronics and transmission/receiver device ( a Transceiver ) named L/A 411. That device was home built, because in Romania at that time there was a dictatorial regime, and high-tech industry hasn't taken off, and imports were very limited.

At around 6 years old I discovered this thing called "L/B 881 computer", also a homebuilt device ( there were only around 20 in existence at that time in the entire country ). I was so mesmerized by that device that I spent all possible time around it... so my mother and my engineering grandfather decided to build one for me as well. Not long after that (actually it was quite long, nearly 1 entire year to get all the parts and build it) I started working on my first computer. Funny thing, I still have it and while it's keyboard has broken, the electronics in it STILL WORK !

It is quite unfortunate that I had medical problems during this time, on my right eye, which needed to be operated, and to this day I basically only see with one eye ( the image in the bad one is so poor that it's practically useless ). So, I'm a one-eyed computer programmer :)

The L/B 881 Computer

I am naming this period of time after this machine, because it marked my life to the point of no return. I became "addicted" to computers and technology :) While most children at 7 years old play outside with their friends or do some sports... I used my mind inside the house. Using information found in a magazine called Tehnium ( which was actually the only technology magazine that could be found during that time ), I learned to operate and even program this machine. It definitely wasn't easy...

Here's the technical specs for it:

  • Intel 8080 8bit CPU (actually the russian variant of it), @ 1.5Mhz ... sure looks puny compared to today's multi-gigahert, multi-core, high IPC 64bit CPU's
  • 48kbytes of RAM, almost fully usable - with 2kbytes for the alphanumeric screen (no dot matrix, just letters, numbers and symbols!), and another 2kbytes system reserved
  • 4kbytes of ROM, which contained the most basic system functions and two very interesting tools: A rudimentary text editor and an assembly language compiler (which converted i8080 Assembly into machine code)
  • Tape Input/Output, with around 1000baud ( took around 6 minutes to fill the RAM, however most programs were much shorter, because of the alphanumeric screen and almost total lack of graphics of any kind )
  • 80x25 characters alpha-numeric matrix, with english characters and various kind of Ascii-like symbols
  • A programable interrupt controller, which allowed for a rudimentary form of preemptive multitasking
  • Programable sine-wave tone generator (my goodness, how many times this got locked up and I had to reset the machine to cut off the sound...)

What an amazing device ! After a few months of playing around with it, I got interested in that assembly language... and learned to do tiny programs of my own. At first there were programs that just displayed some text. Then programs that made songs... then programs that did some animation... then I learned to use the interrupt controller and made a program that appeared to do several things at once ! Oh, the good times :)

Elementary school and music

My first school was an interesting one. It was a music-school, where I learned to play the Piano. I had in my classroom very interesting people, including this girl who since then became quite famous. We were good friends back then, but split roads soon after. I spend my first years of school just learning, playing, and became inloved with music as well.

This part of life is still vivid in my memory and is shaping the way I envision music and culture to present day. I became a Trance Music fan back then even without knowing it. Going back to computers, sometime during 4rd grade I discovered another type of computer named H/C 88 ( Home Computer ), a clone of ZX Spectrum, at the Children's Palace in Brasov ( which is an educational institution ). There, I played games and learned to program in Basic, my first ever interpreted language !

While it was all fun, this period of time made me start to love computer games, which I still play today. The games at the time were horribly compared to the wonderful realistic games of today, however compared to ANYTHING ELSE that was available for un back then, they were wonderful ! I remember one of my favourites was called Chronos. It's a sidescrolling shoot-em-up that had incredibly good synthetized music and fantastic graphics for a game programmed on such a limited computer. Please click the link and watch the whole video, listen to the music!. Another of those very cool games back then was R-Type

Secondary school and the H/C 91

My 5th grade started uneventful, but then in just 3 months... boy, what a ride ! The Romanian Revolution came at the end of 1989, and starting with early 1990 stuff began showing up in stores. Plenty of children got toys of all kinds, including myself... but still, nothing compared to a Computer :) Later the same year a new model of H/C machine appeared, the H/C 91 which had better keyboard and supported a joystick. I had the toy of my dreams at home... playing games all day, learning to program in Basic, and later learning to do Machine Code (no assembler here, sorry!) on that machine as well

Starting with 6th grade I started participating in school and extra-school competitions, both for computers and Physics as well. I was actually very good at it, and got to national-level competitions in both 7th and 8th grade, in both Physics and Computer Programming. Music got put aside, while I still had a piano in my home, I rarely played it

In time, the number of games and software for the H/C 91 grew up, I think that at the peak (at the start of high-school) I had over 50 1-hour tapes with software ( running at 1500baud, that's 33Megabytes of data stored on tape! Totally impressive for that period of time ). With those competitions and the job my mother had, I also travelled through the country A LOT, seeing nearly everything that were to be seen. I think that during this time I fell inloved with stars and nature, because I spent many summer evening just sitting outside looking at the stars

High-school and the start of my PC era

I joined the Informatics High-School at 15 years old, and soon my mother bought me my first PC, a 386SX computer with a monochrome SVGA monitor. The loss of color compared to the H/C 91 ( which had 8 color TV output ) was not very fun, but the fact that the PC had a 40MByte harddisk was wonderful ! No more tapes and horrors when one got messed up

Due to the limited space on that harddisk, the number of floppies grew up quickly, culminating to over 300 of them when I got my first CD-ROM drive ! (And got ONE CD burned with the content of all my floppies !)... hell, 650MByte CD versus 40MByte harddisk and 1.4Mbyte floppy, incredible technology, isn't it ?

These are the specs of my first PC:

  • Intel (or AMD?) 386SX 32bit CPU running at 33Mhz (which was quite fast compared to the computers of the era, which were 286's
  • 2 (two) Megabytes of RAM! Hell yeah, it had extended memory and run Windows 3.1
  • 40 Megabytes ATA harddisk, which got filled with who-knows-what quite quick
  • No mouse (initially), but I received one with a heavy metal ball in it as a present from my aunt during winter holidays
  • 1.44MB floppy drive
  • 256Kbytes SVGA video card, ISA bus
  • A monohrome SVGA monitor which supported 1024x768, an incredible high resolution at that time!, but only in 4bit (16 colors, or shades of gray), there was no memory for more

I started to learn Pascal on that machine, and soon became good at it, participating in a national summer programming competition at the end of 9th grade, writing in Pascal complex (for that time) algorithms

Since then, I changed lots of PC's... I will try to make a "short" list of them (if I remember them all):

  1. 386SX @ 25Mhz - This computer I just presented (1993-1996)
  2. 486DX2 @ 66Mhz - Not really mine, it was a computer at my mother's workplace, but I stayed there most of my free time (1994-1996)
  3. AMD Am5x85 @ 133Mhz - My second PC, assambled with parts got from various people (was not bought as a whole) (1996-1998)
  4. AMD K5-100 @ 100Mhz - Pentium class, considerably faster than the 486, I bought this with money from my first job after high-school (1998-2000)
  5. AMD K6-2 333Mhz - Pentium II class, WAY faster than my previous K5-100... I borrowed this one from my work-place, it was not used anymore. Returned it one year later. With this PC I had an S3 Graphics "Accelerator" (totally sucked for 3D, however it was decent in 2D) (2000-2001)
  6. AMD Duron-600Mhz - The K6-2 was obsoltete when I got this baby, which was extremely new at the time. Actually was the faster CPU and computer between all my friends, who had either K6's or Pentium II-300 or slower. This computer started with a nVidia Riva TNT2 graphics card, with 16Mb, and later a GeForce-2MX 32Mb (2001-2004)
  7. AMD AthlonXP-2200+ - This CPU actually fitted into the same motherboard as the old (by now) Duron, and increased the speed of my PC considerably, and got an important upgrade for the videocard as well, an nVidia GeForce 6600. I still have this CPU/Motherboard today, functional (2004-2005)
  8. AMD Athlon64-3200+ - A platform change, new motherboard, new CPU and new memory, this CPU kicked serious ass, probably 50% faster than the AthlonXP before it. Yet, I was still lacking in GPU department, so new games were kinda sluggish (2005-2006)
  9. Intel Pentium-D 2.8Ghz @ 3.5Ghz - After many years of using AMD cpus, and considerable financial effort, I switched to Intel, with the dawn of the Multi-Core computing. I also got an incredibly fast graphics card with that computer, A GeForce 7900GT 256Mb, which played all the games at that time like a knife trough butter. The card was so rare that the store had to order it specially for me and I waited 2 weeks for it ! (2006-2007)
  10. Intel Core2 Duo E4300 @ 3Ghz - Using the same motherboard (which I still have and is functional, but in a secondary computer) I upgraded the CPU to one of the new Core CPU's, and overclocked the hell out of it. Damn it was fast ! (2007-2009)
  11. Intel Core2 Quad Q6600 @ 3Ghz - This is my current PC, a quad core running at 3Ghz (for nearly 3 years already). At about the same time I got my current videocard, an ATI Radeon 4800-series card, very fast, very powerful (2009-Present)

There you have it, 11 PC's and a lot of experience with computers. And countless terrabytes of data that passed in front of my eye(s) :)

Going back to what I've learned during this time... after Pascal I learned to program in C/C++, from some wonderful books. The C experience holds today, I can find it easy to learn languages like PHP, JavaScript, JAVA, which are all rooted in C. I understood object oriented programming very early, and even with PHP which wasn't designed to be an OOP language, I started writing classes in my first year of PHP, which was around 2002.

Conclusion

There you have it, 25 years of computer experience, 12 computers, 10 PC's, many programming languages, programming machine code, programming in interpreted Basic, programming in compiled Pascal and C, programming for DOS, programming for Windows, doing graphics with SVGA, then with DirectX, then finally doing all kinds of web-based programming... which I still do today!

I wonder if anyone really took their time to read this entire page, it is quite long :)