Erm, you really wanna know?

Well, in that case, let's go for it. But don't complain to me afterwards, this page is about me and only me. You've been warned.

My name is Marcel Kilgus (you might have guessed that), I'm currently 27 years old (still counting), I have a diploma degree (roughly equivalent to a master in other countries) in software engineering from the University of Stuttgart, Germany, and currently work under my own flag as a freelancer on different projects and companies, mainly programming C.

Hobbies

I do quite well in pool billards (not quite as well in Snooker, but it's still fun), I like reading books, surfing the net and going out for a drink. For sports I work out and do some boxing training, plus I like to play Badmington. Sometimes I try to play my guitar, but with varying success, it's more of a chill-out thing.

I also have a sailing license for the German "Bodensee" lake which I unfortunately don't use as often as I used to do. I also like travelling, often with Jochen Merz to different QL user meetings all over the world (in reality the meetings are just an excuse to visit theme parks - rollercoasters mainly - and generally have lots of fun). England, Italy, Croatia, Netherlands, USA (from coast to coast)... all for the sake of the QL ;-)

Music

Currently I mostly listen to some Trance/Dance tracks, but I also still like some Hardrock and Heavy Metal (e.g. Iron Maiden, Metallica).

Literature

My favourite book author is currently Terry Pratchett with his discworld series, as you can see here (my collection is even bigger now but I'm too lazy to take another picture of it):

All books are the English originals. One reason is that the German translations are just awful and often lack lots of joke, the other is that I'm seeking every opportunity to improve my English and reading is quite a good one.

Thanks Terry, you often made my day.

Other authors I usually read are for example John Grisham, Dean Koontz, Stephen King and so on. And of course Douglas Adams's Hitchhiker trilogy (all, erm, 5 books of it). RIP, Douglas.

Work experience

I started with Basic on a Sinclair ZX81 in 1986. Some years later I got a Sinclair QL and (ab)used its nice SuperBasic language (it's a bit of a hybrid between Basic and Pascal). As Basic on an 8MHz machine is not fast enough for every need I had to learn Motorola 68000 assembler, in my opinion still one of the best assembly languages ever. In middle of 1993 I finally became infected with a PC (486). The first thing I've learned was x86 assembler (a pain in the a...) and I immediately started working on something which later became known as QPC, the first software only emulator for a Sinclair QL (due to the limited PC power in those times it was written in 100% assembly code).

Turbo Pascal at least was a lot more pleasant, I programmed quite a lot utilities, bits and pieces with it. My first commercial application was a customer management program for Win3.1 written in Turbo Pascal for Windows in 1994. After that I bought Borland's Delphi IDE. I didn't even really know what it was supposed to be but it was cheap and the term "visual programming" appealed to me. And boy, it was worth every penny.

Beginning with early 1996 I did some commercial database stuff in Delphi for the company which hosted my old web site all those years (they were also my ISP at that time which saved me a lot of money. Thanks again, Samuel).

In late 1996 QPC v1.00 was released and it turned out to be a dozen times more successful than I thought it would be. That's why now, six years later in 2002, the 3rd major revision, QPC2 v3.00 was finally released. No end in sight so far, at least as long as I've fun doing it.

In 1997 I once again created a commercial database application which is as far as I know still in use.

In early 1999 QPC2, the Windows 95/NT version of the till then DOS-only QPC emulator was released. In order to do this I had to learn C, which due to it's nature of being a macro assembler wasn't very difficult.

In 1999/2000 I was employed by a major car supply manufacturer to develop a test/adjustment program for new common rail diesel engine fuel pressure sensors. I was called very late into the project, the deadline for the first milestone was less than 2 weeks away. This included getting to know the new development environment (National Instruments CVI), designing and implementing most of the application. After lots of 15 hours days it was finished in time.

The company was so impressed with my work that in 2000/2001 they contacted me again for another "urgent" project. This time it was the pressure sensor for the brakes and a lot more complicated. Fortunately there was also more time available than last time.

2001 was also the year of QPC2 version 2 (the naming scheme is logical but admittedly not very practical), a much improved version of the original QPC2.

That year I also developed software for a manufacturer of valves and similar automation components. This was due to the fact that I have to spent at least 4 months in industry as an intern for university. So this was actually the first job which wasn't mainly located in my own room, but apart from getting up early (a relative term, for me everything before 10am is early) this was a lot of fun.

In 2002 QPC2 version 3 was released. I basically took the latest QPC2v2 version and added the complete user wish list to it. It was first called v2.04, then v2.10 and finally we decided that it's in fact worth another major step.

With Tony Tebby dropping out of the QL scene in 2002 I now also happen to be the main developer for the SMSQ/E operating system.

Well, that's all I have to say for now. Better quickly get back to the main index ;-)