Christian Meunier Home Page

General information

This is the home page for Christian Meunier, a software developer in Montreal, Canada. You can email me at meunierc@aibotoys.com . Apologies if you email me and the message goes in my spam box : as of last update I receive approximately 500 spam emails per day. If this happens try emailing me from another address, or providing more content in the email so that my spam filter has a better chance at separating from the noise.

I work as Software Project Leader / acting Software Manager for Esterline CMC Electronics Inc., formerly known as Canadian Marconi Corporation. The company was initially known as "Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company of Canada", established in 1903 by Guglielmo Marconi, when he was the first to demonstrate a transatlantic radio communication - beating the inventor of radio Nikola Tesla to the race, after he had his funding cut by his investor for planning to use the prototype to provide free/unmetered wireless electricity. Today Esterline CMC specializes in Cockpit Systems, Flight Management Systems and GPS receivers.

I have graduated with a Computer Science degree in 1994 from Université de Montréal, and studied full-time (while working also full-time) to obtain a Master's Degree (M.Ing.) in 1999 from the Electrical Engineering Department of the Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal university.

This web page has been online in various forms since june 17, 1996. I have been on the Internet since 1989, when FTP, Archie and Telnet were the face of the Internet.

Language Cheat Sheets / Quick References

Working with various languages (and maybe as a side effect of getting old), it becomes useful to have a cheat sheet for the programming languages I learned. Here are cheat sheets I wrote over the years. If the link below points to a blank page, I know I have one somewhere, and just need to dig in my archives.

  • Recursive Descent Parser
  • [Ada95]
  • [CAndCPlusPlus]
  • [Java]
  • [LexYACC]
  • [ManPages]
  • [Perl5]
  • [SQL]
  • [TCLTk]
  • [VHDL]
  • [Win32]
  • [PICMicrochip]

Technical notes :

Software Engineering

I'm interested in a number of topics in software engineering; my main interests gravitate around the low-level aspects of computing, finding ways to automate them, and making the whole process portable.

Past projects, Libraries, etc.

  • games Aibo I released starting in February 2002. In July 2006 I started to make most games free for general use (instead of charging a nominal fee), after concluding my games took days to develop, and were typically seen by 2-3 customers at best.
  • TestUnZip - Use this to read ZIP files programmatically. This is a quick-and-dirty Visual C++ 6.0 Console application port of the Info-Zip utility (now public-domain - see inside the file) originally found in 1992-1993 on the Simtel (mirror) public-domain software archive. Public domain software written by Info-zip (see inside the file for details), and ported by me to Visual C++ 6.0. Recent distributions of the software by Info-Zip is found here.
  • (sources coming soon) A low-cost PC oscilloscope that at some point I wanted to commercialize. Now in 2005 and many years after putting the project aside, I think the software would be put to better use in the Public Domain. Status of the project: the software and circuitry is pretty much completed; I'm stuck on building a plastic encasing before I can proceed, and probably will postpone the completion of this project until I find somebody who can help. Public domain software written by me.
  • (sources coming soon) WinOrb - Circuit design, including microcontroller software and Windows software, for making a PC-controlled coloured "orb" similar to the Ambient Orb. Current project status: I need to change the circuit so there are more LEDs inside the orb, as the orb colours are not visible enough under daylight. Public domain software written by me.
  • Here's a link to my early article on programming the Aibo, written for aibolifestyle.com. There is a local copy stored here if the main link doesn't work.
  • Training Fish FAQ (document back soon): This started out as a joke in early 2001 about how a goldfish could be trained to do tricks, worked a lot better than I thought, so I documented a bit the experience...
  • MastersThesisDeliverable - A unix C++ application for parsing C and C++ applications, outputting static function structure graphs in graphics form (using AT&T's dotty) and generating the list of execution paths in the program that must be taken if we would want to have a 100% coverage testing of either the source instructions, or the edges, of the function structure graphs. Public-domain software written by me as a Master's thesis project for Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal.
  • A Documentation Set for the Smart information retreival system. Use this application to generate indexes for large bodies of text, stemming words and running other modifications to facilitate information retreival, calculate sttaistics about specific documents (ex. in order to deduce "the word Information and the word Retreival appear often in the same context, so they are probably related") and run queries to find data. This is the foundation for most Internet search engines.
  • [SRTRWindows] A portable, real-time multitasking application in Ada 95 for simulating a robotic arm, running its graphics using OpenGL on Linux and Windows. Public domain software written by me as part of a Master's degree course in Ada programming.
  • TVNW - A 6809 computer emulator so that Videoway binaries can execute in a virtual environment on a Windows machine instead of the native hardware platform. This cut down software development time, and provides a much more stable environment than the Windows version of the Videoway API.
  • RTSim - The prototype for a real-time image processing test platform running on Windows. Some project files (in french): presentation, architecture, sample report (growth) . Current project status: the core of the application which can open graphic files and pass them through one or many filters and record the running time for each task, is completed; GUI reporting, GUI selection of task and ordering is not implemented. Public domain software written by me as part of a Master's degree course in real-time programming.
  • Architecture for network management applications for DWDM fiber networking applications
  • I have given university-level programming courses in C, C++ and Assembly language at Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal.
  • Collection of database applications for the Montreal, Canada municipal elections
  • Games for the local cable company, Videotron, on their Videoway platform. Videoway is based on a 2MHz 6809 computer receiving informations (application and data) broadcast digitally on a few dedicated analog channels of Videotron's cable network.
  • ...and a lot of others!

As time go by, I'll try to make as many projects available one way or another. Some are or will be released for commercial use, some projects could be released as public domain software, and others could have other licenses. I just have to find the time to publish older projects while I continue to go forward.

My opinion on "free software" : only software released under the public domain can be considered as such. There is a need for closed-source software when the commercial viability of a product is at stake, but when open access is prescribed, Public Domain is the way to go. I cannot support the GPL because the sole intent of the GPL is to limit software freedom to the people who have more GPL code to contribute.

Interests

Here are a few topics of interest for me, with a few links to direct people who want to know more.

  • Aikido Being physically attacked is one of the worst thing that can happen to someone. Having the means to resolve an attack in a peaceful way brings peace to the soul in even dangerous situations. When time allows me, I practice at Aikido de la Montagne, a very reputable school thaught by Shihan Claude Berthiaume.
  • Reverse Engineering It is of my opinion that: any piece of software that can be executed on one specific computer, can be understood by any other machine. Past research indicates that this marchine understanding can lead to presenting source code to the user, given only an executable stripped of its debug information.
  • Software Testing Making a Master's degree specialized in software testing has solidified my experience in software development by stressing the crucial importance of testing in the process. My testing interests turn especially to automated software testing and automated test case generation. Anybody who does not think that 50% of the coding process should be spent on writing and executing test cases, should revide his position towards testing.
  • Aibo Sony Electronics markets a very interesting robotic platform for entertainment robotics, with the unstated goal of gaining market lead on the burgeoning home robotics market. The Aibo has a very flexible and solid architecture making it a firm ground to base on.
  • Avionics simulation At CMC Electronics, my team and I develop a Part-Task Trainer for multiple uses. The particular PTT we are developing find application in training, FMS developement, and avionics components simulation. As of writing it simulates various avionics systems for the CMC C++ and Ada-83 Flight Management Systems (military and commercial, fixed wing and rotary wing) line of products, with more features in various stages of completion.
  • Ham Radio On the air, I am VE2 JVA; since I only have a small portable 2m radio (a 5 Watts Kenwood TH-22AT), I am not exceedingly present. I look forward to having a better emitter, especially to experiment with packet radio.
  • Physics I appreciate a lot the recent fields of physics, particularly dealing with special relativity and quantum mechanics/quantum computing.

Notable quotes

  • The Wright brothers were not the first to fly an aircraft; they were the first to land an aircraft. -- Rand McNatt

Favorite editor: /usr/bin/vi. Favorite operating system: Debian GNU/Linux. Favorite sauce: tsaziki.

This page was first created on June 17th 1996, and is updated more or less regularly.

http://www.ourfamilysbox.com/~meunierc/glider.jpg

Old versions of this web site are located here (Christian Meunier Home Page 2003) and here (Christian Meunier Home Page 1999).