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Welcome to this page, which deals mostly with physics and science fiction. I'm Johan Wevers. I hope that you find the information presented here of value to you.

I am a graduate in applied physics at the Eindhoven University of Technology. For those interested, my graduation report, that dealt with the experimental and numerical study of a hydrogen plasma is also available here, also in pdf form.

To leave a message for me, you can mail to johanw@xs4all.nl. If you want to encrypt your email to me, you can use my PGP public keys.

Last change in this page: August 19, 2020.

Contents

  1. Physics Formulary
  2. Mathematical Formulary
  3. Scientific compendia
  4. Physics
  5. Star Trek
  6. Science fiction stories
  7. Babylon 5
  8. Star Wars
  9. PGP
  10. DVD Encryption broken
  11. Remote Service Control Center
  12. Remote Commander
  13. Symbian trics and programs
  14. Signal

1. Physics Formulary

This document is a LaTeX file of 108 pages which contains a lot of equations in physics. It is written at advanced undergraduate/postgraduate level. It is intended to be a short reference for anyone who works with physics and often needs to look up equations. A list of recent changes is available.

It is available in Dutch and English, and in several file formats:

English version

Last version: July 8, 2012
  1. Table of contents.
  2. physics.zip: zipped English LaTeX file (100kb).
  3. physics.tex: English LaTeX file (for people without unzip, 312kb).
  4. Zipped English Postscript file (384kb).
  5. physics.pdf: Adobe PDF file (776kb).
  6. physics-hyperref.pdf: Adobe PDF file with bookmarks (844kb).
  7. A conversion to html with the equations translated via MathJax. Thanks to the people at Libretexts for doing a lot of the translation to html.
  8. physics_html.zip: a conversion to html, zipfile with all html files and figures.

Nederlandse versie

Laatste versie: 8 juli 2012.
  1. Inhoudsopgave (Nederlands).
  2. fysica.zip: een gezipte Nederlandstalige LaTeX file (100kb).
  3. fysps.zip: een gezipte Nederlandstalige Postscript file (394kb).
  4. fysica.pdf: Nederlandstalige PDF file (783kb).
  5. fysica-hyperref.pdf: Nederlandstalige PDF file met bookmarks (855kb).

2. Mathematics formulary

A 66 pages mathematics formulary that is intended for physicists and engineers. Both Dutch and English versions are available. A list of recent changes is available.

English version

Last version: September 2, 2013.
  1. Table of contents (in English).
  2. math.zip: zipped English LaTeX file.
  3. zipped English Postscript file.
  4. math.pdf: Adobe PDF file (362kb).
  5. math-hyperref-a4.pdf: Adobe PDF file with hyperlinks, in A4 format. (430kb).
  6. math-hyperref-letter.pdf: Adobe PDF file with hyperlinks, in US letter format. (515kb).
  7. A conversion to html with the equations translated via MathJax.
  8. math_html.zip: a conversion to html, zipfile with all html files.

Nederlandse versie

Laatste versie: 2 september 2013.
  1. Inhoudsopgave in Dutch.
  2. wiskunde.zip: A zipped Dutch LaTeX file (43kb).
  3. Gezipte Nederlandstalige Postscript file (177kb).
  4. wiskunde.pdf: Nederlandstalige Adobe PDF file (365kb).
  5. wiskunde-hyperref.pdf: Nederlandstalige Adobe PDF file met bookmarks (435kb).

3. Wetenschappelijke compendia door Wouter van der Star

Op 21 december 2011 stierf mijn vriend Wouter van der Star. Hij liet me zijn wetenschappelijke compendia na in boekvorm, in LaTeX met handgetekende illustraties. Helaas was de elektronische versie van deze documenten niet meer beschikbaar. Als eerbetoon aan Wouter wil ik deze documenten voor iedere geïnteresseerde beschikbaar maken door ze opnieuw in te voeren.

Eventuele fouten zijn waarschijnlijk van mijn hand en ik stel correcties op prijs.

Momenteel zijn beschikbaar:

  1. Astronomisch Compendium:
    1. AstroCompendium.zip: een zipfile (372kb) met daarin de LaTeX file gescande plaatjes.
    2. AstroCompendium.pdf: Een pdf file van bovenstaande (50 pagina's, 795kb).
  2. Fysisch Compendium:
    1. FysischCompendium.zip: een zipfile (511kB) met daarin de LaTeX file en de gescande tekeningen.
    2. FysischCompendium.pdf: Een pdf file van bovenstaande (158 pagina's, 1,4MB).
  3. Mathematisch Compendium:
    1. MathCompendium.zip: een zipfile (1,15MB) met daarin de LaTeX file en de gescande tekeningen.
    2. MathCompendium.pdf: Een pdf file van bovenstaande (229 pagina's, 2,6MB).

4. Other physics related subjects

  1. If you are new to the physics newsgroups you should take a look at the Physics and relativity FAQ before posting questions. It is now available on the World Wide Web only.

  2. A course in General relativity by John Baez is a highly recommended tutorial for beginners and more advanced students in general relativity. John Baez has also placed his column "This Week's Finds in Mathematical Physics" online.

  3. Hendrik van Hees has put some nice lectures about quantum field theory, statistical physics and some published papers on-line. Most are in English, some in German.

  4. Physicsworld, is a collaboration between several institutes and socities in Europe and North America. It contains for example a list with events.

  5. CoRe: Compendium of Relations for practical calculations in the standard model. This file can also be obtained from the preprint server as gzipped tar file. (495kb).

  6. The NRL Plasma Formulary is a file containing equations on plasma and atomic physics.

  7. Principles of Charged Particle Acceleration by Stanley Humphries is an introduction to the theory of charged particle acceleration, including descriptions of several accelerator types.

  8. The physics preprint server provides preprints of scientific articles, organized by subject.

  9. The Net Advance of Physics Homepage is a collection of links to review-article preprints and advanced (mainly graduate-school level) tutorials in all areas of physics.

  10. The particle data group is an international collaboration that reviews particle physics and related areas of astrophysics, and compiles/analyzes data on particle properties.

  11. Bo Thidé has written a textbook on classical electrodynamics which is available online.

  12. The Dutch Physical Society.

  13. prof. Pierre van Baal's site contains, among other things, lecture notes on quantum field theory (in English), and lecture notes on special relativity (in Dutch).

  14. On this site you can find a lot of articles on optics. Enableling Javascript is necessary.

  15. On Americanelements.com a nice overview of physical and chemical properties of the chemical elements can be found.

5. Star Trek

The following Star Trek related material can be found here:
  1. Generations: The script of Star Trek 7: Generations (161kb).
  2. Star Trek 8: The story of Star Trek 8: First Contact.
  3. Star Trek 9: The story of Star Trek 9: Insurrection.
  4. Next Generation episodes: An episode guide for Star Trek: The Next generation (143kb).
  5. Deep Space 9 episodes: An episode guide for Star Trek: Deep Space 9.
  6. Voyager episodes: An episode guide for Star Trek: Voyager.
  7. The Original Series episodes and the Movies: An episode guide for Star Trek: The Original Series and the Movies (11kb).
To obtain more information about Star Trek episodes and other science fiction series, see Mr. Video Productions Home Page.

There is a Dutch Star Trek fanclub, The Flying Dutch.

6. Science Fiction stories and information (including Star Trek)

All the Star Trek stories have also been posted on the group alt.startrek.creative. These and many other stories can also be found on the WWW at archive.nu

  1. Garth op de vergeten planeet: een Nederlandstalig Science Fiction verhaal (140kb).
  2. Neuromancer: a cyberpunk book (460kb).
  3. USS Vigilante: the story of the Star Ship Vigilante fighting against the Borg (239kb).
  4. The Reichenbach Maneuver: a Star Trek: The Next Generation story where the crew is after a spy (31kb).
  5. Serpent in Silence: a Star Trek: The Next Generation story where Q meets Nagilum and gets beaten up... (28kb).
  6. Deceptions: a Star Trek: The Next Generation and Battlestar Galactica crossover, chapter 1 (100kb).
  7. Dark Dawn: a Star Trek: The Next Generation and Battlestar Galactica crossover, chapter 2 (100kb).
  8. Alliances: the Federation and the Romulan Empire join forces when the Borg attack the Romulans (42kb).
  9. Delphi: the Romulan Empire tries to lure the Federation into war again (230kb).
  10. The Hunt: a Deep Space 9 story where some strange people are fighting their war on DS9 (31kb).
  11. Honor of the Empire: a Star Trek: The Next Generation - Star Wars crossover (42kb).

7. Babylon 5 information

The series has a continuing story line. If you've missed an episode, a summary of all episodes can be found in The Lurkers Guide to babylon 5.

8. Star Wars

Here you can find the scripts of the Star Wars movies.
  1. Star Wars 1: The Phantom Menace
  2. Star Wars 2: Attack of the Clones
  3. Star Wars 3: Revenge of the Sith
  4. Star Wars 4: A New Hope
  5. Star Wars 5: The Empire Strikes Back
  6. Star Wars 6: Return of the Jedi

9. PGP: a standard for email encryption

9.1 PGP

PGP, short for Pretty Good Privacy, is a program whose primary use is to encrypt email by using a special algorithm that does not require a safe channel to exchange keys or passwords between people. It does so by encrypting messages with a public key, who can only be decrypted by the owner of the matching secret key. The public key can be given away to anyone interested, the secret key should (as the name suggests) be kept secret.

Because the time it takes to derive the secret key from the public key is much longer than the estimated age of the universe this is pretty safe. But for this type of products it is best to know all possible weaknesses, after all you'd be better safe than sorry. Therefore I recommend reading the documentation and look at the the PGP attack FAQ: although the document is a bit outdated and does only handle issues with pgp 2.x, it shows how to think about security related to encryption.

PGP is originally written by Philip Zimmermann in 1991.

9.2 Standardization?

Due to the introduction of PGP 5, 6 and later, which are very platform dependant and deleberately made incompatible with earlier versions, it becomes increasingly difficult to find the reliable commandline versions that work well on all platforms. Therefore I have placed the source of PGP 2.6.3ia here. Unix users should unpack it with unzip -a to convert the end of lines correctly. A project file for MS Visual Studio 5 to compile a native win32 version using long filenames is also available.

A special development line of PGP that aimes at solving some of the compatibility problems that arise between the different versions are the "ui" versions. They can be found at Steve Crompton's homepage.

9.3 Gnu Privacy Guard

Another interesting development is the GNU Privacy Guard. This program, although not fully compatible with PGP 2.x (it does not create pgp 2.x compatible keys (version 3 or V3 keys) but it can use existing V3 keys).

In its standard form it does not support IDEA, but IDEA is available as a plugin module (here is the signature file from Werner Koch). You can activate IDEA by compiling the source file and add the following to your ~/.gnupg/gpg.conf file on unix systems: 

load-extension idea
or place idea.c in the cipher dir of the gpg distribution before running configure.

On windows, place the entire path to the dll into C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\gnupg\gpg.conf, for example: 

load-extension C:\Program Files\GNU\GnuPG\idea.dll

For win32 users, here is a precompiled idea.dll and it's signature file.

A frontend that gives GnuPG a 2.6 compatible syntax is pgpgpg. It is not fully functional though, some of the more obscure options are not yet supported.

If you want to encrypt your email to me, you can use my PGP public keys.

10. DVD encryption broken

11. Scientology sect attacks free speech on the internet!

12. Remote Service Control Center

Control distributed.net clients running in a WinNT network.

13. Remote Commander

An NT service and a remote controlling program that can execute arbitraty commands on NT workstations and servers in a domain.

14. Symbian trics and programs

A collection of Symbian programs, speedtraps for Nokia Maps and tips on how to install some of them.

15. My Signal fork

Signal is a chat and VOIP app for Android and iOS for secure, private comunication. I like it a lot but I'm not pleased with the existing backup functionality on Android: the old method was incomplete and the current one is too slow and buggy, so I forked the source and implemented my own backup. Source, patches for the original source code and installable apk files can be found at Github.