(Last updated June 10, 2006)
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Thompson Home Page
(Last updated June 10, 2006)
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Résumé
Ashton Security Laboratories
Dave's Web Sites
Greek Concordances
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University of Arkansas '06
Mercyhurst College '04
Music Teachers
Other Instruments
Music Compositions
Natural Languages
Web Sites
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Hobbies
The Curious Quilter
Favorite Food
Games
Cat Friends
People Friends
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| -- June 10, 2006 |
| -- December 20, 2003 |
Later, a Honeywell 6000 computer was used, programmed in assembly language to generate Greek fonts by expanding each letter to a 16x16 matrix of bits, linearized horizontally and written to tape to be carried to the University of Pittsburgh for printing by a Versatec electrostatic dot matrix printer. A single book often filled a dozen 1600bpi tape reels with printer dots. The Pittsburgh campus is very hilly and parking is difficult and usually far from your destination. Carrying all those tapes from the car to the printer was a chore.
Later yet, a C program for a Macintosh was used to generate MS Word files. This was barely practical because Word almost always choked on our large files. Since the Word format was (and remains) proprietary, only simple codes, such as tab and CR could be used for control format. The rest of the formatting was done with Word macros, but they were very slow and almost always crashed before completion. I think only one book was successfully published this way, but the restructured program, which did not use tape sorts to order the records but used a more efficient method more suitable to microcomputers, is the basis for the current program.
The most successful (and current) process uses a C program called BTAS to generate the concordance records and statistics reports. Its output is compatible with the TeX formatting system developed by Donald Knuth at Stanford University and widely used for high quality typesetting. TeX macros do much of the page breaking and formatting that formerly had to be done in the program. The output looks stunning. The Greek letters are from a TeX font produced by Silvio Levy of Princeton University. The current program is very portable, since C and TeX are available and consistently implemented on nearly every computing platform. BTAS has been run on PCs under DOS, MS Windows NT, and Linux, and on a Sun workstation running Solaris. Better Greek fonts and higher resolution laser printers keep improving the product.
The Computer Bible series was published by the Iona Press until 1994, when it was sold to Mellen Press, of Lewiston, New York. The Computer Bible was one of the many projects nurtured by the late Dr. J. Arthur Baird, Professor of Religion at the College of Wooster, my mentor as an undergraduate and a seeker, and still an inspiration.
Concordances of the complete New Testament and the Apostolic Fathers have been completed, although some of the early New Testament books would benefit from being redone with the newer process. The Septuagint (a Greek translation of the Old Testament produced in Alexandria, Egypt in the third century BC, and one of the primary sources of our modern Bible) is almost complete. Manuscripts have been submitted for all books except the Psalms.
The project is now completed and no new books are being produced.
A list of the books produced by the Computer Bible Project, including mine, is online at the Edwin Mellen Press website.
| -- December 20, 2003 |
Andrew is our son,
who spends most of his time at
Mercyhurst College, in Erie, PA.
He likes music, languages, video games, big speakers, and Tae Kwon Do.
He plays violin and viola (very well), piano (pretty well), and is
working on electric bass and electric and acoustic guitar.
He writes music, transcribes music to MIDI,
translates Japanese pop and rock (JPop and JRock) music video lyrics to English,
and plays in several orchestras and quartets.
A piece he wrote (Fresh Snow) won the NVMTA Northern Virginia Regional
Competition, came in second in the State, and was awarded an Excellent
in the national competition.
He played it with the
McLean Symphony Orchestra
on April 19, 1998 and in Tokyo and Kyoto, Japan in March 1999.
He gave a short speach at that concert in Japanese.
| -- December 20, 2003 |
| -- June 10, 2006 |
Andrew received his Bachelors degree in 2004 from Mercyhurst College,
a Catholic Liberal Arts School in Erie, Pennsylvania, founded by the Sisters of Mercy in 1926.
He took a double major in Music Composition and Violin Performance
from Mercyhurst's D'Angelo School of Music.
His non-musical academic interests are Japanese, Linguistics, Archaeology, and Astronomy.
He travelled to Italy in Summer of 2001 with the Erie Youth Orchestra, for which he is a mentor.
| -- June 10, 2006 |
Music Groups
Andrew prefers playing his violin in groups over playing solos.
He played in two standing orchestras:
The McLean Orchestra and
the Herndon High School
Senior Orchestra, where he is Concert Master.
He also played in the Herndon High School String Quartet
and with various chamber groups during the
Strings of Arlington summer camp.
Honorary Orchestras
Andrew was selected to play in the Northern Virginia Senior Regional
Orchestra his Sophmore, Junior, and Senior years,
and in the Virginia All-State Orchestra as a Junior and Senior.
Japan Trip
Andrew traveled with the McLean Youth Orchestra
to Japan in March 1999 to play with the Chiba Youth Orchestra
The trip was sponsored by The Manjiro Society,
whose mission is to foster friendships between Japanese and American people
through exchange and homestay,
following the example set by John
Manjiro in 1841-51.
The Orchestra visited Chiba, Tokyo,
Kyoto, and Osaka to complete an exhange started when
the Chiba Youth Orchestra visited McLean in March 1997.
Andrew's composition, the Fresh Snow string quartet,
dubbed by Dingwal Fleary, Director of the McLean Symphony,
the A. Thompson First String Quartet, was played
several times during the trip.
Andrew made a short speach in Japanese during the concert in Tokyo.
Andrew visited his friend Tenjiro in Kyoto. Tenjiro stayed with us during the March 1997 visit by the CYO, when he was a college senior and the CYO Concert Master. He has since received his degree in aerodynamics engineering and design and is working for the Dome Racing Team in Kyoto. He races bicycles and cars, plays the violin and cello, and speaks English very well. Here is a picture of Andrew and Tenjiro during the 1997 exchange.
| -- May 4, 2000 |
Science Fair Project
Andrew and his friend Rob Carter designed and built, after much
trial and error and brain-storming, a 360-degree electrostatic speaker,
using an aluminum coated mylar balloon surrounding an aluminum ball.
A high=energy audio signal (boosted by a spark coil)
alternately attracted and repelled the charged balloon membrane.
They won their High School Science Fair,
received a first place at regional and
would have gone on to the State if they hadn't missed the
application deadline by several weeks.
It was a learning experience in many ways.
| -- April 15, 2000 |
His second major work, Sakura Variations was commission for and premiered at the March 2001 McLean Youth Orchestra/Chiba Youth Orchestra Exchange concert. This is from the program notes for that concert:
The MYO and the Chiba Youth Orchestra are honored to premiere Sakura Variations, a composition by Andrew Thompson. Based on a Japanese folksong, Sakura Variations is written in sonata form with two melodies or themes, a development that mixes both melodies together with variations, and a recap that repeats both original melodic themes.More of Andrew's music and translations can be found on his web sites.The first melody presents the traditional folksong. It's based on the pentatonic scale, the traditional Asian scale of five notes, but includes western accompaniments. It's sound is melancholy and meditative. The second melody, written by Mr. Thompson, uses the western scale, and its song is joyful and happy. Sakura Variations (Sakura is the Japanese word for Cherry Flowers), successfully blends eastern and western sounds to arouse the complexity of feelings associated with the end of winter and the beginning of spring.
| -- June 2, 2001 |
He is currently studying Italian in preparation for his trip to Italy in June 2001.
| -- June 2, 2001 |
| -- July 24, 1999 |
Former teachers: Rossitza Jekova-Goza, Viola (Mercyhurst College and University of Arkansas) Denitza Kostova, Viola (Mercyhurst College) Soh-Huyn Park, Violin (Mercyhurst College) Irene Cheng, Violin (Mercyhurst College and formerly with the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra), Glen Kwok, Violin (Mercyhurst College), Jim Batts, Violin (Levine School), Pavel Pekarsky, Violin (National Symphony Orchestra), Virginia Moore, Piano and Theory (Langley, Virginia); Marty Taglieri, Violin (Burke, Virginia); Dioni Stone, Violin (Clear Lake, Texas); Sally Rowell, Violin (Friendswood, Texas).
| -- June 10, 2006 |
Bonkers is our family cat.
We also call her Binky and
sometimes the Bonkster.
She protects our house from intruders,
except for the parties she throws for the neighborhood cats
when we're away.
We can always tell because they don't clean up the overturned
flower pots or pick up the leftover house plant parts.
Bonkers adjusted well to our recent move.
Quilt made with help from the first graders of St. Joseph's School, who cut out all the animals. The quilt was donated to their silent auction and drew $300. Click on the image for a larger view. |
A quilt made to commemorate the visit of the Chiba, Japan Youth Orchestra members to the McLean Youth Orchestra in March of 1997. The picture on the right is a close-up of the central square. Click on either image for a larger view. |
More quilts can be seen on my website (The Curious Quilter).
