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Frank da Cruz
Frank da Cruz, formerly:
Director, Communications Software Development
Columbia University Information Technology (CUIT)
Columbia University
612 West 115th Street
New York NY   10025
USA
Retired since 1 July 2011.
Before that: US Army, musician, NYC yellow taxi driver; programmer, sysadmin, etc.
BS Columbia 1970; MS Columbia Engineering 1977. War baby, not boomer.
Presently: National Associate (for the Bronx), Living New Deal, University of California at Berkeley.

ACCESS TO MY PAGES: Until 8 May 2024, some of my popular pages like Columbia University Computing History and Columbia University 1968 Student Uprising were on a file system that was accessible only by HTTP: (and not HTTPS:). There's no reason why these pages would need to encrypted, but even so, they have become unreachable by an increasing number browsers — notably Google Chrome and Apple Safari — that have begun to bar access to non-encrypted pages. Effective 8 May 2024, Columbia has changed its web server to honor both HTTP and HTTPS URLs, so if you request a connection to (say) http://columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/, you'll get an unencrypted ("not secure") connection if the browser allows it. If you request a connection to https://columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/ you'll get an encrypted ("secure") connection.

RECENT:

Security Notice: As of 21 December 2023, this site can be accessed securely as https://www.columbia.edu/~fdc/. It remains accessible via non-encrypted http: links, which, in this case, are not (and never were) "insecure" because all of the pages are read-only; no login or password is required, no information is collected. Web browsers like Chrome now support only HTTPS and until recently if you clicked http://www.columbia.edu/~fdc/ in Chrome, it would change "http:" to "https:" and the result would be "https://www.columbia.edu/~fdc/ not found". But now clicks on either type of link to this site should work.

The Kermit Project

Data communications protocol and software project founded at Columbia in 1981:
C-Kermit development
C-Kermit 10.0 Beta.10 (3 July 2023)
Kermit's Fortieth Anniversary, 19 April 2021
https://kermitproject.org/fortieth.html
At the Computer History Museum:
Kermit Project Oral History Panel (Jeffrey Altman, Bill Catchings, Frank da Cruz)
MS-DOS Kermit Oral History (Joe Doupnik)
Kermit Project Document Archive (16 boxes of fun)
Other computer museum contributions

Online Archive of California
Guide to the Frank da Cruz Kermit records
The New Open Source Kermit Project (2011-present)
Home page: https://www.kermitproject.org
What Is Kermit?: https://kermitproject.org/kermit.html
Timeline: https://kermitproject.org/timeline.html
Current software archive: https://kermitproject.org/archive.html
C-Kermit for Unix and VMS: https://kermitproject.org/ckermit.html
Kermit 95 for Windows: https://kermitproject.org/k95.html
E-Kermit for embedding: https://kermitproject.org/ek.html
The Kermit scripting language: https://kermitproject.org/ckscripts.html
Books: https://kermitproject.org/books.html
Bibliography: https://kermitproject.org/biblio.html
The Original Kermit Project - Columbia University (1981-2011)
This site was frozen by Columbia U in 2011.
Home page: http://columbia.edu/kermit/
Complete software archive as of 2011: http://columbia.edu/kermit/archive.html
C-Kermit binaries versions 5A–9.0: (1992-2011) http://www.kermitproject.org/ckbinaries.html
Brief history: https://kermitproject.org/dec20.html#kermit
International Kermit Conference, Moscow USSR 1989
Gallery: http://columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/ussr/.

I was laid off from Columbia U in 2011. My last day was June 30th, 2011, and then I spent the next 3 months cleaning up:

Columbia University Computing History

History of Computing at Columbia University (1879-2022)
http://columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/
Computing at Columbia (Columbia 250, 2004)
http://c250.columbia.edu/c250_perspectives/write_history/61.html
Wallace Eckert, Computer Pioneer (Columbia 250)
http://c250.columbia.edu/c250_celebrates/your_columbians/wallace_eckert.html
The DECSYSTEM-20 at Columbia University (1977-1988)
https://kermitproject.org/dec20.html
Watson Lab Conduit Trenching (May 1985)
http://columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/conduit

Other Computing Topics

MM: The 1980s-era email client that I used and maintained until 2015
http://www.kermitproject.org/mm/
What Is a Terminal?
http://www.kermitproject.org/terminals.html
Safe Network Computing - Windows Desktop (2001)
http://columbia.edu/kermit/safe.html
Programming Language Survey (1980)
http://www.columbia.edu/kermit/ftp/dec20/languages.info

New York City

New Deal Projects in New York City (2012-present)
https://kermitproject.org/newdeal/
Photo galleries, tables, narrative. Mainly the Bronx but also some sites in other boroughs, with side trips to Virginia and New Mexico.
Williamsbridge Oval Park — 80th Anniversary of a WPA creation (2017)
https://kermitproject.org/bronx/ovalpark80/
Aymar Embury II - The real Master Builder of the Great Depression
https://kermitproject.org/newdeal/embury/article.html (profile)
https://kermitproject.org/newdeal/embury/ (list of projects)
https://kermitproject.org/newdeal/embury/gallery/ (photo gallery of projects)
Bronx Photo Gallery (2012-present) (Also available as a slide show)
https://kermitproject.org/bronx/
Bronx Day Parade and Festival galleries (2014-2019)
http://columbia.edu/~fdc/bronxday/
University Food Market (1957-2003)
http://columbia.edu/~fdc/ufm.html (English)
http://columbia.edu/~fdc/ufm-es.html (Spanish)
Samad's Deli (photos from 2012-14)
http://columbia.edu/~fdc/Samad
La Rosita (December 2006)
http://columbia.edu/~fdc/larosita.html
Upper Manhattan Running Zone (last update: July 2014)
http://columbia.edu/~fdc/running/
Columbia University Area Photos
http://columbia.edu/~fdc/uws20120914/ (September 2012)
http://columbia.edu/~fdc/uws20120915/ (September 2012)
http://columbia.edu/~fdc/cu/200204/ (April 2002)
http://columbia.edu/~fdc/cu/200212/ (December 2002)

Countries, Languages, Character Sets

Translations of Kermit, computer history, New Deal pages into different languages
https://kermitproject.org/translations.html
Frank's Compulsive Guide to International Postal Addresses (1988-present)
http://columbia.edu/~fdc/postal/
UTF-8 Sampler (text in many languages and scripts) (2000-present)
http://www.kermitproject.org/utf8.html
Say PEACE In All Languages! (March-April 2003)
http://columbia.edu/~fdc/pace
Representing Middle English Manuscripts on the Web with UTF-8 (August 2002)
https://kermitproject.org/st-erkenwald.html
Interchange of Non-English Computer Text (1994)
https://kermitproject.org/accents.html
HTML (Web-page) sample and tutorial (for making simple Web pages "by hand")
http://columbia.edu/~fdc/sample.html

Germany

Frankfurt American High School, Army-brat history from the 1950s and 60s (2003-present)
http://columbia.edu/~fdc/family/frankfurt.html (narrative: work in progress, currently about 62 pages)
http://columbia.edu/~fdc/frankfurt/ (gallery, mostly from 1959-61)
Berlin 1959 Gallery
http://columbia.edu/~fdc/family/berlingallery1959/
Berlin 1961-62 Gallery
http://columbia.edu/~fdc/family/berlingallery1961/
Army - Kaiserslautern and Stuttgart
http://columbia.edu/~fdc/army (photo gallery 1963-66)
http://columbia.edu/~fdc/family/army.html (narrative: 2019-2024)
East Germany Reconsidered - Books by Victor Grossman
http://columbia.edu/~fdc/germany/grossman.html
Messerschmitt Kabinenroller (und andere Kleinwagen) (1954)
http://columbia.edu/~fdc/frankfurt/messerschmitt.html
BMW R-26 (1956)
http://columbia.edu/~fdc/frankfurt/bmw-r26.html

Politics

Note: I'm a Viet-Nam era Army veteran as well as a military brat, and both my parents were World War II veterans.
Now Or Never: A New New Deal (10 November 2020).
https://kermitproject.org/newdeal/newnewdeal.html
Columbia University 1968 (the student uprising)
http://columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/1968/index.html
Recent USA elections
The 2022 midterms
http://columbia.edu/~fdc/election2020.html
Don't Trust Anyone Under 50! (Columbia 250, 2004)
http://c250.columbia.edu/c250_perspectives/write_history/282.html

Virginia

Chesterbrook, Virginia, 1947-55 (narrative, work in progress, about 14 pages )
http://columbia.edu/~fdc/family/chesterbrook.html

Photos of Chesterbrook, Virginia, 1947-55 (gallery, 2014)
http://columbia.edu/~fdc/virginia

New Deal Projects in Virginia (2017-2020)
https://kermitproject.org/newdeal/virginia/

Family history

International research project into my Portuguese, Norwegian, and German/Swiss families, my ex-wife's African-American family, and my cousins' Lebanese and Palestinian families, with a large family tree going back many generations:
http://columbia.edu/~fdc/family/

Index to individual chapters:
http://columbia.edu/~fdc/family/#chapters

Books

Other publications (and semi-publications)

Also see: Kermit Bibliography and Kermit Project Books Online.

Recipes

Miscellaneous

Milestones in the Annals of Junkmail (July 2002)
http://columbia.edu/kermit/george.html
No Wax Please!
http://columbia.edu/~fdc/nowax.html

Frank da Cruz / [email protected]