Michel Bel's Homepage Personal Information
 Email : Michel@Belxs.com

     Another picture

My name is Michel Bel. I live in Naarden, east of Amsterdam, in the Netherlands.
I was born on 16 September 1951 in the Hague, but lived the first forty years of my life near or in Utrecht.
I studied Mathematics there at the Utrecht University, (fairly unavoidable as I won the Dutch Math Olympiad of 1968), and got my masters ("doctoraal") degree in Foundations of Mathematics in 1977, with Econometrics as a side dish. I was married at the age of 37 to Quirine, who has degrees in Swedish, speech therapy, and linguistics, and am now the proud father of Mirjam, Thomas and Judith, who take up most of my time outside working hours. The spare time I have left I spend on singing (also while dishwashing), listening (mostly baroque) music, reading, repairing and refurbishing HP 200LX palmtops(see me at the Pforzheim palmtop meeting), committee work, and sometimes building crystal radio's .
I also like to make useful things of small and/or obsolete computers.
You might want to look at some of  these fun projects among which: a totally silent webserver and a midi-file player.
And, my latest design: The "Li'l monster PC". A mini-itx complete(ly weird) PC, fit for browsing, internet radio and office work.

Career

Before University I first worked a year as Central Heating Mechanic, where I learned such practical skills as pipe welding.
From my first year in University on I have earned my keep in IT, and there have variously done programming (including but not limited to systems programming in Cobol, artificial intelligence in PL/1, math in Mumps, graphics in Forth and word processing in Fortran), as well as presales, prototyping, presentations and project management, crisis management and consulting, training and trouble shooting. Initially as university assistant, after that as consultant for Digital, Shell, Digital again, BelConsult(my own company), Philips C&P/Origin/Atos Origin,  Moniforce where they make the best web-analytics software (now part of Oracle since 2008). Then I was working as a senior consultant for  CMC / T11 Company BV, which is strong in Compliance Management and Fraud Control consultancy.
My current employer since 2010 is the Verbond van Verzekeraars, where I work as a senior Statistician on Insurance Crime Detection. (Fraud Risk Analysis and Prevention), Safety control and Motor Insurance .

See my CV if you are interested

Professional Interests

Much of my work requires a lot of communication to get things done well in a short time. As such I am very interested in the spiritual, psychological and communications aspects of consulting, for which I have followed a heavy training. As such I am best in 'solving the unsolvable' - stepping into projects where others fail, and restoring the project and relationships - combining mediation with trouble shooting and hard project work. Where I need help my personal coach keeps me sharp!

Organisational work: I regularly use to participate in some committee, usually as the 'trouble shooting' member, e.g. not as chairperson or secretary, but doing all the odd jobs nobody else wants. Although I had a (non-paid) stint of three years as treasurer and hrm manager of a small subsidized foundation.
Among the jobs I did in these functions are: (advise on) fund raising, writing new  'articles of incorporation'  ( 'statuten' in Dutch)  - a hell of a job by the way, legal consulting, and organizing visits to sponsoring companies. I also was web master for a.o. a small NGO (Dignity Foundation NL).
My current extra is doing statistics for the Utrecht University Fund - charting the good givers..

My favourite links (besides everybody's google)

Views of the Solar System
NS Reisinfo, Dutch travel by train
Mathematical Logic , especially: Lambda Calculus and Combinatory Logic
And I make my music files on the PC with Melody Assistant, which is an exceptional shareware package.

Favourite writers

I like to read poetry, in most any language. After a year I finally know 'Ithaca' by Kavavís by heart (in it's original Greek) see here
(Improve your literacy, get your electronic books from Project Gutenberg )
Favourite Irish (English language) poet: Yeats, esp. 'Sailing to Byzantium'.
Favourite Dutch poet: Ida Gerhardt. , esp. 'Onder de Brandaris' which starts: Dit is het huis genaamd de Duizend Vrezen.
Favourite writer: John Irving
My Professional Bible: 'The Secrets Of Consulting", by Gerald Weinberg.

A Recursion Theoretic Self Interpreter for the Lambda Calculus

Below you see some 'self interpreters', these are fully equivalent to 'Turing Machines', 'Universal Functions' or the construction used by Kurt Gödel to prove the incompleteness of arithmetic.
Image

This HTML file is handcrafted with Notepad++.