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<h2><a href="/tutorials/pascal/index.html">Learn Pascal</a></h2>

<p>Since 1997, this web site has been teaching the fundamentals of the Pascal programming language to novices and experienced programmer alike.&#160; <em>Learn Pascal</em> is now the most popular Pascal tutorial on the Internet.&#160; The explanations have been honed over a decade of continual updates, aided by many user suggestions.&#160; In addition, there are programming assignments for practicing the constructs taught in each section, along with model solutions.</p>

<p>It has been bound into university course books in Europe, mirrored over a satellite connection to First Nations schools in the Yukon Territory, and used by professional programmers to update business-critical production code.&#160; The tutorial has refreshed a whole generation of GRE Subject Test-takers in a programming language that dominates much of the pioneering work in Computer Science.</p>

<p>Welcome!&#160; And be sure to write in if you have a story to tell about Pascal.</p>

<p><a href="/tutorials/pascal/index.html">[Enter the tutorial]</a></p>

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<h2><a href="/explore/orbiter.html">Explorations: Landing on the Moon</a></h2>

<p>There’s so much neat stuff on the Internet, including tools for exploring the possibilities of science and engineering.&#160; Train simulators, flight simulators, space simulators – many can now be had for a few minutes’ download time.&#160; But enthusiast communities tend to fall short when it comes to documentation.&#160; It is fun to just download and explore, but it can get very messy to piece together add-ons and figure out the software from forum posts and the often-patchwork documentation.</p>

<p>I found this to be true for Orbiter, a space flight simulator that is the best way I know to appreciate the possibilities and limitation of space travel, and to obtain an intuitive grasp of orbital mechanics.&#160; People once got PhDs for figuring this stuff out – now you can figure it out intuitively, just like driving a car.</p>

<p>Follow along as I explore the Orbiter software and re-enact the Apollo landings on the moon.</p>

<p><a href="/explore/orbiter.html">[Read more]</a></p>

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<h2>Stacks</h2>

<p>Some people get a thrill from wandering the musty stacks of libraries and archives.&#160; I’m one of them.&#160; There’s a lot of fascinating stuff buried in the archives that deserves to see a wider audience.&#160; Here’s some of the stuff that I’ve uncovered, along with my thoughts on the content and the context of the material.</p>

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<li><a href="/stacks/articles/defence-scheme-one.html">Canadian Defence Scheme No. 1</a>

<br />A contingency plan for war between the Dominion of Canada and the United States.&#160; Written at a time when the British Empire was allied to Japan, the plan decided not to wait for Canada to be invaded.&#160; Instead, the Canadians would attack the United States and buy enough time for Imperial forces to come to the Dominion’s rescue.

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<li><a href="/stacks/articles/brilliant-men.html">Why I Never Hire Brilliant Men</a>

<br />An article written in the 1920s for a broad-circulation weekly magazine.&#160; 70 years later, it found a second life as a citation for books on IT management, as an example of a harmful old attitude that should be avoided in a world where talent is tops.&#160; As far as I can tell, though, all of these management gurus just stopped at the title.&#160; Very few people bothered to read the original article – until I dug it up and put it online. </li>
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<h2>Archives</h2>

<p>These are old sections of my site that are no longer relevant in the fast-changing tech world of today.&#160; But, in keeping with my dedication to archiving, I don’t like to let links rot.&#160; I am preserving the material, at their original links if possible.</p>

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<li><a href="/workbench/pbfd.html">Packard Bell full-duplex sound driver</a>

<br />In the 1990s, a company called Packard Bell was one of the biggest sellers of personal computers in the United States.&#160; Beset by quality problems, the company ended up withdrawing from the US market, although the brand remains untarnished in Europe and Asia.&#160; One of these quality issues was outdated device drivers – a problem that still affects PC OEMs today.&#160; Trying to get IP telephony working in the late 1990s, I discovered that Packard Bell PCs actually had full-duplex sound cards, although they were preloaded with half-duplex drivers.&#160; Why they were crippled in this way, I have no idea.&#160; This page helped hundreds of Packard Bell owners get full-duplex sound working on their PCs.

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<li><a href="/software/index.html">Yue Software</a>

<br />Back in the 16-bit days, I wrote a couple of shareware programs, one of which became quite popular.&#160; UnitStar helped hundreds of scientists and engineers get a handle on their unit conversions, and was a finalist in the 1998 Ziff-Davis Shareware Awards, run by the parent company of the then-dominant PC Magazine.&#160; It’ll still run on a 32-bit version of Windows, but not on a 64-bit version.</li>
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