501 Urhixidur

Welcome to my asteroid, a 77 km hunk of rock hurtling through space. Inside its hollow interior is found the Centre for Really Weird Studies.

It was discovered a little over a century ago, on 18-19 January 1903 by Dr. Maximilian Franz Joseph Cornelius Wolf (1863-1932), at the Königstuhl Observatory in Heidelberg, Germany. The first to use photographic methods, Max Wolf discovered 248 asteroids starting in 1891, including the first Trojan, 588 Achilles, and what would later be recognised as the first Apollo-class Earth-crosser, 887 Alinda (currently an Amor-class Earth-grazer). His record stood unbeaten until 24 July 1933, when his pupil Dr. Karl Wilhelm Reinmuth (1892-1979) took the title.
Here's a link to some recent (November 2002) photographs of 501 Urhixidur. Or you can use the NASA Near-Earth Object Program Orbit Visualization Tool.
According to The Names of the Minor Planets (1955), Urhixidur is the name of a (minor?) character in the then-best-seller satirical novel «Auch Einer - Eine Reisebekanntschaft» (1879; roughly translates as «One More - A Travelogue») by Friedrich Theodor Vischer (1807-1887). I flipped through the pages of a copy of that book some years ago, but because it was in German and in Gothic script, I failed to spot the name... According to Lutz D. Schmadel's Dictionary of Minor Planet Names, vol. 1, Springer, 1992, fifth revised and enlarged edition 2003, she is the housekeeper, nurse and female companion of the priest Angus. He is a progressive and opposes her conservative views, but she eventually dominates him as he cannot live without her.

Here you'll find mostly game-related stuff and goodies, but also some TrueType fonts and Delphi bits and pieces.

Under Construction

fDUT - Urhixidur Fonts

On my Urhixidur Fonts Type Foundry Page you'll find a number of TrueType fonts of ancient, fantasy and alien scripts.

Nuclear War

On my Nuclear War Page you'll find additional cards to spice up an already wonderfully exciting game, replacements for the Country Place Mats, additional countries and all the rules (Escalation, Proliferation, Boosters, FAQ, etc.) in one handy booklet.

Titan

On my Titan Page you'll find a Battleland Construction Kit and the General's Badlands.

Europa 1945-2030: The Birth of a Continent

Improved English rules (PDF, RTF and Word 97, Zipped) for Eurogames' wonderful game of the unification of Europe. See also Greg J. Schloesser's Europa Review.

Illuminopoly: The Game of Real Estate Subversion

Illuminopoly 2.4 (Word 97, Zipped). These rules are based on the 1993 2.2 rules by Dave van Domelen.

GURPS Grimoire

GURPS Grimoire Errata & Addenda (PDF, Zipped) contains a few corrections/clarifications for GURPS Grimoire and some spells that were cut from the manuscript for space reasons or which were designed after its publication.

GURPS Magic: Spell Variations (PDF, Zipped) contains a system for modifying spells in systematic ways; for example, from Fireball it can be used to generate Explosive Fireball. It was intended for Gramarye, which is why the varied spells did not appear in GURPS Grimoire. Had I been consulted earlier in the preparation of GURPS 4th ed Magic, it would certainly have been included.

Senet

Senet for Windows 1.20 (Zipped) is an old (1996) but still good VB executable that allows you to play Senet against a customisable AI. Once unzipped, right-click on Senet.inf and choose "Install" (navigate to where you unzipped it when prompted).

Tangerine Dream

Coming Soon: The Tangerine Dream Concordance, listing the tracks from all the albums I could document...

Delphi 7 and Wikipedia

This little zip contains an application designed to allow one to browse the AstOrb data base of asteroidal orbital elements maintained by the Minor Planet Center, with additional facilities for Wikipedia asteroid entries (in English and French). The ReadMe explains the painless installation procedure as well as how to obtain the aforementioned database.

AstOrb Browser 1.4.7 (Zipped)

Diacriticals.txt (Zipped) (Updated 08 April 2009)

In early November 2005, the format of AstOrb.dat changed to accommodate asteroids with numbers greater than 99,999. The current version of AstOrb Browser (1.4.7) cannot read older AstOrb.dat files; to read those, use the older AstOrb Browser 1.32 (Zipped). Since version 1.4.4, support exists for the slightly different AstOrb.dat format used by the Centre de données astronomiques de Strasbourg.

Delphi 3.02

(This should become a separate page later on)

Here are bits and pieces (documentation, source code,etc.) that should help you write shell extensions, even the so-difficult-in-Delphi shell property sheet extensions. This is getting old, and I suspect Shell+ is now a much better solution. Start with the ReadMe file in the first zip:

DUT Shell Extensions files (Zipped) the sample code

DUTDlgTemplate (Zipped, source) An incomplete unit wherein I started to encapsulate the DLGTEMPLATE structure in a (probably misguided) attempt to make Dialogs (such as those used by shell property sheet extensions) as easy to use as Delphi forms

DUT Logger (Zipped, source and executable) A small applet that logs debugging messages emitted by your code --very handy for DLLs

DUT Utils (Zipped, source) A few all-purpose utility units, used by several of my other units

Trash Unit Demo (Zipped) A Delphi unit and demo application showing how to retrieve and manipulate the contents of the Recycle Bin on Win 9x and Win NT/2k/XP; methods include GetTrashContents, RestoreFromTrash, DeleteFromTrash and EmptyTrash (updated for Delphi 7)

Additional Help (Zipped) A small help file covering topics I thought Delphi's help was deficient with

COM Objects in Delphi 2 (Zipped, HTML) The article that started it all, originally written for Delphi 2