Norman Shakespeare is a private consultant with 20 years of experience in electronics, PC and mini hardware, networking, programming, and training. Before writing this book he spent two years consulting at a large financial institution on asset-finance, insurance, and telephonic banking. A significant part of this job was programming in Visual Basic and Access. He enjoys this hands-on side of computing and is in the process of developing a code-scanning tool specifically for Year-2000 use. Prior to the financial position he was the academic head of the Computer Training Institute where his leadership and technical input to the popular computer science courses resulted in his admission as a Member of the prestigious City and Guilds of London Institute (MCGI). He was responsible for writing a lot of the courseware at the Institute, experience that set him up for full-time technical authoring. He has a long list of advanced computing and technical diplomas and qualifications, the acquisition of which appears to be one of his hobbies. Originally from Zimbabwe, he has lived in South Africa and Canada and traveled through Europe, Asia, and America (where he gleaned much of his knowledge for another of his hobbies, fiction writing).