Category Archives: Books

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    All consuming…

    So I’ve been using All Consuming for a while to track which books I read and to put little info on the current book I’m reading on my webpage. I’ve had mixed feelings about this service for a while, mainly because I find the UI to be very confusing, and now since All Consuming was consumed by 43things I’m even more confused. I pretty much give 43things the finger. I think this website was designed by mischievous monkeys.

    Maybe it’s time to do something different to track my book reading. Besides I’m so far behind chronicling reading in my blog that it’s made all the neighborhood children cry. After all this is one of the concrete reasons I started blogging in the first place. I wanted to keep a journal of the stuff I’ve read.

    Maybe I’ll try just writing blog posts about what I’m reading instead. Simple is good.

    the best software writing…

    Being a wannabe writer, I really enjoyed this. We definitely need better writing. The blog post is worth the read as is, I’m sure, the book, Introduction to Best Software Writing I, by Joel Spolsky.

    If you read the list of authors, you’ll see Rick Schaut. Rick is a MacBU veteran. I met him a couple of times when I was a dev lead over in the MacBU. Nice job Rick. Writing well, is like hard and stuff.

    [Update]

    Here’s Rick on the article for the book.

    Here’s the article on Word 6.

    The Dark Tower

    I just finished The Dark Tower by Stephen King. This was volume seven and is the conclusion of the Gunslinger series (which King started writing in 1970). This is quite an investment to read, most of the books are giant unabridged dictionary sized. The print is fairly large though so mayhap it’s not really as long as it looks. This one took me a while to read – about two weeks. I usually average about one book per week. Anyway, I’m still thinking about the conclusion. Parts of the last book were very sad. The only other book that has come close on the sadness scale was For Whom the Bell Tolls (Hemingway). I actually had to stop reading The Dark Tower and pull my self together before continuing. It’s funny how you get to know characters and care what happens to them. Especially after living with them through their adventures for thousands and thousands of pages. They almost seem like real people. Anyway, pontificating any more about it seems lame, so I’ll stop. Let me just say that it’s worth it. Clearly, this is the pinnacle of King’s work, and I thank him for it. Thankye sai King.

    Long days and pleasant nights.

    Hacking your ipod…

    Scott Knaster has published a new book Hacking your ipod and iTunes. Congratulations Scott! The book even has its own website!

    Scott and I worked together back in the good old days in the MacBu. I’m glad to see him doing well and publishing. That pretty much kicks ass.

    …and now for something completely different…

    …a scotsman on a horse…

    I just started Anna Kerenina by Leo Tolstoy. I’m pretty sure I read this in college, but I may be getting Tolstoy mixed up with Kafka. Hmm, who wrote about the kid who turned into a giant cochroach again? For the last year or so I’ve been on a sci-fi kick. I’ve grown a bit tired of it and was craving something different.

    Walking around Barnes and Noble I saw Anna Kerenina and was put off initially by the giant Oprah’s Book Club sash wrapped around it. You’ve got to hand it to Oprah though – she’s inspired untold bajillions of people to read who would otherwise being watching, um, The Oprah show. Anyway, I’ve read a few of the books on her list like She’s Come Undone, Midwives, The Reader, The Poisonwood Bible, House of Sand and Fog, A Lesson Before Dying, East of Eden, and One Hundred Years of Solitude. Some more recently than others. Some as much as 15 years ago. I find the selections Oprah chooses to sometimes be depressing or hard to get through. She’s Come Undone made me want to put my head into a nice gastastic oven. On the other hand I liked House of Sand and Fog and I love Steinbeck.

    This new version of Anna Kerenina appears to be a new translation and is getting good reviews. It’s like 800 pages long so it’s going to take me a while to read. At least a week ;-) . I hope it’s more exciting than Moby Dick. I read that one summer when I was like, um, much younger, just for the hell of it and it bored the frickin’ bajesus out of me. I learned more about whale fat (and since forgotten) than one really needs to know. Greatest novel of all time!? I’ve got your greatest novel of all time right here pal! That’s two months of my life I’ll never get back! I could have been reading the rest of my Hardy Boys collection!

    Anyway, I’ll let you know how it goes. Should be fun.

    “A programmers Introduction to C#” (I’m learning about .Net)

    A Programmers Introduction to C#, by Eric Gunnerson

    Just read this. Seemed like a good book to me though I can’t really tell until I put it into practice. I’m sure a couple of days with C# would give me a solid understanding of the language. It’s very similiar to C++, which I’ve used for years, so it’s not a large leap.

    You Mac folks will probably groan with disgust, but I’m teaching myself about .Net (pronounced dot net). This is the latest and greatest technology from Microsoft for writing web based software (among other things). I’m interested in learning about the technologies. Call it a healthy curiosity. Not sure how I’ll fit this project into my life, given my lack of spare time, but I’ll weasel a few minutes here and there. I admit it, I have too many projects going simultaneously… :-( I get interested in something and off I go… (oooh, shiney!) Pending projects: cd reorg, garage reorg, various house projects, books, etc. blah blah blah. Not enough frickin’ time in the day!!

    Anyway, I want to learn how to write web applications. The first step was to read about the preferred language (c#). I’m still quite fuzzy on how everything fits together though. I have a large learning curve, especially since I’ve never really used Visual Studio or written any software for Windows. Sheesh, how hard could it be? ;-)

    Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I finally got visual studio to run without complaining about .Net not being found. I had to run some command line installer thingy and now it’s working. The cool thing was the help link in the error dialog led me right to the solution. Nice. That impressed me a lot.

    Eventually I was able to write a “hello world” forms app and run and debug it in VS.Net. Nice. Easy to understand. But then I downloaded and started poking around in the source for DasBlog. What the? There’s a lot o’ crap in there. Actually, it makes some sense though I haven’t quite figured out how things are related to each other.

    That’s where I’m at with this. I’m reading a book about writing web apps with .Net which should clear some of the fog. I don’t have that book in front of me or I’d put a link to some info about it here. Stay tuned for that.

    I better go now though, we’re having Fred Steak and corn on the cob for dinner which is obviously is a high priority interrupt. C-Ya :-)

    P.S. Trina, I did a search for Fred Steak on the web and one of your blog entries came up. What are the odds? :-)