I'd heard about Tobias Buckell when he showed up on Dead Robots Society to do a podcast episode, and from the interview he sounded like exactly the kind of creative little monkey that makes stuff I like reading about. He'd mentioned a couple of his books, but the one that stuck out in my mind was "Ragamuffin".
As a result, that was the first I ended up snagging after I got my Kindle online.
It turns out that this is book two in a series that has 3 entries so far ("Crystal Rain" being the first, and "Sly Mongoose" being third) which means I've once again been introduced to a universe in the middle of the story. But the way the book is structured, you're eased into the history of the universe while being started off with some pretty brutal action in the story. I also really enjoyed the pace of the story and found it to be pretty well crafted overall.
I'd highly recommend this book, and have already snagged the other two in the series.
Showing posts with label books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label books. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
now with 20% more kindle flavor
I scored a Kindle for Christmas, and have been busy catching up on a bunch of reading that I have neglected. Most of it is sci-fi stuff so far, but I'm also planning on ganking stuff from Project Gutenberg (as in "printing press", not "Police Academy") and some other interesting/educational texts.
The big hassle is that the Kindle's PDF reader is kind of limited. Specifically, it can't resize fonts at all, which makes reading some of the books I've got rather difficult. I've snagged Mobikit's Creator Publisher version and managed to convert both The US Army Ranger Handbook and all 24 of the NEETS modules into kindle format. Conversion seems to do great for text, but messes up formatting of stuff like tables and the placement of artwork.
Pretty slick stuff so far. Amazon did a good job of integrating their store with it and making it easy to acquire content.
The big hassle is that the Kindle's PDF reader is kind of limited. Specifically, it can't resize fonts at all, which makes reading some of the books I've got rather difficult. I've snagged Mobikit's Creator Publisher version and managed to convert both The US Army Ranger Handbook and all 24 of the NEETS modules into kindle format. Conversion seems to do great for text, but messes up formatting of stuff like tables and the placement of artwork.
Pretty slick stuff so far. Amazon did a good job of integrating their store with it and making it easy to acquire content.
Thursday, October 8, 2009
NEETS
Ok. Admission time. I don't know a damned thing about electronics, aside from the fact that capacitors are round and the big ones can probably kill you so just stay the hell away from them.
But it's become clear that some electrical work is going to need to get done in order to pull of the MT screen. The usual strategy of wait helplessly until New Egg sells isn't going to work this time.
So my new strategy was turning to Mr. I Grew Up MacGuyvering Radios Together with Bobby Pins and a Potato and Have an EE from the Air Force Academy -- aka, "Dad" for advice. But that went something like:
"Well, you'll need to get a couple of 82 ohm resistors."
"Wait. How'd you figure that out?"
*incredulous look* "You just take the voltage, add up the fronkus coefficient, and then subtract that from the average magnetosphere reading for the location where you'll be using the device."
"That doesn't sound right."
"And be sure you pick up a Henway with the breadboard at Radio Shack. You need a Henway, or this is going to blow up."
"What's a Henway?"
"Ohhhhh, about the same as rooster! HAHAHAHAH!"
".... You are so screwed when we start talking about whether or not to put you into a nursing home."
"Go do your own homework."
"Seriously. I'm going to watch 60 Minutes to make up the list."
"And get a haircut."
So I googled "electronic training that will really piss of my dad", and up came a link to:
NEETS
Google for the acronym if that link is dead... there are lots of places that carry mirrors of it.
Navy Electrical and Electronics Training Series. It's basically about 20 "modules" that take you through simple DC stuff, converting mechanical energy to electrical, radio waves, logic gates, and wraps up with radar. It's targeted towards enlisted personnel, so it's written for someone with a high school level education and slants more toward the trade side of things than dipping too far down into the theory.
In short, if you've ever been curious about electronics but cringed in horror at the thought of going through a college level EE textbook, this is TFM you should R.
But it's become clear that some electrical work is going to need to get done in order to pull of the MT screen. The usual strategy of wait helplessly until New Egg sells isn't going to work this time.
So my new strategy was turning to Mr. I Grew Up MacGuyvering Radios Together with Bobby Pins and a Potato and Have an EE from the Air Force Academy -- aka, "Dad" for advice. But that went something like:
"Well, you'll need to get a couple of 82 ohm resistors."
"Wait. How'd you figure that out?"
*incredulous look* "You just take the voltage, add up the fronkus coefficient, and then subtract that from the average magnetosphere reading for the location where you'll be using the device."
"That doesn't sound right."
"And be sure you pick up a Henway with the breadboard at Radio Shack. You need a Henway, or this is going to blow up."
"What's a Henway?"
"Ohhhhh, about the same as rooster! HAHAHAHAH!"
".... You are so screwed when we start talking about whether or not to put you into a nursing home."
"Go do your own homework."
"Seriously. I'm going to watch 60 Minutes to make up the list."
"And get a haircut."
So I googled "electronic training that will really piss of my dad", and up came a link to:
NEETS
Google for the acronym if that link is dead... there are lots of places that carry mirrors of it.
Navy Electrical and Electronics Training Series. It's basically about 20 "modules" that take you through simple DC stuff, converting mechanical energy to electrical, radio waves, logic gates, and wraps up with radar. It's targeted towards enlisted personnel, so it's written for someone with a high school level education and slants more toward the trade side of things than dipping too far down into the theory.
In short, if you've ever been curious about electronics but cringed in horror at the thought of going through a college level EE textbook, this is TFM you should R.
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
catch 22
And while we're talking about stuff from novels here....
I had a chance to finally scratch Catch 22 by Joseph Heller off my Stuff to Read(tm) List.
I wish I hadn't, because now that I have I keep grinding my teeth everyone uses "catch 22" when they're talking about a paradox. A chicken-or-egg situation. In order to get venture capital to finance development of your software, you need to have developed your software. That kind of thing.
But the real definition of a catch 22 is revealed at the end of the book: those who are stronger than you can do anything to you that you are unable to stop them from doing. The problem isn't that the rules don't make sense... it's that you have to obey any rules in the first place. Or, to put it even more concisely: might makes right.
Heller's solution to the problem? Fscking flee. Get out from underneath the power behind the rules and remove the constraint altogether.
It's a good book, I highly recommend checking it out if you haven't.
I had a chance to finally scratch Catch 22 by Joseph Heller off my Stuff to Read(tm) List.
I wish I hadn't, because now that I have I keep grinding my teeth everyone uses "catch 22" when they're talking about a paradox. A chicken-or-egg situation. In order to get venture capital to finance development of your software, you need to have developed your software. That kind of thing.
But the real definition of a catch 22 is revealed at the end of the book: those who are stronger than you can do anything to you that you are unable to stop them from doing. The problem isn't that the rules don't make sense... it's that you have to obey any rules in the first place. Or, to put it even more concisely: might makes right.
Heller's solution to the problem? Fscking flee. Get out from underneath the power behind the rules and remove the constraint altogether.
It's a good book, I highly recommend checking it out if you haven't.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
[book] Restful Web Services
RESTful Web Services
by Leonard Richardson; Sam Ruby
Publisher: O'Reilly
Pub Date: May 01, 2007
Print ISBN-10: 0-596-52926-0
Print ISBN-13: 978-0-59-652926-0
I found this to be a pretty good reference book. What was most helpful was chapter 12 which covered several of the web frameworks. The chapter on Django walked through the framework from a Rails perspective, which was perfect for me since that's where I'm coming from. Also had some nice examples on dealing with JSON and how to organize your site around the concept of web services.
It did a nice job of explaining the difference between the Rails and DJango MVC philisophies, and even included a decent example of how to handle routing of actions.
I'd recommend this for the bookshelf mainly as a reference if you're in a situation where you need to jump between different languages and frameworks as it's pretty agnostic. Don't think I have the attention span to read it from cover-to-cover, though.
by Leonard Richardson; Sam Ruby
Publisher: O'Reilly
Pub Date: May 01, 2007
Print ISBN-10: 0-596-52926-0
Print ISBN-13: 978-0-59-652926-0
I found this to be a pretty good reference book. What was most helpful was chapter 12 which covered several of the web frameworks. The chapter on Django walked through the framework from a Rails perspective, which was perfect for me since that's where I'm coming from. Also had some nice examples on dealing with JSON and how to organize your site around the concept of web services.
It did a nice job of explaining the difference between the Rails and DJango MVC philisophies, and even included a decent example of how to handle routing of actions.
I'd recommend this for the bookshelf mainly as a reference if you're in a situation where you need to jump between different languages and frameworks as it's pretty agnostic. Don't think I have the attention span to read it from cover-to-cover, though.
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