Books on Miro's World

Book recommendation: Outliers by Malcolm Caldwell

Wed, 20 May 2009 22:24:39 -0400

From the author that wrote Tipping point (on my reading list) as well as Blink - which I listened to but found rather controversial. I was very curious what will this one be about.

The book is about success and people that managed to achieve extraordinary results. It touches several topics, I will pick three of them that I found most interesting. It starts with interesting observation - if you look at the MONTH of the birth of junior NHL hockey players, you'll discover that over 50% of them was born between January and April. Certainly not anything like normal distribution. The point is that cutoff-date for signing up children into hockey training in Canada is January 1st. At the age when this happens (5-6 years), kid born in January has significant physical and mental advantage against kid born in November or December. As result, the early born children perform better in their category, and as result they are more likely to make the selection between the talented and perspective. Those selected get much more opportunities to play and practice, which causes them being really better players than late born ones - a kind of self fulfilling prophecy. As result - if your kids are born after August, better reconsider the NHL dreams. If you believe what M.G. is saying, I mean.

Dewey's Classification can be funny

Mon, 13 Oct 2008 18:08:20 -0400

Yes, I mean *that* dry, boring Deweys Decimal Classification used by libraries around the world.

Here is what I noticed in Ottawa Public Library:

Can you imagine two subjects so far apart from each other - and sometimes sooo close ;-)

Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X, Third Edition is out

Sun, 04 May 2008 10:53:06 -0400

as long as you are Safari Books online subscriber - see it here.

Completely updated with XCode 3.x and Objective C 2.0. The screenshots even show the iPhone project templates, indicating the XCode 3.1 in some places. So far the only difference against reality I have found is not covering the XIB resource format (which is generated by default) and sticking with NIB. This blog entry has good explanation of the difference.

Book recommendation: Java Concurrency in Practice

Wed, 06 Feb 2008 23:01:35 -0500

After long time, I stumbled upon something that is both educational and practical. Since Doug Lea's classic, this is very readworthy work on concurrency in Java world. It focuses on Java 5 features and addresses both Web applications as well as GUI apps - each group having their own share of concurrency related problems

Here is the Amazon page for the book - check the reviews. There is also a sample chapter available on the book's website. If you have Safari subscription, you can read it there as well.

Sony eReader format (LRF) viewer for the Mac, Linux and Windows

Mon, 07 Jan 2008 23:29:44 -0500

Thanks to Kovid Goyal, the Sony Reader's very own terrible software (iTunes wannabe) can very soon be decommissioned from my software collection. The libprs500 project, multi-platform solution written in Python works very well and allows to move data between Sony and your Mac / Linux / Windows. The UI is actually pretty decent, considering that it is not native Cocoa app:

You can also edit metadata, which is very important because of the limited screen space on PRS500. As added benefit, the application gives you a reader for LRF file format that allows reading unprotected LRF books on the Mac/Linux as well in addition to Windows. Here is a snapshot:

Free Microsoft Press E-Books !

Wed, 02 Jan 2008 12:44:27 -0500

Microsoft Press is handing out 3 books:

- Introducing Microsoft LINQ by Paolo Pialorsi and Marco Russo

- Introducing ASP.NET Ajax by Dino Esposito

- Introducing Microsoft Silverlight 1.0 by Laurence Moroney

Silverlinght 1.0 is probably a bit outdated (with 1.1/2.0 close), but the others should be good, judging by the authors. Dino Esposito wrote couple of very good books on ASP.NET and .NET.

See this blog for more details and download links.

How to show preview for CHM file in Leopard

Mon, 10 Dec 2007 01:02:32 -0500

The CHM files (Microsoft compiled HTML help files) are often used for eBooks. They are readable on OS-X using excellent open source CHMOX application. If you want to get more useful preview in OuickView than the not very helpfull static icon, get this plugin.

Download here
https://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.p...group_id=211847

How to install it: Unzip it, take the proper package for your system (the ZIP file contains several architectures, on modern Intel-based Mac's you want to use x64), put it inside

Book recommendation: Seth Godin - Small is the new big

Fri, 16 Nov 2007 23:25:50 -0500

On previous weekend I had great opportunity to spend a lot of time listening to books and podcasts. The opportunity was long drive to Quebec City and back, plus the two days spent walking around with camera, taking pictures, enjoying the differences in style and architecture and listening to Seth Godin's book - Small is the new big.

There is nothing in this book that would actually require to drive almost 500 km one way - you can comfortably get the same benefit out of it without moving out from your favorite sofa, walking around your neighborhood or on a treadmill (hi Joel). The real reason being in the capitol of La Belle Province was Skate Canada - Grand Prix competion in figure skating. And while my wife was watching Jeff Buttle, Joannie Rochette and many others - which is her favorite leisure time activity, I was walking, taking pictures and listening - which is mine.

Book review: The Dip

Sun, 21 Oct 2007 21:30:49 -0400

Subtitled "A little book that teaches you when to quit and when to stick" by Seth Godin.

So what is the dip ? It is the strange valley after you start with something, causing that after initial quick success you will get worse before you can get better. Obstacles that you either overcome - or you quit. Seth explains that these obstacles are there for a reason - they separate those who want something badly enough from those who do not. We know them in various forms. Back at the university, the first 2 years packed with math were the dip. Very little of the math we have had to learn was actually really necessary - other that learn you how to think, how to study and in addition to that, separate those who really wants to have that Computer Science degree strong enough.

Book mini-review: Breaking Windows

Sat, 20 Oct 2007 23:15:23 -0400

I've spent lot of time today reading. I am catching up with my reading stack. Between stuff I've finished was: Breaking Windows : How Bill Gates Fumbled the Future of Microsoft

The impression ? Mixed feelings. Maybe I've expected something different. Lot's of details on internal politics and inner fights, not too flattering portrait of Bill G as control obsessed person with very questionable interpersonal skills. From technology perspective, very little what was both interesting and new. I can hardly tell how close to reality are the facts presented, but I often disagreed with the conclusion and analytics. Overall, it was probably worth the time spent on the book - the more you are into politics and relations, the more you may like it. If you are (as I was) expecting a view from more technology side and other stuff that matters, get another book.

iPod Touch eBooks reader - problem solved

Thu, 18 Oct 2007 00:31:03 -0400

As I noticed on Apple Website, the SDK for developing 3rd party applications for iPhone/Touch will be available in February. This solves the biggest problem - offline reading - because with SDK, storing a downloaded copy will be trivial. It also will most likely fix the annoying lack of updatability of calendar and add few more interesting apps.

It is only matter of time until the other eBook formats will be be readable on iPod - such as CHM or PalmDoc (non-DRM-ed version).

Book recomendations: Google Story, The Tipping Point

Tue, 16 Oct 2007 01:14:25 -0400

Thanks to sudden memory jump in my iPod (from 4GB Nano 2gen to 8 GB iPod touch) I have enough space to load some books in addition to podcasts. I normally do not like abridged versions, but the weather is getting worse so I do not get enough walking time for full versions. These two were both 3-4 disc long audio books.

The Google Story is interesting if you are into history of computing - because it describes the probably the largest transition in computing history - the evolution of World Wide Web to a platform and the evolution of the company that made the Web actually useful. I still remember how much time did it take in 1997/1998 to find anything relevant when the best way how to do this were directories (in early Yahoo! style) or AltaVista and hours and hours of paging through the irrelevant results. Then in early 1998 my friend Rajeeva (I was working in New Jersey at Merrill Lynch) made me aware of that company with funny empty looking page and strange name Google :). And now, 9 years later the shareprice of GOOG is well over $600 - just unbelievable.

Free eBook and audiobook on media business and distribution control

Tue, 09 Oct 2007 00:05:37 -0400

Gerd Leonhard, co-author of the Future of Music book is making an experiment with his new book - The End of Control. He is publishing the chapters of the book as they appear in PDF format as well as MP3's on his website. First two chapters - "Attention is the new currency" and "Copyright in the Age of Uncontrolled distribution" are currently available for download / reading / listening.

The books tries to address very important questions on how will the new media business function in environment with little control over the distribution channel. Attempts to enforce control with technical tools were not very successful - just recall the Sony rootkit fiasco's, hacking the HD-DVD and others. Currently, there is strong movement away from DRM and towards non-~~crippled~~restricted content.

Free PDF ebook 'Build your own Ruby on Rails Application'

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 23:09:17 -0400

For sixty more days (actually 59 days and 17 hours as of Time.now, or if you prefer to speak Javaish rather than Rubyish, new java.util.Date()) you will be able to download free PDF version of the book by Patrick Lenz Build Your Own Ruby on Rails Web Applications - courtesy of nice guys of Sitepoint.

The book download page is here, no strings attached - all it will cost you is disclosing an email address (book download link will be emailed to you) and bandwidth to get the 20 MB PDF. Mine is downloading right now, so I cannot tell anything about the book yet. It has 447 pages and from the table of content it looks like solid beginner's book.

Book: Softwar - an intimate portrait of Larry Ellison and Oracle

Sun, 23 Sep 2007 21:54:31 -0400

This is blog entry I wrote over a two years ago - before this blog has even started. Now I found it on the disk during cleanups and found out it is still valid. The iPod mentioned was my first, now long dead first generation Shuffle.

Here it comes:

Spent most of Friday night and part of Saturday reading this book. I did not really expect to finish it, considering the size (~ 500 pages) and the fact that I am not such a great fan of Oracle products - especially not the Oracle Apps. But it turned up to be way better that expected. I mean the book, albeit I partially improved my opinion about the 11i. Technologywise, it is still kind a dinosaur, but now I can more appreciate the sheer size of the problem these guys were trying to address. But back to the book.

BOTD: The Reader

Sat, 22 Sep 2007 22:06:21 -0400

Today's Blog of the Day is "The Reader".

Everything about ebooks and readers - all the stuff I like. See at http://wowio.wordpress.com/

Here I discovered that Sony is assumably preparing new version of reader - PRS 505. From the changes that should be included, none is IMHO really so important. The memory capacity of the reader with SD cards (which are reaching 8GB these days) is much bigger than you ever will need. If I should pick some enhancements hat would make a huge difference, it would be:

Good book on Spring Framework version 2

Wed, 12 Sep 2007 22:36:00 -0400

During my recent return to Javaland, I have noticed many improvements in newer releases of well established frameworks and toolkits, as well as many new ones. One such new release is version 2 of Spring framework. It is not really a hot news, because the final version of 2.0 is out for almost a year (October 2006), but it is new to me, because I spend pretty much all of last 12 months in DotNet, C# and OLAP worlds, with only brief visits to older Struts based, Spring-free Java projects.

New iPod touch as ebook reader ?

Mon, 10 Sep 2007 00:23:53 -0400

As the September 28th is approaching (the day when the new iPod touch will be available in Canada), I have a real dilemma: do I go with the "iPhone without the phone" or not ? The price $329 for 8 GB iPod is pretty high - compared to $279 for 80GB classic - which would allow me to carry all my music, some movies and all podcasts with me. On the other hand, the Touch has WiFi and can be used as pretty decent Web browser on top of iPod functionality.

Sapkowski in English is out !

Mon, 30 Jul 2007 00:05:54 -0400

For all my fantasy-loving friends who consider reading in Czech or Polish too inconvenient: the first book of the grand master Andrzej Sapkowski in English is out. It is book of short stories about Geralt, the Hexer (or Witcher if you want), who is the main character of the 5-book saga with the same name.

You can get it on Amazon.

Most important event of the year

Fri, 27 Jul 2007 23:30:15 -0400

I have been pretty quiet during last month. Few reasons why, none of them business related. The summer is not the season where people in our industry are incredibly busy - that's what winter is for ... and end of March, government fiscal year end ;-). We had family visit - my two nephews were staying with us for few weeks. So instead of blogging, I was spending evenings with them and weekends as a tour guide around Ottawa's attractions. I have even - finally, after 9 years in this country - overcome my dislike for really long car trips and visited Niagara Falls.

Book review: Dreaming in Code

Mon, 02 Jul 2007 19:09:46 -0400

Thanks to long weekend and more quiet time in last couple of days (Happy 140th Birthday, Canada!), I managed to read something else than Ruby-ism/Rail-ism. Among others, I finished the Dreaming in Code by Scott Rosenberg, a book promising to explain why software is hard.

It is pretty tough question to answer. The way this books tries to address it is following the story not very well known open source project named Chandler through it's beginning over period of 3 years. Chandler was - and still is - developed by the OSAF - Open Source Application's Foundation, founded (and financed) by Mitch Kapor, who was before the founder of Lotus Development Corporation and designer of the "Ur-spreadsheet" Lotus 1-2-3.

Best book for Ruby on Rails

Mon, 07 May 2007 20:41:16 -0400

During last two weeks I have been reading and playing a lot with Rails. Now I am in the state where I think I started to "get it" and understand how things work under the surface. Which means I am ready actually start using the framework for real work and become proficient as I get my hands dirty.

To get to this state, absolutely essential and by far the best book is the classic one - Agile Web development with Rails co-authored by the original Rails designer and one of the Pragmatic Programmers. Like other books, the first part is sort of step-by-step code tutorial, which leads you through creation of a Rails application, shows you how you access data, create UI, use scaffolding, etc etc. Unlike other books, this does not stop there and the second part of the book is an excellent coverage of Rails internals - ActiveRecord, ActiveView and templating system. Very well written and offering great balance between covering important features without becoming reference manual.

Managing knowledge portfolio

Sun, 25 Mar 2007 22:50:43 -0400

There are few technical books which you enjoy first time you read them, remember the experience and keep coming back. One of such classic books is The Pragmatic Programmer - from journeyman to master - by David Thomas and Andrew Hunt. If you have not read it, get it, it is worth every cent. Since the book was written - ages ago, back in 2000 - it did not loose anything of its freshness and value - which one cannot say about most of technical books written earlier than 2-3 years ago. Inspired by the success of their initial creation, Dave and Andrew started the website and continued writing whole Pragmatic Programmer series of books.

Converting eBooks to Sony Reader format

Thu, 22 Mar 2007 19:50:51 -0400

Since yesterday, I made nice progress in solving my issues with content creation for PRS500 and it's readability. There are several ways how to proceed:

The simplest is to download Book Designer. It is free for non-commercial use and current version 5.0 Alpha does the job very well. It allows you to load source in text, HTML, Lit, PDF, PalmDoc (prd/prc), rb and few other formats and process them into native LRF format - plus few others I do not really care about. The result is nice, readable LRF file with three sizes, nicely formatted, with metada. As added benefit, because the author is Russian, the program does not assume that English alphabet is the only one in existence and allows to select encoding. The result is quite good - most of the extended characters from Czech/Slovak are there, some are missing and displayed as space (namely ř,ě,ľ ...) but it is readable. What is maybe better option is that with English as language and default encoding, the software "downscales" the extended characters to closest English pairs: ř -> r,ě -> e - which results in familiar computer Czech/Slovak. I am very comfortable with option 2, and will work on getting correct font for #1.

Sony eBook Reader - software updated

Wed, 21 Mar 2007 22:28:26 -0400

After few weeks, I have got back to actually using my PRS500 again and I have finished the books loaded on the device. When I have connected the reader, first the CONNECT software as well as the PRS500 downloaded the updates. The firmware in reader is up to version 1.0.02.0130 from 1.0.00.21081 and should bring longer battery life and stability improvements. It better does, because so far the battery life is nowhere in the proclaimed range of 7000 page turns ... Time will show.

Computers Ltd.

Sun, 11 Mar 2007 20:25:32 -0400

Same as last few weeks, I have spent most of the weekend reading. Unlike the weekends before, this time I was actually reading a book, not source code. It was nice change ...

I have picked this small book with title Computers Ltd in Ottawa Public Library last Friday, while returning some books on CD. Written by David Harel of Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, the book is trying to explain what computers cannot do. It speaks about complexity, P / NP problem and other fundamental limitations of what we can and cannot do with our favorite toys. This book is nice proof that even on such complex and abstract problems it is possible to find very nice and readable presentation - without sacrificing the precision. It reads as novel and thanks to very short format, it is an excellent complement to quiet Sunday afternoon. Recommended.

Good book on coding and software development

Sun, 25 Feb 2007 23:23:54 -0500

I have picked it two days ago in Chapters - Code Craft by Pete Goodliffe. Somehow similar in topics covered as the Rapid Development or From Coder to Developer - but newer. Divided into 6 parts:

Part I - At the codeface - defensive programming techniques, naming, formatting, commenting, error handling

Part II - The secret life of code - code contruction tools, testing and debugging methods, building

Part III - The Shape of the code - code design, architecture, source code growth and decay over time

DotNet Development Toolbox - II

Tue, 20 Feb 2007 21:51:00 -0500

Continuing from here.

Ch-7: Digging into the source code

In this chapter, Mike describes the tools that work with, around or towards source code: Idlasm, Reflector and FxCop. The book is written for Visual Studio 2003, so some references are slightly outdated - but there is one utility that stands out and is still more useful than ever: Lutz Roeder's Reflector. It is part of the Visual Studio 2005 (albeit in older version that you can get on the Web site).

Sony eReader - first impressions

Wed, 03 Jan 2007 23:12:07 -0500

I have got my eReader on 30th December, so after few days of playing with it, here are first impressions. I managed to read one book and played with it quite a bit, but I am still learning.

The quality of the display and "electronic paper" look and feel is great. It actually looks like paper, not like screen. The non-glossy texture surface has same visibility from every angle and it really reads like paper. I have no problem with the speed or lack of it - the page turn takes about 1-2 seconds, switching to full black and then redrawing is kind of cool when the page text "emerges" from the page. The picture is perfect, steady, does not strain the eyes, perfectly readable in sunlight. It is the best feature of the reader.

Publish your own book - or Lulu.com rocks!

Wed, 27 Dec 2006 23:17:19 -0500

One of the most successful presents this Christmas was five copies of the same book. Not just some kind of a book. Our daughter got five copies of the book she authored as a surprise. How can this happen ?

I was toying with an idea to try out self-publishing on-demand printing company that would allow you to create and publish book without spending hundreds or thousands of dollars as investment - sort of "pay as go" plan. The only way how to do it is create the the printable book yourself and find publisher that can do print on demand. Most companies that I found were selling packages in price segment $800 to few thousands of dollars, which included professional assistance in book creation: proofreading, editing, graphics design etc. One company however, offered exactly what I needed: a service that allows you to upload content file, design the cover and order as little as single copy - or as many as you need. No setup fees, publishing packages or minimum orders. See www.lulu.com for more detail. So we have decided to give it a try. It was an easy decision because manually printing the color pages and paying for binding would cost about 3 times more as was the price on Lulu.

Got the Sony reader :-)

Sun, 24 Dec 2006 11:24:11 -0500

Despite Sony's attempt to ignore non-US markets and leave Canadians in the cold (pun intended, even if it is still above zero), I have become a proud owner of the wonderful gadget for all eBooks fans. I still do not have it physically, so I cannot put it under the tree. It is coming next week, when my friend who now enjoys the vacation down in the south returns. He was not only very kind to buy one for me too, but he also wrote a wonderfull review which he is going to post on the Net. I will add a link as soon at it happens. Until that time, here is the summary, in his very own words:

Too many ebooks, too little time

Fri, 08 Dec 2006 23:11:21 -0500

http://manybooks.net/. 'nough said.

Weekend nuggets

Sun, 26 Nov 2006 21:27:43 -0500

Technically, it was Sunday so rather than working or reading some serious stuff, I have decided to take a long walk (to catch up with lot's of new podcasts downloaded yesterday) and to surf the net just for fun. Here is some of the interesting discoveries:

There was a rumor on the net that some Indian student in Kerala discovered a way how to store over 450 GB of data on a sheet of paper. They say

Internal: Free books to a good home :-)

Sun, 03 Sep 2006 23:26:16 -0400

Again, I need to make some space on a shelf and I simply cannot throw away a book ... This time I have decided to reduce my Java bookshelf to allow new (mostly .NET books) come in. No, I am not abandoning Java - but for next 8-12 months I am very likely fully booked in .NET projects, and after that, it will be time to upgrage to new sets of books for Java 1.6 anyway ...