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May 12
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Peter
marked as to-read:
Accounting For Dummies (Paperback)
by John A. CPA Tracy
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Peter
marked as to-read:
Naked Economics: Undressing the Dismal Science (Paperback)
by Charles Wheelan
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Peter
is currently reading:
Business @ the Speed of Thought : Using a Digital Nervous System (Hardcover)
by Bill Gates
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Peter
gave
to:
Catalyst (Paperback)
by Jonathan Rockway
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Peter said:
"First, I must admit, I have yet to finish this book, so my review is only based on the first half of this book. However, I must now explain why that's the case.
This topic, is one that I'm very interested in, web development is a passion of mine. ...more
First, I must admit, I have yet to finish this book, so my review is only based on the first half of this book. However, I must now explain why that's the case.
This topic, is one that I'm very interested in, web development is a passion of mine. I've been interested in learning Catalyst for awhile to see if I could realize some of the potential benefits in my own applications, so this book was much anticipated for me. That said, I'm sad to say I was let down, hard... I'm about 90 pages through this book and I've spent at least 12 hours reading it, much of the time was spent researching bugs in the code, as well as my own bugs that I was not able to find quickly due to the lack of good source code for comparison. At this point, I've all but given up out of pure frustration, with no place to turn, and no clear answers on why things don't work, it's hard to trudge forth.
While the content of the book is good, overall the book suffers from some pretty severe editorial problems. It seems quite apparent that the technical reviewers did not actually build and run the code in this book. In many cases the code is buggy, this is evident from the lengthy errata available for such a short book (>200 pages). In more than few instances, the code did not run at all, or did not function the way it should. This issue was compounded by the fact that the example code for download differed from the book code with no explanation as to why, in addition it was often incomplete or mis-configured as well leaving the reader confused and lost.
Errors alone did not lead to my low score for this book. Unfortunately, the problems didn't stop at mere "typos" (I say "typos" as in one case an entire sub routine was missing from the example, which is hardly a typo). The book had consistency problems as well, in some places it seemed as though the author assumed you knew only basic perl, while in other cases it seems he assumed you were at least an intermediate developer. Often times, the author clued you into the fact that additional modules were needed, while other times he did not. Equally important, since this book was in theory supposed to teach you something, it was hard to follow as the author often switches syntax, spacing, quoting, etc... for various commands and functions with again, no explanation. This leaves the reader baffled trying to understand if these changes are significant and relevant to the topic, or simply insignificant syntactical differences. I often found myself confused when the same concept was presented in two differing ways, but no notes informing you that both are equal and interchangeable.
I believe for the most part, these errors are the fault of the publisher and not the author. John is well known, and well respected in the Catalyst community, and is after all, a core developer of the framework. He also maintains a blog that is high quality. The publisher doesn't seem to be very responsive to additional errata submissions (I submitted 2-3 myself and a few weeks later they were still not posted) this is made clear by the user generated errata. While they do bear most of the blame, I do believe the author too should not have let a book out with his name on it with so many issues and inconsistencies. However, it's the publisher's responsibility in the end to ensure quality, consistency and smooth flowing examples, and in this case they failed to do that.
The good news is, there are excellent online tutorials for Catalyst for free. The best part is, in many cases they cover the same concepts as the book, except, they are accurate and provide working examples for comparison.
I think it's fair to say, I would NOT openly recommend this book. Unfortunately, it is the only physical book available on this topic at this time, so for those of you (myself included) who prefer a physical book to a web page, you are currently stuck. Then again, you could just print out the online tutorials like I did.... problem solved! Unlike this book, they even created an entire CPAN module to install all the necessary modules and dependencies to run all the examples so that you can concentrate on learning catalyst, and not troubleshooting someone else's bugs...
...less
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Peter
gave
to:
The World Without Us (Hardcover)
by Alan Weisman
bookshelves:
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read in May, 2008
Peter said:
"The World Without Us is an ...more
The World Without Us is an interesting thought experiment tackling the subject of what would happen if everyone on planet Earth died... tomorrow. The author breaks this complex story down into chapters explaining various parts of the human infrastructure and thoroughly details how they would fare in the days, weeks, months and years following our demise.
The book covers topics ranging from the sprawling New York City metropolis, down to the deserted vacation town of Cyprus in Greece. Along the way, the author interviews professionals with expertise in wide range of fields from environmental, to architectural and on to more complex topics such as Nuclear physics and Cosmology. While not necessarily a "green" book, this text either intentionally, or accidentally has an environmental agenda to point out how the decisions we are making to today will be affecting our planet hundreds, to hundreds of thousands of years after we've departed.
At times it does feel a bit artificially elongated, and occasionally repetitive for what seems like the sake of filler. Overall, it's an interesting read and a provides a unique angle to the subject of our global impact....less
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Peter
gave
to:
Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking (Audio CD)
by Malcolm Gladwell
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my rating:
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read in May, 2008
Peter said:
"I recently read: The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference also by Malcolm Gladwell, altho...more
I recently read: The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference also by Malcolm Gladwell, although I wasn't the biggest fan of that book, it did intrigue me enough to consider this book by the same author. I'm glad it did!
Although the book is billed, and often marketed as a business book, I'd say that it definitely appeals to a much wider audience. Blink tells the story of quick thinking and sub-conscious decision making in everyday settings. The book starts off with an in-depth and and well though out account of the Getty Kuros "Fake". From there the book touches on, and walks through various research studies as well as business studies along the way to both prove, as well as counter the idea that quick thinking can often be far superior to long drawn out investigations and research.
This book was a great read, and left the reader enticed and wanting more along the way....less
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Peter
gave
to:
Rich Dad, Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not! (Rich Dad's)
by Robert T. Kiyosaki, Sharon L. Lechter
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my rating:
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read in May, 2008
Peter said:
"A wonderful, albeit brief introduction to the stark differences and subtle's between the rich and poor. This book provides some essential stepping stones in building one's financial security. The author explains, in simple terms, the differences betw...more
A wonderful, albeit brief introduction to the stark differences and subtle's between the rich and poor. This book provides some essential stepping stones in building one's financial security. The author explains, in simple terms, the differences between expenses, liabilities and investments. He also dis-spells some of the long held myths in the middle class on what constitutes an investment.
Overall the book was insightful and educational and provides a great base of information as well as comparison between the social classes....less
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April 23
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Peter
gave
to:
The Principles of Beautiful Web Design (Paperback)
by Jason Beaird
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my rating:
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recommended for: Starting Web designers
read in April, 2008
Peter said:
"This book offers great, albeit short introduction to many of the core concepts relating to web design. The author does a great job of explaining the basics of color theory as well as perspective.
This book was one of the few that inspired me and ...more
This book offers great, albeit short introduction to many of the core concepts relating to web design. The author does a great job of explaining the basics of color theory as well as perspective.
This book was one of the few that inspired me and made me want to go hack away on some new designs and ideas right away....less
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Peter
gave
to:
The Official Ubuntu Book (2nd Edition)
by Benjamin Mako Hill, Jono Bacon, Ivan Krstic
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my rating:
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read in April, 2008
Peter said:
"This book was a little odd to me, I'm not exactly sure who the target audience is supposed to be. The book does give a pretty good overview of all things Ubuntu, which is a good thing. However, it's a bit of a jump to go from a chapter that explains ...more
This book was a little odd to me, I'm not exactly sure who the target audience is supposed to be. The book does give a pretty good overview of all things Ubuntu, which is a good thing. However, it's a bit of a jump to go from a chapter that explains how to use an email client and firefox, to one discussing partition, LVM and editing fstab.
If you are an IT manager, or administrator and thinking about installing Ubuntu in your environment this book is probably good for you. If you are however, like me and are looking for a more technical introduction to linux and specifically Ubuntu linux then this book has something, but not much to offer. It's hardly worth reading 300+ pages to learn 5 new commands.
But again, I don't think the point of the this book is for people like me, I didn't do a very good job of reading the intro I just saw "official" and "Ubuntu" so I bought it....less
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April 10
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Peter
gave
to:
iWoz: From Computer Geek to Cult Icon: How I Invented the Personal Computer, Co-Founded Apple, and Had Fun Doing It (Hardcover)
by Steve Wozniak
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my rating:
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