2011 Year End Book Reviews

One of my favorite things about public or group transportation is that I get a chance to read a good amount of books. While I could do those things at home, it would take time away from my family and seems a bit selfish. In any case, here are my top 5 books for the year in no specific order.

1. The Calculus Direct - John Weiss
I enjoyed this book so much I've not only read it more than once, I've started reading it out loud to Fynn. The writing style and clear, lively, presentation of information is even keeping my wife interested.

2. Monsoon : The Indian ocean and the Future of American Power - Robert D. Kaplan
This is a great overview of the region built around the Indian Ocean which includes India and parts of the Middle East. Understanding the cultures that have been at play there is so important to understanding not only exported people from the region but from how America should be working, or not working, in the region.

3. The Mindful Child - Susan K Greenland
Being 'awake' and able to see the world around me is something I don't take for granted, but how can I be even more conscious of that so that I can help Fynn have even more sensitivity to the world he will encounter? This book offers some practical advice on that as well as some general reflection on the topic of mindfulness.

4. Demon-Haunted World - Carl Sagan
With the constant harping of the right and Fox "News"'s desire to force religion on everyone, I find myself drifting towards an ever more hostile position against religion. Demon-Haunted World is a great glimpse into what a non-scientific and non-skeptical worldview has caused. The factual view of the past as opposed to the religious fanatic view presented in a book like MindSiege really drives home the danger of a fear led world sponsored by religion.

5. Supergods - Grant Morrison
Before opening this book, I had no idea who Grant Morrison was. I didn't even know that much about graphic novels or comics! However, by the end of the book there were at least a half dozen comics I wanted to read. The thinking that went into the comics and the freedom of mind that a lot of the writers had is so impressive. Plots involving space, multiple dimensions, the application of popular science and the grounding of abilities in it, just so many things portrayed in some of the epic series of graphical storytelling are mind blowing. But the book also grounds itself in some of what makes up Mr Morrison himself.

There are so many good books that I read this year it's been very difficult to narrow it down to just five. Here are a few I think are worthy of mention that didn't make the cut.

• Steve Jobs
• Ghost Towns of the Santa Cruz Mountains
• Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin
• Unfamiliar Fishes
• Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
• Confessions of a Buddhist Atheist
• Masterminds of Programming

I need to stop. That list could go on for pages and pages. Some of the surprisingly good books I read this year were non-fiction. Masterminds of Programming falls into this category as did Algorithms in a Nutshell, both of which I expected to be out of my league but turned out to be so intriguing and well articulated where they became as comfortable as well written fiction. In the case of the former, its about hearing the mind of the creator(s) of these languages that are at the foundation of so much of the world around us and seeing how they thought about the things their creations would need to accomplish. 

What have you read this year that blew your mind? 

The creator has died

#include <stdio.h>

void main() {
printf("Goodbye Dennis\n");
}

Google+ : Sipping is your choice

What's going to be interesting is when people start to recognize Google+ isn't just the obvious. It's that it can replace email and instant messaging, a host of other technologies, as well as content management systems for collaboration. Google Wave was a bit ahead of it's time, and not everyone really understood it. What it said was "People produce content and those that are interested are responsible for consuming it". Google+ has the chance to take a lot of what's become familiar and allow that idea (Wave) to run. In a practical example:

A creative group is working on a new design for a sneaker logo. But, they're a small part of a large company. So, they start a wave/Circle. Each time any person has an idea, they share it to the Circle or update the Wave. Specifically, they create a wave just for the members of this project, since it won't require all of the creative team members. If you join the project, you join the Circle. No email groups. No "looping in" of people. The fire hose of over-communication is turned off and becomes the cool stream you touch your lips to instead.

There's no version control apparent to the users for documents added this way, they just flow. It is the responsibility of the Wave/Circle members to consume the content and search for what they need to know. This is collaboration: Sharing, consuming, and relying on yourself for referential connections (memory). It demands people be more responsible, not less responsible. It also creates honesty which in turn builds trust.

In this large company, there's also an HR group. The creative group is a member of that Circle/Wave too and gets HR updates. Some of the members are also members of the Management Circle/Wave. And so on.

Objective-C XML parsing

Out of curiosity I started fooling with objective-c a few weeks back. One of the sample projects I thought up was a dopey book-like RSS feed reader. This required parsing some XML and then displaying it in a page-flipping manner.


When I first went out to learn about the topic, I found the documentation to be a bit hard to understand. While it was probably concise and accurate, it didn't explain the topic the way I wanted. Part of the reason was that I hadn't done delegate programming before, or heard of it. Another part was that I was reading MWaterfall's MWParser code for a bit more understanding.


Long story short, after a bunch of poking, it appears it's pretty easy to do XML parsing. There are some short examples in this MacRumors post but I like my way. So, if you feel like looking at the code or checking it out, it's hosted at Google Code. Hopefully it'll prove a simpler example of implementing an RSS feed reader. Code review and helpful comments are welcome. 

Google docs list Chrome extension

I love Google Docs. My wife and I use it for almost everything. We organize our finances, track thank you cards, and do things like create diagrams about how useless things are. The irony.


Because of this constant use of gDocs, I was looking for a browser extension to Chrome that would allow me to list the documents I'd recently work on which I could then click and get something done, in a new tab, without having to launch a new tab and click the document. Since I also wanted to learn about Chrome extension programming, I made my own extension to do just that. 


Interestingly, none of the code is mine. It's actually one of Google's well written examples. It was, though, a good visual learning tool which my wife and I now use for document access. If you're starting in Google extension programming or Google app programming, I think it's an excellent jump off for understanding oauth. In my opinion, it makes oauth much less cryptic as well as visually showing how items are connected to make a Chrome extension. If you're not a book reader but instead a monkey-see-monkey-do kind of person, I highly recommend it.




As an aside, if you're looking for simple file upload and hosting, check out Media Fire if you haven't already. You literally drag want you want to upload onto the page and then copy the resulting link to it.

Raccoons are pretty big

If you spent the time on it, you could start a tumblr of butch lesbians that look like Marcus Bachmann. If you applied the same effort to Michele, you'll find plenty of transgendered females. The conclusion that's being drawn is that Marcus and Michele, or M&M if you prefer, are actually a couple of either transgendered or gay Americans that are feverishly anti-gay. Perhaps Marcus, or Marcia, runs his gay-away camps to meet people? I can't figure out how Michele, or should I say, Michael, gets involved. But it happens. You can't be feverishly crazy unless you're actually crazy, or, hiding something.


Also, a raccoon is on average, somewhere north of 20 pounds at full adult weight. If you were to eat one, you'd probably consume around 16,000 calories. If that raccoon was alive while you were eating it, your net caloric intake would be about 15,200 calories. This assumes taking down a raccoon burns the same amount of calories as an hour or so of kickboxing. The theory is built around chasing down a raccoon in a 1,300 square foot, two floor house, after a nuclear holocaust, with temperatures in the mid 90's and very low humidity. The raccoon is quite cagey.

A new home

After enjoying blogging at toomanyconferencecalls.posterous.com for the last year or so, I'm moving over to blogger. Legacy posts will stay at Posterous but new posts will go up here.


The reason for moving was that Posterous won't allow some specific social feedback or allow me to make any monetizing efforts. While this blog is certainly nothing to spend money on, I am a selfish jerk that would like to try make it anyway.