Books ← A Little Ludwig Goes A Long Way

Recent Books — Smil, Candide, Wiesenthal

Oct

2013

The last set of books I read had some stinkers, perhaps not suprising given that I was surfing through popular genre fictions. Decided to raise my standards a little bit: Harvesting the Biosphere by Vaclav Smil. Some random blogger recommended this book, it’s a descriptive survey of human consumption of the planet’s biological resources. Not ...

Recent Books — Stross, Dibdin, Barr, Shields, Barclay

Sep

2013

Reality Hunger by David Shields. An excellent exploration of what we read, why we read, the evolving nature of the things we read and the things we write. I used to think I was a thoughtful reader, now I realize I am a rank amateur. If you read extensively, I recommend this highly — you ...

Guides to mechanical movements

Aug

2013

I just discovered 507 movements, what a great resource! Back in my active Halloween days, I used to spend a lot of time figuring out how to turn simple rotary motion (as available from a myriad cheap motors) into some form of erratic or lateral motion. Or lateral motion (as available from a pneumatic piston) ...

Recent Books — McElroy, Rendell, McDonald, Savage

Jul

2013

Night Soul and Other Stories by Joseph McElroy. I just don’t enjoy short stories. These seem well-written and intriguing, but the lack of plot and character development due to the strictures of the form just doesn’t work for me. Giving up. Portobello by Ruth Rendell. Given the author I expected a straight up mystery but ...

Recent Books — computer vision topics, Jacob de Zoet

Jun

2013

Trying to get smarter about image processing and computer vision — kind of a random walk of books: Digital Image Processing: An Algorithmic Approach Using Java by Burger and Burge. Mix of theory and implementation on the most basic of image processing techniques. A nice starting point. Mastering OpenCV with Practical Computer Vision Projects by ...

Recent Books — Afterwards, Rankin, Zourodi, Beautiful Forevers, Rule of Law, Skippy

May

2013

Afterwards by Rosamund Lupton. A family is shattered by a school fire, and the critically injured mother battles to protect her kids and uncover the truth around the events. Great story about the relationship between a woman and her family, tested by extreme events. The voice used in the story is a little confusing at ...

Recent books — Dragon’s Path, Fault in Our Stars, Garden of Evening Mists, and more

Apr

2013

Ghostman by Roger Hobbs. Excellent thriller about a world-class thief trying to thread the needle between rival criminal organizations and law enforcement. Great character. I’d read more featuring. Business Model Generation by Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur. I don’t read many popular business books, they are all so repetitive and derivative. This book wasn’t terrible ...

Recent books — Alys, Dhalgren, Neuhaus, Teleportation Accident, Fade to Black

Mar

2013

Alys, Always by Harriet Lane. A young woman witnesses a tragic accident and is then drawn into the family of the victim. Or insinuates herself into the family. I thought the tale was a little underdeveloped as either a suspense novel or as a character study, so just ok. Dhalgren by Samuel Delany. I read ...

Man I would hate to be the guy flogging Nooks at B&N this week

Feb

2013

On the heels of “B&N’s rumored step back from the Nook”:http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/25/business/media/barnes-noble-weighs-its-nook-losses.html, I bet he is “more forlorn than ever”:http://theludwigs.com/2010/04/the-nook-dude-at-the-barnesnobles-looked-forlorn-today/. This was an easy one to predict. Competing in consumer hardware against Apple (and Samsung), and with an undifferentiated product relative to the Kindle? The Nook was born with 2.5 strikes against it. Maybe there were ...

Recent books — Jordan, Sandford, Evanovich, King, Molina

Feb

2013

* “A Memory Of Light”:amazon by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson. This series finally comes to end, about 6 books too late. Good to get to closure on the tale but I can’t recommend starting the series. The first 3-4 books were excellent but then the series meandered far too long. * “Storm Prey”:amazon by ...

Recent Books — Going Clear, The Big Truck That Went By

Feb

2013

* “Going Clear”:amazon by Lawrence Wright. A tough look at Scientology. The author does a nice job of letting the evidence speak for itself. If even a fraction of the accounts of abuse are true, the church has some serious issues to face. The public figures who are adherents probably should step up and make ...

Books I’m Reading — Haskell, Viruses

Jan

2013

I am pushing myself a little this month. * “Real World Haskell”:amazon by O’Sullivan, Goerzen, Stewart. Functional languages have always seemed like a research toy to me. But some of the smartest guys I know are using the concepts at least in commercial products, and “this post from John Carmack last year”:http://www.altdevblogaday.com/2012/04/26/functional-programming-in-c/ has stuck with ...

Recent books — Machinery of Life, Half-life of Facts, Moonwalking with Einstein

Jan

2013

* “The Machinery of Life”:amazon by David Goodsell. I have a reasonable understanding of atoms and electrons and electron-based chemistry, particularly for semiconductor materials. I have never really understood biochemistry — protein chemistry, DNA, etc. I love this book because it builds up from atoms to proteins and other biochem molecules, and has tons of ...

Recent books – Black List, Quantum Thief, Stone Arabia, and Antifragile

Dec

2012

* “Black List”:amazon by Brad Thor. Eh. A treasonous cabal plans an apocalyptic cyber-attack on the US. Pretty standard suspense tale, some interesting characters left completely undeveloped, pretty standard plotting. * “The Quantum Thief”:amazon by Hannu Rajamiemi. Very nice tale of distant future with terribly advanced nano/cyber systems. Difficult to tell where humanity leaves off ...

Books — a bunch of airplane fiction, Makers, MLK Jr.

Nov

2012

A handful of airplane reads: * “Up Against It”:amazon by M. J. Locke. YA SF, set in the asteroid belt. Nice technical treatment of asteroid belt life and some interesting political plotting, but tissue paper thin characters for the most part. * “Red Hook Road”:amazon by Ayelet Waldman. In a Maine coastal town, a wedding ...

Recent Fiction — Adiga, Child, Ignatius, Stein, Abercrombie, Flynn, Simonson

Oct

2012

* “Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand”:amazon by Helen Simonson. An aging British major finds love unexpectedly across race and class boundaries. Awkwardness, tragedy, loss, redemption all ensue. An excellent tale. * “The Blade Itself: The First Law: Book One”:amazon by Joe Abercrombie, and the two following books in the series. Does a great job of creating ...

Recent nonfiction — Quantum Universe, Disrupting Class

Oct

2012

* “The Quantum Universe”:amazon by Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw. An attempt to explain quantum mechanics. Some good elements but the authors wed themselves to an analogy using clocks that I think just confuses the matter. I gave up 30% in. * “Disrupting Class”:amazon by Clayton Christensen, Curtis Johnson, Michael Horn. Like most nonfiction books, ...

Recent Books — Master and his Emissary, Where’d You Go Bernadette, and others

Sep

2012

* “The Snow Whale”:amazon by John Minichillo. Don’t know why I picked this up, exactly the kind of satirical farce I hate. Gave up on, blah. * “The Master and his Emissary”:amazon by Iain McGilchrist. Get your pith helmet and machete, this is a deep jungle to fight your way thru. Deep exploration of brain ...

Recent Books — Chabon, Priest, and some YA titles

Aug

2012

* “The Yiddish Policemen’s Union”:amazon by Michael Chabon. I’ve always wondered what would have happened had Israel lost their 1948 war of independence, and all the Jewish refugees had moved to exile in Sitka, Alaska. OK no I never wondered that. But Chabon does a great job of creating that world as a setting for ...

Recent Books — Barthelme, Suarez, Grant, Kean, Lander

Aug

2012

* “The Disappearing Spoon”:amazon by Sam Kean. Breezy walk through all the elements and their quirks, along with the back stories of their discovery and the quirky, sometimes petty scientists involved. * “Whiter Shades of Pale”:amazon by Christian Lander. If you like Portlandia, you’ll probably chuckle at this. * “Kill Decision”:amazon by Daniel Suarez. Guy ...