Category: books

Book reviews

Reading George Orwell

In my seventh grade English class, I got an opportunity to read Animal Farm by George Orwell.

My mom had read it once as a little girl during the brief occupation of Seoul in the Korean War.

“One day Ohma brought home fish for dinner, wrapped in paper. But it was too much paper—everything was scarce. I noticed that the paper was numbered and I put them together and that was the first time I read Animal Farm.”

“Did you know what it was about?”

“Of course! I really liked the part where they said, ‘All animals are equal.” and then it got changed to ‘All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.’ 😀 I loved it so much that when the war ended I read Nineteen Eighty-Four, but it didn’t make any sense. 🙁 I didn’t know what a ‘television’ was.”

[Politics after the jump.]Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 8

Pragmatic bullshit

Someone took exception to me saying:

“I have yet to read a good “Pragmatic Programmer Series” book.”

…with the lines:

“I think that’s a bit of a hard knock of the Pragmatic Bookshelf. I’ve had a number of books which I’ve really enjoyed from them; The Pragmatic Programmer and Practices of an Agile Developer spring to mind.”

Hehe, he caught me! Oh, I didn’t lie—I just never actually finished a single one of their books. 😉 I started reading the Pickaxe book and The Pragmatic Programmer mentioned, but I put them down in disgust.

The book that started it all

This book is the book that launched a thousand crappy books.

[But that won’t stop me from peeing on your programming religion after the jump.]Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 21

I found a use for Ruby

…a place to send all the people who washed out coding PHP.

Commentary on Rails for PHP Developers

I haven’t read this book so I can’t comment, however, I have yet to read a good “Pragmatic Programmer Series” book. The one all the Rails developers jizz over, is so poorly written and full of errors, I am beside myself.

Please buy this book.

Not to emphasize the obvious, but if you can’t build a website in PHP, you must really, really suck. Be sure to shave your head and buy a MacBook on your way down the your path of enlightenment.

More Ruby history

Hmm, Ruby was making a comeback, too.

Don’t miss my book: Delphi for Rails Developers, you’ll be needing it next year. 😉

Posted on by tychay 15

Triumphs of the Human Spirit

Blurb is hosting Lunch 2.0 today on Valentine’s Day!

Reading people’s twitter’s I think

Am I the only single person who loves Valentine’s day?

Oh the gifts, flowers, chocolates, singing telegram, and the the restaurant dinner reservation! I love watching the public trauma this day brings to two people in love. Sometimes it is like a romance sped up. Other times it is a romantic comedy in miniature, but mostly it is a complete disaster—still memorable in a “visit the inlaws” sort of way.

To that last one, I remember how my friend Jay broke up with his girlfriend by taking her to McDonald’s for Valentine’s—given how I love fast food, this would probably be my ideal date. 😀

I thank that I never have had to privately experience that public trauma. Historo-mathematically, it should have happened—I know that I’ve been in a relationship during some February 14th of the past, but somehow I’ve been spared any compulsion to participate.

Instead, I normally celebrate it by spamming friends and family with an e-card.

Not this year.

[Triumphs of the Human Spirit]Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 4

Flights of fancy

Flights of fancy

Flights of fancy
somewhere over the Eastern United States

Leica M8, Cosina-Voigtländer NOKTON 35mm F1.2 Aspherical
1/90sec, iso 320, 35mm (47mm)

My tweets make no sense.

This is why nobody follows me and even my friends have turned off updates.

I just can’t seem to explain my experiences in 140 characters. Maybe I should have titled this blog “The Circumlocution.” Oh well, at least two people asked me about this confusing tweet after my plane landed.

But it’s really quite a simple story, even if I can’t tell it right.

Here is a helpful diagram…

Helpful diagram

[More misadventures after the jump.]Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 16

Book Review: Tuesdays with Morrie

As the BART pulled in to the penultimate stop, I was half a dozen pages from the end of tuesdays with Morrie: an old man, a young man, and life’s greatest lesson, a “long paper on what was learned” as the author comes to the terms with the slow deterioration and death of his favorite teacher.

An old lady who sat across from me for most of the train ride, looked directly into my eyes and said, “That is really good book.” She smiled.

“Yes. I have to stop reading now, because I’m liable to cry if I finish it.”

(I’ll confess my eyes were a little bit wet.)

Posted on by tychay 0

The Gourmet Cookbook

I was at Costco today to pick up some extra FoodSaver bags. After that I wandered around a little bit and I couldn’t avoid the temptation to pick up a copy of The Gourmet Cookbook ($22.49 at Costco).

This book consists of over 1000 recipes culled from the over 50,000 ones that appeared in the last 60 years of Gourmet magazine, tested and updated.

The book includes a DVD which I haven’t watched. I can’t help but think that if they’re going to pay the extra dollar to bundle a DVD, they might as well as the over 1000 recipes in electronic form (they didn’t). Even if they didn’t include the recipes in MasterCook MXP format, I’d have taken the time to write my own parser, believe me!

[A little about the book after the jump]
Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 0