01.31.08
Posted in books at 5:42 pm by mridley
I’m generally not a big fan of sci-fi books, but my friend Allen suggested a while back that I check out Frank Herbert’s Dune. Since I consider Allen to be someone who knows me fairly well and of good taste, I ordered it from Amazon and gave it a read. I found that I enjoyed it. While I’m not much for space aliens and laser guns, I found that Dune was much more about international (in this case interplanetary) economics, politics, governance, and religion. That sort of thing does interest me. The fact that it happened to take place on a foreign planet and involved space travel was somewhat irrelevant. The cultural commentary was thought provoking and very relevant to contemporary life on Earth.
Since I enjoyed Dune, I decided to read the next book in the series, Dune Messiah. I enjoyed it as well, although since the political relationships and economic power groups had been established in the first book it wasn’t as thought provoking in that way. Dune Messiah was more about plot, and I didn’t find it as engaging. It read more as a epilogue to Dune, albeit a long epilogue. I suspect I will not go on to read Children of Dune.
After reading the first Dune book, I happened to catch the movie version on television. The book was way too complicated to have all of the nuance captured in the movie, but I think it was a reasonable adaptation. The ending was a bit unfaithful to the book, but in all it’s worth watching as long as it’s in addition to, not instead of, reading the book.
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01.07.08
Posted in books at 5:37 pm by mridley
As I wrote here a few months ago (1, 2), I picked up a copy of Mona Lisa Overdrive for some light reading while I was in California. I finished the book in a few days and was reasonably entertained. I still have yet to read Count Zero. A while back, I’d read Pattern Recognition and enjoyed it a lot. I really like books along the lines of Pattern Recognition or Cryptonomicon which are more “technology fiction” rather than “science fiction”. I saw that Gibson had come out with Spook Country, a sort of sequel to Pattern Recognition. I liked Pattern Recognition and I like the “technology fiction” genre, so I picked it up.
Unfortunately it didn’t grip me in the way that Pattern Recognition did. I am not sure why not. Perhaps I didn’t find the characters as likable or compelling. Perhaps the specifics of the mysterious plot unveiling didn’t interest me as much as in his previous book. Or perhaps it was due to the often very short chapters and skipping back and forth between characters and points of view.
In any case, for die hard William Gibson fans it’s worth a read. But I didn’t find it all that gripping.
Tags: William Gibson, Spook Country, Pattern Recognition
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11.11.07
Posted in books at 4:28 pm by mridley
Although my current reading selection is listed as Swann’s Way, in truth I haven’t had much time to spend on “serious reading” so I haven’t picked that book up in ages. I do still read however. I stopped by Barnes and Noble in California last night and picked up Mona Lisa Overdrive. I’ve just read a few pages, but so far it’s not a bad read. Very much in the style of Neuromancer, which is understandable given that I think Mona Lisa Overdrive is a something of a sequel. The middle book in the trilogy is Count Zero which I have not read.
You’d think I would read them in order. But alas, you’d be wrong. I don’t think there is much character or plot overlap between them. They’re simply set in the same universe.
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07.21.07
Posted in books at 12:20 pm by mridley
I finally got around to updating my current reading selection. Unfortunately I’m really busy these days and don’t have time to do as much reading as I’d like. I’ve had a copy of Swann’s Way on my shelf for a while. I’m not sure that Proust is the best “light reading” but since I’ve been putting it off for years already I may as well do something about reading it. We’ll see how that goes.
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05.01.07
Posted in books, tech at 5:33 pm by mridley
My web design skills have atrophied over the years, and the technology has passed me by. My main career path is in UNIX infrastructure, so I stay pretty far removed from anything that actually involves web design. Unfortunately there are a lot more freelance jobs for web developers than for infrastructure automation perl coders, so I thought it might be time to refresh my web design knowledge. I picked up Ajax in Action in the hopes of catapulting my JavaScript knowledge to the forefront of Web 2.0. Or something like that.
I’ve been reading the book off and on for the past couple weeks, and I really like it. It’s well organized and is fairly comprehensive for the prospective Web 2.0 coder. It covers not only the mechanics of how to make things flashy in JavaScript, but also how to design and develop for scale and supportability. Issues such as code refactoring, the Model-View-Controller approach, effective UI design, and code profiling are covered as well as the nuts and bolts of the JavaScript required to display it all.
If you’re looking for a good introduction to Ajax-style development, I highly reccomend this book. I do think that I may pick up O’Reilly’s JavaScript: The Definitive Guide for a more thorough coverage of all the details of JavaScript. And I’m curious to check out Prototype and Scriptaculous in Action as well.
Tags: AJAX
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04.27.07
Posted in books, business at 4:31 pm by mridley
I finally finished Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything. It took me a while to complete, as I have also been reading The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More and Founders at Work: Stories of Startups’ Early Days in parallel. All three books are reccomended.
I’m still reading The Long Tail, so I’ll have more information on that when I’m finished.
Founders at Work is a series of interviews compiled by the author which detail the experiences and struggles of a variety of tech company founders and early innovators. Definitely worth picking up, and it’s a great book for the time challenged as you can read the interviews one at a time and in any order, so it’s easy to consume the book in small managable chunks.
Wikinomics is a must-read. When I have more time I’ll write up more of a review, I hope, but if you haven’t read this book and you are at all interested in the nexus of technology, communications, media, and business you’re doing yourself a disservice by not reading it.
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03.19.07
Posted in books, business, tech at 8:05 am by mridley
The ever-helpful Amazon suggestion engine pointed me to Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything
which I purchased and have been reading the past few days. It’s funny because not only do I totally agree with the premise of the book, it’s actually a subject I was thinking of writing a book on myself. Apparently they beat me to the punch.
The premise of the book is that the availability of near-free global communication and computing resources changes the worldwide economic landscape. The traditional hierarchical corporation is on the way out, and emerging organizations that leverage the pool of talent outside the silo of their company’s employee base will be the dominant economic force going forward.
Not only does using external talent tap a far more vast knowledge base than what could be created inside a traditional company, it also connects innovative companies to their customers and develops a tighter relationship than anything traditional industrial corporations have been able to do. If this sort of subject area is of interest to you, I highly suggest you pick it up. It’s a quick read and not overly technical, but very thought provoking.
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08.28.06
Posted in books, business at 6:57 am by mridley
I finally finished the Oracle/Larry Ellison book Softwar the other day. I liked it more than I expected to. It was less sychophantic than I had originally feared. While the author is clearly sympathetic to Ellison, he does have some fairly balanced critiques of various decisions made by Ellison and Oracle throughout the book.
And it turns out that Ellison is not really a co-author of the book. Rather he provides a running commentary in the footnotes which is a pretty interesting presentation.
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07.18.06
Posted in books, business at 5:50 pm by mridley
My next reading selection is Softwar: An Intimate Portrait of Larry Ellison and Oracle
. So far, so good. I’m not that far into it so we’ll see.
It’s a portrait of Larry Ellison and Oracle’s move into network centric computing and integrated applications suites. The topic interests me, but the book is pushing my buttons a little bit. The author tends to err on the side of the sycophant.
I enjoy reading autobiographies, but this isn’t one. Granted Larry Ellison is credited with co-authorship but this book is supposed to be about the role of databases and applications software in a networked world. There are interesting lessons to be learned here, I’m sure, but I don’t know if a book that lacks objectivity will teach them.
I’ll let you know if I read anything interesting.
Tags: Oracle
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07.16.06
Posted in books, business at 3:32 pm by mridley
I’m getting towards the end of Piloting Palm: The Inside Story of Palm, Handspring and the Birth of the Billion Dollar Handheld Industry
. I wrote about this book the other day when I started reading it, but now I’m coming towards the end so I suppose I should share my impressions.
There’s a contrast in the experience of reading this book with the book I read just prior about the AOL/TW merger. In the case of the book about AOL, I had certain ideas about what happened and was curious if the author’s account would complement what I had already known. In the case of Palm Computing, I’ve followed their products over the years and owned several Palm Pilots, but I never paid much attention to the story of the company.
I knew they had some relationship with 3Com, but the fact that they were a subsidiary acquired in 3Com’s purchase of US Robotics was something I never paid attention to. So in this case, the point of reading the book was more about learning the story rather than proving or disproving any preconceived notions I had.
The book has been entertaining as a historical account of Palm, but it’s my belief that the future is probably in Windows Mobile smart phones like the Motorola Q. We’ll see what happens.
I think the next book I picked up is on Oracle. Stay tuned!
Tags: Palm, Palm Computing
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