Macslocum over at O’Reilly Answers is asking people to submit their favourite browser plugins and extensions. No prizes for guessing which one I chose!
Thursday 18th March 2010
Monday 02nd November 2009
My home is back in Singapore and I’m studying in Adelaide, and in both places over the years I’ve collected huge collections of computer books, like these ones! Computer books are bulky and heavy just by themselves, so carrying a few dozen of them between cities in luggage is completely out of the question. What I need are ebook versions.
Thursday 22nd May 2008
Having received payment for my latest one off project today, I celebrated by going down to Wheelock Place and splurging on a Starbucks Venti Dulce de Leche from next door and buying some computer books I’ve been dying to get. I’m a wild guy you see.
Happiness is a stack of new interesting computer books!
I find that I learn new skills much faster if I’m given examples and real world applications of technologies rather than just the usual “an array is a collection of objects yada yada” theory. The O’Reilly Cookbooks are absolutely fantastic for this, what irritates me is that I only just discovered them recently when I had to learn Python in a hurry for an assignment. I learned more from that one book than many hours sifting through tutorial pages and the dry slides from the uni.
As for the FreeBSD book, heck I just wanted to see how it works! Perhaps a little over my head right now, but we’ll be looking at the Linux kernel at some point so this could be an interesting side study for comparison.
From the blurbs:
- The Design and Implementation of the FreeBSD Operating System
- As in earlier Addison-Wesley books on the UNIX-based BSD operating system, Kirk McKusick and George Neville-Neil deliver here the most comprehensive, up-to-date, and authoritative technical information on the internal structure of open source FreeBSD.
- Perl Cookbook
- Find a Perl programmer, and you’ll find a copy of Perl Cookbook nearby. Perl Cookbook is a comprehensive collection of problems, solutions, and practical examples for anyone programming in Perl. The book contains hundreds of rigorously reviewed Perl “recipes” and thousands of examples ranging from brief one-liners to complete applications.
- Ruby Cookbook
- The Ruby Cookbook is the most comprehensive problem-solving guide to today’s hottest programming language. It gives you hundreds of solutions to real-world problems, with clear explanations and thousands of lines of code you can use in your own projects. From data structures and algorithms, to integration with cutting-edge technologies, the Ruby Cookbook has something for every programmer.
And now I’m off to bed. 00:07, that’s pretty early for me!
Monday 31st March 2008
I’ll be elaborating more on what I mean by this on the Rubenerd Show, stay tuned. Get it? Stay tuned? It’s an internet radio show? A podcast? Stay… tuned? Hey, I thought it was funny.
For some reason, I’ve always found it harder than most people to suspend disbelief in stories, games and the like. If I read, hear or see something that’s impossible, stupid or unreasonable… it frustrates the hell out of me.
Suspension of disbelief refers to the willingness of a person to accept as true the premises of a work of fiction, even if they are fantastic or impossible.
– http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspension_of_disbelief
Case in point, I was browsing a game website to see if anyone had more information about Knetwalk when I saw a screenshot from one of those now infamous Dead or Alive games:
I ask you this right now: why on Earth is she wearing a denim bra, with pockets sewn on it? It makes absolutely… no… friggen… sense! I’ve heard from so many girls about how uncomfortable these contraptions are, so why would you make one out of denim? And put pockets on it? What could you put in those pockets? A mobile phone? An Objective-C Pocket Reference book? I think not!
The suspension of disbelief that I’m apparently supposed to have with this game (ridiculously over-the-top buff men and tiny adolescent girls fighting on equal terms in ridiculous locations with gravity defying moves and super human injury sustaining abilities) is tenuous and irreconcilable enough in my mind as it is even without this blatant pandering to obsessive game players!
And here’s another example from the same game: why would someone in supposedly frigid weather be wearing a heavy, wooly jacket… with a miniskirt? What’s next, are we to believe in summer she walks down a boardwalk in a t-shirt and snow pants? Snow pants!?
It’s cold, good thing I’m rugged up all over!
This makes absolutely… no… sense! Rarely is the question asked: when did computer games become so ridiculous? And I’m absolutely positive there are far more examples than this!
And while we’re talking about O’Reilly Pocket Reference books; don’t get me wrong I think they’re the greatest thing to happen to the computer reference book world and I can claim to own no less than 14 such tomes; but since when is a book which measures 18 by 11 centimetres pocket sized?
A Pocket Reference?
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