Dedicated to my late brave, beautiful and silly mummy, Debra Ross. I love you mumster.

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Category archive for books

Because archives are so much easier than having just hundreds of posts on the home page. I learned that the hard way.

Latest computer book haul

2008.05.22 – 00.07

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!
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.

Starbucks Dulce de LecheAs 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!

By Ruben Schade | Also posted in programming, shopping | Comments (2)

O’Reilly Objective C adventures in Singapore

2007.11.17 – 22.20

cocoabooks.jpg

I’ve been looking for a good, thick tome to work through to help me learn the Objective C programming language. Just like Ruby, I like the fact Objective C was also inspired from Smalltalk and given my past (icky) experience with C++ and the fact I run Mac OS X and FreeBSD (which has the GNU compilers) I figured it would be a cool language to work on for another study project, and gosh it just looks like a really interesting computer language. Girls love it when I talk like that you see.

Alas, Singapore seems to have as many books on Objective C as elephants have tails. Wait, elephants do have tails. That was a stupid comparison.

Anyway I’ve searched at Borders, Kinokuniya, Times, Popular… and nobody has anything other than For Dummies books on basic Cocoa development. My personal preference is the O’Reilly book series simply because I remember having lots of fun learning Perl and Python from their books back when I was in high school and I like their format. The Dummies series were fun to learn Visual Basic from back when I was in primary, but these days they seem to chatty to me.

I know I’m probably being really picky, but everyone learns in different ways and I find O’Reilly books to click with me the best. So it begs the question, does anyone know of any good places to buy O’Reilly books (or books that follow a similar style) on Objective C in Singapore?

My next try will be to go to that really good computer book shop in Funan Centre, I’m hoping they might have a better range that some of the generic chains. Or I could renew my subscription to Safrai Books Online, I’m sure they’d have some good material.

By Ruben Schade | Also posted in mac os x, programming | Comments (1)

Learning FreeBSD, FreeBSD 6 Unleashed

2007.07.02 – 14.00

(Photos Pending…)

If you’ve read this weblog at all in the last year you would know about my current obsession with FreeBSD. To tell the truth I’ve only been using it seriously for a year now but it’s been long enough to convert all the idle machines in our house over to it from all the different flavours of Linux and… heaven forbid… Windows… and I’ve already started using it seriously in my work and studies.

Another bonus, everything I learn about it helps me to understand a bit more of the inner workings of Mac OS X as well, my other favourite OS.

My biggest problem though with learning about FreeBSD, and most technology in general, is the method I used to do it. Aside from reading the handbook, as with most things I teach myself most of what I need to know through experimenting. I find reading through chapters upon chapters of thick reference books doesn’t really work me, I learn faster by just using it (a fact which I’m sure agitated many of my university practical teachers).

All that said though, I think I’ve stumbled upon one of the best technology books I’ve ever read: FreeBSD 6 Unleashed. It seriously feels as though Michael Urban and Brian Tiemann looked into my mind and saw how I learn things, and wrote a book specifically tailored for me. It is the Swiss Army Knife of FreeBSD books!

As with most of the SAMS Unleashed series of books it’s thicker than John Howard (cha ching!) but it covers such a diverse and interesting range of topics. By reading it you get an understanding of not only how to install, administer and update a FreeBSD system, but also some complex general UNIX, how to install web servers, use SQL, setting up a graphical workstation, simple Perl and shell scripting, choosing shells… the list just keeps going.

What I appreciate most though is how each chapter is laid out. At the beginning you’re given a brief introduction with some technical background and explanation, followed by a step by step guide with plenty of examples and sidebars.

My only regret with buying this book is that I didn’t do it sooner! If you’re serious about learning anything and everything about FreeBSD I would really recommend it.

By Ruben Schade | Also posted in apple, bsd, free and open source, mac os x, software, technology | Comments (0)

Are You An “Evil” Liberal?

2006.09.29 – 15.25

Put Your Beliefs to the Test!

My mum and I laughed out loud when we read the blurb for this book!

Too many self-professing Christians hold a schizophrenic worldview-a toxic mixture of Christian and humanist beliefs that undermine Biblical living and the potential to change the world for Christ. Recognizing the problem, Brannon Howse developed a test to help people assess their personal worldviews. Since it was first put online in 2001, more than 50,000 people have taken the test to rank themselves on a scale from “Strong Christian Thinker” to ” Secular Humanist Thinker.”

And what does this book help to protect you from?

Here are some of the fallacious, humanistic ideas this book will protect you against:

  • All religions are equal.
  • Since the Bible says judge not lest you be judged, no one should ever judge the actions, beliefs or behavior of others.
  • Science, history, and literature can and should be taught without a religious or philosophical foundation.
  • Evolution is scientific while creationism is religious.
  • You cannot legislate morality.
  • Jesus Christ believed in socialism, not free enterprise.
  • Since one of the Ten Commandments is “thou shall not kill,” God is opposed to all war and to capital punishment.
  • America’s Founding Fathers violated New Testament principles when they founded the United States.
  • Mankind is basically good.

And this guy is serious!

Anyway I’d better not take the test, I’m too much of an “evil” liberal I think ;). If you think you have what it takes, you should give it a shot!

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By Ruben Schade | Also posted in funny, shopping | Comments (0)
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