Adam Curry has announced his new Book Blog: I’ve been interested in the Gutenberg Project for some time now, and find it fascinating that so many really well known titles are available online and free from copyright. As an experiment I’m going to upload selected works to a this new weblog, in all available formats… Continue reading Book Blog
Category: Books
Broken email prognostication
I’ve been reading a lot about how email is broken these days—articles here, here and here are examples—and interestingly, I came across the following passage in Cryptonomicon (published in 1999) that I thought was apropos: “I hate e-mail,” John says. Harvard Li stares him in the eye for a while. “What do you mean?” “The… Continue reading Broken email prognostication
More PHP Errata
Again reading Larry Ullman’s PHP Advanced and finding it okay, but I came across another glaring error. On page 169, in the discussion about variable order, Ullman’s got the variable order entirely backwards. The out-of-the-box order for PHP variables is EGPCS (which refer to Environment, Get, Post, Cookie, and Server variables), meaning that PHP processes… Continue reading More PHP Errata
Independence Weekend
So what does July 4th even mean to people any more? A day off from work? Shelling out the bucks to buy enough fireworks to blow up your house? I have to admit, I’ve caught myself thinking along those lines and forgetting why we have the day off and what the fireworks represent. But the… Continue reading Independence Weekend
Killer App
The next killer app? Not weblogs. Not grid computing. Not wikis. Not even Google. It’s a non-volatile, random access, analog memory storage device that’s cheap, durable, mass-produced and ubiquitous.
Ender’s Shadow
I began reading Ender’s Shadow by Orson Scott Card this past weekend, and, predictably, I can’t put it down. Brilliantly written, ties in beautifully to the Enderverse yet remains completely fresh. Particularly well written, and heartbreaking, is the depiction of Bean’s childhood on the streets of Rotterdam. Brutal, harsh, and utterly believable even though my… Continue reading Ender’s Shadow
More random things
While in Portland for Kaitlyn’s surgery, we found a little bit of time to go to Goodwill to accomodate my wife’s eBay habit. Browsing through the science fiction section of their used books, I happened across a paperback Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson that was in pretty good shape. I’d been wanting this book, and… Continue reading More random things
Palm Reader eBooks
I’ve been merrily playing with the Sony CLIÉ that I got for my birthday, installing apps and loading it up with data, and one of my bright ideas is to start playing around with eBooks. See, the CLIÉ runs the PalmOS, for which there is a really nifty free eBook Palm Reader available from Palm… Continue reading Palm Reader eBooks
Procrastination; Father’s Day; Summer Reading
Ack. I’ve been letting my mutant ability for procrastination take over on this site, and I haven’t even finished getting the relatively simple stuff done that I had intended— like, making the “Check it Out” area handle more than one item, or putting up more background material. Or perhaps I shouldn’t chalk it all up… Continue reading Procrastination; Father’s Day; Summer Reading