1. 11 January 2008

    2007 reading list

    238 days ago

    Things I read in 2007. The ones I really liked emboldened.

    1. Machine Beauty, David Gelernter
    2. People, Land, and Community, Collected Lectures of the E.F. Schumacher Society
    3. The Big U, Neal Stephenson
    4. Zodiac, Neal Stephenson
    5. The Complete Calvin and Hobbes, Bill Watterson
    6. The System of the World, Neal Stephenson
    7. The Earth Manual, Malcolm Margolin
    8. Heat, George Monbiot
    9. The Batteries of Life, Christopher Assendorf
    10. Beautiful Evidence, Edward Tufte
    11. Le Fantôme de l’Opéra, Gaston Leroux
    12. Timeless Beauty, John Lane
    13. The Mezzanine, Nicholson Baker
    14. Deer Hunting with Jesus, Joe Bageant
    15. Out of Control, Kevin Kelly
    16. Harry Potter 7, JK Rowling
    17. Labyrinths, José Luis Borges
    18. Rainbows End, Vernor Vinge
    19. Castle, David Macaulay
    20. Gentle Architecture, Malcolm Wells
    21. Natural Architecture, Alessandro Rocca
    22. Architecture without Architects
    23. The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, Greg Palast
    24. The World Without Us, Alan Weisman

    I read a lot fewer books this year compared to 2004, 2005, or 2006.

  2. 14 September 2007

    Free Books

    357 days ago

    Walking through the student center, I saw that the annual library book sale. I’d meant to stop by sometime, but I didn’t have my wallet. I bought a few books at the sale last year (25¢ per) and it was a good deal.

    Apparently this year for the last hour of the two-day sale, none of books cost anything.

    I discovered this after walking by on my way home, deciding that I had time to spare, and turning around to go back. When I was about 30 feet away from the door, a guy said something loudly about free books and started trotting there.

    Here’s a list of the books I bought, in order of their physical size.

    • Minnesota Sings, Cooperative Song Service. An old songbook with traditional songs and hymns. This is printed by 4H, I grabbed it because it has a lot of songs that are in the book at Danebod (I can’t remember what it’s called), which means it’s probably got some good other stuff.
    • How to breathe right, Edward Lankow. ©1918. In 5/6th grade class our teacher would spend time teaching us to breathe deeply, to relax. I adapted the breathing style, breathing slow and deep ever since without really thinking about it. What better skill to master than the one you use nonstop, that keeps you alive?
    • The philosophy of existence, Gabriel Marcel. ©1954. Had me at the cover: simple white capitals set into bright red. A french contemporary of Sartre, coming at the same general subject (existentialism) from somewhere else (according to the back cover, red printed on white).
    • Evolution and religion, Problems in american civilization (Readings selected by the department of american studies, Amherst College). ©1957. The cover again, but a before-its-time look into the science v. religion arena.
    • The uses of the past, Herbert Muller. ©1952. History, an overlook of the major ancient civilizations.
    • The combined spanish method, Albert de Tornos. ©1867, reprinted 1943. I’ve wanted to learn spanish lately. We’ll see.
    • Language for men of affairs, Vol 2, Business Writing, James Melvin Lee. ©1920. This one had a nice worn hardcover that caught my eye. And c’mon, Language for men of affairs? I was sold.
    • A logical approach to discrete math, David Gries, Fred B. Schneider. I took 1302 From Elena with a huge, new agey textbook that had zen-like stacked rocks on the cover. My friend took it last year from Nic with a littler gray book with a theorem1 on the cover, and their class looked shitloads harder (also more interesting) than mine was. This is that book, I figured it was worth picking up.
    • Victorian ceramic tiles, Julian Barnard. ©1972. Hopefully worth it for the pictures. Hardcover, 175 pages, let’s hope I like ceramic tiles that much.

    Coming to the checkout for a bag to carry all this stuff in the ladies running the place said that they wanted to give kids a chance to build their bookshelves. They looked at the books I had and told me to go back and get more. I said I didn’t want to go overboard, and these were what caught my eye.

    1 Here’s the cover, merci à amazon

  3. 06 March 2007

    Booklist

    549 days ago

    Books I’ve marked down to find and read sometime. I’m hoping that putting these here makes me start checking them out of libraries instead of skipping the queue and getting stuff right as it comes to my attention.

  4. 03 January 2007

    2006 Reading List

    612 days ago

    My reading list for the past year, I’ll go through and say whatever comes to mind (if anything) and slap a meaningless number on each of them. I’m right between the number I’d read in 2004 and 2005, not that I’m counting.

    1. Catch-22, Joseph Heller. 85
    2. Ishmael, Daniel Quinn. 85
    3. What the Doormouse Said, John Markoff. This has stuck around in my head quite a bit, I did a project for my CSCI seminar 1 on history of computing and threw lots of this in. Makes me want to get my hands on some LSD. Stewart Brand plays a big role here, see also Whole Earth and Clock, later in this list. 80
    4. Reflections from the North Country, Sigurd F. Olson. This guy rocks. The book is nice, but the author better. He was one of the first conservationists, and galvanized formation of the BWCA. 85
    5. Free Culture, Lawrence Lessig. Good ideas, not that impressive a book. 65
    6. The Prince, Machiavelli. What can you say? 70
    7. A Whole New Mind, Daniel H. Pink. I’m disappointed I put this on my christmas/birthday list. 50
    8. Slaughterhouse 5, Kurt Vonnegut. Good read, I really don’t have words for either Vonnegut or Heller. 80
    9. The Last Whole Earth Catalog, Steward Brand. Interesting to look through, I wonder if I could try and order any of the stuff? 80
    10. Utopia, Thomas More. 65
    11. Mother Earth Mother Board, Neal Stephenson. Stephenson rules. Makes talking about undersea cables fun. 80
    12. Notes on the Synthesis of Form, Christopher Alexander. 75
    13. In search of God & Self, Donald Wilcox. Book for Ren/Ref course. 70
    14. Linked, Albert László Barabási. Book for Networks/Open Source course. 65
    15. Three Weeks, Issue 1, (who knows?). Goddamn hipsters. 70
    16. American Assassination, James H. Fetzer and Four Arrows. I’ve let the conspiracy theories lay low for awhile, but am still inclined to go for this one. Wellstone was a good guy. 75
    17. The Metaphysical Club, Louis Menard. Fun ideas, and damn – a polar explorer! 85
    18. Brilliant Orange, David Winner. This is one of the books that came at me from like 5 different angles, and I finally just had to read it. 80
    19. The Nature of Order: Book 1, The Phenomenon of Life, Christopher Alexander. I like Alexander’s ideas on this stuff. I don’t know how/whether they’ve impacted me much, but I think the frameworks he’s laying out is elegant and convincing and hope to see it come to more than just a few glossy books. 90
    20. Getting Real, 37signals. Eh. I got/read it for work, now that 37signals are getting so big I’m doing my shun the popular thing. 70
    21. Alaska, James Michener. Damn I want to go to Alaska. I did before, but the book really tinted my glasses. 85
    22. The Open Society and its Enemies, Karl Popper. I won’t pretend I wasn’t a bit lost in my political philosophy class. But a good book nonetheless. 80
    23. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig. Fun stuff, a nice way to look at the world. 85
    24. The Wild Boys, William S. Burroughs. I’m not sure where I was trying to get reading this. 65
    25. Quicksilver, Neal Stephenson. Rock on. 90
    26. Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad. 75
    27. The Nature of Order Book 2: The Process of Creating Life, Christopher Alexander. Not as enthralling as the first, longer and more technical. But good still nonetheless. 75
    28. The Time Machine, H.G. Wells. The first science fiction? 70
    29. King of the Vagabonds, Neal Stephenson. 90
    30. A Guide for the Perplexed, E.F. Schumaker. 80
    31. In Patagonia, Bruce Chatwin. While I’m at wanting to go places, South America is in the list as well. But really what isn’t in the list? If I keep at soccer for a few more years there’s a training trip to Brazil planned, which might just be fun. 75
    32. Odalisque, Neal Stephenson. 90
    33. Allen & Mike’s Backcountry Ski Book, Allan O’Bannon & Mike Clelland. Instead of doing things I like to read about doing them. 75
    34. Lighten Up!, Don Ladigin. Ditto. 75
    35. Chased by the Light, Jim Brandenburg. Pretty pictures. 85
    36. The Confusion, Neal Stephenson. Can’t wait to get my hands on The System of the World here soon. 90
    37. Finite and Infinite Games, James P. Carse. 70
    38. The Clock of the Long Now, Stewart Brand. 80

  5. 18 January 2006

    2005 Reading List

    961 days ago

    I like to make up a list of the books I’ve read, with quick reviews of each. 2004. I managed 46 books, counting make magazine (the shortest book I read) three times.

    I’m a big fan of reading, and managed 12 more books then in 2004. I had a whole three months of not reading around the time I started college, because college got me real bored and I never managed to figure out the library.

    1. The Timeless Way of Building, Christopher Alexander. Alexander has some fascinating ideas. I really like his thoughts on organic – that people should do things (like building) for themselves. The whole idea of a pattern language, which provides for the effortless design of buildings, is a neat one. I wish I had that kind of language. 90
    2. Small Spaces, Azby Brown. A real interesting look at how Japanese embrace the size constraint in their architecture, coming up with all kinds of ways to maximize space and improve living conditions in small flats. 80
    3. Programming Ruby, 2nd Edition, Dave Thomas. The first book I’d ever read on programming. I feel it taught me well. I wouldn’t quite call myself a ruby wizard yet, and there are plenty of concepts in the pickaxe that I haven’t quite internalized. But without me coming across ideas in a project, I don’t think I’ll ever master a programming concept. And the book gave me a good awareness as to what is where in ruby for when I will need to use it. 90
    4. Mind Hacks, Tom Stafford & Matt Webb. I liked mind hacks, although really haven’t thought back as often as I should have since reading it. A better understanding of how my mind actually works is a nice thing to have, and I think a lot of the stuff I read over effects me on a less then conscious level almost daily. 85
    5. Le Petit Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. A quick and short read, provides a lot of ideas to think over. A lot. I don’t have much to say, but that doesn’t reflect on how I thought of it. 95
    6. The Mind’s Eye, Henri Cartier-Bresson. Interesting look at photography I took up around the time Cartier-Bresson died. Musings of an artist, it was a nice read, but I got a bit bored working through it. 70
    7. A Pattern Language, Christopher Alexander. The second time through for me, a pattern language was still nice. As The Timeless Way above, Alexander comes up with some good ideas that make you think. Which is the best thing about reading. 90
    8. Adobe Photoshop CS in a Book, Adobe Creative Team. A nice intro to photoshop, which I wanted to learn to use to touch up my digital photos. I don’t do all that much, but I got a good basic understanding of the controls and manipulations you can get done. 60
    9. Defensive Design for the Web, Matthew Linderman and Jason Fried. A nice concise look at how to get the basics in interaction right at your site – even baser then having a pretty look, make sure that the your users won’t get frustrated and close the window while trying to make an order or finding information. 80
    10. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hunter S. Thompson. I ordered it from the library when news came through of his death. Nice read, crazy shit. 75
    11. Camera and Lens, Ansel Adams. Another look at photography. I skipped the section on his zone system, but the rest of the book was a good look at the logistics, techniques, and equipment needed to do a good job at photography. 70
    12. Make Magazine Volume 1, Mark Frauenfelder. I got caught up in the make hype, and bought a subscription. It’s a nice magazine.
    13. Test Driven Development, Kent Beck. I can’t say I didn’t get test driven development, but I couldn’t quite make myself practice it. I still don’t after having read the book, but I do a better job. 65
    14. Les Aventures de Petit Nicolas, Sempe. A cute book on the adventures of little nick, a preschooler in suburban france. Charming tales with beautiful illustration. I read it to keep on learning french. 80
    15. Cradle to Cradle, William McDonough, Michael Braungart. Fascinating look at how things should be done sustainably around the world. In manufacturing and building of consumer goods – any and all consumer goods – you shouldn’t have to recycle, but upcycle. Things shouldn’t deteriorate as they get used and discarded and cycled, but better. We’re in enough of an environmental crisis right now that we need all we can get, and if the methods proposed here could be adopted all over the world things out to get a lot better. 85
    16. Un été pas Comme les Autres, Hughette Zahler. Worst book ever, read to learn a little french. 0
    17. Ordinary Wolves, Seth Kantner. Fascinating recollection (partly fictional?) of the author’s childhood being raised by his father nomadically in the alaskan arctic. Interesting look at society from someone who grew up foreign to it, tried it out a bit around college, then married and moved back into the wilds. 90
    18. Planting Green Roofs and Living Walls, Nigel Dunnett and Noel Kingsbury. Good look at what todays green roof technology/methods can achieve, when I build myself a house it will sure have a green roof or two. But a little less then interesting. 60
    19. Make Volume 2, Mark Fraudenfenlder. I haven’t managed to construct lots of projects from make, I usually do one or two of the littler ones – money always provides obstacle to the harder ones. I’m debating as to whether or not I’ll renew my subscription after one more issue. I like it, but haven’t actually built any of the stuff.
    20. Rhinocéros, Eugène Ionesco. A great play written after ww2. In french, to learn french, I fell that I understood most everything. And there were lots of interesting ideas I came away with. 90
    21. The Long Emergency, James Howard Kunstler. We’re fucked. We’re fucked. We’re fucked. Kunstler lays out his drama filled vision of why our society is massively unsustainable, and is on the verge of complete and utter collapse. As much as I want to have an optimistic view of the whole thing, Kunstler provides a good case, and I can’t help but believe almost everything he says. Let’s go humans, we’ve dug ourselves a hell of a hole. 90
    22. Bogtrotter, Richard A. Coffey. A man and wife chronicle making the move to their central Minnesota cabin, living off the land and the money they made working at a nearby county museum in the summer. I’m still looking for something more compelling then suburban life and the 9 to 5, I’m not sure what part these ideas will play. 70
    23. Allen & Mike’s Really Cool Backpackin’ Book, Allen O’Bannon & Mike Clelland. Nice cute book on backpacking, with great common sense instructions and nice illustrations. Before reading this I’d done a bit of camping, nothing more then a few days. I read a few backpacking books this year, and liked ‘em all. 80
    24. Lost in Norway, Per Eide. Beautiful book of photos. Photos from all over norway, all of nature, with lots of wide images (which I just love). 80
    25. The Very Small Home, Azby Brown. Another from Azby Brown, again on japanese solutions to the problem of space. In japan there isn’t any. Real estate is prohibitively expensive, and architects have figured out how to maximize livability in the minimum amount of space.
    26. Lord Foul’s Bane, Stephen R. Donaldson. The first in a series of three, it was enjoyable fantasy. But I haven’t moved on in the trilogy, so as compelling as it was, it didn’t keep me interested. 60
    27. Natural Born Cyborgs, Andy Clark. On how ubiquitous or pervasive computing is just the extension of the differentiating factor between humans and less successful members of the animal kingdom – their ability to master tools and further their abilities. 90
    28. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, J.K. Rowling. Nobody hates Harry Potter. Vestiges from my preteen days still hang, but now instead of my mom reading it before bed, I can rip through a Potter in a day. 70
    29. Agile Web Development with Rails, Dave Thomas. I’m a fan of rails, which I’d been using intermittently over the summer. But sitting down and reading through the tutorials really helped cement my understanding, and after it I mostly rewrote the two apps I’d been fooling around with. 80
    30. Make Volume 3, Dale Dougherty. Make switched editors, but has always had the exact same page count. Interesting fact.
    31. The Complete Walker IV, Colin Fletcher & Chip Rawlins. Another book on backpacking, I’ve been yearning to get out on some longer trips. It’s a goal of mine to thru hike one of the real long trails, and I was reading books to try and measure how much I really wanted to and how much it just seemed like something fun. The books increased my interest, whatever that comes to mean. 75
    32. The Pragmatic Programmer, Andrew Hunt, David Thomas. I always try to reinforce what I want to be with books, and I;m not much of a programmer, so I went for the book. I couldn’t say it quantifiably improved me, but like the pickaxe, it gave me a solid idea of what tools were there for me to use so that when I needed them I could get and use them. 75
    33. Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson. Real good read. My first time going at Stephenson, the only reason I stopped with The Diamond Age was that my school library doesn’t have much of a collection. Fascinating stuff. 95
    34. Enders Game, Orson Scott Card. Stolen from my brother on the trip to montana, nice read. 80
    35. Einstein for Beginners, Joseph Schwartz & Michael Mcguinness. Found in the attic – I think I better understand all that relativity stuff, but it’s still a bit out there for me. 80
    36. A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson. Good fun read, encompassing all threads of science as time progressed. The kind of book that throws you off on a different tangent every page. Real good. 90
    37. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Mark Haddon. Interesting look, but I was real let down when I heard it was fiction. Damn misleading books. 50
    38. Cryptonomicon, Neal Stephenson. I’m the kind of guy who can’t ever pick favorites, but Stephenson is approaching favorite territory. I can’t say which of his novels I like better (I’m not much at favorites…), but all I’ve read have been spectacular. 90
    39. The Diamond Age, Neal Stephenson. Ditto. 90
    40. God’s Debris, Scott Adams. I went two or three months at a dramatically slower pace then I’d been following to date, college really just sapped a lot of the gungho out of me. But a real interesting philosophical dialog, although I haven’t thought too hard about it since. 85
    41. Make Volume 4, O’Reilly Publishing. I think my standing on Make has been make clear in the last three issues, and I haven’t been rating it, as it isn’t quite a book.
    42. Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town, Cory Doctorow. Nice book from Doctorow. He’s curbed a good genre, I’m looking forward to finding and reading more from him. 80
    43. 1984, George Orwell. I hadn’t read 1984 before, the whole government spying and manipulating us thing made me snap it up. I don’t think I got the best chance of absorbing it, having listened to it instead of reading, but good none the less. 85
    44. Don’t Make Me Think, Steve Krug. Good look at web accessibility, and how simple it really is. 75
    45. A Walk in the Woods, Bill Bryson. Great read from Bryson, equal parts biting social satire, lament over lost wilds and illustration of how much of the natural world is still out there to be enjoyed.
    46. Catch-22, Joseph Heller. I’ve yet to put any coherent thoughts on Catch-22 together, I don’t know what’s keeping me from thinking it over. I’ll get to it.

  6. 18 December 2005

    992 days ago

    All Systems Go: The Newly Emerging Infrastructure to Support Free Books

    Traditional textbook publishers are insane. They’re looking at the size of the US market for textbooks, which is no longer growing, trying to figure out how to keep their revenue growing and satisfy shareholders. And their solution isn’t to find new markets, to reach out to developing nations, or to cut development and distribution costs by using the new technologies that are available to all of us. Instead, their solution has been to raise prices every year and to try to kill off the used book market with gimmicks and pointless new editions. But their prices are getting so high that they’re actually shooting themselves in the foot—- no one outside of the developed world can afford their product at all, and fewer and fewer of those who can pay are willing to. Jason Turgeson, of TextbookRevolution

    via Kjell Olsen992 days ago

  7. 30 September 2005

    1071 days ago

    Wired 13.10: The Trend Spotter

    Tim O’Reilly looks like a pretty cool guy.

    via Kjell Olsen1071 days ago

  8. 16 June 2005

    1177 days ago

    Main Page - Wikibooks

    Wikibooks is really getting fleshed out these days – maybe a year ago I was all over the site but there just wasn’t much polished content. Looks like that is changing!

    Kjell Olsen1177 days ago

  9. 30 March 2005

    1256 days ago

    Bhargav's Collection

    “The Collection,” a nice bit of academic reading materials (textbooks and lecture notes!). I love the internet. I’m tempted to wget the entire site – but I’m running out of hard disk (doh!).

    via Kjell Olsen1256 days ago

  10. 04 January 2005

    My 2004 Reading List

    1341 days ago

    I figured for the end of the year I would log and link to all the entries for books I’ve read this year, all 34 of ‘em in descending order by date. I rated and wrote a little about all of them too, which was a lot more then I was planning on doing an hour ago.

  11. 05 December 2004

    1370 days ago

    Free Programming and Computer Science Books

    Wow – a collection of books available for free over the greatness which is the internet. All kinds of interesting books.

    Kjell Olsen1370 days ago

  12. Also somewhat recently

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