1. 11 January 2008

    2007 reading list

    313 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. 01 August 2007

    Harry Potter

    JK Rowling

    476 days ago

    was good, maybe even great, up until the epilogue. Just end the damn book already, rowling!

  3. 06 March 2007

    Booklist

    623 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

    686 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. 28 September 2005

    1148 days ago

    The Morning News - I Am Gary Benchley, by Paul Ford

    I never thought Benchley was a real person, but I did love the story. Now the book is out.

    One agency, ICM, figured out I was behind Benchley, and I decided if they could puzzle out my identity from the clues I left in Gary

    via Kjell Olsen1148 days ago

  6. 18 September 2005

    1158 days ago

    Feed count

    Bloglines doesn’t give you a number here, but I’m at 248. Time for a bit of weeding. (two minutes later: 249.)

    via Kjell Olsen1158 days ago

  7. 08 September 2005

    1167 days ago

    37signals Getting Real

    A new book is coming out of the crew from 37signals, Getting Real.

    via Kjell Olsen1167 days ago

  8. 22 May 2005

    1277 days ago

    Google Translator: The Universal Language

    I use google’s translator all the time, and it works well – at least for just translating individual phrases or words. But it looks like it’s on the edge of a breakthrough:

    To the translation system, any language is treated the same, and there is no manually created rule-set of grammar, metaphors and such. Instead, the system is learning from existing human translations. Google relies on a large corpus of texts which are available in multiple languages.

    All it needs is someone to feed the system the two books and to teach it the two are translations from language A to language B, and the translator can create what Franz Och called a “language model.”

    via Kjell Olsen1277 days ago

  9. 09 May 2005

    1290 days ago

    Index of /deobfu/

    Florian Groß goes over entries into some ruby obfuscation contest, and I don’t understand a word of it. I need to look at this and learn from it à l’avenir.

    via Kjell Olsen1290 days ago

  10. 07 April 2005

    Un été pas comme les autres

    Hughette Zahler

    1322 days ago

    The worst book I’ve read in quite a long time. Third grade all over again – but this time en français. Ou la la.

  11. 30 March 2005

    Les Aventures de Petit Nicolas

    Sempe

    1330 days ago

    A classic little book about a schoolkid in France who gets himself into all kinds of good kid fun. très drôle…

  12. Also somewhat recently

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