March 2013
1 post
1 tag
Learn You Some Erlang For Great Good! by Fred...
Upshot: A popular Erlang tutorial site becomes a book. Any downsides? Nope, unless you don’t like the style. But you won’t. Support the author!
I was a bit skeptical that there was another “Learn You Some…” book out there written in the same style as the Haskell book. But, as of this post, Learn You Some Erlang For Great Good! by Fred Hebert is one of the six & counting books...
January 2013
3 posts
November 2012
2 posts
1 tag
October 2012
6 posts
1 tag
1 tag
1 tag
September 2012
10 posts
2 tags
1 tag
Regular Expressions Cookbook 2nd Edition by Jan...
Upshot: It’s a “Cookbook.” Truth in advertising, you’ll find recipes. Upsides? It’s from O’Reilly. So the quality’s there. Any downsides? Windows-centric, probably not meant to be read cover-to-cover.
I already owned the 1st edition of Regular Expressions Cookbook 2nd Edition by Jan Goyvaerts & Steven Levithan, so when I picked up the 2nd, I was...
1 tag
WebGL: Up and Running by Tony Parsi
Upshot: As this is an ‘Up & Running’ book, there’s no wasted time. Upside: All the info, VERY concise. Any downsides? You’d better be intermediate, as with other ‘Up & Running’ books, this is a dense crash course.
If you’ve gone through a couple of these ‘Up & Running’ books, you’ll know what to expect from WebGL: Up and...
1 tag
Learning Web Design by Jennifer Niederst Robbins
Upshot: Do you need background or even a refresher in Web Design? This is your book, now in 4th edition goodness. Upsides: Lots. A full survey of the current state of the web, including HTML5 & cutting edge CSS/JavaScript. Any downers? Not really.
I have to say, I’m really impressed with this ‘soup to nuts’ book, “Learning Web Design by Jennifer Niederst...
mgdphotography asked: Thank you for some great reviews, in particular the recent one's about ePub books (O'Reilly, Pragmatic Prog...) and the ePub readers, just what I was needing on my Mac. Thanks, Mike
August 2012
2 posts
4 tags
Hey Apple, WTH Happened to secure.log in Mountain...
Since I cannot post more than ONE LINK in Stack to this question, I present my research here. Please give me the 10 rep points so I do not have to do this again. Here’s my stack answer with multiple links:
Thanks to user @ben_fry on twitter, we have an answer. In short, secure.log auth events have been rolled into asl (syslog). Ben Fry’s discussion is here:
...
July 2012
1 post
1 tag
Webbots, Spiders & Screen Scrapers, 2nd Ed. by...
Upshot: A nice primer on how to get started with web ‘bots & spidering via php. Use your powers for good! Upsides: great linked sample site and scripts. Concise examples to get you going. Any downsides? Maybe the book is a bit Windows-centric… But Wintel folks need all the help they can get.
I was really impressed with Webbots, Spiders & Screen Scrapers, 2nd Ed. by Michael...
June 2012
1 post
1 tag
May 2012
3 posts
chilly: Facebook's Cognitive Dissonance with... →
Interesting read, but I disagree with the premise. Facebook pays a lot of lip service to privacy, but only tweaks things when the cattle, uh, users protesteth too much. In moving things around, they ‘open up more holes’, which, again, other users will protest about. It would appear that this is, as we would say in SQA, is ‘as designed.’
In one way Facebook reminds me of a...
1 tag
PayPal APIs: Up and Running, 2nd Ed. By Matthew A....
Upshot: A worthy upgrade to the first edition, this time not PHP but enumerated in Python. Does a good job of plotting & describing PayPal’s increasingly byzantine “workflows” to bop payments back and forth.
Coming from a different author than the initial edition, PayPal APIs: Up & Running 2nd Edition came as a bit of a surprise to me. Whereas the 1st ed used PHP & Objective-C, this...
4 tags
April 2012
0 posts
2 tags
Head First HTML5 Programming by Eric Freeman,...
Upshot: Like most Head First books, this is a good ‘general’ start to the topic at hand. Downsides? If you have more than one HF book.. you may begin to see a pattern here.
Head First HTML5 Programming by Eric Freeman, Elisabeth Robson is another dense, soup to nuts tome that weighs in at 610 pages. The authors attempt, and IMHO succeed in covering the current territory-in-flux that is HTML5.
If...
March 2012
6 posts
2 tags
Death Rally Review
This is my review of Death Rally from iTunes, posted mostly to encourage the Developers:
“At 99c this is a no-brainer and loads of fun. I don’t know why folks are complaining about the controls. At the hale old age of 44, and as someone who does NOT game I was still able to get to 2 mil, play Extreme races and occasionally beat the Adversary, both on my iPad1 as well as my iPhone4…...
4 tags
paco the sage: Writing Kit Review →
This is an awesome review of WritingKit, my primary Markdown editor. It does Tumblr. Very well, according to this review:
pacothesage:
Ok, this is something I haven’t done before, so bear with me if this fails miserably. But I’m trying out Writing Kit. It’s a really interesting take on writing apps for the iPad.
Up until today I’ve used iA Writer for most of my iPad centric writing. Or Apple’s...
3 tags
AT&T says, "Your Billing Cycle doesn't Start When...
In the morning, folks! When we last left Bad Uncle Leo, that being ME, I was befuddled by ‘phantom data’ appearing on my iPhone. Being a geek I approached the problem from the geek end of things. It’s not a geek issue:
So @ATTTeamTrevor’s rep called me back, after I posted this pic to Twitter of my current billing cycle for March, which begins on the 13th:
Well it...
3 tags
AT&T's Problem with 3G 'Phantom Data' -- even if...
In the morning everyone, time to take a break from the ORA reviews to document my own little ‘issues’ with AT&T and what they define as ‘unlimited data’.
Here’s a little riddle:
If you ‘turn off’ all 3G and cellular data the night before your data ‘turns over’ or resets like this, say around 7pm PST the night your billing cycle ‘ends’….
What would you expect your data to...
February 2012
1 post
1 tag
Head First Mobile Web by Lyza Danger Gardner &...
Upshot: Everything you’d want to know about developing or porting a website for Mobile Devices, even ones older than iPhone/Android. Yes this still matters. Any downsides? Gets a bit dense at time, but pain is good for you.
I was really impressed with the coverage & focus of Head First Mobile Web by Lyza Danger Gardner & Jason Grigsby.
As with other books in the Headfirst series, with...
December 2011
5 posts
1 tag
1 tag
Head First jQuery by Ryan Benedetti, Ronan Cranley
Upshot: This is a ‘Headfirst’ book. You know what to expect by now, right? Easy intro to jQuery, made easier if you know Javascript. Wow, at 544 pages this is a pretty thick ebook.
So you want to get into jQuery, eh? Well, if you’re versed in CSS and Javascript, there’s a ‘Headfirst’ book for you, Headfirst jQuery By Ryan Benedetti & Ronan Cranley. The book starts out with a nice intro to the...
1 tag
Getting Started with Arduino by Massimo Banzi
Upshot: Here is you beginner’s primer to the funky hacker world of Arduino. Hardware, software, hacking… oh my. No downsides. For browsers as well as the serious.
I think Getting Started with Arduino is probably the first book you should buy on Arduino (or even Processing, the other embedded system language) to get your feet wet. The book starts with basic electronics, which MOST designers and...
1 tag
Tap, Move, Shake by Todd Moore
Upshot: If you want to learn programming & have fun, learn to make games. This is a great book to start you on your way, suitable for beginner to intermediate. Cons: None, other than it’s a draft (as of this writing).
I really enjoyed reading Tap, Move, Shake, even though (at this time) I don’t have any interest in developing a game. Where does it start? With the most basic game...
October 2011
8 posts
1 tag
Privacy & Big Data by Terence Craig, Mary E....
Upshot: If all ‘Big Data’ is to you are two words and you blissfully share away on Facebook…. I’ll be blunt: you need this book. Any downsides? WSJ links go nowhere. Might plod a little for lay folk as the authors decant the issues to English. Even so, stick with it.
To me, the problem with information sharing isn’t ‘the Cloud’…it’s Privacy & Big Data. Whether you’re sharing on Facebook or...
1 tag
And you wonder why I'm an O'Reilly DRM-Free(ak)
And THIS is why I get DRM-Free ePubs from O’Reilly and PragProg. From my O’Reilly download page:
You get lifetime access to ebooks you purchase through oreilly.com. Whenever possible we provide them to you in five DRM-free file formats — PDF, ePub, Kindle-compatible .mobi, DAISY, and Android .apk — that you can use on the devices of your choice.
Our ebooks are enhanced with...
2 tags
HTML5 Cookbook (Early Release) by Christopher...
Upshot: A great survey of HTML5, relevant examples for all levels. Good documentation of the gotchas, too. No downsides, other than it’s in draft right now.
Even though HTML5 Cookbook is in early draft — seriously, the Introduction is still a template —there is a LOT of good stuff here. If the priority with the authors was to get to the meat first, then they have executed on...
2 tags
The HTML5 Sessions: The Best of OSCON 2011
Upshot: If you didn’t make it to OSCON, or never do, here are your lectures on HTML5. The best 11-odd hours that you can spend getting up to speed. With a snag or two.
I was really impressed with the The HTML5 Sessions: The Best of OSCON 2011 videos. If you need an introduction to HTML5, start with the lecture “Refactoring for Mobile using HTML5 and CSS3” by Joseph Lewis of Sandia National Labs....
4 tags
Pallet.app & MacPorts on Lion
For anyone else who installed Pallet.app, the GUI for MacPorts on Lion… and doesn’t know where the TCL path is, it’s not in
/Library/Tcl/
..anymore. It actually moved here:
/opt/local/share/macports/Tcl/
And, of course you’ll have to use the Finder > ‘Go to Folder’ to drag the /Tcl/ folder to the ‘Open Folder’ dialog in Pallet.app.
3 tags
How to Read DRM-Free ePubs on your Mac
How do you read ePubs on your Mac? Here’s how!
Up until VERY recently there has been no way to read DRM-Free ePubs on your Mac, without the use of the excellent ePubReader Firefox plugin. And while the plugin is great for paging through ePubs, how do you:
Search for code or strings inside that 800+ page ePub on iOS Programming?
Use MacOS technologies like Spotlight or Quicklook to get at...
4 tags
3 tags
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Lion: "The Battle is Lost"
Warning: Rant (on)
Made you look, didn’t I? There’s a reason. As some of you know, there’s a bug in Lion about a tool that most Mac users wouldn’t care about let alone use- in the dscl tool.
I have no doubt whatsover that Apple will fix this bug. That’s not what’s bugging me.. it’s this attitude by a number of users and worse, system administrators...
