January 4, 2008
Books I read in 2007
I read a lot of dry technical books and didn't read as much as I'm accustomed to
God Delusion - Richard Dawkins
Iron Sunrise - Charles Stross
Singularity sky - Charles Stross
Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
Ham on Rye - Bukowski (re-read)
P.S. I scored the bridesmaids - Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
The Sleeper Awakens - H.G. Wells
The 22 Immutable laws of Branding - Ries and Ries
Junky - William S Burroughs
Hells Angels - Hunter S Thompson
Glasshouse - Charles Stross
Setting Free the Bears - John Irving
Sirens of Titan - Vonnegut (R.I.P. - so it goes)
Room full of Mirrors (Jimi Hendrix biography) - Charles Cross
His Dark Materials Trilogy (Northern Lights, Subtle Knife, Amber Spyglass) - Philip Pullman
Gormenghast Triology - Meryn Peake (started)
The Blind Watchman - Richard Dawkins (half-done)
ASP.NET Essentials (C#) - Onion
ASP.NET 2.0 Essentials (C#) - Onion
MCTS Application Development Foundation - Microsoft
Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture - Fowler
The pragmatic programmer - Hunt and Thomas
Coder to Developer - Mike Gunderloy
Database in Depth - C.J.Date (quarter-done; slow read, but excellent)
Design Patterns - Gamma, Helm, Johnson and Vlissides (the 'Gang of Four' book! - started...)
I'm sure I missed a few; I usually read a bit more than that - I was slowed down by the technical books - just a little...
Posted by dottie at 12:08 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 25, 2007
Early Science Fiction Collection on Project Gutenberg
All free, all in the public domain.
You can get you rhands on it a number of ways - the links, etc. are on this page
Posted by dottie at 3:34 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 24, 2007
reCaptcha - brilliant idea
This is a brilliant idea that kills two birds with one stone.
The Gutenberg Project started the ball rolling with the idea of making public domain literature available to a wide audience. Their idea was to scan books, OCR them into text and make them available on their website. It's a brilliant strategy, one that has allowed me to read a few free novels - turn of the century yes, but still a glittering array of reading material to choose from.
The problem with OCR is that the characters are often misread by the computer. The volunteer scanning the book into the computer needs to meticulously go through the text produced by the OCR process and correct all and any errors. A hugely time-consuming business I'm sure you'll agree.
The second 'bird' that I alluded to is the fact that many sites use a captcha to distinguish between humans and computers. A typical captcha will consist of distorted text that only a human can distinguish correctly. A computer attempting to enter spam onto a comment form will use OCR to distinguish what the text says.
This is where the makers of reCaptcha made the connection. In the book scanning process, the computer fails to recognise the character using OCR, but often a human has no difficulty in distinguishing the word.
Using a cache of problematic OCR'd words as captchas the process of digitising books is somewhat, if not fully, automated. The problematic OCR word is displayed along with an OCR word that is known and if the human correctly guesses the known word the problem word is assumed to be correct. Check that against a few other answers and you can be sure it is.
Brilliant strategy.
Posted by dottie at 9:22 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 17, 2007
Happy podiobooks day!
Podiobooks is back online and better than ever (wait till I head over to Digg to initiate some 'server testing' ;) )
Pay them a visit - there are some great audio books there!
Posted by dottie at 11:00 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 29, 2006
Quick review of Richard Dawkins latest book God Delusion
I got this for Christmas (thanks Mum!) and I am just working my way through it - for the first time. I plan on reading it again and making noes this time!
A quick sum up in Prof. Dawkins words, and this is directed towards his critics, not him:
"Dream on"
Loving it!
Comments
James
I look forward to reading your thoughts on this book, after you're through.
Amazon must have told me that he released a book, for it's been on my list of books to read for a bit now.
Shame on me, I started reading one of Dawkins' books back in school, albeit early on, when I was taking classes for which I had to study, and never finished ...
Anywho, I look forward to your notes/thoughts on it.
Mark Lennox
Will do chap. I am workig through the difficult middle chapters - some hairy concepts being thrown around!
I'll have to crack a few other books and do some googling before I can read through it again.
And I will also, God forbid ;), have to bone up a little on theology to see if Prof. Dawkins detractors really do have some basis for saying that their profession of faith is more than just a scoffable 'personal god' (the ultimate cop-out as anyone can claim that the god that is being denied is not their god - sort of misses the point but necessitates a game of logic whack-a-mole before the god-botherer usually retreats into the old 'god is beyond logic' argument which for some reason they STILL believe clinches the argument for them rather than against them *sigh*)
Really good book though.
Overall what strikes me is that theologians offer obfuscation and confusion. Prof. Dawkins on the other hand offers clarity and reason.
For some reason this generates a vitriolic response.
What WOULD Jesus do? ;)
Posted by dottie at 9:30 AM | Comments (2)
December 13, 2006
Laurence Lessig releases Code 2.0 to creative commons
Funnily enough it is released to the creative commons and all proceeds are donated to the creative commons (its freely downloadable but available as a dead tree version too).
Cant wait to get some free time to read this so I know what the hell its all about! :)
Posted by dottie at 2:10 PM | Comments (0)
October 5, 2006
Filthy books
Praise Lord Jedus and God almighty - hallelujah!
I have just now read about a good christian gentleman in the United States of America (one nation under GOD...!!!! rapture is near!!!) that has asked for that lascivious, filthy, denegrating, unholy book by the satan worshipping individual known as Ray Bradbury, that ungodly, hedonistic piece of devil worshipping known as "Fahrenheit 451" (obviously written by some homosecual friend of that devil Michael Moore) that has asked for that piece of filth that the liberal media hods up as an example of literature, to be banned. Banned, and with good reason.
This gentleman, this fine upstanding individual, Mr. Alton Verm, was shocked, stunned and outraged when his teenage daughter, only 15 years old people, only 15 years old and being subjected to filth! pure filth! and ungodliness! Dark-sidedness like we have not known since the Salem with trials. This brave father has confronted the corrupted board of his local school and demanded that his daughter be protected from filth, depravity, wickedness and evil. PURE EVIL!!
Luckily, with his good judgement born of many days studying the holy bible and reflecting on his own potential sinful thoughts and lustful desires, this good christian (having fought the good fight against the devil many times) has seen the light of reason and come to the only conclusion that a good, GOD-fearing christian can come to. THIS BOOK MUST BE BANNED!! FAHRENHEIT 451 MUST BE BANNED!
Think on it folks - his teenage daughter exposed to swear words, talk of drunkeness, lasciviousness and coarseness of nature. The poor child has been exposed to corruption. Who knows how it has affected her soul, how it is even now eating away at the shield of virtue she has managed to erect between her and the world. How this evil force in her life has injected a seed of destruction into the very heart of her christianity - her burgeoning womanhood, her future children, the very foundation of every Chrsitan souls future.
Like 'the don' from the popular Godfather movies if they mess with our family, they mess with us. We mustrise up against this filth and declare a vendetta against this perfidious filth that invades the lie of our most precious assest, our 'purity of essence', orur vry lifeblood, our very OFFSPRING>
Clearly, any book that ses the lords name in vain, that talks of foul deeds such as (dare I type these venomous words) Sodomy, Murder, Idolatry, violence, sloth, venal pleasures of every kind. This "Fahrenheit 451" pales in comparison to other books.
We must call for, and expect the immediate destruction of any book that seeks to lead our children and even seasoned warriors of god and knights of jesus and paladins of virgin mary from the street of truth, a street respendant in gay ribbons declaring our undying love for Jesus, his father and the indefatigable holy spirit.
There is a book friends, of such evil. This book , along with many others of its ilk is distributed in secret by a shadowy organisation that claims it seeks only "the betterment of mankind". We, as god-fearing folk, know exactly what such shadowy organisations seek - to overthrow the power of the army of the redempted Chrust himself!!
GUard yourself against these folk by reading what I have to say about this book. It speaks of idolatry, it speaks of murder, it speaks of sodomy, it speaks of murder, it speaks of venal, carnal, mortal sins of every ilk. It presents stories with fully fledged characters that wander far from the light of the lord but in a compelling way designed to strip our youth of their senses, designed to strip our youth of their senses, desinged to kill our youths thought processes and demand undying faith to a false god, a false prophet and demands a familiarity with filth.
This secret order must be stopped at every cost. Please. If you are a good christian send me support by mail, send me support by email, add me to your prayers. We need to combat this society and their text, the text shared by them and many other devious, unholy organisations, unblinking in their devotion to the corruption of the true message of humanity.
Pledge your support, pledge your love of the ture message of life and your faith in humanity.
Posted by dottie at 12:37 AM | Comments (0)
February 26, 2004
Free books
You wont get the latest Harry Potter here but there are some great books. All out of copyright and available completely free of charge!
and some more here. I have selected Sir Richard Francis Burton coz hes a really interesting character, google his name and see what comes up
http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/aut/burton_richard.html
Posted by dottie at 2:01 AM