Posted by Doug
Tue, 15 Nov 2005 10:42:16 GMT
Yum! I love Bruce Fraser’s stuff. This has just been bumped to the top of my wish list
Real World Adobe Photoshop CS2-It’s Shipping!:
Word has come in from Bruce Fraser that he’s recieved his author’s copies of Real World Adobe Photoshop CS2 and the books should be hitting distributors this week.
In this copiously illustrated volume, best-selling authors David Blatner and Bruce Fraser offer scads of hands-on production techniques as well as clear explanations of the concepts that drive them, so that you can get the best results possible on your own Photoshop CS2 projects. You’ll learn about managing color, getting great scans, correcting tones and colors, and more. You also find complete coverage of all of Photoshop CS2’s newest features: integration with Adobe Bridge; Vanishing Point; super-tight integration with the rest of Adobe’s Creative Suite 2; and more.
Posted in Photoshop, Books | no comments
Posted by Doug
Tue, 30 Aug 2005 14:31:00 GMT
My good friend, Mark Windholtz, loaned me a copy of Kent Beck’s Test Driven Development by Example
. While I’ve been practicing TDD for a while now and experimenting with various techniques, I hadn’t actually read this book yet. I found it very enlightening even though I already had some TDD experience.
I have been convinced for a long time that automated tests are the way to go. TDD seems like the logical conclusion to that belief. What the book does is explicitly define the procedure of red/green/remove duplication, why that works, and patterns that come out of it. There’s almost a third of the book related to testing patterns. Most of the book is targeted towards Java, but the patterns are pretty applicable to Ruby on Rails too. Having read this book will definitely improve my development practices.
I feel I should mention that the overall tone of this book is much more informal than the XP books I’ve ready by Kent Beck. Also, I really liked the acknowledgment he wrote about Ward Cunningham.
My life as a real programmer started with patient mentoring from and continuing collaboration with Ward Cunningham. Sometimes I see Test-Driven Development as an attempt to give any software engineer, working in any environment, the sense of comfort and intimacy we had with our Smalltalk environment and our Smalltalk programs. Tere is no way to sort out the source of ideas once two people have shared a brain. If you assume that all of the good ideas here are Ward’s, then you won’t be far wrong.
I’ve communicated with Ward several times via IM and a couple times over the phone. I like him a great deal. Kent certainly gets a lot of attention because he writes the books. He’s never shy of giving credit to Ward. Ward’s such an easy going guy. He doesn’t push himself on you; it’s more like he infects you. With all I know about Ward, one of my career goals is for someone to say I’m like him. Of course, I’m far from that now. For starters, I need another 15 to 20 years of solid experience.
Posted in Programming, Software, Test Driven Development, Books | 2 comments
Posted by Doug
Sat, 03 Jan 2004 04:24:00 GMT
Since our Sirius satellite radio wasn’t work on our trip to South Carolina, I bought and returned
Life of Pi by Yann Martel from
Cracker Barrel. This was a marvelous book. What I liked most about it was the originality. The story is about an Indian boy growing up in the ‘70s whose father owns a zoo. Because of the political and economic situation of India in the ‘70s his father sells all the animals in the zoo to zoos around the world (mainly the US), and moves his family to Canada. Unfortunately, the ship that’s carrying Pi, his family, and all the zoo animals to Canada sinks in the middle of the Pacific. Pi ends up in a life boat with a zerbra (who has a broken leg), an orangutang, a spotted hyena, and an adult bengal tiger. Before too many days pass, it’s down to Pi and the tiger. The bulk of the book is about the 200-some-odd days it takes Pi to float his life boat across the Pacific to Mexico.
While sometimes gruesome and often funny, the book reads like a true story. I kept thinking through out the book, “This isn’t real, is it? I would have heard of this wouldn’t I?” But the story is told with such detail that it seems true. Overall, I give the writing at 10. The book was billed as a Spiritual book. I guess it is. He mentions God through out. To most secular reviewers that would make it a Spiritual book. Pi pretty much creates his own religion by merging Hindu, Islam, and Catholicism. But I don’t consider this really a spiritual book. Martel doesn’t cover any new ground. He’s not trying to make a point that I ever figured out. There are some small point here and there; a really good chapter on fear. But no overall Spiritual theme (such as you’d find in
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance). It’s just a story about survival. I highly recommend the book. I’m pretty sure Carla won’t agree, but you’ll have to ask her.
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